When I started out my Leverhulme Professorship in the UK, I really enjoyed my work on the „Progressive Fantastic“, a new form of the genre in contemporary German literature. I did some lectures, which you can read or listen to, if you like (here). And I got a book contract to write a whole book about the phenomenon with the lovely Lever Press. And then, life got in the way and I never wrote that book.
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The fantastic genres are ideally suited to represent the complex issues of identity politics and thus have been used in a form of cultural activism to shape our perspective of how contemporary and future society might function. Beyond the more dominant sphere of gender, sexuality, and race, though, there is another aspect of human embodied existence that is generally used as to describe identity: that of disability, which is popularly seen as an absolute category and culturally strongly tied in with the concept of normalcy (Davis 1). The fantastic has always been a field of cultural representation that allowed for discourses around the idea of normalcy in that it asks what constitutes the human and what pushes its boundaries. Different embodiments abound in fantastic stories, as prominent examples such as Mary Shelley’s creature, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Gollum, or George A. Romero’s hordes of zombies can attest to. But as with race or gender, the cultural representation of (dis)ability has not been without controversy, this is as true for realist literature as it is for the fantastic. While the fantastic „has long explored deviant and disabled bodies“ and is inhabited by characters „whose embodiments are situated along the entire spectrum of ability“ (Allan 2), the kind of representation that these bodies experience is often problematic. As Elsa Sjunneson and Dominik Parisien claim: „disabled people have been discarded from the narrative, cured, rejected, villainized“ (n. p.). Fantastic fictions, they argue, open the potential for marginalized people to claim their existence, in past, present, and future: „to explore concerns and realities in the present and amplify them, correct them, highlight the ways they might become better or worse“ (n. p.). But in order to do so, (dis)ability issues should not be erased from the narrative worlds of the fantastic. That is, impairments should not simply be cured ‚away‘ via magic or technological progress, leaving a world in which impairment either does not exist or is a medical ‚problem‘ to be solved.
This medical model assumes that disability is an individualized experience of bodily limitations due to impairment, which causes that person pain and suffering and which needs to be alleviated through medical intervention (Waldschmidt 73). In contrast, more recent (dis)ability studies scholarship employs the social model of (dis)ability, which sees (dis)ability as an exclusion or mistreatment of different embodiment in social contexts and differentiates between social exclusion (disability) and medical condition (impairment). This shifts the burden of addressing (dis)ability from the individual to society (ibid. 79–80). An extension of this social model can be found in the cultural model, which argues that social practices of exclusion are based in a specific culture of representations of (dis)ability and that (dis)ability is a way to negotiate categories of deviance and normalcy (ibid. 86–87) via culture. According to Tobin Siebers, then, a social and cultural approach to (dis)ability studies is interested in „the social meanings, symbols, and stigmas attached to disability identity and asks how they relate to enforced systems of exclusion and expression“ (4). Moreover, approaching literature through such a lens is an important shift of critical perspective. Disability has long been used as a literary device, as metaphor to comment on the disabled character or the nature of the narrative world—it has been used as „narrative prosthesis,“ that is „as a crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality, and analytical insight“ (Mitchell and Snyder 49). Barker and Murray argue: „the plasticity of the ways in which literary texts make meaning—the combination of (among others) formal aesthetics, characterization, generic affiliation, and narrative playfulness – creates rich webs of content“ (10). That is, each text generates meaning of (dis)ability through its employed imagery and metaphors, its narrative descriptions, as well as its generic conventions and histories.
With its narrative focus on „the future, other worlds, altered pasts, and altered present periods,“ the fantastic is especially able to „shift, challenge, and play on what readers expect of bodyminds and reveal how such expectations shape definitions of (dis)ability, race, and gender“ (Schalk, Bodyminds 18). The fantastic genres by default already challenge our notions of normalcy. In addition, though, the fantastic „does not purport to directly reflect reality; rather, speculative fiction brings aspects of reality into newly constructed worlds in which realist rules regarding time, space, bodyminds, abilities, and behaviors need not be followed“ (ibid. 21). It is this ability to explore difference that makes the fantastic such an important resource for (dis)ability studies. The fantastic allows for free expression of (dis)ability, but it also restricts this freedom through the constraints of generic conventions—that is, the demands of genre weigh on how (dis)ability is represented, which images, language, and metaphors are employed (Cheyne 185). This is especially important as, in the fantastic genres more than others, images and concepts are often derived from reference to images and concepts that came before. As Ria Cheyne has pointed out: „The literary inheritance of today’s genre fiction is a complex and shifting network of rules, conventions, tropes, and motifs including those directly affecting the depiction of disability. Identifying and examining these conventions opens up new insights into the workings of genres, as well as into disability’s literary history“ (186).
To shortly explore the idea of genre conventions and the representation of (dis)ability outside of the ideals of the progressive fantastic, I want to turn to one of German SF’s more traditional authors mentioned in the introduction. In Sterne in Asche [Stars in Ash] (2014), Uwe Post describes the apocalyptic event of all the stars in the universe slowly losing their energy and dying out. The novel is a space opera, set in a galactic empire and utilizing a variety of alien characters with a broad scope of different bodies and minds. Among these aliens are Leskorians, small humanoids whose adult stage is no larger than a Terran child. Post makes use of several different narrative perspectives to tell of five days during the end of times, but interjects them with chronologically backward moving chapters titled „Flashback — Constitution:Zero“ which are focalized on the character Constitution:Zero, a Leskorian woman whose physical body is described as „a head and cleavage“ (50) or just „a torso, fixed with life-sustaining machinery made of plastic and metal“ (134). She moves by using a six-wheeled platform and mental controls. The Memento-like storytelling, moving backwards from present to past as Constitution:Zero learns about her own history, while the other chapters move forward in time allows Post to introduce the character and her personal quest to understand her own existence and slowly reveal the unusual story of why she is a quadruple amputee. As we learn in the final chapter, Constitution:Zero is actually named Kaalon and used to be the high priestess of a cult that worshipped the apocalypse. As such, she was persecuted and hunted by the governing force, the New Council, who eventually succeeded in pinning her down. Instead of death, though, Kaalon chose to have her arms and legs amputated to be light enough for a war drone to carry her out of the conflict zone.
The depiction of (dis)ability and the amputee character especially are problematic on several levels, though, and markedly differ from the inclusive and empowering representation delivered by the progressive fantastic. First, the story of Kaalon/Constitution:Zero is limited to her status as disabled, as each flashback concentrates on events that have to do with her amputee status: an encounter with a fan that brings her a memory chip, starting the process of her remembering her origin story; a memory of an attack on a black market for people with modifications, where she was caught in the crossfire while trying to buy used, cheap, artificial limbs; a memory of the trial for inciting public disorder, which left her unable to buy prosthesis due to her debts in legal fees; a memory of a rehabilitation clinic, where she fell in love with another reconvalescent during her healing process; and finally, the memory of the attack, in which she gave the drone the order to amputate her limbs and carry her to safety. The backwards order of events and the elliptic and somewhat opaque narrative make it seem as if Constitution:Zero’s amputee status was ordered by the court as a form of cruel and unusual punishment, highlighting even more how the story treats her (dis)ability as a grotesque form of exoticism. Even her name, Constitution:Zero, is based on the amputation, announced by the drone as it cuts off her limbs and monitors her overall constitution, which drops with every limb that is severed („Constitution: One. Death is imminent. Operation progress: 75%“; 189), ending in a repeated refrain of „Constitution: Zero“ (190; 165).
Further, the novel’s tone is slightly satiric, placing ridicule on its characters and their attempt to deal with the imminent end of the universe. In the case of a devil-may-care sports star and his overzealous fan, this ridicule works to satirize their late-stage capitalist disinterest in the apocalypse. Constitution:Zero, though, is ridiculed and even makes self-deprecating comments, so as to balance out her status as heavily impaired. First, most characters in the story treat Leskorians in general, but Constitution:Zero especially, as children due to their child-like appearance. For example, the first scene in which we meet Constitution:Zero is set in a toy store, where the narrative compares her to the toys around: „Some of those robodolls and dinonurses were bigger and heavier than she was. Than what was left of her, since…“ (49). That she is treated as a child, or worse an object, is further made clear by several characters handling her like a doll, picking her up, placing her on higher objects so that she can see or is seen: „only the table seemed to be improvised. Maybe someone thought it would be inappropriate to simply set a torso on the ground“ (135). But not only does the story satirize Constitution:Zero’s child-like body, it also pushes the idea of a medical model of disability in that it highlights the amputation as an individual problem that can be solved by medical intervention, a solution available in technological augmentation. In line with this, there are instances when Constitution:Zero is described as lacking parts of a ‚normal‘ body: „A complete human would have noticed a spike in adrenaline this instant. Constitution:Zero’s base frame did not have the necessary functions for that. It did not have an adrenal medulla“ (76).
Lastly, Constitution:Zero and her (dis)ability are conforming to the generic conventions of early cyberpunk, which Post satirically incorporates into his apocalyptic scenario in the form of modders, a kind of old-school movement of self-improvement, which stands in contrast to genetic engineering and other technologies. „Modder: Person that has electronic or digital gadgets on or integrated into their body. The rest of the world thinks of modders as hopelessly backwards and marked for extinction“ (56). Most cyberpunk follows a transhumanist philosophy, arguing that the biological body is limited and needs to be overcome for human potential to be fully actualized: „Cyberpunk appeals to the (impossible) desire to escape the vicissitudes of the body and occupy the place of self-mastery“ (Vint 104). The body is mere meat that needs to be controlled and made better. Similarly, in the novel, modder characters conform to the idea of the ‚meat‘ as something to be replaced with better equipment: „I don’t have any real legs anymore either. They were a hassle, really“ (49); „It is the microstructure of my replacement skin, which looks that way. Not bad, is it? Better than before“ (165). In the novel, Constitution:Zero and her origin story complicate this view, as she is never granted full autonomy over the kind of augmentations that she can use, but in general, modding as a transhumanist solution to the perceived lack of biological bodies is a comment on the medical cure for impairments and thus a rather overcome view on issues of (dis)ability. While the overall tone of the novel is satirical, it nonetheless conforms to a rather problematic perspective on (dis)ability. As the example shows, generic conventions of science fiction that view disabled bodies as either part of the cabinet of exotic and strange creatures (space opera) or as a medical problem to be solved via technological enhancement (cyberpunk) are not ideally suited to represent (dis)ability issues in a way that enhances social awareness or allows empowerment. Aiming to better represent marginalized groups and reflect an awareness of difference, signalling towards a more open society, the progressive fantastic thus emphasizes a different position on the representation of disability. The inclusion of characters with bodyminds beyond the abled norm is a relatively common feature in the narratives of the progressive fantastic. What is interesting to note is the variance of differently-abled bodyminds and the breadth of issues from (dis)ability studies that is addressed. In the following, I want to give a short overview of some of the variable notions of (dis)ability and how the progressive fantastic handles them, before delving into two longer case studies to give a detailed account of the positive representation of (dis)ability.
In his high fantasy, Das Erbe der Elfenmagierin (2021), James A. Sullivan includes the character of Daludred, a young nobleman who can be read as neurodivergent, because he is on his way to become a powerful oracle. His ability is untrained, which means that his family is skeptical about his clairvoyance, hinting at it only in whispers, always suggesting the boy might be awkward, weird, strange. It is mentioned that he could think „dozens of moves ahead“ (114) in a strategy game and was weirdly obsessed with oracles. In the novel, he is described as hyperfocused on gaining knowledge, ignoring food and passion, instead spending hours upon hours reading. He is rather inept at interacting socially, a strong impairment for a nobleman with high social expectations resting on him. He needs time to get to know people, is described as naive and somewhat too trusting. When he finally manages to harness his latent magical power and comes into his own, he grows in confidence. This is especially helped along by his lovers, the fighter Jerudana and the elven scholar Ardoas, both of whom accept Daludred’s neurodivergence and his differently abled bodymind and fully trust his (clairvoyant) decisions on where to travel next. Overall, the story positively reinforces the idea that each person’s bodymind is able, just in very different ways. It embraces such difference and celebrates it.
