A ficção científica como crítica das alianças entre capitalismo, colonialismo e ciência moderna: uma proposta de epistemologia regenerativa para um mundo em crise, de Frankenstein ao Solarpunk

Abstract

Western modernity has instituted a series of foundational separations – nature/culture, reason/emotion, subject/object, human/non-human – that have shaped the dominant ways of knowing and inhabiting the world. These separations have been historically deepened by three interlinked mechanisms: capitalism, which instrumentalizes life through expropriation and extractivism; colonialism, which imposes a logic of geographical and epistemic domination; and modern science, which, in its drive to predict and control, reduces the world to an object of manipulation. These dynamics of separation manifest today in multiple contemporary crises – climatic, social, political, and epistemic – which share fragmentation as a structural symptom. Starting from this diagnosis, this dissertation proposes to understand science fiction as a critical tool for analyzing the alliances between capitalism, colonialism, and modern science, due to its ability to expose and challenge the dualisms they promote. This work argues that the narrative structure of science fiction itself – marked by estrangement and cognitive engagement – inspires a specific way of conceiving “regenerative” knowledge practices. Drawing on the convergence between Helen Longino’s (2002) social and feminist epistemology and Fabio Scarano’s notion of “regeneration” in the context of planetary sustainability, I propose the concept of a “regenerative epistemology” as a mode of knowing that not only exposes but seeks to repair the wounds opened by modern separations, promoting situated, relational, and alterity-sensitive knowledge practices. With this aim, the dissertation conducts a panoramic analysis of Anglophone science fiction literature from the 19th to the 21st century, examining how the genre responds to the historical transformations of the alliances between capitalism, colonialism, and modern science. The analyzed corpus includes: Frankenstein (1818/1831) by Mary Shelley; The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells; Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley; Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert; The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin; Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler; Annihilation (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer; To Be Taught if Fortunate (2019) by Becky Chambers; and the Monk & Robot duology (2021-2022), also by Becky Chambers. The analysis of these works reveals how science fiction exposes the logics of expropriation, control, and assimilation that sustain the entanglements of these three forces, while simultaneously proposing alternative ways of relating to nature and difference. By challenging the foundational separations of modernity and the alliances between science, capitalism, and colonialism, science fiction responds to a world in crisis by providing a space for experimenting with and reinventing the ways we know and inhabit the world.