Queering the family as an act of resistance, transformation, and hope in Indigenous futurist, Afrofuturist, and New Wave feminist science fiction

This thesis examines queer representations of the family in feminist, Afrofuturist, and Indigenous futurist science fiction (sf), focusing on how authors kept to the margins of the genre—women, Black, and Indigenous authors—use sf to challenge heteronormative family ideology. Although science fiction scholars have been thinking queerly about the genre since the 1990s, there has yet to be a large-scale study of the family in science fiction, in part because the nuclear family—as a symbol of American national prosperity and the conservative beliefs and values of the white middle class—is considered a key facet of nation's moral fabric. Popular representations of the family in science fiction confine nuclear families to far-away spacecraft and remote planets to safeguard the idealised vision of the family from the threats of modern society. This study interrogates hegemonic family ideology and the dominance of white heteropatriarchy by examining how sf can instead be used to question rather than uphold the validity of the homogenous family unit and exposes the use of the family—both as an idea and a social structure—as a political tool to oppress and marginalise women, Black people, and Indigenous people in North America. Using an intersectional queer critical lens, my research shows how New Wave feminist, Indigenous futurist, and Afrofuturist sf texts unveil ideas about gender, sex, sexuality, race, and nation that are embedded in family ideology and wielded by state actors to subjugate oppressed classes. This thesis’ intersectional and, indeed, queer, study of the family in sf, therefore, undermines the nuclear family as both a symbol of stability and an organically occurring, homogenous phenomenon while exploring the varied and nuanced ways in which women, Black, and Indigenous authors transform the genre, resist white heteropatriarchy, and foster hope for a queer future.

Grantor dc:publisher

University College Cork

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Aherne, Elizabeth Anne

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Corcoran, Miranda
• O'Connor, Maureen

• Feminist science fiction
• Science fiction
• Indigenous futurism
• Afrofuturism

Statement dc:rights

• © 2025, Elizabeth Anne Aherne.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18930

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:cora.ucc.ie:10468/18930