In Wasteland (2019) and its sequel Laylayland (2022), Judith and Christian Vogt’s protagonist Zeeto has a bipolar disorder, which the novels portray in detail, showing both his mania and depression and all the consequences either condition has. In a postapocalyptic world, Zeeto lives in a community that accepts difference, in terms of gender, sexuality, race, and bodyminds. When, during a manic episode, he decides to wander off into the wasteland, he discovers a hidden bunker, finds an abandoned child that he adopts and catches the so-called wasteland plague. Thus, in addition to his shifting moods and energy levels, he also has a form of biohazard contagion that will diminish his physical body, draining his life until he dies. Zeeto’s manic phases are portrayed as full of life and ideas. He is willing to fight off the plague, wants to raise Mtoto, the foundling child, with his partner Laylay. During his depressed phases, though, he is full of despair, ready to drop down and die, wishing only to be less of a burden to Laylay and his family. Especially in Laylayland, where the wasteland plague has progressed in him, the novels further emphasize the interconnection between physical and mental aspects, highlighting how Zeeto’s conditions cancel each other out or compound each other depending on the phase of his bipolarity. Zeeto’s (dis)ability forces him to realize how his life hinges on the energy levels that he has each day and that because of this preexisting condition he is more likely to have less energy left for other aspects of his life—here, the novel highlights the idea of crip time.
Ace in Space (2020), also written by Judith and Christian Vogt, is a swashbuckling space adventure whose main actors are a gang of space pilots, the Daredevils, who take on daunting jobs for fame and money. Former corporate fighter pilot Danai joins the gang and soon becomes the gang’s new hotshot—holding her own in dogfights and races alike. In the steep hierarchies of both corporation and gang, Danai needs to assert her dominance, especially in verbal altercations. But Danai has a stutter and is unable to sound out certain phonemes, especially when in social situations that call for quick wit and repartee. The novel emphasizes the setting as especially toxic and pressured, rankings and competition as the norm for both the gangs and the corporations. But it also shows Danai’s coping mechanisms and how she conquers her new social terrain by perseverance. Importantly, the representation of the speech impediment breaks with literary clichés, as Danai is a leader and a fighter. Her stutter is not a sign of weakness or meakness, it is not a literary metaphor for lack of confidence and it is not made fun off, neither by characters nor by the narration itself.
And Melanie Vogltanz’s dystopian novel Shape Me (2019) is centered around questions of embodiment, fatness, and chronic illness. The novum of the novel is a technology that allows the swapping of bodies and minds in a world that is dominated by the ideals of health and a striving for the ‚correct‘ body weight. In the dystopian society, citizens are allocated a daily calorie regimen, which is used as a form of payment to buy foods. Authoritarian surveillance is used to measure any action against the state’s ideals of a healthy and slim body. Ironically, the technology is strictly regulated and mainly used to allow rich customers to lose weight by swapping bodies with a professional trainer that will do the ‚hard work‘ for them. There are two main story lines that each deal with aspects of a wider definition of (dis)ability. On the one hand, there is Nena Jean, whose identity and body get stolen by another woman, suffering from a chronic and ultimately deadly illness. The novel emphasizes how chronic illness means losing a body, how the impairments restrict life choices and how the onset of illness can feel to the person as if their body (and their future) were stolen from them. On the other hand, the story of Tess Trimm, a personal fitness trainer trapped in the body of an overweight customer because the swapping technology was stolen, deals with the social and personal discrimination due to fatness. What the novel makes explicit here is the hatred and marginalization that fatness produces, thus showing it as a (dis)ability issue and commenting on the harsh psychological impact that fat shaming has. The novel is not subtle in this, and the tone of the representation is not body-positive, but through the satirical critique of the dystopian world pushes against the idea of (self)-hatred of fatness and the glorification of the fitness ideal.
As these examples show, the progressive fantastic has a strong awareness for (dis)ability issues and emphasizes the importance of representation of differently-abled bodyminds. Key for a more inclusive society, accepting of difference in bodymind ability, is thus to culturally challenge normative thinking and realize the breadth of what (dis)ability means. The texts mentioned here are examples of including stories about (dis)ability, challenging conventions and existing metaphors for dealing with (dis)ability, and instead providing new narratives and images that embrace difference and allow for (dis)ability to thrive in its own ways. In the following, I want to explore in more detail the potential of the progressive fantastic to address issues of (dis)ability in two case studies.
For my first case study of (dis)ability, I want to turn to debut author Lena Richter, who is yet to publish her first novel, but whose short fiction often emphasizes different aspects of (dis)ability. Richter strongly identifies with the ideals of the progressive fantastic and in her activism for both LGBTQ- and disability rights is closely connected with Judith Vogt, with whom she co-edits the magazine Queer*Welten and co-hosts the Genderswapped podcast. I am reading Richter’s short stories „Das Innerste der Welt,“ „Feuer,“ and „3,78 LifePoints“ through the lens of (dis)ability. Richter’s stories explore a range of (dis)ability topics: the reality of living with chronic illness and the price it exerts on a lived reality, the shifting definitions of (dis)ability and how markers of health and illness that are culturally defined by social contract, and how technologies open or close worlds of possibility within the range of (dis)ability.
In her story „Das Innerste der Welt“ („The Innermost Thing of the World“), Richter explores issues of chronic illness and loss through the metaphor of witchcraft. Jennifer, the protagonist, is part of a bloodline of witches, but has stopped learning about witchcraft as a young woman, due to a chronic illness that leaves her body drained of energy. When her cousin dies in a house fire, she is the last of the bloodline and it falls to her find the „innermost thing“ (75) of her family home to secure its magic before it spreads uncontrolledly. Arriving in the burnt out remains of the house she uses her rather restrained witchcraft to identify different objects and the memories connected with them to finally identify the essence of the house and secure its power. Central to the story is the idea that „magic comes with a price“ (74). It will leave its wielder physically depleted, as Jennifer explains (via the second person singular narrative perspective) when she remembers her aunt perform spells to find the essence of things: „When her work was done, your aunt looked pale, exhausted in a way that went beyond tiredness“ (75). Performing magic, the story suggests, takes a toll on the bodyminds of its users and thus marks them as (dis)abled: „No one in your family grew to old age“ (75).
Though chronic illness and disability can be argued to be separate conditions (cf. Wendell), I here follow an expansive definition that, as Alison Kafer argues, in terms of its social, political and cultural identity sees (dis)ability drawing on „collective affinities“ with other groups, from „people with learning disabilities to those with chronic illness, from people with mobility impairments to those with HIV/AIDS, from people with sensory impairments to those with mental illness“ (11). The story builds this connection by highlighting how both magic use and Jennifer’s chronic illness put excessive physical strains on her and limit her ability to function in expected ways/roles. Both the illness and her magic use have a relevant impact on her bodymind. When she first performs a spell, the bright light it generates hurts her eyes and she reflects: „Somehow you expected that magical light would be different, would find a way to not hit your damaged retina“ (77). Her damaged eyesight, in turn, is caused by the drug she takes to manage her chronic pain. In terms of the spectrum of (dis)ability, then, „medicine is not much different from magic. She is the wicked witch in tales of old that demands a price for every boon that she will grant you“ (77).
The focal point of the story is the idea of identity. Richter negotiates this by intersectionally connecting witchcraft, queerness, nationality, family relations, and chronic illness, and the discriminations that belong to the marginalized of those identities. By engaging in finding the essence of her family home, Jennifer moves through memories that inextricably link her family’s history with her own. As a person suffering from the physical impairments of chronic pain, fatigue, and limited mobility, though, each aspect is filtered through her (dis)abled identity. As Stuart Blume reminds us, (dis)ability issues always bring with them a form of embodiment: „We simultaneously experience our bodies and experience through our bodies“ (354). This is especially true for chronic pain. While in able-bodiedness, our body seems to disappear from our conscious thoughts, by „contrast the body reappears, though problematically, as it experiences pain. Though pain is internally experienced, it also rearranges our daily living: the ways in which we deal with space, with time, with others“ (Blume 354). In her story, Richter explores this renegotiated relation to space, time, and others by granting Jennifer a limited amount of energy supply that each aspect of her identity and the way it is discriminated against has demands upon. Her upbringing in the former GDR prompts (micro-)aggressions from her surroundings, ridicule for her accent, hatred about „your former home town being redeveloped“ (78) on her neighbor’s dime. Her relationship with a woman and the desire to adopt her partner’s child, which prompts bureaucratic hassle as their official status as „registered life partner“ is not a equal to a marriage: „Your wife, that you call your wife, even though she must not be“ (79). Her family of witches that she has to leave behind as her energy levels are too low to continue learning and practicing, „you only knew that your heart was too heavy and your bones were too soft“ (79). And the loss over her family that dies, leaving her the last of her bloodline: grandmother, mother, aunt, cousin—all dead.
The story makes clear that all aspects of Jennifer’s life are touched by her (dis)ability and the impairments of chronic fatigue and pain. She „has become a master in parceling out your energy, every day is meticulously organized“ as her „energy is an account with a high rate of interest, every overdraft will have to be paid in future installments“ (81). This refers to what critics like Margaret Price call „crip time,“ that is „a flexible approach to normative time frames“ in which (dis)ability structures the relation of time and space. In „Das Innerste der Welt,“ Jennifer needs to plan out her days, as she has no energy reserves to make spontaneous adjustments: „you have strategic planning sessions with your self, in the morning, when you wait for movement to return to your extremities“ (82). The story connects chronic pain and magic through crip time and its need for flexibility, as Jennifer’s magic abilities are as severely limited as her physical energy levels. As Ellen Samuels explains, „crip time is sick time,“ meaning that (dis)abled bodies do not function according to the „strange arithmetic“ of a 9-5 job, and that they were „attuned to my own physical state rather than the external routines of a society ordered around bodies that were not like mine“ (n. pag.). For Jennifer, this means that she cannot simply perform one potent spell, locating the essence of the house, but has to exhaust her power with a small spell that then bounces along from object to object, revealing its individual history. (Dis)ability here means having to wait out the little energy that is available, seeing the magic move along slowly and painfully (in both the literal and the figurative sense). As Alison Kafer argues, „Crip time is flex time not just expanded but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of ‚how long things take‘ are based on very particular minds and bodies“ (27). In the story, an able-bodied witch could find the innermost thing of the house „with just one spell,“ the „elegant sequence of words“, the „long fingers plucking cautiously“ (75), while Jennifer describes her own ability as „bumbling,“ and in need of a trick: casting a spell for auras and one that keeps perpetuating the original spell from object to object. This method takes time and is exhausting to the limited energy she has, but it works, showcasing how crip time is „a challenge to normative and normalizing expectations of pace and scheduling. Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds“ (Kafer 27). And even though Jennifer adheres to crip time, her impairments still cost her more energy than she planned for, exhausting her bodymind beyond her limits to find the essence of her family home—a seed that evokes the memory of her and her partner’s forming of a new family and makes her realize that all her identities are intersectional and connected, that her life is open to new potential: „All the spells have evaporated and you are you again. Just Jennifer, mother and daughter and somehow, yes a witch too, loved and happy and sad and ill, and alone in the ashes“ (86). In this, the story emphasizes that chronic illness is not separate or monolithical but that Jennifer’s crip identity, i.e. having to deal with the lived reality of chronic illness, impacts all other aspects of her life in many varied ways.
