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Being swamped: decomposed developments in tropical fictions
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Boswell, Suzanne F.. Being swamped: decomposed developments in tropical fictions. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-yy1e-m939

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TitleBeing swamped: decomposed developments in tropical fictions
NameBoswell, Suzanne F. (author); Goldstone, Andrew (chair); Stephens, Michelle (co-chair); Walkowitz, Rebecca (internal member); DeLoughrey, Elizabeth (outside member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2021
Other Date2021-05 (degree)
SubjectLiteratures in English, Caribbean, Authors, Caribbean, Future, The, in literature, Science fiction
Extent1 online resource (x, 197 pages)
DescriptionThis dissertation reveals the influence of Caribbean environments on late 20th century global constructions of the future, from science fiction to early infrastructures of the internet. While Anglo- Americans critics have generally adhered to a temporal binary where they grant futurity to science fiction, while pushing the Caribbean into the past, my research undoes this false dichotomy, uncovering a new narrative of the future that writers create from tropical Caribbean environments. In the period following decolonization, Caribbean authors used tropical environments as a narrative framework that deranged a teleological ordering of history: narrative, rather than tracing progress, patterned itself after ecological processes like rot, decomposition, and re-uptake. Constructions of the future departed from development, taking on temporalized forms like annihilation and ruination. This productive ecological destruction then echoed in narrative forms throughout the Caribbean before finally influencing science fiction novels, corporate white papers, and technologist writing from the metropole. This dissertation thus demonstrates how, for the past 60 years, the metropole’s construction of its future builds on the Caribbean’s tropical environments and the ecological ruination that lies coiled within these tropical roots. In revealing how science fiction and technology - two mediums assumed to be the product of capitalistic progress - are rooted in productive ecological destruction, this dissertation redefines critical assumptions about colonial capitalism and the history of technology. In the process, this research does more than recover SF works by Caribbean authors: it makes the Caribbean central to the interpretation of both narrative form and the material constructions of futurity.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-yy1e-m939
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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