The Cyborg Caribbean

Techno-Dominance in Twenty-First-Century Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican Science Fiction

Samuel Ginsburg

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781978836228
  9781978836259
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978836242
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Finalist for the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award from the Caribbean Studies Association

The Cyborg Caribbean examines a wide range of twenty-first-century Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican science fiction texts, arguing that authors from Pedro Cabiya, Alexandra Pagan-Velez, and Vagabond Beaumont to Yasmin Silvia Portales, Erick Mota, and Yoss, Haris Durrani, and Rita Indiana Hernandez, among others, negotiate rhetorical legacies of historical techno-colonialism and techno-authoritarianism. The authors span the Hispanic Caribbean and their respective diasporas, reflecting how science fiction as a genre has the ability to manipulate political borders. As both a literary and historical study, the book traces four different technologies—electroconvulsive therapy, nuclear weapons, space exploration, and digital avatars—that have transformed understandings of corporality and humanity in the Caribbean. By recognizing the ways that increased technology may amplify the marginalization of bodies based on race, gender, sexuality, and other factors, the science fiction texts studied in this book challenge oppressive narratives that link technological and sociopolitical progress.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Broadcasting Resistance
• 1. Electroconvulsive Therapy: Treatment, Torture, and Electrified Bodies
• 2. Nuclear Weapons: Missiles, Radiation, and Archives
• 3. Space Exploration and Colonial Alienation
• 4. Disruptive Avatars and the Decoding of Caribbean Cyberspace
• Conclusion: New Caribbean Futures
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author
• Series Titles