„Feuer“ (Engl. „Fire“) is harder to place in terms of genre, as the narrative world is far-future post-apocalyptic with remnants of high technology but also featuring aspects of folk lore and mythology. The story is about an encounter between teenage boy Tarnik and an Amazon warrior named Cyrix, who is being hunted by a stranger called a „renewer“ (26). Tarnik has run away from home and finds Cyrix in an abandoned building, wounded and unconscious. A fan of Amazons through popular stories and games, he bonds with the woman, before they are attacked and have to fend off Cyrix’s pursuer together. An important element of the story is the emotional and physical condition that Tarnik experiences and which is the reason for his running away in the first place. Tarnik, as the narrative voice, refers to this condition as „the Anger,“ an uncontrollable force that „drives me like the storm drives away a swarm of drone birds“ (21). The Anger seems to be both a physical and a mental condition, and the words he uses to describe it are negatively connoted, representative of his culture that defines it as a sickness: „The Anger in me was a monster with too many tentacles. They strangulated my gut, they let my body shiver with wrath, they balled up my hands into fists and let them lash out against walls and turn over tables. They retched up words from my throat, hateful words, that shot through the room like arrows and found their target in the wounded eyes of my fathers, in the tight-pressed lips of my sister. I did not know how to tame this monster. I could only pick up the pieces after the tentacles had let me out of their grip“ (21). He feels overwhelmed by the condition and cannot cope with hurting his family and thus chooses to leave instead.
Even though Tarnik’s family wishes to help, they are ultimately confined to „silent mourning“ (21) as they have no cure against the Anger and society demands ostracizing the threat. In Tarnik’s culture there is a stigma around the Anger; it is seen as „an illness that can befall some people in their young age“ (21) and is associated with puberty. It hits Tarnik shortly after his fourteenth birthday, when „in just a few weeks, I had grown by a head, my voice had dropped and the Anger had awakened in me“ (22). The description of the anger is steeped in (dis)ability discourse. The society of Tarnik’s village stigmatizes the Anger as a threat to the normative majority and ostracizes those that are afflicted as „unable to live with others“ (21). This echoes Margrit Shildrick’s idea that disabled people are alienated from society because their „embodied selfhood“ runs counter to society’s „understandings of what it is to be properly human“ (31). Shildrick continues that „valued attributes of personhood are autonomy, agency—which includes both a grasp of rationality and control over one’s own body—and a clear distinction between self and other“ (32). But Tarnik does not have this status of ‚proper human’ in that he is unable to remain rational and to stay in control of his body—in fact, the Anger is repeatedly described via images of a loss of agency: Tarnik is „deeply startled“ by the roar that he let loose and giving over to the „tentacles of the Anger taking control“ (28). His community sees this loss of agency and reacts, as Shildrick explains, with „a deep-seated anxiety“ (32). What is important to note here is that even though Tarnik’s community is described as quite different to ours, readers are invited to draw comparisons to their own society. The speculative aspects of the story, its far-future scenario and the loss of knowledge that follows from an apocalypse, invite us to question „who is and is not human or sentient, to explore what aspects of humanity we want to save or dispose of“ (Schalk, „Bodyminds, Science Fiction“ 10). Oscillating between recognition of (dis)ability and the estrangement of a post-apocalyptic world ignorant of mental conditions like the anger, the story pushes us to renegotiate our own categories of normativity and able-bodymindedness.
But the story moves beyond just showing how (dis)ability leads to alienation, instead shifting the definition of the Anger. When the renewer attacks Cyrix, Tarnik at first feels helpless to aid the warrior, but then suddenly realizes that the Anger is empowering him to fight, „as the monster in me awakened with a loud rumbling“ (28). Further, not only does the Anger make him strong enough to hold his own, it also connects him to the Amazon warrior:
I did not know that I could scream like this, so loud, so full of wrath. All at once I was on my feet and running forwards. […] I ran, screamed, and hit him in the side. […] Once more, the tentacles of my Anger had taken control, were hitting the attacker again and again with my hands.
I screamed.
And Cyrix answered. […]
I heard my own cry, blending with the cry of the Amazon. For a split second, it felt like I could feel her heartbeat in my chest, hear her thoughts in my head. (28)
After defeating the renewer, Cyrix tells Tarnik that she knows about the Anger and that it will grow and eventually kill him if it is not controlled. Cyrix explains that the Amazons refer to the condition as „the Inner Fire“(29) and that is an ability that makes the Amazons fierce warriors and its presence in a person makes them an Amazon: „The Fire will consume those that do not learn to control it. But to those that master it, it will grant fury and power to fight that which threatens this world […] The Fire can awaken in any human. And whoever masters it and fights against the powers that let the Old World burn, is one of us“ (29). By giving the Anger a new cultural framework, by realigning it in the spectrum of (dis)ability, Cyrix claims a different embodied reality for people living with the condition and thus, in a sense, performs a ‚cripping.‘ In the same vein that Robert McRuer argues for queer, Richter here uses the idea of crip as a fluid marker for identities that „are shaped and reshaped across differences and that interrogate and disrupt dominant hierarchical understandings“ (cit. in Sandahl 26), in this case not of gender or sexuality but categories of (dis)ability. Cripping, as Carrie Sandahl argues, „spins mainstream representations or practices to reveal able-bodied assumptions and exclusionary effects. Both queering and cripping expose the arbitrary delineation between normal and defective and the negative social ramifications of attempts to homogenize humanity“ (37). Cyrix challenges the notion that a loss of agency is disabling, instead exposing the embodied difference of those with the Inner Fire and claiming Amazonian subjectivity—not despite of her difference, but because of it.
And in her cripping, Cyrix confirms that general society is ignorant about the Inner Fire, that „they fear the Anger“ and only know that it is somehow connected to Amazons, banishing them for it, blaming them for it: „They won’t let us into their cities, even though we could help“ (29). Due to the apocalyptic event that formed this society, a lot of knowledge about the Inner Fire has been lost, but Cyrix draws a connection to old technology. The man that had pursued Cyrix is called a „renewer of the Old World“ (26), a hunter seeking to destroy any form of technologically enhanced being, „Amazons and Technimals […] They are after anyone with implants or abilities“ (26), wanting to bring back a world in which the few exploit the many via war machinery, thus linking Amazons with concepts of social justice and peace-keeping. The story’s description of the Amazons as superhuman heroes, people with „abilities,“ falls into the category of what Schalk refers to as the „superpowered supercrip narrative,“ a story about a disabled person „who has abilities or ‚powers‘ that operate in direct relationship with or contrast to their disability [… becoming] exceptional by dint of their extraordinary powers and abilities alone“ („Reevaluating“ 81). And even though Schalk warns that „people and characters represented in this type of supercrip narrative in many ways exceed their own embodiment through their abilities, to the point where their status as disabled may be called into question“ („Reevaluating“ 82), the social context of the story allows for a less critical reading. Cripping, or even supercripping, in this case means spinning the culturally normative reading of the Anger as a fatal illness that makes Tarik a pariah in his own community to reveal the social ignorance that drives the definition of this (dis)ability. Instead, the Inner Fire is turned into an extraordinary power, which generates a new community and identity for the boy. Consequently, at the end of the story, Tarnik feels „the monster“ in himself, feels „the Inner Fire awaken again“ but for the first time welcomes it—by claiming his (dis)ability, he has found his own subjectivity.
Picking up the idea of subjectivity and a form of identity because of embodied difference of (dis)ability, in „3,78 Lifepoints“ Richter denies the empowering moment of claiming crip that Tarnik was given in „Feuer.“ Instead, the story negotiates how a genre like science fiction can become problematic in its representation of (dis)ability due to SF’s tendency to render invisible (dis)abled bodies by providing technological solutions to what is essentially framed as a problem. As Allan has pointed out, SF usually sees disability as „as a physical or mental impairment that is supplanted through the application of technology, transforming the disabled body into a figure of prosthetic awe and medicalized prowess“ (8). Even more problematic is the tendency of SF to portray these transformations as empowering to the point of become superpowered supercrip narratives (see above; cf. Schalk „Reevealuating“). Consequently, as Stuart Murray points out, more „than with most disability narratives, those shaped by technologies create fantasies—of rehabilitation, restitution, cure and (in a posthumanist age) of the superhuman“ (67). In „3,78 Lifepoints,“ Richter denies both the erasure of (dis)ability through technology and the superhuman fantasy of a supercrip body. Instead she exposes „the illusions of inviolability and self-mastery over the body“ (Allan 5) that technologized supercrip narratives uphold.
In the story, the non-binary character Amii gets a job delivering a package to a specified location. As the story opens, their „SeroTone device“ (123) stops working and leaves them stranded in the streets unable to manage their surroundings. As they soon find out, the device was cut off, because the social security office has flagged Amii as being uncooperative. Without it, Amii is unable to mentally process all of the sensory overload that the fully mediated cyberpunk world presents—they get overwhelmed by lights, sounds, smells, and motion: „Videos and Gifs in screaming colors, cute animations of animals, thin bodies jumping up and down in front of a mirror. Everything moves, is too colorful, too bright, too much. Normally I only notice this at the edge of my consciousness, but the disruption of my implant has pushed my brain into the normality of this way too fast“ (123). Amii’s brain cannot filter the information that their sensorium provides and they just cannot focus on necessary tasks to navigate the world: „Impressions of every kind grab at me, demand my attention, before my brain moves on and latches on to the next impulse and the next and the next“ (124).
Here, Richter links Amii’s (dis)ability with their ability to work and to perform in the capitalist system. As McRuer argues, this is a main point of the „compulsory nature of able-bodiedness: in the emergent industrial capitalist system, free to sell one’s labor but not free to do anything else effectively meant free to have an able body but not particularly free to have anything else“ (8). This is, of course, in line with the historical conception of prostheses as means of the rehabilitation of soldiers otherwise too wounded to work and provide for their family’s livelihood (cf. Harrasser). Prosthetics were meant to restore the capability to work and not need social aid. Compulsory able-bodymindedness (to extend the concept) as a normative „nonidentity, as the natural order of things“ (McRuer 1) thus means that in order to perform to capitalist expectations, the (dis)abled body has to be repaired, cured, fixed. The story makes this explicit when Amii associates her situation with a memory of a poem about a blind man that a school teacher had students read for them to realize their own privileges. The teacher argues that through prosthetic technology, (dis)ability such as blindness could be eliminated: „Problems such as this are problems of the past, the woman from the lesson had said. […] I remember how she continued: By now, everyone could work to earn a set of artificial eye replacements in case of a loss of vision“ (124). It is a poignant irony then, that without prosthesis work itself becomes harder to accomplish.
What „3,78 Lifepoints“ makes clear, then, is that able-bodiedness is a necessity to work in the oppressive capitalist system of its narrative world. Because of Amii’s cognitive disability, they neglect to comply with the social security office, overlooking one message of a „summons to participation“ among several „announcements“ and „notices“ (125) and miss sending in one of a list of several documents needed to stay on social benefits. Here, the story highlights the social dimension of (dis)ability and how a cognitive impairment might interfere with compulsory compliance to rules measured on the able-bodyminded (and politically comments on the German social system reform Agenda 2010, which saw punitive action invoked against non-compliant citizens in need of social benefits). As a beneficiary of social services, Amii is compelled to bring documentation about every aspect of their life, and if they don’t the office can turn off their SeroTone device. Amii does not own the device outright but receives it as disability aid to help them perform their job. Because of the non-compliance, even though accidental, the device is turned off, which effectively makes complying with the social security offices’ demands even more impossible, as the disconnect in turn impacts Amii’s ability to work. This is a feedback loop they cannot break out of: „Without the implant, it might be possible to work, but it is grueling. Without the implant, I do not manage 60 hours per week, I do not get highest level evaluations for friendly demeanor. Without those evaluations I will never succeed in any of the applications I constantly put out. For real jobs, permanent jobs with access to all health care services“ (125–26). Amii’s whole existence is centered around making enough LifePoints to warrant better services, to move along the projected axis of normative behavior and thus fit in with able-bodyminded society. But the events of the day throw them back onto their own cognitive impairment. What becomes clear in the story, through the narrative perspective of Amii’s position, is that Amii’s disability is a social construction. Sensory overload is produced through the capitalist need for accumulation and the ever-present advertising. The pressure to work 60 hours a week and always be superficially nice is socially constructed because society persists in its compulsory able-bodymindedness and the need to define norms of behavior. In addition, political institutions do nothing to alleviate the social and material barriers for people with (dis)ability, instead relying on technology to ‚cure‘ or ‚erase‘ the problem. As Kafer argues, an individualized and medicalized conception of disability, as displayed in the story, „presents a future vision of technological and medical intervention—not social transformation or political action—as the only proper response to disability“ (22). It is not the ableist demand of normed behavior that is the problem, but the lack of a technological device to make Amii’s (dis)abled body comply. But the hypercapitalist system which demands compulsory able-bodymindedness through technology, denies access to the technologies via high market prices, so that „many of these cyborg technologies remain out of reach of the people for whom they are imagined,“ as the „ability to become cyborg is too often economically determined“ (Kafer 107). Thus, „3,78 Lifepoints“ shows how SF’s promise of technological cures and superpowered prostheses are fantasies of privilege, that capitalist systems of exploitation can just as easily limit access to technologies or deny (dis)abled subjectivity all together.
