Serra Hughes | Worlding Communication: Novel Communication Barriers in Global Science Fiction and Speculative Literature

Serra Hughes | Worlding Communication: Novel Communication Barriers in Global Science Fiction and Speculative Literature | University of Amsterdam, ASCA | Supervisors: Dr. Emelia Quinn and Prof. dr. Esther Peeren | March 1, 2023, 4 years

The novel communication barrier, an innovation beyond the norms of empirical reality that obstructs mutual understanding, is identified in this thesis as a distinct literary trope across a transnational range of science fiction and speculative literature. Locating this mechanism across a diverse corpus of texts from the Cold War period to the present and from the United States to Britain, Canada, Nigeria, Poland, Spain and China, this PhD project is the first to untether these novelties from their local contexts to develop urgently needed clarity on communication in a world of deepening divides. Worlding Communication uses Eric Hayot’s theory of worldedness to demonstrate how novel communication barriers confront a world-representational norm, affirming the existence of a universal world-concept of communication while calling attention to the possibility of its transformation. The thesis identifies three key categories through which the novel communication barriers manifest – through ontological alterity, differing modes of consciousness, and physical blockages – and substantiates their transformative potential through Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communication in order to demonstrate how the friction generated by communication disturbances creates new worlds. Taking a world literary approach to a global crisis, this project answers the call to approach literature in more expansive ways, not only to reflect on the economic, cultural, and social transformations of globalization but also to address them, demonstrating, in the process, the vital role literature has to play in reimagining the ways the world can be transformed.