Abstract:
This dissertation discusses the archive in SF and the way it is embodied in the
subject, questioning the way that recorded, stored information shapes society, making
law, enfranchising some groups and disenfranchising others. This dissertation explores
the following issues through readings of four authors, Bradbury, Atwood, Gibson, and
Stephenson: embodiment of archives in the subject, controlling gender and the body
through archives, and the role of information technology in archival control and archival
access. In SF, corporate and state powers have anxieties of control mapped onto them and
are nodes for the homogenization and control of society while individuality is envisioned
as the technology for resisting oppressive structures. SF offers narratives that do the work
of embodying archives—sending characters into archival spaces and making them into
archives—to elucidate the kinds of anxieties associated with archival control of society
and to demonstrate the revolutionary potential of the individual.