MacDonald, Ian P.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the trailblazing work of C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry in light of themes of queerness, gender, and female masculinity, which has seldom been analyzed. In this thesis, I will juxtapose Moore’s work with other contemporaries like Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Éowyn to highlight Moore’s trailblazing gendered portrayal. This thesis utilizes Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender and Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity as lenses to codify the uniquely gendered portrayal that Moore has left for us to interpret. Furthermore, through examining Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of phallocentricity, this thesis will argue that the art of being a warrior (or warriorship) should be a non-binary conception.

Louise Erdrich, an American Ojibwe, and Patricia Grace, a New Zealand Māori, incorporate code-switching, moving between languages, in their creative works. Rather than viewing language choice as an aside to cultural representation in fiction, codeswitching should be viewed as an integral part of the text because these writers attempt to rectify the oppression of their people by using code-switching as a tool of cultural and language survival that shifts power dynamics in response to settler colonization.
However, while Erdrich and Grace use the same linguistic tool for similar purposes, they ultimately impart different themes; Erdrich’s language protagonist symbolizes reconciliation while Grace’s language protestors symbolize resistance. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Erdrich and Potiki by Grace should be read in conversation with each other so that we can better understand the role indigenous languages play in Anglophone fiction.

Non-Anglophone voices in literature can lead to a better understanding of the intricate relationships shown by Ashley Dawson tying capitalism, slow violence, and uneven development to climate change. There is skepticism that science fiction (sf) in particular can properly present climate issues in the anthropocentric era that we live in today, but scholars such as Shelley Streeby argue against such perceptions. Science fiction writers that use magical realism, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Nalo Hopkinson, as ecological sf have already accomplished the task of creating speculative works that fit in perfectly under the umbrella of “serious fictions.” These writers work from a non-Anglophone perspective or from a minority group within a Western society, allowing for different modes of thinking to play a part in these bigger discourses. Writers, educators, and other scholars need to reestablish humanity’s kinship with nature.