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-a rationale for your chosen topic (including reflection on how the taught elements of your programme have helped you develop it)
Literature Review:
-Brief overview
Methods:
-an overview of the methods you plan to use in developing and writing up the project (including reflection on how any methods training you have taken has helped inform these)
-how gather info, lit review
-Methodology – what are u gonna look at?
Timeline:
End of May- Completed Research, Collected quotes, working on literature review and intro
June 15th- Chapter 1 / first section written
End of June- Chapter 2 / second section written
July 15th- Chapter 3 / third section written
End of July- Conclusion, writing completed
1st – 10th of August – Edit
Potential Ethical Challenges:
my perspective, bias & bias in academic lit used – acknowledge and outline my perspective and examine research in lit review
Mode of Representation:
a statement of the intended mode of representation you will use in the final project report
Appendix:
an appendix listing the dates of significant blog posts building to the project plan with direct links, or inline citations and a references – this will be used to make a judgement on whether you have actively engaged with the blog and made meaningful, consistent posts (in other words to assess whether you pass or fail the course; it is not included in the final word count and should include around 10 posts, although it is the quality of the posts and your integration of them into the plan which is most important)
An update on where I am with my project & an informal annotated bibliography
Update:
-A few weeks ago I had a meeting with Simon Western, CEO/Founder of The Eco-Leadership Institute, and we had a discussion about my project. He has a podcast, Edgy Ideas, on which he invites various guests to talk about their expertise and ideas about the world. Some relevant episodes I have listened to so far are: Purpose Upgrade with Paul Skinner, Becoming Digital Savvy with Anni Rowland-Campbell, and Lurking Monsters with Nora Bateson. These were very interesting and although his work centers more on coaching and psychoanalytic perspectives, some ideas discussed could come into play in my project. He is interested in a plethora of theory including Latour and Haraway, who I had planned on including or centering my project around. We therefore discussed these ideas briefly and he gave some suggestions for further reading. He suggested: Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern – https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=latour+modern&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
and an unpublished paper of his own which is extremely relevant and discusses Haraway and technology.
Project:
Cyborgs and Intersectionality in Sci-fi and Speculative Fiction – Narratives of bodies, machines, and nature
– connection / disconnection / re-connection
My research will be an essay looking at contemporary speculative literature and theory surrounding speculative fiction, speculative futures, and technology and the body. It will largely use qualitative analysis and also contain some small sections of my own creative writing. The data will be literature and academic texts. I will undertake a literature review to outline my main texts and their perspectives and potential biases. The aim will be to explore and outline how we can make the world better and counter oppressive systems by envisioning hopeful futures through speculative fiction that contains intersectionality and the blurring of boundaries between nature (the body) and technology. The main research question will be something akin to, how do intersectional cyborgs in speculative fiction create hopeful futures?
It will expand on the ideas in Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ and accompanying texts, including the academic literature which responded and followed as well as fiction focused on those topics.
A preliminary overview of and reflection on the academic literature that I will be drawing on for my project – Informal Annotated Bibliography
-HARAWAY, DONNA J., and CARY WOLFE. Manifestly Haraway. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1b7x5f6. Accessed 2 April 2024.
I will particularly focus on the chapter ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ which was originally published in 1985, and its ideas. In ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ Haraway outlines how the idea (and potentially the reality) of the cyborg – a synthesis of human and technology – has the potential to be a tool of feminist emancipation.
-Cutanda, Grian A. The Earth Stories Collection: How To Make Another World Possible with Myths, Legends and Traditional Stories. The Earth Stories Collection, 2019.
Collects and sometimes alters traditional stories from various cultures around the world and adds to them. Discusses counter stories or counter narratives and their importance as well as the importance of oral storytelling traditions.
-DUNNE, ANTHONY, and FIONA RABY. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. The MIT Press, 2013. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qf7j7. Accessed 2 April 2024.
-Latour, Bruno. On the Emergence of an Ecological Class : A Memo : Subject – How to Promote the Emergence of an Ecological Class That’s Self-Aware and Proud / Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz ; Translated by Julie Rose. Edited by Nikolaj Schultz and Julie Rose, Polity Press, 2022, https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=4e47c45f-629e-ee11-ad36-a04a5e5d2f8d.
-Womack, Ytasha L. Afrofuturism the World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. Lawrence Hill Books, 2013, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57718389725e25272beacd64/t/5f998f434c2ae52feda5ca70/1603899211765/Afrofuturism+the+world+of+black+sci-fi+and+fantasy+culture++by+Ytasha+L.+Womack..pdf.
-VanderMeer, Ann, and Jeff VanderMeer. The Big Book of Science Fiction: The Ultimate Collection. Vintage Books, 2016.
