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Existence as Resistance, WisCon 46 , May 26–29, 2023, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

2023; Penn State University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/utopianstudies.34.3.0618

2154-9648

Laurie Fuller, Jenna N. Hanchey, Erick López Ornelas,

Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

In a world that seems structured to kill most of its occupants, there is a utopian impulse in the act of existence itself. WisCon 46 represented a prefigurative utopian impulse through centering continued marginalized existence as resistance.1 Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha calls “prefigurative politics” the “fancy term for the idea of imagining and building the world we want to see now,” particularly in terms of access needs.2 The structure as well as the content of the convention itself created a space in which to set the groundwork for utopia: the ways that we live and act to resist structures of oppression in order to prefigure a better world.Since WisCon’s founding in 1977, its intended audience has been fans, authors, and academics interested in the intersection between feminism and “science fiction, fantasy, and speculative literature of all sorts.”3 While neither feminism nor speculative fiction could be solely defined as utopian, both do explore utopian impulses that inspire change for the better. Therein lies the hope of Alessa Johns’s proposal that “the utopian imagination has been crucial for feminists.”4 Lisa Yaszek agrees: “for nearly 200 years writers have used speculative fiction consciously and collectively to dramatize the political issues most central to women living in a technocultural world and to create a sense of wonder about the interrelated possibilities of social and scientific change.”5 Envisioning a liberatory world is a feminist imperative, and speculative fiction offers a unique venue to do so. This imperative informed WisCon this year, as participants collectively worked to imagine and enact a better future for marginalized folks, in and beyond the space of the conference.WisCon is unique in attuning its organizational structure to the creation of liberatory futures in the here and now. WisCon is strongly attentive to disability access of all kinds, COVID safety, antiracist/anti-oppression principles, and safety and anti-abuse support for all these areas. In the contemporary US context—where COVID-19 remains a major barrier to disabled people wishing to participate in conventions, where racist violence continues to threaten BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) life, where queer and trans folks are under exacerbated legal attacks—creating a convention space that protects and enables marginalized participation becomes a means of prefiguring utopian potential through embodied praxis. As mask, capacity, and vaccination mandates disappear (despite these ongoing pandemic times), and as bigotry of all forms continues relatively unabated, WisCon 46 remains steadfast in its commitment to safety. In short, the conference itself aims to become a utopian space.WisCon organizers are also keenly aware of the challenges that many different bodyminds might encounter in large group settings.6 Trained monitors oversee in-person and online programming in an effort to discourage harmful words and actions as well as ensure the fullest participation for those most impacted. Hence, disability justice lies at the center of the Con’s policies and practices. The event is made as accessible as possible through careful attention to venue selection, including the availability of gender-neutral bathrooms, scent-free spaces, and quiet rooms, as well as the use of color communication badges.This year’s event followed strict masking and testing protocols: individually packaged rapid COVID-19 tests were available without cost at registration, as were KN95 masks. The Con kept an anonymized record of self-reported positive COVID-19 tests, in case of possible exposure. This mutual responsibility reflects the kind of utopianism inherent to disability politics; that is, disability “allows for reformulation of in/dependence and community,” a way of rethinking how we share space and produce knowledge together.7The conference’s decidedly feminist approach “to creating a space for feminism and its consideration within the science fiction community” is applied at every level. The Con’s general organization and procedures are structured as nonhierarchically as possible. There is a board of directors as well as co-chairs, but these are rotating positions. This “commitment to feminism” is reflected in its planning of “meetings, decision-making processes, program development, and guest of honor choice.”8 Each year, members propose panel titles and descriptions through crowdsourcing ideas and, after voting, those with the highest level of interest are then scheduled. Members volunteer for these different panels and roundtables from the crowdsourced topics.Another example of WisCon’s feminist framework is its method of selecting guests of honor. Each year the guest of honor (GOH) is selected through majority vote by Con volunteers, which “reflect[s] a commitment to feminist ideals of equality, respect for everyone’s right to be heard, and the obligation to hold each other accountable for what we say.”9 Jeanne Gomoll explains: “Many WisCon decisions have been made on this basis: the group’s unwritten philosophy has been that, in order to survive, a volunteer organization must be run democratically, empowering those who do the work with the right to make decisions.”10In this spirit, other essential food and transportation resources were also provided at WisCon 46: free meals and snacks; meal vouchers for four nearby restaurants; and ride vouchers for a local unionized taxicab company. WisCon offered free reduced membership fees and travel assistance; particularly notable was the free registration offered to all BIPOC pre-Con volunteers. WisCon’s commitments to Indigenous peoples and decolonial feminisms prompted the adoption of a land acknowledgment—again highlighting its efforts to move toward a more just, inclusive conference. The threads of utopianism within feminism and science fiction are not