Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Power of Science Fiction.

Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World

A Phenomenological Analysis of the Power of Science Fiction.

Matías Graffigna

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, GSGG

Abstract

The state of our current world has brought about a very active discussion concerning possible alternatives to our current society. In this article, I wish to consider Marx’s idea of communism as a possible alternative, by understanding it as an undetermined concept that only proposes a society without classes and private property. The thesis I will defend here is that we can meaningfully think about such an alternative through the means of Science Fiction literature. In particular, I will take Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (2006) as a case study. To clarify this relation between science fiction (SF) literature and communism as a particular case of an alternative society, I will introduce some concepts of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory. Thus, I shall argue that in SF we can presentify in bounded phantasy an alternative life-world, so furnishing with content the undetermined idea, and in doing so, strengthen the belief in the possibility of such an alternative society.

About the Author

Matías Graffigna is Licenciado in Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is currently doing PhD studies at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany under the supervision of Dr. Christian Beyer. His main area of research is Phenomenology, in particular empathy and language. He is also very interested in social theory and Marxism, and a lover of science fiction as a form of philosophical thinking.

Published: 2019 – 12 – 01