What Lena Richter’s short stories thus show is that (dis)ability is defined against social and cultural parameters of any society, and that the progressive fantastic is one way to negotiate (dis)ability, that it can „shift, challenge, and play on what readers expect of bodyminds and reveal how such expectations shape definitions of“ (Schalk, Bodyminds 29) any form of identity. Further, the representation of (dis)ability that these short stories deliver, is powerful proof that we need (dis)abled voices to understand how people with (dis)ability are denied subjectivity and what needs to change. „Das Innerste der Welt“ explores the concept of crip time and the need to negotiate time, space, and relations with an understanding of the challenges faced by differently abled bodyminds. „Feuer“ shows the social and cultural perceptions of what constitutes able-bodymindedness and how this is connected to subjectivity. It challenges this notion and by an act of cripping affirms a position of acceptance for the whole spectrum of (dis)abled bodies as human. And „3,78 LifePoints“ highlights that the neoliberal capitalist system we are in might provide technological solutions to (dis)ability, which means reducing the issue to individualized and medicalized concepts, thus erasing social and cultural dimensions, as well as ultimately entrenching (dis)ability as a marker for otherness.
While Lena Richter’s short stories allow for the pointed and short discussion of smaller issues of (dis)ability studies, my second case study explores more widely the interconnection of (dis)ability and poverty. In Memories of Summer, Janna Ruth offers her readers three different (dis)ability narratives in one story. First, there is Mika, a kid from a low-income family barely making ends meet, who has found a way to make additional money while helping others. Mika has been donating childhood memories to an institution called the Memory Transfer Clinic (MTC), which uses them as a means of treating depression and behavioral disorders in others. But there is a limit to how much the MTC will take, as the side effects of losing too many of your own happy childhood memories are yet unclear but feared to cause mental problems in the long run. Second, there is Lynn, who has been suffering from severe depression caused by her mother’s abusive narcissism and her father’s abandonment. Lynn is an old childhood friend of Mika’s, but when they meet at the MTC, Mika does not recognize Lynn, having sold all his memories of her. They reconnect and discuss the pros and cons of the memory transfer technology for both the donor and the recipient. Thirdly, there is Philipp, Mika’s father who suffers from lupus, a chronic illness that restricts his ability to work and move without pain. The story makes explicit how aspects of finance such as the income of patients are what studies consider „key social determinant[s] of health,“ as income is directly related to „the quality of early life, levels of stress, social exclusion, availability of food and transport, incidence of addictions“ (Raphael 10) or the most obvious: access to treatment in a capitalist health care system. In the novel, Mika’s family is under strong financial burdens, not able to pay for the father’s health care needs on top of cost of living (food, shelter), and thus forced to cut costs where possible. This pushes Mika to seek out a black market dealer of memories who will extract more memories beyond the safety limit, no matter the health cost that Mika will pay.
As with Jennifer in Richter’s story „Das Innerste der Welt“, Mika’s father Philipp has lupus, a severe illness with chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and limited mobility. What compounds the issues of (dis)ability in the novel, though, is its intersectional relation to poverty. The heightened capitalist health care system and the lack of social welfare systems like disability aid in Memories erects barriers to Philipp’s management of the illness—in fact, the story’s plot kicks off with Mika discovering his father’s illness when the family has to move. As Philipp explains to his son: „The treatment has cost us a lot of money. More than we can afford“ (29). The family needs to move to a low-income neighborhood and into a smaller apartment, as the treatment becomes increasingly expensive: „The last few years, my condition has worsened. The drugs don’t work anymore, and the more powerful antibiotics we just can’t afford. I am having more and more episodes“ (30). Even though better treatment would be available, the financial situation will simply not allow for it. In this, Ruth’s story is a reminder of how for-profit-privatization of health care can run rampant, as it does currently in the US, where a severe health issue can bankrupt you and the fear of paying for health care is perceived as scarier than having a health issue (Khatri 5–6). This is true for Philipp and his family, which in the absence of social security systems has to cope with the financial burden of treatment as well as maintaining the cost of living with a diminished income.
Moreover, the situation causes emotional stress for the family. Mika discovers that he has been ignorant of the situation for a long time, that his father was diagnosed nine years ago and the family had moved once before to accomodate the treatment plan: „Nine years ago we moved from Ottergrund to this apartment. Because the money was tight. Because his way to work was shorter. No, not to work, to the hospital“ (30). In the end, though, the illness progressed nonetheless; a decision between the costly treatment and the cost of living in relative happiness with his family, Philipp decided to not burden his family more than necessary. As Mika realizes the illness is medically treatable, or at least manageable, his father has to admit that they were and are lacking the resources for comfortable management and that he will eventually die as the illness moves to its final stages: „My kidneys are beginning to fail“ (31). It is through Philipp’s lupus that the story emphasizes how (dis)ability and other forms of marginalization intersect. Within a capitalist system, here in the novel fully encompassing medical and health care, getting adequate treatment is hindered by poverty as a factor, which creates „almost insurmountable barriers“ (Mollow 414). Instead of highly specialized pain medication, Philipp can merely afford basic over the counter medicine (46).
These barriers of capital then prompt Mika to illegally sell more of his memories—the additional money is meant to pay for his father’s pain medication and constantly needed dialysis. Nonetheless, Mika is barely keeping up with the basic costs and only manages to keep his father alive, not to stop the progression of his illness. And the progression prompts more impairments, as Mika notices when his father is unable to complete his way home from work without getting on a train, even for three stops. A few weeks later, his father has to stop working altogether, losing the family its main steady income. Philipp’s body is no longer part of the logic of capitalist accumulation through exploitation, having lost its ability to „function like machines“ (Russell 30), and it is thus eliminated from the workforce. Without even the aid of social systems, the family now depends on Mika’s mother’s income for their overwhelming cost of living plus the treatment.
Here, we again encounter crip time as sick time (Samuels) just as in Richter’s short story. Building on the concept of „queer time and queer space […which] develop according to other logics of location, movement, and reproduction“ (Halberstam 1), crip time in the novel dominates the lived realities of Mika’s family: moving house in relation to treatment facilities, costs, time, and energy needed to allow for the impaired mobility. The chronic illness, the potential of fatality, pushes Mika and his family into queer/crip time, which emphasizes the present moment: here, crip time „deflects attention away from the future altogether, attending only to this moment, finding urgency in the present“ (Kafer 35). Mika takes on this exact claim in his reasoning to sell more memories. To him, his memories of a distant past are not worth keeping for a diminished chance at a present with his father. His father’s illness thus forces Mika to step out of the „paradigmatic markers of life experience“—the normalcy of an unburdened childhood, growing up and old with a father present—and into the „alternative temporalities“ (Halberstam 2) of a queer/crip time. And because Philipp’s chronic illness is linked to poverty, its impact is intergenerational and ‚contagious,‘ generating more (dis)ability in Mika himself.
In the beginning, Mika uses the MTC to shore up his spending money for technological gadgets. He is a carefree teenager enjoying the possibility of a little financial leeway, until he meets Lynn, whom he does not recognize even though she is a close childhood friend. Already at this point, Mika is trapped in the capitalist system, exploiting his bodymind in order to generate income: „The concept, that you have to sacrifice something to get ahead in life seems to be completely new to her“ (26). Thus, he sells what he considers „blurry memories, full of gaps anyway“ (26). But as his word choice here makes clear, there is a sacrifice, a price to be paid in health, either mentally or emotionally. He finds his old photo albums and looks through a lot of images he does not recognize of himself and Lynn during their childhood: „The images are there, but there is nothing in me. These are the childhood images of two strangers. Cute moments, no doubt, but even in the videos, they feel eternally far away“ (33). For Mika, Lynn is a new acquaintance, while she feels intimately connected to him, knows much about him. They both decide to make new memories with each other, but ultimately, Mika’s (dis)ability to remember is an effect of crip time. His neurodivergence „extract[s him] from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast[s him] into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration“ (Samuels). (Dis)ability is, as Ellen Samuels argues, a form of „time travel“ which for Mika has erased his memories and forces him to restart the clock on his relationship with Lynn. While at first, this seems not so bad, Mika’s excess at donating memories, beyond the safe limits, pushes him evermore into crip time and the effects of falling out of linear time.
In an emotional scene with his sister Anni, she explains to him that she feels Mika is on the same track as his father Philipp, which prompts Mika to argue that this is not true as he is not sick, but Anni counters: „Not yet. But you are not my Mika any more either“ (227). She explains that ‚her‘ Mika used to build apps for her and that for seven years he used to gift them to her on her birthday, always some creative program that he had made himself, but: „For my thirteenth birthday, you gave me a gift certificate for clothes“ (228). As practical as the gift was, and as much as it was a necessity born out of poverty and the stress of making ends meet, it is also a symptom of Mika’s (dis)ability. He realizes this and pleads with Anni to never sell her own memories. In a revealing reversal, when Anni argues that „they are just memories,“ Mika implores her: „What you are selling are my apps. The apps that I have given you on your birthdays, which you missed so dearly this year. It’s the memories of championship wins and of little fights. Of family vacations. And of dad“ (229). He confesses that the gift certificate was not just a practical gift, but actually „because I completely forgot that I build an app for you every year. […] I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything“ (229). Having forgotten aspects of his childhood, his relationships to Lynn or his family, here his sister Anni, have become fractured. Mika is experiencing crip time as „broken time,“ which „requires us to break in our bodies and minds to new rhythms, new patterns of thinking and feeling and moving through the world“ (Samuels). Mika cannot go back to remembering Anni’s apps or having spent a childhood with Lynn, he has to adapt to crip time, to new patterns, and he has to establish new relations to his surroundings.
Even more than with Anni or Lynn, Mika realizes how strong his impairment is—how the loss of his memories has altered his life’s trajectory—when his father dies and he is confronted with his own grief. During the family’s mourning, people share stories of his father and compare Mika to Philipp, but Mika is unable to join the family’s grief: „To be honest, I have no idea how my father used to turn around or how he kept his hands. I don’t remember any more“ (183). Instead of feeling close to his siblings, their memories of their father make Mika realize his loss, feeling his „throat close up“ and „becoming jealous“ (183) of them. While the family is healing through the process of sharing their stories, Mika is becoming „a stranger in my own house“ (185). His bodymind is divergent from the expected norm, causing him to have „feelings of asynchrony and temporal dissonance“ (Kafer 34). He is experiencing crip time as „grief time […] a time of loss, and of the crushing undertow that accompanies loss“ (Samuels). Because he cannot remember, he has to give up his father without even knowing what he has lost. His mourning then, is less for his father, and more for the memories of his father, which he had to sacrifice to keep the family afloat. His loss is of a common past, of a loving relationship. The memories of his father left to him are of disapproval for the memory transfers, and of the fights they used to have about the financial situation. In his despair, he realizes that his „father has died and all that I have left of him is these image scraps in my head. It doesn’t feel like he has died, it feels like he stopped existing. […] As if he had never existed“ (188). Mika’s divergent bodymind has broken his position within linear time, having erased Mika’s past experiences with his father.
In addition, though, he also has to grieve for a possible future, as he realizes that the intersection of (dis)ability and poverty makes it impossible for him to follow his dreams of becoming a programmer for a tech company or a memo-scientist with NEURO, the company that invented the memory transfers. At the beginning of the novel, Mika was day-dreaming about his soon-to-come graduation from school and how the extra money from the memory transfers could help him to finance an internship, or how the high-tech RedPad he bought would help him work on programs and apps. It seemed like social upward mobility was possible—that is, until his father’s illness got in the way and Mika’s reckless disregard for his own health produced a severe (dis)ability in him. With poverty looming over the family, Mika becomes the provider for the family. After his father’s death, his mother will have to raise his two younger siblings and will, on her single salary, not be able to manage their life. Mika’s additional income is needed to pay for the apartment, thus studying or getting an unpaid internship are not possible. The alternative, moving to the remote rural countryside and living with Mika’s grandparents, similarly eliminates the option for a career as the tech business is located in the city. Mika realizes that, after all the struggles to have a present with his father, the intersection of (dis)ability and poverty preclude him from both his past and his dreamt of future—to him, it feels as if his life is „lost, it is all for nothing“ (186). Lastly, Mika has also lost his present in the process of dealing with his (dis)ability. As Lynn argues, „you have changed. […] You used to be enthusiastic, easy-going, and just started talking because you noticed the girl in the waiting room. You had dreams“ (213). His reality now, with the memory loss and the financial burden on top of it, is much more dire: „Now you are stressed, frustrated and resigned“ (213). Mika has aged years in just a few months, again stressing the time travel effect of crip time. He has become a grown-up and lost not just his childhood memories, but also his child-like outlook on life.
What is interesting about the novel and a clear departure from the rather more conventional depictions of a (dis)ability in science fiction is that Memories does not rely on a technological solution to Mika’s impairment, though it initially suggest one. When Mika is most dispirited, Lynn suggests getting back his memories and asks „Is it possible to re-implant your own memories back to you?“ (189), to which Mika replies that even if re-implantation was technically possible, there is no way to know „how full of holes my brain is right now. It might just be the hardest puzzle in the world to reconnect all of my memories so that they make sense and not just create something new“ (190). Here, it might be important to digress the argument about how the novel portrays Mika dealing with his impairment of memory loss to analyze how his memories are a key component in how Lynn and others deal with their (dis)ability of depression. The novum of the novel is the medical procedure of memory transfer, which has been designed to offset a negative outlook on life with positive memories in order to „help people with depression“ (37). Therapy works by extracting negative memories from the patient with depression and exchanging them with donated positive childhood memories to alter the overall mood of the patient: „The basis of the memo-donation is that happy childhood memories help the human mind to stabilize and thus make it more resilient in fighting off depression“ (56). In the novel, two cases of adults with depression are mentioned in more detail, as is that more memories are needed to alleviate a person’s depression than „a single human could have donated in 18 months“ (168), meaning that there is a far greater demand for therapy than there is currently available. This makes childhood memories a valuable commodity and the technological cure for the (dis)ability of depression only available to those with strong financial means.
The two examples of the memory transplant and its effect on depressed patients in the novel are a man called Liam, whom Lynn and Mika visit when they try to locate Mika’s memories, and Lynn’s mother, who is depressed from her husband’s cheating and abandonment and has caused a lot of similar issues in Lynn. Interestingly, both patients are described as wealthy, living in large houses with their families. Interestingly, though, when Lynn and Mika visit Liam and his family, they mention the fear of losing Liam’s income and their social status as a major source for Liam’s depression. He lost his job and could not easily get another, thus becoming more depressed, which in turn makes it harder to find a job. In a way, this reflects an idea proposed by Marta Russell that disability and poverty are linked as categories in the existing labor system, excising disabled bodyminds from the workforce and making them dependent on public aid: „Most important, public policy that equates disablement with poverty means that becoming disabled (a nonworker) translates into a life of financial hardship […] and generates a very realistic fear in workers of becoming disabled“ (35). Liam fears just that, becoming more and more disabled and not being able to provide for his family. When the family decided on the memory treatment, they argue that „it was noticeable right away, that something changed“ (217). In contrast to Mika, who has lost all grip on past, present, and future, Liam experiences the opposite, a sharper focus on his place in time and space: „I knew before that had to do it for the kids, but with the memories I suddenly realized what I had really lost and that I would not want to risk that again, ever“ (218). In this case, Liam only needed a very limited amount of treatment („it wasn’t much, we were careful“, 217) and improved noticeably but without other side-effects.
Lynn’s mother, though, seems to have suffered a stronger and more entrenched form of depression. Whereas Liam still had his family’s support and only suffered from depression for a short time, Lynn’s mother has chronically suffered for years, becoming more and more overwhelmed by her own situation as a single mother and pushing this illness onto her daughter as well. At least twice, Lynn is witness to her mother’s suicide attempts, as well as bearing the brunt of her anger and frustration: „She never trusted me, blamed me for her situation, and kept threatening to find herself a new family as well. […] That is, when she did not cry without pause or try to kill herself“ (212). But even though this is traumatic to Lynn, she at least feels like she has an understanding of what is going on, what is causing this behavior and how to deal with it. As Lynn’s mother’s depression is much more severe, the treatment is also. First off, it does not just mean receiving positive childhood memories but also extracting „all those traumatic memories“ (212) of the last few years, including how she treated her own daughter because of her trauma. Second, Lynn’s mom got a lot more memories to balance her mood and stabilize her, making Lynn feel „as if she were a stranger. I don’t know my own mother any more. I do not know how to handle her“ (212). Lynn is missing the connection to her mother, the bond over having suffered the same feelings of abandonment and trauma—and since Lynn only has those memories of her mother, she is just as unmoored in past, present, and future as Mika is.
But whereas Lynn can rely on her memories being intact, to the point of refusing her own treatment and instead opting for the traditional forms of therapy, Mika has lost his memories for good. Which returns us to the science-fictional ‚go to solution‘ for (dis)ability: that is, technology. But while the novel does open the possibility of a technological solution to Mika’s ‚problem‘—that is the option of retrieving and re-implanting his memories—this solution becomes loaded with a moral dimension. Most of Mika’s memories have been taken by the black market dealer Alistair, who, it turns out, is illegally working for NEURO. The company is trying to expand the range of their break-through technology—as demand is much higher than the supply—and using Mika’s neighborhood with its high rate of crime, substance abuse, and poverty as a testing facility to siphon more and different memories. When Mika and Lynn manage to visit the NEURO facility, they sneak off and wait for evening to explore the laboratories, discovering how NEURO is harvesting positive memories from orphaned children, aptly named the „happy-memories-project“ (281), how they pay off dealers such as Alistair to provide them with enough raw materials to keep innovation and progress going. During the stand-off with the head scientist, Prof. Pattern, she makes Mika the offer that she can re-implant all of the memories that Alistair took from him, in addition giving him a job and financial security for all of his family. This is the technological solution, the science-fictional fix to eliminate Mika’s impairment (at least in theory), but it comes attached to a breach of his own ethics. The technology he thought was a utopian break-through curing depression, was only possible by scrupulous capitalist machinations, by exploiting the poor and the powerless.
Herein lies the biting commentary of the novel, that discussions of health issues, especially chronic illness and (dis)ability, are entrenched in capitalist notions of exploitation and accumulation and that the (dis)abled bodymind is an important factor in this kind of thinking. First, as (dis)ability limits the possibility of exploitation as a worker, exemplified in Philipp and Liam, both of whom needed their bodyminds to adhere to capitalist expectations of a worker but had very different options to choose from due to financial security. With the compounding issue of poverty hanging over him, Philipp had only limited choice of treatment for and adaptation to his impairment, ultimately forcing him out of exploitative labor and into disability benefits—which in this case were not provided by government policy but his own son’s exploitative commodification of his bodymind. Liam, by contrast, invested in his health and was able to treat his impairment and ultimately rejoin the labor pool. Second, (dis)abled and impoverished bodyminds are a commodity in the health industry—willing subjects of experimentation as they have no other option but to agree to any and all conditions. Mika has no other choice but to offer more and more of his memories to make ends meet. Shady characters like Alistair, as much as the corporate criminals behind him, use the desperate and powerless to experiment upon.
The novel concludes with only one of all donated memories being re-implanted into Mika, which I read as the novel’s moment of techno-utopian hope that without the capitalist corporation running things and the medico-ethical issues cleared up, technology can indeed help to cure impairments and alleviate (dis)abling practices in our society. Ultimately, though, I believe, the stronger impulse in the novel is its focus on living with (dis)ability and adjusting the social frame around it to better accept it. Yes, the one technologically replaced memory does help Mika, but ultimately, it is his relationship to Lynn and his family that allow Mika to balance his life again. Instead of regaining the memories of his childhood, Mika learns about them through his new (dis)abled bodymind’s perspective when he reads a long letter by his father, who had written out several important memories of his son’s life. The mediated memories, the new and adjusted perspective to a life with and acceptance of his (dis)ability is ultimately more effective at helping Mika find a future than any technological cure.
When researching German science fiction, the diligent academic will notice that there seems to be a large gap of knowledge in both German Studies and Science Fiction Studies about the respective other. Neither field has done much to engage its opposite in finding potential overlap. In his book Beyond Tomorrow, Ingo Cornils explains that „German studies has a blind spot when it comes to speculative literature“ (3) and, as Cornils and I have stated elsewhere „German SF does not register prominently in the history of SF either“ (2). There are several reasons for this unique „double absence“ (Schmeink and Cornils 2) of German SF: from the German literary focus on „Vergangenheitsbewältigung“ (Cornils 3-4), that is, a strong interest in coming to terms with the past, rather than a drive towards exploring the future, to the culturally persistent distinction between serious and entertainment literature that classifies SF as escapist at best and unreadable trash at worst. Furthermore, there is a distinct lack of available translations—in terms of primary material, but also in terms of scholarly work dealing with German SF. And lastly, I would argue, German SF’s rather conservative worldbuilding does not help either.
In her book Out of this World, Rachel Cordasco discusses speculative fiction traditions from around the world through the lens of English-language translations. To my mind, it is fair to say that those authors getting a translation are likely the more known, the more successful, and in a way the more representative of a genre. But publishing post-2000, Cordasco only names five authors in German SF: Wolfgang Jeschke, Andreas Eschbach, Frank Schätzing, Dietmar Dath, and Julie Zeh. As Zeh is not an SF-author, but in The Method (2012) merely uses science-fictional elements to write a high literary allegory of medical authoritarianism, a specific image of the successful German SF-author as white, cis-male, middle-aged and (mostly) heterosexual emerges. German SF as a genre, then, has a diversity issue in that parts of its readership and especially the changing reality of German society as diverse and multiethnic are not reflected. As Charlie Jane Anders argues regarding the US, but similarly true for Germany, representation in the genre needs to reflect a more pronounced social and political awarenesses and shifting public discourses on issues of diversity: „science fiction and fantasy [are] finally catching up to reality—the best stories aren’t only the ones told by straight white men.“ The genre, as I will argue, is slowly changing due to a concerted effort by marginalized authors under the heading of „Progressive Phantastik“ (the progressive fantastic).
In the following, I want to use Judith and Christian Vogt’s novel Anarchie Déco (2021) as a prime example of the progressive fantastic and explore its challenging of normative conceptions of gender, language, and genre representation. After a short explanation of what the progressive fantastic constitutes, the article will explore how the authors reimagine speculative fiction as a tool for social change. Anarchie Déco challenges existing social conditions by exploring narrative worlds with diverse and radically changed societies. The novel, I contend, is queer in the way that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has argued as „spinning outward“ from issues of sex and gender, overlapping and moving across „other identity-constituting, identityfracturing [sic] discourses“ (8). In this sense, Anarchie Déco is a progressive fantastic intervention, an act of queering that reveals how changing perspectives and transgressing normative categories can promote new social values. Following this outward movement, I will first address the novel’s use of gender fluidity and non-heteronormative sexuality, which is linked to the historical period of the liberal 1920s Berlin. But the novel takes it’s queering further, inventively linking magic and science and thereby challenging the heteronormative conventions of science discourses. Lastly, in using the novel’s alternate historical setting to explore how technologies influence social, political, and cultural reality, the novel becomes a queer imaginative intervention that allows for what Lilith Lorraine has called „constructive dreaming […] by cutting the imaginative patterns for better social conditions, more mature systems of government, more advanced biological research“ (quoted in Sharp and Yaszek xxii). In this sense, it exemplifies the power of the progressive fantastic to address the key issue of equality for all in contemporary society.
