La ciencia ficción feminista en novelas norteamericanas y españolas contemporáneaspersonajes en el intersticio

Abstract

This doctoral research analyzes the liminality of female characters in North American and Spanish science fiction novels. Considering this comparative study, the objective is to demonstrate how this liminality acts as a space for questioning gender roles and conceptions, as well as a free territory in which, thanks to the combination of feminism and science fiction, the authors present different worlds that serve, ultimately, as a mirror in which to reflect and ponder on our own. Therefore, the steps taken were, first, to define the concepts of science fiction and related genres, as well as the characteristics of these genres from a feminist perspective; secondly, to compare the evolution of the trajectory of science fiction authors, as well as feminist theorists in the English and Spanish speaking contexts from a gender perspective; thirdly, to analyze a corpus of dystopian science fiction works authored by women using a feminist methodology; and finally, to analyze the liminality of the characters, as well as their subversion of the norms that govern gender roles, turning a wounded territory into a free space that serves as a reflection on our own gender conceptions. As a result, since the purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate the liminality of the characters present in the selected works, the final conclusions showed that this liminality is a common element in the reconstruction of these characters, as well as in the transgression of the norms imposed by a patriarchal regulatory framework that establishes a series of limitations that distance them from these norms, and, therefore, places them in the interstice of the genders.