UC Riverside

This dissertation analyzes a number of science fiction novels and short stories from Mexico and Argentina. These include texts that are frequently read as science fiction as well as a few that aren’t. These texts are: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges, Mejicanos en el espacio by Carlos Olvera, “Los embriones del violeta” by Angélica Gorodischer, La ciudad ausente by Ricardo Piglia, “Ruido gris” by Pepe Rojo, and Mantra by Rodrigo Fresán. These texts portray alien invasions and encounters, or cyborgs, exploring in intricate ways the relation of gender, race, and sexuality to colonial expansion, coloniality, and neoliberalism. By exploring both texts from Mexico and Argentina I am able to compare and contrast the ways that race and sexuality manifest themselves in science fiction.

My theoretical approach includes various queer theorists such as Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, and J. Halberstam. It also includes scholars of science fiction such as J. Andrew Brown, John Rieder and Sherryl Vint. The queer possibilities of the texts I analyze have been, with few exceptions, largely overlooked or underrepresented by scholars. I have found that this approach brings to light the way science fiction creates new worlds, bodies, and spaces goes hand in hand with representations of queer space and time. Cyborgs, aliens, and space men have various queer encounters in the texts I examine. Though different, each text represents queer lives through the homosocial bonds of characters who find themselves in outer space or even just the changing of life on earth due to technology. The encounter between peoples and customs in outer space and alien planets abstracts actual cross cultural and colonial encounters and manifest the way that gender, race, and sexuality are intricately connected and important to consider in such encounters. Science fiction provides a vehicle to understand historical and present differences and the way that gender, sexuality, and race are constructed across time and space.