Science Fiction and the Cultural Politics of Education

Increasingly, contemporary education exhibits characteristics that have often been associated with science fiction. The acceleration of technological change and ecological crisis, and the intensification of fascist, authoritarian, and xenophobic identifications, haunt both the present and possible futures. Despite these emergent tendencies, educational discourse retains its marketized assumptions, instrumental economism, and techno-optimism. The pursuit of educational futures that are informed by a cultural politics of utopian imagination faces major obstacles to intervene in time to map alternative trajectories and build new worlds.

Bringing together diverse perspectives, theoretical approaches, and texts, the book asks what science fiction can bring to cultural politics in education, and how the cultural politics of science fiction can transform educational futures. It also questions whether science fiction can guide educational projects that aim to foster visions of what Fredric Jameson called ‘unimaginable futures’ and if critical studies of science fiction can guide scholars, teachers, and cultural workers to think about the purpose and potential of education in the current moment. This imaginative volume demonstrates how thinking with science fiction affords educators a speculative energy made artificially scarce by precarious conditions, reactionary ideologies, and hegemonic practicality.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.