Speculative fiction serves as a powerful tool with which to consider power structures, the status quo, and how to fight for social justice. It’s a genre that encourages readers to examine the nuances and operations of complex social theories that help us better understand our own world.

The reading list below includes theoretical investigations of the social construction of the status quo, the development of “conscientization” to push against it, and the role of social conflict, social movements, and imagination in changing it. It also includes an essay on two short works of speculative fiction in conversation with utopian vision and intersectional feminist praxis, providing a model for using speculative fiction to understand theory. Finally, it concludes with seven works of fiction that provide fertile ground to apply and critique these theories.

The Status Quo

Michele Filippini and Patrick J. Barr, “Society,” in Using Gramsci: A New Approach (Pluto Press, 2017), 65–85.

Political theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian anti-fascist journalist, organizer, and imprisoned political dissident, offered a conception of society and described the possibilities for changing social orders. In doing so, he alighted on the concepts of hegemony, conformism (often referred to in English as consent or social consent), and coercion. In this essay, scholar Michele Filippini lays out Gramsci’s framework, with the help of his Prison Notebooks, written between 1932 and 1935. Gramsci theorizes that the dominant group in a society seeks to maintain hegemony over the status quo yet is often challenged by less powerful groups, especially in moments of crisis. Hegemons use consent and conformism (coercion) to maintain power. Conformism is the social, not explicitly violent, force that pushes people to believe that the status quo is necessary and immutable, or at least the best available option. Through social pressures and knowledge and expectations passed down through various social institutions (education, religion, the family), people learn what’s expected of them and what they can expect of the world around them. Consent is constantly being negotiated between the institutions and the dominant groups that shape them and the rest of society. Various social groups may push for change, and at times hegemons may make apparent concessions to these groups; these concessions are reforms implemented as an appeasement to prevent unrest or revolution. When consent fails, coercion is applied, moving toward the forceful or violent maintenance of the status quo.

Pushing for Social Change

Paulo Freire, “On the Right and the Duty to Change the World,” Counterpoints, 422 (2012): 45–52.

Freire examines the conditioning that convinces people of the good, or at least the utility, of specific socioeconomic arrangements. He points out that this conditioning doesn’t mean we must be resigned to inherited socioeconomic structures. Education, he posits, is the key by which we unlock our consciousness and, as such, achieve other possible futures. While he notes the constraints set up by the status quo, he nonetheless states that it’s our duty to attempt to fight for a more just and equitable world. The future, whether fatalistic or progressive, isn’t certain. Rather, we can and should fight toward “overcoming dehumanizing injustice.”

Paulo Freire, “Conscientisation,” CrossCurrents, 24, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 23–31.

Freire here examines the idea of “conscientisation,” the recognition of one’s oppression and the commitment to work with others toward liberation. This process includes questioning the logics and myths that uphold the status quo and calling out oppression as part of the struggle toward an anti-oppressive future. It’s important to confront the bedrock which the status quo is built on, he argues, because to focus only on institutional changes, rather than also on narrative and cultural changes, means new institutions of oppression will emerge from the remnants of what’s been overthrown. Education explicitly oriented toward liberation—not that which either explicitly or implicitly upholds the status quo—is vital to the process of conscientization. In his view, conscientization is essential in the fight for liberation, as we must all confront the assumptions that we have internalized in order to create lasting positive change.

Alain Touraine, “An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements Social Research,” 52, no. 4, Social Movements (Winter 1985): 749–787.

Touraine discusses six types of social conflicts, including the competitive pursuit of collective interests; reconstruction of political, social, or cultural identity; and the creation of a new social order. Taking a narrower approach than other theorists, he defines social movements as something that exist within the context of a social conflict “to control cultural patterns.” He introduces key concepts in the understanding of social conflict and social movements that readers can analyze through works of speculative fiction listed in the final section below.

Aldon Morris, “Reflections on Social Movement Theory: Criticisms and Proposals,” Contemporary Sociology 29, no.3 (May 2020): 445–454.

In a study written fifteen years after Touraine’s Social Movements article, Morris takes on social movement theories from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. Mid-century collective behavior theories considered social movements to be nonrational, spontaneous events occurring during moments of social and cultural breakdown. Morris adds human agency to the equation, focusing on how people choose to engage. By observing the Civil Rights movement, for instance, Morris introduces two concepts: resource-mobilization theory and political process theory. Resource-mobilization theory focuses on organizations’ role in moving people toward collective action, while political process theory considers the constraints and opportunities for social movements within a particular political context. He also discusses the role of tactics, social movement leadership, and narrative framing in social movements.

Corrina Wainwright, “Narrative Change Strategies and Approaches,” in Building Narrative Power for Racial Justice and Health Equity (Open Society Foundations, 2019), 19–20.

Wainwright outlines the lessons gleaned at a two-day conference centered on narrative and social change as well as the approaches and strategies for changing public narratives. In her framework, she defines narrative as “collective meaning making”—a strategy toward cultural change that requires collective stories, storytellers, the ability to engage with others, and the simultaneous telling of the story of the past and the building of a case for the future. Narrative-change work enables us to confront built-in assumptions and biases; address harmful, exclusionary narratives; and create spaces and ways for people to connect across difference.

