Visionary Fiction: Fugitive World-Making and Ethnofuturisms

Pat Imburgia

In writing my final short story, “A Vote of Confidence,” I kept returning back to this notion of the legacy of colonial violence and how it impacts our understanding of notions of futurity. In choosing to write a counterfactual narrative, I decided to explore what a near-future America might look like if it still existed as a colony and how that nation might deal with its future. By returning the U.S. to its very distant past, I wanted to demonstrate to readers the ways in which the U.S. is still dealing with the legacy of British imperialism despite our taking on our own sense of world hegemony.

On a critical level, my piece engages with speculative fiction’s treatment of history, namely how can speculative fiction in presenting alternative timelines challenge the dominant historical narrative of progress. Josh Rios argued that “If all we can imagine is a future where the same social structures persist, where people of color continue in their invisibility or only occupy the most marginal of social statuses, when that future world becomes present reality, it appears natural and meant to be” (68). Although my text is based around the day of a white, Anglo-protestant, male and a member of the dominant privileged class, I have tried to make present as well (albeit in more subtle ways) the suffering held by those whom imperialism marginalizes. I have attempted, while not making them always the dominant voice in the page, to give them prominence in the beginning (or ending) of each section. By attempting to do so, I wanted to both make readers aware of the importance of who gets left out of narratives of empire but also to demonstrate how imperialism constructs and fears a constructed “other” that seemingly lacks identity but is always both ignored and a threat to be overcome. The story is built around three parts that describe Arthur Newitt, the main character’s day, from his morning phone call with the Colonial Secretary, to his walk to Parliament and his observation of the Rittenhouse Square protests (and the police’s handling of it), to lastly, the actual vote and the storming of the Parliament by those marginalized by society. 

By framing my story around these three incidents and its subsequent undermining by the end of the text,  I have attempted to show how something that occurs in the dominant group as a naturalized idea (that the future of the country is dependent on a vote by the dominant group without the input or concern for those marginalized) is not necessarily the only possible future reality as the vote never begins because of its interruption by revolutionary violence. My choice of ending, moreover, demonstrates what Rios notes as a main goal for Speculative and Science Fiction- that is to create postcolonial narratives that do not ask “where do you fit in” but instead to accept the ways in which the “future” is a cultural construct that we must redefine (64). While the main character spends a greater part of the narrative questioning what his role in the possible future that the vote for devolution will create- whether he might become the prime minister, for example- the text ends instead with the creation of a new future, independent on the ones proposed by the vote, and one that ends in an inclusive way- “we ourselves” (which I admit I borrowed from the 19^thand 20^thcentury Irish revolutionary group, Sinn Fein). 

The creation of the new nation-state at the end of the text also gestures towards questions about technology. Throughout the text, there is mention of a sort of technological “mind-reading” (implicit at first and then later stated more explicitly) as a means of maintaining surveillance and control over those who pose a threat to the established order. Csicsery-Ronay Jr. claims that “the means of consciousness production are concentrated in the hands of a very few oligarchs. This empire is reaching the limits of its external expansion and turning increasingly toward the direct penetration of human minds” (17). In writing my story, I attempted to show how within empires ultimately there is a quick reconfiguration of who counts as having an autonomous consciousness, as even the main character is in some ways faced with the rhetoric of control while it is only the Prime Minister at the end who seems to have his thoughts and speech escape becoming “archived” as the Colonial Secretary and the marginalized do. This archival aspect of technology in my story also engages with Simone Brown’s arguments about biometric surveillance. What I’ve chosen to do is to give situations in which such biometric technology might appear “normal” to us that is in situations where a politician might use a DNA scanner to lock his office and computer ( in a way reminiscent of Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID) and then to give an example of how such technology might be used to identify and mark those who appear as “others.” 

Works Cited

Brown, Simone. “Race and Surveillance.” Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies, edited by Kirstie Ball et al., Routledge, 2012, pp. 72–79.

Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Istvan. “Science Fiction and the Imperial Audience.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 26, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 7–18.

Rios, Josh. “A Possible Future Return to the Past.” Somatechnics, vol. 7, no. 1, Mar. 2017, p. 59-73.

Excerpt:

1. A Call with the Colonial Secretary:

We are unhappy. We have been excluded from the nation. We are those who should define it: farmers, industrialists, labourers, the undercurrents of empire. We are the Natives, the Slaves, the Women. We are those who are cast aside. We have no voice. Our crops are dying. Our families starve. Our work is sent away to the Mother Country and we are left with nothing. No one listens to us. We suffer. Yet we are here. 

Sir Arthur Newitt, Member of Parliament, was sitting alone in his office, smoking a cigar while waiting for his holophone to ring. For most, it was an unusual sight as the only people who were normally seen smoking cigars were either British politicians who had come to inspect the health of their Empire, or well-to-do British tourists vacationing in the colonies. Since the tobacco crops (amongst others) had failed nearly half a century ago, the most prominent politicians and business leaders had decided that the only recourse was to give up this habit in the belief that the smoking of domestic cigars halted and weakened trade with Britain. And normally, Sir Arthur would have advocated for such a worldview; after all, his whole career was based on maintaining British North America as key country within the Empire, whose prosperity was dependent on each country’s ability to trade with England. However, now, aged fifty-two and having been first an M.P. for fifteen years, and the B.N.A’s liaison officer with the British Colonial Secretary for five, Sir Arthur had picked up the habit of smoking when in the presence of his British counterparts; a habit, he believed, that endeared him to them and proved himself more than a colonial figurehead. 

And so, it was this desire to prove himself a loyal servant of the Empire that forced Sir Arthur to get up early in the morning (before even the servants), to creep out of bed quietly, so as not to disturb his wife. He dressed quickly and efficiently, although he quietly bemoaned to himself that he used to own a valet who was perfect for this kind of situation before he was sold for having dangerous and treasonous thoughts. After making sure his tie was straight, he began to traverse the gallery of his Philadelphia home and make his way across the hall to his home office and to his holophone. His office was his favourite room in the house. Sleek and modern, it had been remodeled in the past five years after his promotion with the addition of tempered glass windows and doors, a black metallic desk, and updated security features to prevent unauthorized access. As the liaison between Parliament and the Colonial Secretary, it was vital that reports documenting the state the country not be seen by anyone without the proper security clearances or that he should risk being overheard in his conversation with the Colonial Secretary over tonight’s vote in Parliament. 

 At his office door, his hand trembled as he placed it on the icy glass of the DNA scanner and waited for the all clear to turn the handle. With his identity confirmed, he quickly entered, sat at his desk, and opened the middle drawer in which he loosely kept his cigars. Before picking one up, however, he tapped his desk until it began to light up and project the home screen of his computer in front of him. Tasked again with proving his identity, he placed a finger on the desk while drumming his other hand nervously against its metal framework surreptitiously as to not disrupt the computer from unlocking. He then checked the time, and noting that it was a few minutes until five, focused his attention again on the cigar drawer and picked one at random. Lighting it, he turned off his computer screen projector and awaited the Colonial Secretary’s call.