BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Sabre//Sabre VObject 4.6.1//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Zurich X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Zurich TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:CEST DTSTART:19810329T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:CET DTSTART:19961027T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:news1911@dslw.philhist.unibas.ch DTSTAMP;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20260930T130807 DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20261112T141500 SUMMARY:"Against the Sexless Utopia: Delany contra LeGuin" DESCRIPTION:Samuel R. Delany’s novel Trouble on Triton (1976) is often co nsidered to be the author’s response to the feminist science fiction wri ter Ursula K. Le Guin’s anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed (1974) \, published two years earlier. Triton\, however\, is just one half of Del any’s engagement with LeGuin’s novel: it sits alongside a long critica l essay by Delany entitled “To Read the Dispossessed” (1977). This pap er seeks to revisit this moment in the history of the New Wave in science fiction history in the 1960s and 70s to outline the particular contributio n—and modification—that Delany’s queer and sex-positive visions of t he future make to perhaps the most widely read utopian work of the 1970s. Beyond the hetero- and cisnormativity of The Dispossessed\, not only does the novel downplay (if not entirely disappear) sexual desire\, Delany also saw it as inadvertently undermining the gender equality it appeared to ch ampion. LeGuin’s anarchist utopia\, even as it questioned its own legiti macy (the protagonist is a scientific genius held back by his ostensibly e galitarian lunar society)\, is nonetheless celebrated as a possible soluti on to ills of LeGuin’s Cold War present. But this is only possible by ab senting the disruptive forces of desire and subjective autonomy. This pape r is interested in what this encounter between contrasting visions of utop ia between two left-libertarian feminist authors writing in the wake of th e 1960s counterculture and sexual revolution can teach us about the ways i n which we might imagine emancipatory futures today. X-ALT-DESC:

Samuel R. Delany’s novel Trouble on Triton (1976) is often considered to be the author’s response to the feminist science fi ction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s anarchist utopian novel The Disposse ssed \;(1974)\, published two years earlier. Triton\, howev er\, is just one half of Delany’s engagement with LeGuin’s novel: it s its alongside a long critical essay by Delany entitled “To Read the Disp ossessed” (1977). This paper seeks to revisit this moment in the history of the New Wave in science fiction history in the 1960s and 70s to outlin e the particular contribution—and modification—that Delany’s queer a nd sex-positive visions of the future make to perhaps the most widely read utopian work of the 1970s. Beyond the hetero- and cisnormativity of Th e Dispossessed\, not only does the novel downplay (if not entirely dis appear) sexual desire\, Delany also saw it as inadvertently undermining th e gender equality it appeared to champion. LeGuin’s anarchist utopia\, e ven as it questioned its own legitimacy (the protagonist is a scientific g enius held back by his ostensibly egalitarian lunar society)\, is nonethel ess celebrated as a possible solution to ills of LeGuin’s Cold War prese nt. But this is only possible by absenting the disruptive forces of desire and subjective autonomy. This paper is interested in what this encounter between contrasting visions of utopia between two left-libertarian feminis t authors writing in the wake of the 1960s counterculture and sexual revol ution can teach us about the ways in which we might imagine emancipatory f utures today.

DTEND;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20261112T160000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR