Attempts to Reconstruct Totality

The title of my dissertation is Attempts to Reconstruct Totality: Ambivalent Interaction of Science Fiction and Suvinian Theory since the 1970s. It focuses on an essential theoretical resource for the study of Science Fiction – the theory of Darko Suvin and his successors (Here I can cite Tony Venezia’s term ‘Suvinian’ and define it as ‘Suvinian theory’). My dissertation aims to reveal the interaction between SF and Suvinian theory. They have been combined in post-1968, with the rise of feminism, the black civil rights movement, and the counterculture movement, science fiction increasingly carries a social critique aspect. This trend is referred to as the "New Wave" in the history of science fiction. Suvinians believe this cognitive anxiety – how humans can understand the world in a total way when they face a world divided, fragmented, gender discrimination and racial injustice, and full of technological rationality – is an opportunity to reconstruct Lukácsian totality, which means cognizing social relationships as a whole, it was once considered by Lukács to be the privilege of the proletariat. However, post-Gramsci Marxists like Suvin believe it can happen to intellectuals and students through SF’s popularity and sensitivity, achieving a critical view of reality, thus forming a common utopian vision. My research requires considering both sides of SF researchers and SF writers, it includes the following elements: 1. the concept of totality change in different stages; 2. how Suvinians tried to get a totalized perception through SF texts and its influence on SF writers; 3. what common context for the attempts to reconstruct totality was built by the interaction between theorists and writers; 4. how theory and literary practice are finally separated; 5. the attempt to reconstruct totality faces challenges in the contemporary intellectual world.