Lyric mimesis

Most readers think of science fiction as a non-mimetic genre, a genre whose objects of representation are altogether imaginary. I argue that science fiction is a mimetic genre whose objects of representation are real but impossible to describe in a straightforward manner. Such referents include virtual entities (e.g., cyberspace), realities that the human brain is unequipped to perceive (the fourth dimension), referents whose historical contexts have not yet been fully realized (robot rights), and events so violent that they elude immediate experience (trauma). What allows science fiction to render such objects available for representation is its dual status as both a narrative and a lyric artform. In science fiction, figures of speech are literalized and substantiated as the features of a narrative world: personification, for example, is often literalized as the animation of a robot. As a genre in which lyric figures operate on a literal level without losing their figurative power, science fiction has the ability to describe objects and phenomena that are themselves neither purely literal nor purely figurative. Using texts that range from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, I examine science-fictional accounts of globalization, cyberspace, trauma, postmemory, and robot rights.