[Extraterrestrial (Dublin 2013). Foto Rb]
Andrew Milner, Science Fiction and the Literary Field. Science Fiction Studies,
38.3, 2011, pp. 393-411
Milner builds on Bourdieu’s theory of the arts and
literature [1], by
expanding in the direction of science fiction.
He adapts Bourdieu’s concept of “literary field”,
with poetry as the sector most independent from financial and social pressures,
and prose as the most dependent.
In designing the science fiction field, Milner
takes into account not only fiction but also drama, and, within his revised
science fiction specific literary field, he assigns varying positions to science
fiction within mainstream literature, and to the peculiar science fiction avant-garde
constituted by sub-genres such as new wave, cyberpunk and so on.
In his conclusion, he comes to “two axioms. The
first is that science fiction is a sub-field of the general literary field, with
a structure homologous to that of the wider field that simultaneously
constructs and is constructed by, produces and reproduces the science fiction
selective tradition. The second is that the boundary between the science fiction
field and the canonical ‘literary’ field takes a form loosely
analogous to that of a membrane - that is, a selective barrier, impermeable to
many but by no means all elements - located in the overlap between the science fiction
restricted field and institutionalized bourgeois science fiction. From the
canonical side, this impermeability tends to allow science fiction to enter the
canon, but not to return to science fiction; from the science fiction side,
movement is normally permitted in both directions”.
It seems to the present writer that, while constituting
an interesting account of science fiction complexity, this way of re-defining
science fiction is rather a recapitulation of pre-existing definitions than a totally new approach.
Milner's conclusion cited above is certainly valid in general. However, in the last two or three
decades, due to the restructuring of genres within the contexts of late
modernity, science fiction, once it made it into canonical literature, did not
necessarily have to be prevented from going back to non canonical status. Science fiction would
rather appear to come and go from the traditional literary canon, and to challenge, and influence, canonical
definitions of literature.
In the subsequent volume Locating Science Fiction [2], Milner continues and expands his exploration
of this genre, supported by Bourdieu, Jameson and Suvin as his main theoretical
references.
[Roberto Bertoni]
