SF as Method: Experiments in Post-Earthly Ethnography

• In Event: Future Visions: Unpacking the Technological Imaginaries of Science Fiction

Abstract

The real is presumed to shape, create, and influence fictions, but fiction is not supposed to become fact. Yet SF has always influenced technological (and other) futures. So why not write our own fictions, and see what kinds of worlds we might make and research? This paper explores the potential of SF writing as a form of speculative ethnographic research practice, in this case to explore two contrasting sociotechnical imaginaries for the future of life after earth. First are those centering technological salvation narratives, in which humans leave earth in order to save it and/or themselves. Second are those that position humans as merely instrumental in launching life – a multispecies process – off the planet, a new development in the deep time of evolutionary history. Each offers vastly different visions of what it means to be human, and what kind of earth might be left behind. While science fictions have been written that align with both of these visions, this paper does not analyze these works directly. Instead, it describes the process of remixing existing published statements from public figures and SF writings into a new set of fictional “focus groups.” This experiment in speculative research allows access to otherwise inaccessible actors with influence over outer space imaginaries – the dead, the rich and famous, the fictional, and so on. This paper will explore the potentials and pitfalls of storytelling ethnographies otherwise, particularly for understanding how imaginaries take hold and shape the material-political conditions of earthly life.

Author

• Micha Rahder