Envisioning a New World

Erik Olin Wright, “Real Utopias,” Contexts 10, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 36–42.

How is our current world ordered, and to what extent is that a result determined by those in power rather than a function of natural law? Wright takes up this question in his discussion of utopian visions and their role in social change movements and the development of critical consciousness. He presents the idea of “real utopias,” or “viable, emancipatory alternatives to dominant institutions and social structures,” and provides example of authentic contemporary utopias found in urban participatory budgeting processes, unconditional basic income models, Wikipedia, and worker-owned cooperatives. For more on the late Wright’s ideas, see The Real Utopias Project.

Grappling With These Concepts

Mark A. Tabone, “‘The Ones Who Stay and Fight’: N. K. Jemisin’s Afrofuturist Variations on a Theme by Ursula K. Le Guin,” Utopian Studies 32, no. 2 (2021: 365–385.

Tabone examines two works of short fiction that engage the “limits of the utopian imagination”: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973) and N. K. Jemisin’s “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” (2018) which “pays homage to, replies to, and reimagines Le Guin’s 1973 story in the twenty-first century.” Tabone connects Jemisin’s work to intersectional feminist praxis, Afrofuturism, and twenty-first-century anti-racist political movements including Black Lives Matter. He compares the in-world contexts of both stories as well as their perspectives on the respective society and times in which they were written. This investigation offers an expert example of how to incorporate fiction into theoretical analysis. Students should read Tabone’s article after reading the short stories.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Utopian Studies 2, no. 1/2 (1991): 1–5.

This classic in speculative fiction describes a seeming utopia with a dark secret about the idyllic lifestyle of (almost) all of its residents. Its premise helps readers consider how they conceive of their own world and whether they’re living at the apex of human progress. Alternatively, it asks if the Edenic lifestyle of a few is gained at the expense of the many. Le Guin’s work recognizes that while some people are resigned to the status quo, others are catalyzed by it to leave, if not to confront, systems of oppression.

Kris Swank, “Ursula’s Bookshelf,” Mythlore 39, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2021): 137–155.

Swank discusses seven works of fiction that influenced Le Guin, and one—“The Ones Who Stay and Fight” by N. K. Jemisin—that was influenced by her. A variation on Le Guin’s novella, Jemisin’s short story deals with leaving a so-called utopia and creating a place where everyone can flourish. Its narrative offers much for readers to discuss in terms of utopian vision, identifying oppression, and fighting for liberation.

Jerry Phillips, “The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 35, no. 2/3 (Spring–Summer 2002): 299–311.

Published in 1993 but set in 2025, Octavia E. Butler’s prescient Parable of the Sower follows a young woman, Lauren, surviving in California during a time of societal collapse bought on by climate change, increased wealth inequality, and the rise of an opportunistic demagogic president. Lauren contends with the rapid destabilization of Los Angeles, which leads to violence and her ultimate flight from the city. This book invites discussions about social conflict and envisioning new types of social interaction. Phillips argues that Butler’s work “intensifies the contradictions of modern society” and illustrates how we might build a future in a time of catastrophe.

Bryan Gillis, “Honor List of 2019 Prize-Winning YAL: Coming of Age—Past, Present, and Future,” The English Journal 110, no. 1 (September 2020): 92–97.

The young adult novel Pet is set in a world that claims to have fought and killed all monsters. The plot centers on Jam, a teenager who inadvertently brings a creature from a painting to life. The creature, who Jam names Pet, claims to be sent to Jam’s world to fight monsters. Jam must reckon with the stories she’s been told of the past and present and discover remaining monstrosities that the adults are unable, or unwilling, to see. Pet gives space to discuss narrative framing, the nature of utopia, and the development of “conscientization.”

Andrew Gordon, “Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time,” Literature/Film Quarterly 6, no. 4 (Fall 1978): 314–326.

Star Wars is an expansive collection of works that began with the film Star Wars (later retitled as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), released in 1977. With a canon that’s still being added to today, the Star Wars cinematic universe spans disciplines including films, television shows, fiction, and non-fiction/reference. Each work, while attempting to exist within the broader story, is a product of the time in which it was created.

Gordon discusses how Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, a stand-alone movie at the time he was writing, was influenced by different genres to produce a modern hero myth. Importantly, and perhaps clearer in retrospect, the original movie and the sequels released in 1980 and 1983 explore empire and resistance to it at a time when the United States’ imperial war in Southeast Asia was still a recent memory.

More recently, the Star Wars cinematic universe has expanded into serial productions such as the television show Andor, which builds on the central conflicts of the original movie. Andor covers the five years leading up to Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Each season is broken into four story arcs, each with three episodes, that focus on different key moments in building what will later become known as “The Rebel Alliance.” In two seasons, released in 2022 and 2025, the show traverses the Star Wars galaxy to show what means people employ to consolidate power and what risks others take to stop empire. This series does an incredible job of showing how empire uses bureaucracy, scapegoating, and resource extraction to build its own power, but how in doing so, it breeds discontent than can build into resistance and eventually its downfall. This series, which brings together many of the threads woven through this reading list, has a lot to offer to the discussion of social conflict, collective action, and social movements informed by current events.

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