The first major neo-Nazi party in the US was led by a science fiction fan. So opens Jordan S. Carroll’s
Speculative Whiteness, a book that traces ideas about white nationalism through the entangled histories of science fiction culture and white supremacist politics, showing that debates about representation in science fiction films and literature are struggles over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future. Here, Carroll is joined in conversation with David M. Higgins.
Jordan S. Carroll is the author of
Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature (Stanford University Press, 2021) and
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). He received his PhD in English literature from the University of California, Davis. He was awarded the David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and his first book won the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars. Carroll’s writing has appeared in
American Literature,
Post45,
Twentieth-Century Literature, the
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and
The Nation. He works as a writer and educator in the Pacific Northwest.
David M. Higgins (he/they) is associate professor of English and chair of the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide, and a senior editor for the
Los Angeles Review of Books. David is the author of
Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood, which won the 2022 Science Fiction Research Association Book Award. He has also published a critical monograph examining Ann Leckie’s SF masterwork
Ancillary Justice (2013), and his research has been published in journals such as
American Literature,
Science Fiction Studies,
Paradoxa, and
Extrapolation. In the public sphere, David has been a featured speaker on NPR’s radio show
On Point, and his literary journalism has been published in the
Los Angeles Review of Books and
The Guardian. David serves as the second vice president for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA).
EPISODE REFERENCES:
James H. Madole
Richard B. Spencer
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad)
Samuel Delany
Alain Badiou
Francis Parker Yockey / “destiny thinking”
“Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind” by Elisabeth Zerofsky, on Robert Paxton.
New York Times Magazine.
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Fredric Jameson
“Carroll reminds us that our future is contingent. Fascists have a vision for the future that excludes most of humanity, but fascists can be defeated. The future is for everyone—if we make it that way.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
What is University of Minnesota Press?
Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.