Polygenesis in Fantasy

Tolkien’s explanations of the differences between Good and Evil humanity – that the former descended from those who had greatest contactand affinity with the Elves in ancient times – does not obviously relate to pseudo-scientific explanations of racial difference; it smacks more of religious constructs of a “chosen people.” Turning from Tolkien’s delineation of human groups to his other species, however, reveals the influence of theories of polygenesis, according to which differen...

 Racial Theory, Science, and Fantasy

Modern concepts of race were formulated as a “widely shared theory of biologically determined, physical, intellectual and moral differences between human groups.”35 Hannah Augstein identifies three key elements in nineteenth century race-thinking: that humanity can be divided into races “whose characteristics are fixed and defy the modifying influences of external circumstances;” that these racial groupings have different “intellectual and moral capacities;” and “that mental end...

 Fantasy's "Unreality" Makes It Safer for Exploring Cultur...

Fantasy is a useful sub-set through which to explore popular culture not only because of its prominent position at the present historical moment,but because its inherently non-mimetic nature creates a space which is at least nominally not “the real world” and is therefore safer for cultural work around fraught issues such as – although by no means limited to – race. This is not to suggest that the imagined worlds of Fantasy are separate from reality, but rather that the inclusion of a...

 All Utopias Are Conservative

Herbert’s critique of this seemingly countercultural utopia is precisely aimed at its conservatism. In necessarily rendering life static, the utopian vision must deny the instability of signification and that permits for change and development itself. In making this argument, I am aware that I am (or Herbert is) falling into what Kenneth M. Roemer calls that category of “muckrakers (or ‘stuckrakers’) preoccupied with exposing elements in literary utopias that tend toward changeless st...

 The Invisibility of Whiteness Makes it the Default

In the theoretical and critical literature of whiteness studies, one of the more often discussed ways in which the social efficacy of the category of whiteness has been maintained in the face of its various “leaks” is, ironically, through its erasure as a definable racial category, as was briefly mentioned in the discussion of Tarzan of the Apes. As Jolanta A. Drzewiecka and Kathleen Wong (Lau) point out, the invisibility of whiteness has resulted in its supposed universality. By erasing ...

 SF Fantasies are in a Mutually Complicating Relationship ...

This general paradigm is offered as a theoretical ground for the specific focus and readings of the rest of this book, which analyses in detail the issues of gender, race, and their representation in American SF. For, while the “cognitive” element of SF may not hold in all or even most cases, still SF, as a specular mode, reminds us that its fantasies are in a mutually complicating relationship with material reality. The categories of gender and race, their mutable histories, and the meta...

 How Scientific Experimentation is Superior to Rationality...

Now that we have looked at the differences between the experimental type of thinking and the other types we have discussed, we can see that it is superior to any of the others. Experimental thinking does, to be sure, emphasize systematization and classification, but as means, not as ends in themselves. And, along with rationalism, it emphasizes general principles and laws, but again, not as ends in themselves, but as convenient guides for making our inferences. Neither observation nor infere...

 The Scientific Process Encompasses Numerous Viewpoints

We can get rid of outdated ways of looking at things, of fixed experience, of ingrained intellectual habits, only by constantly expanding our experience and continually comparing one idea with another in order to select the better one. Because systematic science is the result of constant comparison of innumerable materials and experiences, it cannot be produced by individual effort; it is a social product. Science has no nationality; it admits no prejudices. Scientific discoveries made in one...

 The Scientific Method is a Process for Knowing that is Su...

Since mere observation cannot provide the solution to a problem, no matter how accurately it is conducted the necessary next step is inference the process which leads from the present to the future, from the known to the unknown. Every inference is a sort of adventure. Another difference between the scientific method and ordinary common sense is that the former controls the adventure more carefully, and thus reduces the danger involved. The more rigorous the method the less the danger. Safegu...

 Tolkien's World Makes Race Scientific Rather Than Legalistic

The core of the problem is that Tolkien conflates race, culture, and ability. Hobbits, he says, are a race, and based upon a combination their hereditary traits and cultural practices, are better at being stealthy than other races. Tolkien does this throughout his novels, outlining the “racial” characteristics of men, of dwarves, of elves, of orcs, and those few of mixed ancestry (like Aragorn or the Uruk-Hai). As Helen Young, author of Race and Popular Fantasy Literature put it in a re...