Starboard Vineyard Tours 14: Shadows of the Empire/A New Hope: A Dialectical Critique of Gender Historicization and Utopian Desire in Isabel Fall's "Helicopter Story", Fulloon

This episode we read an article on a mission: "Shadows of the Empire/A New Hope: A Dialectical Critique of Gender Historicization and Utopian Desire in Isabel Fall's “Helicopter Story”" by JD Fulloon, which is a mouthful, and was published in the May 2024 issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly. Fulloon's goal is to engage with "Helicopter Story" not for the controversies surrounding its publication and the backlash, but taking it seriously as a work of literature with something to say, a mission we're entirely on board with. In that spirit, while we do address the context, we focus on engaging with Fulloon's historicizing Marxist analysis of "Helicopter Story" as well as what we find interesting and exciting in the story itself, plus get into some confusion about what plastics are and what the story is doing with military science fiction - and what that Star Wars is doing in that title besides making it a bit longer.Topics: Gender, trans studies, military SF, MarxismNext month, we’re reading “Cyberpunk's masculinist legacy: Puppetry, labour and ménage à trois in Blade Runner 2049” by Graham J. Murphy.