Introduction: genre-spaces
‘This Exhibition is an Island’ has something of a cartographic approach. Mapping out a show is both a curatorial necessity and the condition of visiting a show. After all, any cartographers is at first lost with only a method to lead him or her to make sense of the place the cartographer finds him- or herself in. My own method uses different fictional spaces as its leylines. Each chapter is modelled on what I will refer to as a ‘genre-space’.
Genres are ‘a recurrent literary form’[1] and dictionary definitions give two interrelated meanings: generally a style of art; and more specifically a style of painting depicting scenes of everyday life in seventeenth-century Flemish painting.[2] As the second application suggests, genres have specific recognisable spaces that define them as such. They are articulated through a constellation of elements both in the prose and in the storyline that make up its generic character. As such, there is complexity to a ‘genre-space’ that appears on these two levels of style and content.
A genre-space is something that is more prevalent and openly discussed in science fiction (SF). This is best illustrated in one of the most recurrent forms of science fiction today – comic books. The storylines of the two major publishers, DC and Marvel (both of which have frequent forays off the page in television and cinema franchises[3]), operate within distinct ‘universes’ that have evolved to reflect changes in the beliefs, cultures, and technologies of the real-world periods in which they were published. There are distinct phases to SF literature more generally that also reflect the time in which the stories were written: these are frequently classified as ‘golden’, ‘silver’, and ‘new wave SF’, and also include more recent iterations such as ecologically minded ‘cli-fi’, or the ironic[4] reboots that knowingly and explicitly play with genric storylines and characters. The broader term ‘speculative fiction’ has grown to encompass the different spaces of SF – a meta-genre of sorts, the taxonomic ‘order’ to the many ‘species’. Tracing this evolution back further, we can find a bifurcation at the Enlightenment, when the last remnants of mysticism attached themselves to the various attempts to initiate reason. The resulting hybrid space of scientific knowledge and fiction is at the foundation of SF.
One last point before moving on: genres have ardent and committed communities around them. The SF community, in particular, is a fervid group of people who frequently give over their genetic selves in the real world to their generic characters. Inhabiting the genre-space, they are active as readers and frequently also as writers, interpreters, and editors creating sub-genres through fan fiction and closely monitoring the continuities of their chosen universes. Social relations between fans are also mediated through the genre-space, most evidently in cosplay and other caucus cultures within SF conventions, but also in more day-to-day relations through forums and fan media. Further, they influence the genre’s development: they have power. Fan fiction, particularly queer iterations, has led to the transformation of the genre itself – introducing new storylines and themes.[5] They are, therefore, active inhabitants of all levels of a genre-space: the real, social, and discourse. In this sense it is possible to apply it to fan cultures in SF, sport, and the ‘art world’.
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[1] H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 49.
[2] ‘Genre’, Oxford Dictionaries <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/genre> [accessed 22 April 2017].
[3] In fact the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is the name of the franchise from which the current series of films is licensed under. The MCU ensures continuity between events in the different films, although fans are always keen to point out contradictions and discontinuities. Among the most blatant was the concurrent appearance of the character Quicksilver in both the Avengers and X-Men series – played by different actors and with wildly discrepant personal histories for their character (the most explicit difference being that the character was portrayed as being American in one and in the other was from the fictional ex-Soviet state of ‘Sarkovia’).
[4] Irony will come back to haunt us, particularly in the sense of its self-knowing contingency, something that characterises the curatorial and the novelistic in equal measure. But we will have to leave that as an aside for now, as more of the terrain needs to be mapped out before such a speculation can be reached.
[5] For an illustration of the workings and impacts of fan culture and fan fiction in the Star Trek universe and its relationship with the creation of non-normative identities see Kit Hammonds, ‘An Interview with Della Van Hisa’, in Three Letter Words <https://www.academia.edu/1050137/Three_Letter_Words_OMG> [accessed 17 April 2017]; and on its subsequent impact on real world science and technology see Constance Penley, NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America (London: Verso, 1997).