UC Irvine

Take Care: Making and Re-Making Dis/ability in Contemporary Science Fiction examines the genre of science fiction through the lens of disability studies to answer the question: “What does it mean to care and be cared for?” By deconstructing the term care, I show how science fiction as a genre articulates the complexities of care and how the language of care obfuscates and validates systemic injustices and violences. I examine a wide range of science fiction works across North America, South Korea, and Japan, including novels, short stories, and manga from the 1980s onward by authors such as James Tiptree Jr., Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, and Hiromu Arakawa. Through the systems of care depicted in these texts—ranging from cultural, governmental, and alien to technological—I dispute the validity of care, care language, and caretaking when used to disable rather than enable subjects. Science fiction presents futures that makes visible bodies erased by the intersections of disability, race, gender, and sexuality. I show how science fiction utilizes and explores the possibilities and potential of advanced technologies while simultaneously challenging and criticizing ableist systems. I show how the effects of ableist systems that force disabled bodies to pass as worthy of care disproportionately affect bodies further minoritized by race, gender, sexuality, and invisible or visible disability. Through this project, I communicate the simple idea that disabled people have a right to be cared for on their own terms rather than for the convenience of others; criticize systems of care that exploit, further disable, or destabilize disabled bodies; and establish conversations of disability and care as desired by disabled bodies.