Rough Version: SF as a means to express Feelings

Science Fiction holds a unique place in modern literature, developing as an outlet of the peoples imagination of the future. In the 18 through 1900s with the industrial revolution and the enlightenment people were curious and intrigued by all the new uses of technology and science. The writers of the era expressed these curiosities and concerns in their work by imaging what would come of these new ideas and technologies. From Mary Shelley to Phillip dick writers were exploring the consequences of human achievement. From this arose the popular notion that SF tells us what the future could be. Not necessarily what the future will be but just a sample of what it could be like. As all good writers do SF writers have always used what they knew about their world in order to construct the imagined world of the future. By imagining the future of a people, SF writers, are imagining how current conflicts or issues will develop/ be resolved. If those issues happen to be with differing groups (whether human or not) then SF is trying to predict cultural interaction. Therefore SF is subject to being affected by many things such as geography, technology, history, and power relations to name but a few.
People are subject to the place in which they are born. Nobody choses it, it is given to them and they make their life around this. What happens if you are born in area that is rich in natural resources? Supposing this, what if a group decides they need these resources and begins to dominate your geography in order to obtain theses resources? Well then you would be one of about 3 billion people. Many people have had to endure this type of struggle and it has naturally affected the art and the literature that comes out the region. In Ginway’s “A working model for analyzing third world SF” the author argues that because of Brazils location in an increasingly globalized world, the SF that comes out of the country is greatly affected. Ginway elaborates by explaining that the SF of Brazil does not domesticate the technology of the larger world. It does not make technology its own. Instead it views technology suspiciously as something “developed at the expense of Brazilian identity.” Early on the genre in represented the people as peace loving and more powerful than the technology of the first world. An example can be found in Guido Wilmar Sassi’s 1963 work “Mission T-935.” As time progressed these feelings became broader. It was no longer about what technology did to the Brazilians but instead the countries increasingly marginalized position in a globalizing world. Braulio tavares’s work “The Ishtarians are Among Us” is a great example of this by paralleling the struggle of Brazil against stronger economies and expansive cultures of developed nations.
By publishing these works Brazilians, and people from countries in similar situations are venting their feelings and attitudes towards the situations in which they have been placed. They are venting about how things have changed and how they will change in the times to come. This is the intersection of culture and education. When things change redefinition and re-education become highly important. In the case of brazil the change is being able to recognized that they are unable to keep up with the more developed countries simply because of their location in space and time but at the same time they are unable to remain independent of the globalizing world. They may not have much influence in such a connected world but they are also effortless to stop themselves from being influenced. This creates a conflict of identity. Who are we in this world? What do we have to contribute? Or what are we losing by having to deal with everybody else in order to get by? To establish identity there must be an established placed for the entity to exist. Where do we belong socio-culturally in this world? This involves learning the power structures of the world. To determine who you influence and who has influence over you. Learning to work within the systems that have been set in the world. What they are working for is of little matter for the point I am attempting to make. That point is that the education of the people of Brazil, or countries in similar situations, will be highly inundated with feelings of being less powerful, or even put upon, by the expansive cultures of the developed world. This education can come in so many different and varying forms that it is hard to even limit it to education. It is more of a living conditioning. Formal education through schools reinforces that science and capitalism and the western way are the best. Then outside of the education systems, the expansive cultures of the developed world push people into believing that they have need or want of the technologies, ideas, and services of the developed world.