Research Symposium

BIO

Jackson Davis is an undergraduate student pursuing dual-degrees in English: Literature, Media, and Culture, and Philosophy. His on campus involvements are UROP, FSUDems, and the International English Honors Society.

Solidarity and Alienation

Abstract

Speculative fiction can be analyzed to demonstrate how it creates categories of events, which direct us towards a framework of environmental justice. Through analysis of antiwar movements, speculative fictions, and domestic structural issues during the Vietnam era, Rebecca Ballard demonstrates their relationship through interdisciplinary scholarship. Working as a citational editor for her book, I became interested in how these speculative fictions engage with alienation and its relation to solidarity. This led me to my personal research question: How do solidarity movements relate to alienation and how is that relation demonstrated in Vietnam era storytelling? To answer this research question, I focused on the American Indians Movement, the alienation of returning soldiers from Vietnam, and speculative moves in literature with alienating effects. I look at David Vasquez’s book Decolonial Environmentalisms, Bruce Franklin’s article, “The Vietnam War as American Science Fiction and Fantasy,” and Todd McGowan’s book Embracing Alienation especially. Solidarity, I’ve found, has a fraught relationship to alienation, as it is sometimes a necessary component of it, even as alienation contributes to societal violence. This research can help us understand what solidarity movements look like, how they come about, and their relation to speculative literature.

Keywords: Solidarity, Alienation, Humanities, English, Literature