outlandish or unrealistic: they can be realized here and now. WisCon can serve as an organizational model for other academic conferences, conventions, and convergences, especially in the humanities and social sciences, which seek to promote inclusivity and accessibility, rather than simply study it.Additionally, WisCon 46’s programming focused on the act of existence itself as a form of resistance throughout its panels, presentations, author readings, games, video-watching parties, and online events, as well as discord spaces for live and postpanel discussion. There were several award ceremonies, with speeches from the 2023 GOHs, authors Martha Wells and Rivers Solomon. Ryka Aoki was the winner of this year’s Otherwise Award, which honors a speculative author whose work expands understandings of gender.11 These events throughout the Con highlighted the ways in which prefiguring utopia begins with the radical act of existing within structures made for one’s demise. Perhaps the most relevant panel in this regard was titled “Dystopias Are Easy. Utopias Are Hard.” The four participants, Kate JohnsTon, Susan Lee, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Annalee Newitz, considered the following questions:After each participant defined utopia or dystopia in their own terms, the discussion spun off a family metaphor: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The panelists reversed this phrase to ponder whether all dystopias are dystopian in the same way, while utopias are different for everyone.Annalee Newitz recalled the long-held notion that one person’s utopia is often another person’s dystopia.13 For instance, if contemporary US society’s idea of utopia benefits only wealthy, white, cishet, able-bodied men—and is thus founded on the dehumanization of marginalized others—what might it mean to lay the groundwork of a utopia for all? Is it even possible, or does utopia rely on some sort of partiality? Benjamin Rosenbaum reminded the audience that Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), while often heralded as a utopic work, includes major disagreements among characters regarding what should be considered utopic. The “Dystopias Are Easy. Utopias Are Hard” panel, and the audience discussion following, delved into what makes and unmakes utopias and dystopias, and how to exercise our imaginations to envision justice, abolition, and cultural transformation.The panel “The Empire, Struck Back: Anti-Imperialism in SFF” considered this same problematic, and concluded that the first step toward imagining a utopia for all must be the continued existence and indeed flourishing of those most marginalized. Panelist Claire Light/Jadie Jang noted that as part of a postcolonial Asian diaspora in the United States, her work is certainly anti-imperialist, but not in a heavy-handed “overthrow-the-empire” way. She referred to her work as “anti-imperialism lite,” highlighting in small ways the experiences and identities of postcolonial characters and the burdens they carry. However small these moments might appear, these are ways of resisting.This theme of existence-as-resistance shone through the GOH and Otherwise award speeches as well. GOH Martha Wells described policing and silencing of women and marginalized groups: “If you’re a woman, or a person of color, or a queer person, or person with both disabilities and opinions about your own experiences, or any combination thereof, sometimes people just want you to stop.”14 The very existence of imaginings from the margins is a threat to the status quo, one that domination labors to erase. Thus, there is a power in continually exerting such existence, says Wells:GOH Rivers Solomon spoke in a similar vein, highlighting the ways in which quotidian, small acts can accumulate to create large impacts:Solomon reminds us that simply being here and being alive is a form of resistance in a world not structured for our flourishing—and those “small ways” are a means of remaking that world. For those who face odds “weighted toward death,” simply “reach[ing] towards life” can enable transformation.Otherwise Award winner Ryka Aoki encouraged putting these experiences of marginalized existence into our writing as a means of opening the potential for better—even utopian—futures:By taking “what we do to survive every day” and turning it into stories, we create possibilities for our own futures and for those that come after us. Upon realizing that she is the first transwoman of color to be published at a major SFF press, Aoki concluded that “being first only matters if you stick your damn foot in the door and make sure it never closes again.”Finally, the impact for “those that come after” was demonstrated in one of the author reading panels entitled “Speculating Social Justice.” A panel of queer women of color graduate students, who composed short stories for a “writing speculative fiction for social justice” course, discussed how writing itself is an act of survival. Students Stephany Rojas-Hidalgo and Karishma Kasad read from their stories, and then elaborated on how and why, as young queer BIPOC authors, they found the work helped them to weather and process a world not meant for them. The resonance of their words and experiences with the audience in the room was itself an enactment of the kind of solidarity that writing marginalized experiences can create. The sharing of these stories of continued existence inspired precisely the feeling of resisting power, and the hope of a future utopia broadened in scope—and inclusiveness.“We must strive,” wrote José Esteban Muñoz, “in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.”18 WisCon 46 affirmed the importance of this striving, and these small acts of resistance in the face of larger structures of oppression. Ashon Crawley extends this thought: “Whatever we have is not all that is possible. The otherwise is the disbelief in what is current and a movement towards, and an affirmation of, imagining other modes of social organization, other ways for us to be with each other.”19 WisCon 46 and its predecessors are working toward otherwise, toward imagining feminist organizing. Together, our little acts of utopian worldmaking in the here and now prefigure utopian possibilities for the future—not just for some, but for all.