Originally coined by Black author James Sullivan in a tweet about his upcoming fantasy novels as „progressive high fantasy“ (cf. Sullivan) and then promoted in genre podcasts (Phantastik-Brunch, Genderswapped), the term „progressive fantastic“ was developed by Sullivan and feminist, non-binary author Judith Vogt in their short manifesto-like call to action „Lasst uns Progressive Phantastik schreiben!“ Sullivan and Vogt write that some conservative traditions stand in the way of the genre’s ability to depict our social reality, even more so of the ability to represent our „dreams, fears, goals and hopes.“ They argue that the progressive fantastic is a way to tackle issues of diversity in all its variability and call on authors to become more progressive not only in their topics, but also in their handling of structure and form. Progressive fantastic texts, they posit, should reflect on (genre) traditions and discard those that are no longer appropriate to a diverse new social reality. They see the need for a progressive fantastic to balance out the dominant forms of traditional genre texts. As Sullivan puts it: The term „literally means to move forward. […] We are taking on traditions in all aspects of our work. We add to what is already there, carry a lot of stuff with us. And it begs the question: why should we burden ourselves with all this stuff that we won’t be needing in the future“ (cit. in Genderswapped). Since the publication of the manifesto, the term of the „progressive fantastic“ has been widely embraced by authors, critics, journalists, and even the publishing industry to describe a new trend in fantastic writing that is promising to radically change the genre by adapting the aesthetic and ideological trends of a diversity of voices and representations which have gained momentum in the Anglophone fantastic into a specifically German context. It will be an important addition to the genre.
In order to show the potential of the progressive fantastic, I am undertaking a close reading of Anarchie Déco as a central text of the ‚movement.‘ Judith Vogt is one of the key writers promoting the ideas of the progressive fantastic, not just in her writing, but also as co-editor of the Queer*Welten fanzine, the first genderqueer magazine for fantastic writing in German, and as co-host of the Genderswapped podcast, specializing in genderqueer critiques of roleplaying games, fantastic writing, and nerd culture in general. In addition, Judith and Christian Vogt have become focal points of activism for progressive politics within the fantastic-writers bubble on social media, leading to Judith being stylized as a „symbol of political work, which makes people feel uncomfortable“ and being blamed for „every criticism and every crisis“ (Schmeink) that erupts within the scene, as the authors state in a recent interview.
Further, Anarchie Déco is not Judith and Christian Vogt’s first novel to tackle heteronormativity and binary gender representation. In fact, their novels Wasteland (2019) and Ace in Space (2020) already make a concerted effort to use non-heteronormative language by, for example, using „female and feminine forms“ as a „subversive practice,“ employing „neologistic formations“ in pronouns, and erasing „banal heteronormativity,“ that is the construction of heterosexuality as normal through everyday use of language, altogether (Motschenbacher 253, 257). But these novels are both set in future worlds, making such adjustments narrative claims on how a potential future might look. For the alternate historical setting of Anarchie Déco, Judith and Christina Vogt had to package their critique of hetero-normativity differently, instead using subtle characterization and descriptions of the setting that move beyond normative gender binarism and what queer linguists Heiko Motschenbacher and Martin Stegu call the „normative yardstick“ of the „binary macro-categories, female and male“ (522). As such, in Anarchie Déco, the authors had to assume a queer position through more nuanced narrative strategies as well as through a unique and radical shift in the use of fantastic elements such as magic, and last but not least, via the potential of alternate history to comment on political and social changes.
Anarchie Déco is set in an alternate history of Berlin during the Weimar Republic, specifically in the spring of 1928. It is what Karen Hellekson calls a „nexus story,“ an alternative timeline which changes „a crucial point in history“ (11), creating a different outcome. As discussed below, the focal point is the May 20th election of parliament in the Weimar Republic, which sets up the political conditions for the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. But as Andy Duncan has pointed out, not all changes to the historical timeline need to be grand (such as winning a war), the change portrayed in an alternate history can sometimes be „more playful, focusing on quieter, sometimes puckish alterations” (212). In the alternate history of Anarchie Déco, a new branch of physics is discovered that allows the creation of magical effects through the combination of science and art. This turns out to be neither mere „puckish alteration“ nor full-blown „crucial point of history“ as more a long-lasting paradigmatic shift in our understanding of the world, and the novel explores the personal, social, and political ramifications of such a shift.
The story revolves around a murder investigation and a political conspiracy: While trying to finish her PhD thesis on these new phenomena of science and thus becoming the world-leading expert in the field, Nike Wehner, a young Egyptian-German physicist consults with the police on cases involving what the public soon calls ‚magic.‘ Her biggest case yet, the murder of a communist politician via magical means, leads her and her partner, the Czech artist Sandor Černý, into Berlin’s shadowy nightlife, where gender categories are fluid and rules can be broken, a scene that invites magic as a form of experimentation, just as it experiments with social expectations and the performance of divergent sexualities. The pair discover that magic has left behind both academia and entertainment and has instead become a very real threat to the political order of Germany, where anarchists, communists, loyalists, and fascists struggle for power using magic in their propaganda wars and as a means to realize their goals. The novel centers around the investigation and how the emerging ‚technology of magic‘ becomes entangled with the political struggle over who controls it, the social debate about how it is used, and the personal stakes involved in its assumed structure.
What makes the alternate history so effective for the discussion of a non-heteronormative and genderqueer representation of society, is its science-fictional use of cognitive estrangement, as Hellekson remarks: the „alternate history is persuasively science fictional: it uses history as the moment of what Darko Suvin calls ‚estrangement‘ that is common to all science fiction“ (9). Our understanding of the historical reality is questioned and when reading about 1920s Berlin, we are unsure of which aspects of the portrayed society are accurate and which are estranged by the counterfactual alteration in the narrative. What is key to our science-fictional reading of Anarchie Déco, then, is our mis-recognition of the acceptance of non-heteronormative and genderfluid positions at the time. To highlight that 1920s society was more open and accepting of these positions, the authors use intertextual references to the work of sexologist and gay rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld in the paratext of the book. For example, they are quoting from his work twice for chapter epigraphs: once for the chapter in which the characters visit a bar which is famous for its gender fluid performances, and which contains the most outspoken dialogue about non-heteronormative sexuality, and once in the climactic chapter on magic performed by characters outside of normative gender labels (more on the relevance of gender for magic use, see below). Further, Hirschfeld’s ‚Zwischenstufen-Theorie’ (theory on gradual expressions of gender and sexuality) is discussed by characters in the book, when trans woman Georgette explains that „maybe ‚female‘, ‚male‘, ‚homosexuality‘ and ‚normal sexuality‘ are not enough to describe humanity“ (AD 280). Recognizing these references as historical, yet contrasting them with contemporary (and often less progressive) discussions of gender and sexuality creates an estranging effect not unlike that of science fiction.
Moreover, Judith and Christian Vogt take great care to avoid heteronormative stereotypes in describing their characters outward appearance and instead introduce nuanced and historically grounded gender performances through fashion—with an awareness of the inherent power dynamic that the novel comments upon: „Clothing defines our gender on first glance. […] That has its advantages for me. I disguise myself during the day, and no one would dare question that disguise. And at night, I can express myself more freely through my clothes. At the same time, I am aware that clothing restricts us. Women that wear trousers are deviants“ (AD 346). Consequently, the main characters in the novel thus express their gender through fashion and outward appearance.
While Sandor is clearly described as a cis-gender male and heterosexual, he nonetheless seems highly aware of how his attire produces a perception of him and chooses clothing that pushes beyond stereotypical maleness: „He looked like a Dandy, his jacket was tailored to fit tightly, a light pair of pants highlighting his narrow hips and slim legs“ (AD 105). He is fashionable and comments upon Nike’s rather shabby clothing, that „there is nothing manly about letting yourself go“ (AD 106). In contrast to other male characters in the novel, Sandor is thus shown to be more aware of his gender performance, not conforming to the heteronormative carelessness of other men from his economic bracket, who as Nike puts it „look like they have slept in their pants“ (AD 106). Sandor, by contrast uses his fashion style to generate a very specific reaction based on that deviance: „He was wearing a coat that undoubtedly screamed ‚Artist!‘, which he had not taken off even though it was crowded and warm. […] He was leaning against the bar and was already deep in conversation with two young women, who did not look like they were professionals but who clearly had something in mind for him“ (AD 47).
In contrast to Sandor’s confidence, Nike is struggling with her identity, which she sees as being determined by „boxes,“ connecting the personal and the political, into which she was put: „the biggest boxes – woman and man – […] how she wished she could see people differently, in other categories, young and old maybe … or German and Un-German, a voice inside her head whispered, Aryan and Semitic.“ Nike is born to an Egyptian mother and a German father, who denounced her, and in 1920s Germany experiences how perception of those boxes keeps denying her opportunities. As a reaction to women being seen as inferior, she tries to thwart perception by choosing to perform a non-heteronormative gender: „She was wearing a dark grey suit with a shirt and tie. The dark hair was cut short. She looked back at him with stern eyes“ (AD 41). In her job as a physicist, her femaleness singles her out and the male performance is supposed to smooth over other people’s reaction: „Nike wanted to study and said that no one would take her seriously with long hair“ (AD 105), failing to realize that a queer performance is deemed „ridiculous“ (AD 25) by her colleagues and „no one had taken her seriously with short hair either“ (AD 106). But her gender performance is not just a reaction of resistance to being seen as a woman, it also stems from Nike’s feeling of inadequacy of knowing how to perform normative femininity: „I think, I just don’t know how to be a woman. It’s like someone is expecting me to drive a car, even though I have only ever been a passenger. But others know, everyone else knows. It is like a … big conspiracy, and I am not part of it!“ (AD 346).
But it is Georgette that presents the most pointed gender performance in the novel. The trans woman has to disguise herself during the day, as mentioned above, choosing to pass as a cis-gendered man, Dr. George Kalinin, „a small figure in a dark suit“ (AD 276). At night, though, Georgette is „slender […] her shoulders angular above the strapless, but otherwise plain black dress that fell to her knees. Her similarly raven black hair was sleek and short. […] She peered out of the mysterious smoky clouds of her dark eye shadow“ (AD 52–53). Georgette highlights her androgyny, using it in her performance on stage, wearing a dark leotard under a metallic construction: „The metal rods in her costume surrounded her torso like a corset and did not leave much room for the imagination. Her silhouette was slender, androgynous. And yet, this body was pure fantasy, an unearthly ideal“ (AD 117). Discussing her gender identity with Nike, Georgette claims that being a woman is not something she chooses, but „maybe I have to be“ (AD 280). And while Nike feels like she is forced to be a woman, she realizes that Georgette clearly knows her own identity: „Why do you have to be? Something tells you that you are a woman, but why is there nothing that tells me that I am?“ (AD 280).
In Anarchie Déco, then, the authors deploy detailed queer characterization to question the established gender binary. I want to claim for the novel, what Veronica Hollinger argues as an effect of queer theory in general, that „heterosexuality comes to acquire a certain exoticism as an object of estrangement and we are invited to consider it, not as natural and universal, but—to a large extent—as both learned behavior and a network of forces embedded in the very fabric of culture“ (24). As I will show, the novel goes further, not just dissolving gender via non-binary performances, but also addressing sexuality as being beyond binarism and normativity. And again, it is prudent to point out that the science-fictionality of this generates from the estranging effect of an unexpectedly progressive and genderqueer reality of 1920’s Berlin, from history becoming estranged itself.
