Utopian and dystopian fiction has historically fostered radical ideas for the reorganisation of the social order, as such, it has been the medium for much feminist thought. Ranging from early feminist utopias such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 novella Herland, to the other end of the spectrum, the feminist dystopia of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, it is evident that speculative fiction is rich ground for reimagining contemporary constructions of gender relations. I shall focus on reproduction as a core aspect of gender inequality, and examine contemporary feminist speculative fiction which engages with current American reproductive biopolitics. This study comprises four texts in the genre of feminist speculative fiction: Severance (2018) by Ling Ma, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014) by Meg Elison (the first of a trilogy), Future Home of the Living God (2017) by Louise Erdrich, and Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy. This final text predates Atwood’s and is the only utopia selected for this project to be used as a critical feminist text against which the three other texts shall be stress tested. I have selected texts which I deem to be useful microcosms of broader conversations about reproductive rights and gendered violence today. All of the novels (including chapter fifteen of Woman on the Edge of Time) feature a near future dystopia branching from the real and now. Rooting this study in the contemporary political moment offers fresh analysis of old debates concerning how feminist dystopian fiction produces alternatives to heteropatriarchal norms of organising the world, otherwise known as producing feminist epistemologies. This project builds upon the argument that repronormativity is misogyny, and this misogyny is found even in feminist fiction. The vein of repronormativity pertinent to this study is one that presumes all women will reproduce, and presumes that female reproduction is not a harmful process nor or a burden.
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