Building Near Futures has been very fruitful so far. We are in groups for a big project and my group is a very good mix of people from different disciplines who are all great workers with lots of ideas and are keen to work on our project. We are looking at sustainable cities and green architecture and design and are potentially looking at creating a future design of EFI centered around green technology, community, and a sustainable approach. This has been very interesting and rewarding so far and we have already learned a lot, looking at various case studies of sustainable and green cities (and smart cities) as well as green design, architecture, and elements (like urban farming) which we might want to include.
The course has largely been centered around this project and I am glad we are doing something so meaningful, that I find so interesting, and that we work together so well. It is also great to bring in some narrative and literature knowledge for some aspects and even some knowledge from my A-level Geography. My passion for art has also come in use, especially as we are looking at architecture and design elements and even have a meeting with the architecture firm for EFI. It has already been extremely eye opening and a real learning process to find out more about EFI, the building, and the limitations that we may face in our design.
The theory has been interesting and certainly relates to creating narratives futures as a whole and may be useful to integrate into the theory of my futures project, specifically the theory on futures projection, the futures cone, and more. Texts such as Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby would certainly come into play – especially as it talks about the envisioning of real futures and how fiction comes into play with technology and design – and possibly other texts on the course like Technology and Sustainable Development : The Promise and Pitfalls of Techno-Solutionism by Henrik Skaug Sætra or even Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities which was suggested by a lecturer. Theory such as discussion about wicked problems and how to approach them may be very relevant to use.
Furthermore, there are many ways that this form of envisioning and designing the future may blend with art and literature as although it focuses on the near future and the real and tangible, this is an important aspect to add to the imaginative speculative fictions of authors such as Ursula e Guin and the artist Solomon Enos. There is also a lot of overlap topic wise, which is no surprise, looking at green and sustainable solutions to climate change and its intertwining issues.
Most of all, I have learnt about how important it is to think in the near future or the short term, as well as the long term, in order to blend speculative fiction into reality, and so that people can’t deem solutions too far away/ into the future and offload responsibility.
An overview of my first meeting with my project supervisor
I met with my supervisor, Simon Malpas, for the first time and had a really great and very helpful meeting where we discussed where I am at with my project and thought about what my next steps are.
I am glad to have him as my supervisor as his specialty is in literature and has a valuable knowledge of contemporary science fiction. Although he has had a couple of different research interests, including the literature, culture and politics of the Restoration period, he is largely currently focusing on the relationship between science, literature and society from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century to the present and science fiction.
We had a long discussion about my plans and influences as well as suggestions of texts which I could look into. We also looked briefly at my past blog posts and tried to clarify my project focus. He also suggested I look into the podcast ‘Our Opinions are Correct’ by the novelists (and science writers) Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders
As I expected the main feedback so far is to narrow down my scope and have a really solid idea of what exactly it is that my project is and is doing.
My task until the next meeting is to really solidify a few core texts which will influence my project.
Refine the rationale for and scope and format of your project on the basis of any reading or thinking done over the break.
My current vision for my futures project is to focus on ideas of ‘the cyborg’ and intersectionality in sci-fi literature, particularly focusing on Afro-futurism and Indigenous Futurism. It will look at the ideas of embodiment and resistance, and resist, break down, and surpass binarisms. It will analyse these texts and argue how their radical potential can change the world – the (speculative) futures which we envision and make reality, and therefore having the potential to change real world systems and science.
This will be mostly academic essay, with elements of a speculative, sci-fi narrative woven in throughout which embody the ideas and narratives discussed.
My current idea is to build on my research from my undergraduate degree, in which I wrote a dissertation called ‘Keith Piper and Speculative Narratives: How Visions of the Body and Technology Influence Speculative Futures’. This dissertation focused on the artist Keith Piper and his work, particularly his exhibition ‘Jet Black Futures’ (2022), discussing how his work explores the complex questions surrounding technology and the body, its science fiction influences, and how it creates speculative narratives.
Influenced by the electives so far (Text Remix, Interdisciplinary Futures, World of Story, and Creating Visual Narratives), I have found new texts and areas to explore (for example, the work of the Author Ursula Le Guin) and reconnected creatively, producing works of visual and written narrative that I didn’t know I was capable of. I also learned about many new tools and ways of creating these narratives, including using AI.
Initially, I thought that I might just write an essay, focusing on the texts and works which interested me, however, now I am considering doing a blended project, consisting of both essay and of my own creations (possibly a written or visual narrative which exemplifies my ideas about speculative futures).
At the moment, my developing idea for my project is to explore diverse speculative narratives, focusing on technology and the body, and potentially blend in some of my own creative work as well (creative writing or a visual narrative). I would like to explore this in a interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary way. Additionally, I would like to go more in depth, explore intersectionality, and explore texts and areas that I did not get to explore before or have discovered since.
Some of the new influences I would like to explore include, Ursula Le Guin, Janelle Monet’s work (specifically the book ‘The Memory Librarian’), Alberta Whittle, Rashaad Newsome, and Solomon Enos.