Two scenes in particular demonstrate how sexuality can be seen as a non-essentialist category that allows for more fluidity than the binarism of heterosexual and homosexual. The nightclub Eldorado, as the novel explains, „satisfies the voyeuristic need to see what was often referred to as the ‚third gender‘: gays, lesbians, transvestites,“ it is here that the bourgeoisie can „drink cocktails in places where the borders between male and female disappeared“ (AD 111). In a conversation with Sandor, Nike points out that gender perfomance invites speculations about sexual orientation: „You don’t have to explain anything, you know. The way we are dressed, everyone here probably asks themselves, whether you are gay and I am lesbian. And they can ask themselves that, it just isn’t any of their business“ (AD 113). The nightclub chapter is focalized through Nike, highlighting her conviction that gender and sexuality are private decisions that no one else should comment on. While Sandor is highly motivated to guess everyone’s biological sex („you can hardly tell the difference. I mean, between men and women“; AD 112), Nike argues that he can wonder all he likes, but should keep the question and any speculations to himself, „silently, in your head. How hard can that be to understand?“ (AD 114). In terms of sexual attraction, Nike argues that once you want to „get down with a stranger,“ why would it matter to know beforehand „what’s down their pants“ (AD 113)? In this scene, the novel (through Nike) makes clear that, as Motschenbacher and Stegu have claimed, „sexual identity labels construct people’s identities as clear-cut and enforce an either/or choice“ (526), but that actual sexualities are beyond those categories, that attraction is key, not any biological essentialism.
The novel goes further, though, by portraying non-heteronormative sexuality in an explicit scene between Nike and Georgette, which highlights their own sexualities as beyond the limitations of clear-cut categories. Nike’s sexuality is defined by her experiences with men, her expectations are based on heterosexual intimacy. Interestingly, this shows mainly through (self-)negation: she does not „want to become pregnant again“ (AD 329), she feels she might „look ridiculous“ and describes her desire as „frightening“ (AD 330), and believes that their encounter ends with Georgette coming (AD 332). Moving beyond this heterosexual expectation allows her to realize that she likes being tied up, „even that she wasn’t able to see, she liked“ (AD 332), and that even though she has never had an orgasm with a partner (meaning heterosexual intercourse) and believes that „maybe it just doesn’t work, maybe I can’t do it“ (AD 332), she is able to climax. What is important in the scene, and made explicit several times, is that sexuality needs to be consensual and that Nike has full control over what she desires to do and what she does not want to do.
This is also important to Georgette, whose sexuality is even more clearly beyond any binary category. She explains that she has limits to what she is willing to do in a sexual encounter: „My limit has to do with your gaze and your touch […] So, I don’t want to be touched and I don’t want to be seen“ (AD 329). In the scene her sexuality is not portrayed through any biological essentialism, but instead turns auto-erotic as she „began to touch herself, Nike felt the slow, rhythmic movements“ (AD 330), and Georgette „rubbed herself with her right hand, harder now“ (AD 331) until she „could not hold back anymore, turning to her side and coming with a few intense movements“ (AD 332). The novel’s language in the scene is explicit without ever leaving the characters’ bodies to be evaluated by the reader. Georgette is not to be gazed at and the descriptions refrain from providing detail, as her sexuality defies any ‚clear-cut categories‘ and instead embraces the „considerable intra-category differences“ that the „actual continuum of sexualities“ (Motschenbacher and Stegu 526) allows.
In their presentation of fluid gender performances and non-heteronormative sexualities, Judith and Christian Vogt highlight their queer approach to the text, which allows for the „deconstruction or blurring of two powerful binarisms stabilising each other: female versus male and heterosexual versus homosexual“ (Motschenbacher and Stegu 520). As such, the novel exemplifies the possibility of progressive speculative writing to move beyond heteronormative stereotypes and to explore possible social changes in the politics of everyday life.
Anarchie Déco’s queer approach is not just manifest in the historically estranged representation of gender and sexuality, but extends further. As Ann Weinstone has pointed out, queering can take „a plethora of strategies ranging from the mixing of genres to shifts in traditional modes of address to grammatical and syntactic experiments“ (43). I thus want to highlight the similar strategies described by queer theory and what Sullivan and Vogt have claimed as the ‚progressive fantastic’—that is, moving beyond traditions, subverting expectations, and transforming structures and forms in which to explore literary worlds. For Wendy G. Pearson, queer represents a „radical and subversive“ position, whose „very slipperyness“ and „tendency towards instability“ („Alien“ 3) are key to its potential for provoking change. The progressive fantastic claims a similar subversion and instability, as Sullivan and Vogt point out: „we need to […] let go of the entrenched and constantly reproduced,“ as these images and stereotypes are hooked into our cultural memory and „block us, limit us, sometimes even hurt us.“
One aspect in which the novel enacts such a subversive and slippery queering is in its reimagining of magic, not as defined by the narrative traditions of fantasy but as a technology bound by scientific thinking. Blurring the boundaries of urban fantasy and science fiction, Anarchie Déco repositions magic not as a supernatural force, „a reservoir of power […] usually in some between-world, which can be tapped, or stored by some individuals,“ who are commonly assumed to take „inborn talent to work magic“ (Jones 616), but as a scientific phenomenon inherent in our world that combines „art and science“ (AD 12). This new physics discipline is described as working in the conjunction of polar opposites: „Dual magic—an interplay of art and science, man and woman“ (AD 14). When being studied at the university, within the (male-dominated) academic system of science, the binary hierarchy is deemed essential to the working of magic, two people of opposite sex and from the two disciplines are necessary for the experiments. As the young physics student Erika describes it, during a performance with artist Emil, the „dualism of wave and particle in physics has been established. But what about other dualisms? Man and woman! Arts and sciences! How does it all fit together? Are they two sides of the same coin?“ (AD 56). Here, we can see how Judith and Christian Vogt reverse the expected gender dynamics by making both physicists, Nike and Erika, female while their artistic companions are male, thus subverting the stereotypical gendered reading of the two professions.
The novel describes the rigid system of academic and scientific research in gendered and private terms, connecting the professional to aspects of familial life. This is most iconically expressed in Nike’s ‚Doktorvater‘ Prof. Pfeiffer and her two mentors Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg all leaving the risk of presenting the new field at a conference to Nike, as the „scientific reputation of a woman was easier to risk than that of a man. A woman could, after failing at a career, always enter the safe harbor of marriage instead“ (AD 10). Similarly, when talking about the magical experiments, there is constant mention of a „harmony“ of the two partners and Nike expresses her wariness by thinking of this in terms of „an arranged marriage“ (AD 50). Sandor picks up on the similarity as well, when he describes Nike as his „partner. My magical partner. Almost sounds like a marriage, doesn’t it?“, while Nike is afraid of exactly that because „nothing makes a woman more invisible than a husband“ (AD 204). In describing magic by using familial terminology, the novel exposes the underlying hierarchical thinking of the academic system, emphasizing that science as an institutionalized practice is deeply heteronormative.
But Anarchie Déco does not simply accept the heteronormative structure of magic/science, instead opting for a queering that moves across these hierarchies. For one, as Sandor ponders, magic as much as any other science can be decoupled from the hierarchical institutions that gatekeep them: „What would happen if magic gave those people opportunities who had nothing so far? Maybe through magic they had nothing to lose—but their chains?“ (AD 201). Aside from the Marxist connection (more on the political below), this is a comment on access to knowledge, which is deeply ingrained in heteronormative structures. The novel highlights Nike’s struggle for acceptance within the field of physics as much as the acceptance of magic as an academic field itself. These hierarchical structures and categories are limitations of potential that a queer intervention can break open.
Significantly, in the novel, this queer intervention comes in the form of Georgette and her theory of „universal magic“ (AD 384), which does not build on the binarisms of female/male and art/science but instead runs ‚across‘ them, a queer movement „recurrent, eddying, troublant, [… and] multiply transitive“ (Sedgwick viii). In a recurrent reference to her own personal life, Georgette’s theory is based on the question of how ‚clear-cut‘ gender categories really are (or ought to be). Nike explains the idea that magic can be created when a specific condition is found, which the „dominant model of explanation“ (AD 278) calculates via the two axis of ‚male/female‘ and ‚science/art.‘ Instead of needing both axes to calculate the convergence point, Georgette asks Nike to „climb the fence“ (AD 279) and think beyond the limiting categories, in the image calculating the magical midpoint via a different method, moving across the quadrant from the edge of the circle, not via the axes. It is the gender axis that is the arbitrary position, as Georgette explains:
„What am I?“
„A … woman?“
„How do you know?“
Nike did not reply.
„Come on, tell me,“ Georgette said almost teasingly.
„Well, because you say so. And how you are!“
„And are you also how I am? Why are we both women?“ (AD 279)
The dialogue reveals the social construction, not the biological essentialism of the gender axis in the magical equation. Georgette fulfills as much the conditions for being a woman as Nike does, though neither is fully female according to societal norms and ‚clear-cut‘ labels. Similarly, with Sandor, Georgette argues that „I have seen more manly men than you. And to be honest, I think I have seen more manly women than you“ (AD 281). Both Sandor and Nike, then, do not comply to the categories that magic use is supposed to work on. But the queer and troubling movements of Georgette’s magic go further, as she explains: „the gender axis which you are thinking along is a limitation. To unite science and magic is a potentiation. When science and magic find each other, something comes into being that is more than the sum of its parts“ (AD 282). Georgette’s theory is a queer theory, reflecting the novel’s own approach at queering the traditions of magic and science for its readers. In this, Anarchie Déco is drawing on the queer potential of speculative writing (i.e., art/magic/science) itself, as Pearson has pointed out: „Reading sf queerly, we queer it as much as we are queered by it. As readers, we become different through the act of reading, of opening ourselves to the flow of possibilities, of new ideas, of new bodies. And it is on the body—whether human body, alien body, virtual body, body politic, body of work, body of writing—that queer exerts its greatest effects“ („Towards“ 73). In the novel, this queer theory exerts its power on the body of its main characters, for example, when Nike realizes her own magic potential:
Burning, pain, heat, and force rolled over her, penetrated her skin and bone and hair, too much, too much, too much! Nike let go, made herself do it […] She began to dance. […] But Nike wasn’t there anymore, turned into a being of sparks, lightning, and fire, who did not hesitate for a second. With the lightning-fast power of her thoughts she moved the concentrated might of the electrons against the monsters around her. (AD 450)
Sandor’s queer transformation is similarly physically linked to his body via his hand, which has been magically transformed into marble. „The hand is a piece of art,“ he realizes, but it is art that is in him, is him: „But his hand belonged to him. He did not become Renée’s artwork. He owned this hand, and this hand owned him“ (AD 453–54) Through his body, the queer magic takes hold: „His hand in the floor was creating a reality that he controlled with his mind“ (AD 454). In the end, an eddying motion connects both Nike and Sandor with each other, flowing back to the harmony they sought in enacting magic together, now each able to do so on their own: „the tower no longer separated them, but had opened an axis between them. Between Sandor and Nike. Between art and science. Between Nike’s universal magic and Sandor’s universal magic“ (AD 455). In the end, harmony between the two is not hierarchically determined, not a prerequisite to enact magic, but something they transition into because each has found their own identity: „they searched for each other, not because they needed to, but because they wanted to“ (AD 456).
In reimagining how magic and science relate to each other, the novel not only questions the traditional motives of both fantasy and science fiction, blurring the genres and queering our reading experience, it also highlights the use of magic as a science as an example of queer theory itself, pushing readers across boundaries of clear-cut categories and refuting the binarism inherent in depictions of institutionalized science.
In linking magic and science, the novel highlights magic as a form of technology, which is intimately connected to issues of personal identity as much as it is to public life, as Andrew Feenberg has argued: „What human beings are and will become is decided in the shape of our tools no less than in the action of statesmen and political movements. The design of technology is thus an ontological decision fraught with political consequences“ (3, italics in original). According to Feenberg, technology shapes social interactions, reflecting social values, and is a deeply political, „ambivalent process of development suspended between different possibilities“, which needs to be fought over: „a social battlefield“ (15). Feenberg differentiates two common positions regarding the relation of technology and society. First, „instrumental theory […] treats technology as subservient to values established in other social spheres (e.g., politics or culture)“ (5). That is, essentially „technologies are ‚tools‘“ (5), neutral and ready to be used according to the values of public or hegemonic discourse. Second, „substantive theory“ (5) argues that technology itself is cultural and promotes specific attitudes and values, that is, the substantive position argues that „technology constitutes a new cultural system that restructures the entire social world as an object of control“ (6-7). Consequently, technologies are either value-neutral tools that are used by politics to push their ideological agenda or are themselves political and ideological in that they shape social and cultural value systems, overriding what existed before.
