by Aris Mousoutzanis
in _Gothic Science Fiction_ eds. Sara Wasson & Emily Alder (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2011)
While seemingly antithetical genres, the Gothic and Science Fiction have mutually influenced each other many times... more
While seemingly antithetical genres, the Gothic and Science Fiction have mutually influenced each other many times during their historical development, to such an extent that one might claim for the emergence of a hybrid genre of ‘Gothic SF’ since the late 1970s. My thesis is that this peculiar relationship between the two genres may be interpreted in terms of their shared preoccupations with contemporary political and biopolitical discourses. To elucidate, the two genres have interacted with each other more prominently during periods when imperial discourses have developed more sophisticated ways of exercising power, not through repressive and coercive mechanisms, but by preserving, monitoring, even creating human life itself – what Michel Foucault refers to as ‘biopower’. It is for this reason that the first period to witness a considerable interaction between the two genres is the late nineteenth century. This is the moment of increased imperial competition and jingoistic patriotism, of the so-called ‘high noon imperialism’. It is also the time when, according to Foucault, modern biopower emerged, through an increasing politicisation of the sciences, that turned ‘health’ and ‘disease’ into a matter of political preoccupation. And it is the time of early SF texts such as H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, which translates imperial conflict into evolutionary survival of the fittest and biological warfare.
From its beginnings, then, the Gothic SF subgenre has responded to the interlocking of the political with the biopolitical. My focus, however, will be on late-twentieth-century narratives and while I may be making brief references to other narratives, such as the Alien films, the Blade trilogy, or The X-Files, I will be mainly discussing the Star Trek storyline featuring the race of the Borg. The combination of Gothic motifs, such as their vampire-like ability to transform other individuals into ‘drones’, and SF elements, such as their cybernetic implants, has allowed the creators to represent a new form of imperialism that locates itself at the human body itself. From a more theoretical perspective, I will be comparing the Borg with what Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt have called ‘Empire’, a decentred mode of global imperial control that operates through communication networks, a system that represents ‘the paradigmatic form of biopower’, one whose power is exercised ‘through machines that directly organise the brains (in communication systems, information networks, etc.) and bodies (in welfare systems, monitored activities, etc.)’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 24, 23). It is with regard to the strong biopolitical nature of Empire that I will be discussing the increasing association of the Borg with viruses and of their ‘assimilation’ with infection throughout the years. In addition, I will be interpreting the show’s representation of the Borg as the ‘ultimate villain’ of Star Trek with regard to Hardt and Negri’s argument that the United States is losing its prominence in this new system of global control that has come to replace traditional imperialist practices. The Borg storyline will thus be shown as representative of the ability of the Gothic SF genre to represent and comment on the emergence of new modes of biopolitical control at the advent of the Information Revolution and globalisation.
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