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38 Pseudoscience
Get accessAnthony Enns is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His coedited collections include Screening Disability (University Press of America, 2001), Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology (Cambridge Scholars, 2008), and Vibratory Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and his essays on science fiction and popular culture have appeared in such journals as Science Fiction Studies, Screen, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Popular Culture Review, and Studies in Popular Culture.
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Published:02 October 2014
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Abstract
This chapter argues that science fiction represents an alternative forum in which orthodox science can be held up to scrutiny. This argument is supported through an examination of three pseudoscientific theories that have been particularly significant in the development of the genre: hollow-earth theory, Martian canals, and extrasensory perception. By examining the history of these theories, the chapter shows how the struggle over scientific ideas is a struggle for cultural power. By examining literary representations of these theories, it also shows how SF plays a key role in this struggle, as it allows authors to entertain speculative theories and extrapolate the implications of extraordinary sciences that have been rejected by the scientific establishment. SF thus represents a privileged site where scientific theories are negotiated, contested, and resisted, and it provides a record of scientific boundary disputes that is invaluable for the creation of genealogies of subjugated knowledges.
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