Feenberg rejects both in favor of a „critical theory,“ a middle ground which allows for critical reflection of the „technical codes“ (15) and ideologies that are embedded in the design of a technology and then ultimately decides on which path to go based on politics: „there can be at least two different modern civilizations based on different paths of technical development. […] Technologies corresponding to different civilizations thus coexist uneasily within our society. We can already sense the larger stakes implicit in the technical choice“ (15). How we make use of a new technology is thus a relevant political choice and, I would argue, the ideally suited material for science fiction, which according to Sherryl Vint is „a cultural mode that struggles with the implications of discoveries in science and technology for human social lives and philosophical conceptions“ (4).
That magic becomes a technology is the crucial change that Hellekson defines for an alternate history „nexus story“ (11). Judith and Christian Vogt are acutely aware of the social potential for change that such a paradigm shift brings with it and thus realize the genre’s potential to speculate about „the past’s link to the present, the present’s link to the future, and the role of individuals in the history-making process“ (Hellekson 10). In situating the new technology and its impact in a politically controversial and conflict-laden time, the authors emphasize how past, present, and future are as deeply interconnected, as technology, politics and individual decisions are.
Renée Markova, the novel’s main villain, an architect and real estate developer, compares magic to electricity and how it is being delivered even to „the last corner of Pomerania and Saxony“ (AD 235). She sees magic as changing from being a destructive, natural force to being harnessed for „never known comfort“ (AD 235). She points out that electricity had allowed „a single woman to do what used to be done by a whole household staff“ (AD 236), thus showing her awareness of the social impact, though ironically erasing any intersectional critique of class and gender through her own privilege—she herself still keeps staff for her comfort. She dreams of the „basic substance of buildings“ that could „participate in the work,“ conjuring up an automated workforce (but magical instead of machines), while „we are living in abundance and freedom“ (AD 236).
Sandor’s reaction to this magically animated techno-utopia is to question who gets to participate („All of us? Even those that used to work at the assembly lines?“; AD 236). On the surface, Renée seems to agree—„there are things that have to be granted to all the people out there, as soon as they are available“—but with the caveat that she only wants to placate the people, and pacify them with trinkets: „Give the people a tidbit that makes them happy. The perspective of getting a factory golem. And then, behind closed doors, the government can work on the really big possibilities…“ (AD 237). As one of the power brokers of the Weimar Republic and an architect, she sees the biggest potential of the technology in its impact on the way that people live, the effects similar to electricity in reaching into the everyday lives of all. To her the larger stakes are obvious, and they belong under control of people with a far-reaching vision (like her).
Anarchie Déco thus explores not just the potential of magic as a technology, but also how „innovations have been changing material and social worlds“ (Vint 4), that is, how the design and the use of magic become political categories. Importantly then, the novel uses its alternate historical setting during the Weimar Republic and the growing fascist threat to democracy as a backdrop to discuss just how a new technology influences given social structures. As mentioned, the novel takes place in 1928 right before the May 20th elections, and thus foregrounds the political upheaval and social issues of the time.
On the one hand, there is the struggle of left (both communists and anarchists) and right (the National Socialists), which escalates to outright street conflict, as the Nazis discover the ability to use magic for their own purposes. They magically attack a group of anarchists, with Sandor among them, using both the physical force of a projected imperial eagle crashing into the meeting and the psychological force to shock their victims into a stupor by blasting them with Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries (AD 145). Sandor is able to identify the attacker as „a brown shirt with a swastika brassard – SA!“ (AD 146). He immediately realizes the political impact of magic in the hands of the Nazis: „The facts were clear: The Nazis had two magicians. Two more than the anarchists. Two more than the communists. Two more than the Republic“ (AD 155). Later in the story, Sandor decides—along the lines of Feenberg’s critical theory—to open up a different path to a different society via the use of magic as technology. He understands that in order for magic not to become an instrument of oppression, it needs to be in the hands of as many people as possible. In keeping with his anarchist politics, he hands out the secrets to performing magic by printing a pamphlet and distributing it to the people. He argues: „This new form of power is something that all of us can master. The only thing we need is knowledge about the right method. The government, the police, the sciences, they all are learning these methods, but no one thinks of you – and that is why magic is just going to become a new means to separate the powerful from the powerless“ (AD 304).
On the other hand, the new technology of magic is not just being used to keep power under control of the more extreme political factions. The political establishment soon realizes the potential of magic for political purposes and tries to influence its distribution, as a group of centrist nationalist politicians makes clear to Nike: „Think of the enemies of democracy. […] Or the French! These people cannot be allowed to master this new technology before we do. […] It is all about keeping harm from the German people, you understand“ (AD 163). Nike realizes that in the wrong hands, in those of nationalist politicians for example, magic would be seen as a weapon, one that could be used circumvent the restrictions of the Treaty of Versaille, which bans Germany from having a military. This would make it possible „to seek revenge on the Entente powers“ (AD 216), i.e. magic could be used to start a new war against France and Britain. In the novel, the politicians take up the ‚instrumental theory‘ that magic is a tool, its use determined by those who wield it.
Renée Markova follows the ‚substantive theory‘ that the existence of magic will will „shap[e] the whole of social life“ (Feenberg 7), that it will come to determine political realities no matter what. Instead of fearing the ideological shift, Renée seeks to actively shape the technology’s impact. She realizes that magic will inevitably make Berlin „a magical city“ (AD 443), but sees the possibility to shape who can benefit from the changes-to-come. She uses politics to feed her egomania, favoring the Nazis by aligning her magical techno-utopia with their vision of Germania, a monumental capitol for the thousand-year Third Reich: „if we truly want to build for eternity, we need to change all aspects of life. Start completely anew, with a new movement and a new Germany“ (AD 444). And she has harnessed magic and amplified it through her tower, in order to „make some room. And to create an atmosphere of fear, where we will be able to realize our vision“ (AD 444). Rénee sees magic in similar terms as electricity, shaping a new and modernized society, which to her necessitates the complete renewal of society. For this, she is willing to wipe the slate clean and remove the old social structures, which means destroying the slums of the working-class poor to make way for her vision of a magical city of grandeur.
It seems ironic, then, that to make room for this modernist technological vision, Renée is making use of the symbols of the old world. Her magic animates statues all over the city, controlling them to destroy Berlin’s poor and run-down Mietskasernen (literally: renter’s barracks). Aside from the caryatids, sculptures of females that literally support and uphold Berlin’s Renaissance architecture, most of the city’s statues are monuments to the German Empire, such as „Queen Luise and her husband Friedrich Wilhelm III,“ as well as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (AD 449). One might read the destruction of the city by representatives of the German Empire as a subtle narrative comment on the continued influence of the Kaiserreich on the Weimar Republic’s political landscape and how the Nazis were able to instrumentalize the country’s remaining imperial sentiments in their vision of a Third Reich and Germania.
Ultimately, it is a reflection of the novel’s queer approach that magic is not simply set in conjunction with science, but becomes a technology that is used for political means. In relating magic to the politics of the time, by setting the conflict around ideas of housing and city planning, the Vogts are able to draw on the wide-ranging consequences of technology, to reimagine the fantastic as a tool for social change. The novel’s magic is used for social engineering: Renée’s vision wants to eliminate the existing and neglected social housing, claiming the city for the rich and powerful alone. The „social battlefield“ (Feenberg 15) of the technology is literalized in the novel, as Nike and Sandor battle against Renée in the final sections of the book. As I have shown, the fight is part of the novel’s queered message, as Nike and Sandor use universal magic, while Renée and her husband rely on the hierarchical and categorically distinct dual magic. Similarly, the political struggle is queered through magic use, as both Sandor and Nike see magic as providing the opportunity for equality, transgressing categories of power, while Renée represents the idea of magic controlled via authoritarianism, a clear instrument for hierarchies of power.
Anarchie Déco is an excellent example of queering the fantastic, challenging gender categories and heteronormative language. It uses its alternate history and the turning of magic into a science to estrange and queer genre representations, while at the same time commenting on the political and social impact of technology. It is especially through the alternative historical setting around the 1928 elections that the novel shows how technologies are relevant to political debates. History sees this election as a pivotal failure for the social state to manifest its promises, instead leading to a weak parliament and the rise of non-parliamentary oppositions in Kampfbünden (‚fighting companies‘). After the elections, the majority won by the Social Democrats (SPD), who campaigned on a platform of social reform instead of costly military spending, had to give in to the smaller but powerful centrist People’s Party (DVP) and agreed to the construction of several Panzerschiffe (armored ships). This open break with their campaign destroyed all trust in effective government and eroded the Republic so much that the extreme positions of the Nazis could thrive in the following years, especially when after the global economic crisis of the Great Depression hit after 1929.
In Anarchie Déco, the use of magic replaces the historical debate about spending for the Panzerschiffe and becomes the dominant election topic. The threat, as much as the promise, of magic takes over the public debate after the murder of a communist politician via magical means. At the end of the novel, after the destruction of parts of the city by giant living statues, the election is held under the new technological paradigm with a new „Magic Party having cropped up like a shiny new mushroom just one and a half weeks before the election. They [i.e. the Magic Party] promised to test the public for magical affinity, to finance magical education measures, and to make magic accessible to all“ (AD 470). The election result is slightly different to historical record, as the novel points out two major differences: (1) that the Magic Party became forth-strongest party, thus possibly becoming partners for a coalition going forward, and (2) that the Nazis received „roughly five percent“ (AD 472), which is a far better result than the 2.6% they received historically. Magic, then, has changed a pivotal moment in history. The Nazis’ embrace of magic, a technology leading to a paradigmatic shift in social and political relations, for nationalist purposes and their simultaneous propaganda strategy to stoke fears of a Jewish conspiracy of sinister magic use („Jewish Golem Kills in Berlin?“; AD 179) are shown to have worked on the unwitting public. The direct impact of magic on the citizens of Germany have changed the election outcome and thus generated a different historical path. Any future moving forward will have to incorporate positions on the power of magic as technology. The novel thus shows how the „technical codes“ (Feenberg 15) of magic, the inherent ideologies of how it is designed and used, shape different possibilities for society to develop, to either use magic for control and hierarchical power or to allow it to equal the playing field, socially and politically.
Anarchie Déco is a prime example of the progressive fantastic. It is queer in the way that Sedgwick has argued as „spinning outward“ from issues of sex and gender, moving across a variety of „identity-constituting, identityfracturing [sic] discourses […] to do a new kind of justice to the fractal intricacies of language, skin, migration, state“ (8). In this sense, Anarchie Déco is a progressive fantastic intervention, an act of queering that reveals how changing perspectives and transgressing normative categories can promote new social values and, as Lorraine has argued, can impact „the imaginative patterns for better social conditions“ (quoted in Yaszek and Sharp xxii). In its conception of alternate history, the novel is pointing towards our current technological present. Taking on a queer perspective, Judith and Christian Vogt suggest that shifting our understanding of technologies and seeing their social and political impact generates a lasting effect on our social reality.
Am Freitag 23.06.2023 war ich in Köln zu Gast bei TwentyTwo Film, die den Twitch Kanal von ARTE bedienen. Ich war zusammen mit Nils Köbis für den Stream „Wissenschaftler reagieren…“ eingeladen und wir haben gemeinsam Blade Runner 2049 geschaut und uns über KI, Posthumanität, Kontrolle, und Potential von Technologien unterhalten. Die Diskussion war spannend und bei gefühlt 30 Grad im Studio auch manchmal hitzig … schaut doch mal rein, wenn ihr mögt.
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Lars Schmeink and Ingo Cornils
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edited by Sandra Becker, Megen de Bruin-Molé and Sara Polak.
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