Blockchain Papers

Jo Lindsay Walton

This chapter surveys portrayals of money within US speculative fiction. While they may take us to alien planets or alternate universes, such works also serve to remind us how strange “ordinary” money already is. Speculative fiction has often sought to reimagine money in some more rational or explainable form. These thought experiments often propose money based on some purportedly stable and incontrovertible value, such as labor, time, energy, or motion. There is a second and somewhat distinct tendency, which envisions reputation-based currencies and other “storied moneys,” often capable of reflecting diverse incommensurable values. Then there are portrayals of large fortunes that, whether or not they come with overt speculative elements such as magic or futuristic technologies, can also take on an aura of the fantastic. In particular, large fortunes become storied money to the extent that they reflect and enact their owners’ personal characteristics, relationships, and histories. Speculative fiction also often blurs with speculative practices, from Josiah Warren’s Time Store in the 1820s to the Technocracy movement of the 1930s to contemporary cryptocurrency, Non-Fungible Tokens, and blockchain finance. This porous boundary invites the question: might money itself be understood as a kind of speculative fiction?

Ysabel Muñoz

In recent years, small islands have faced the increasing dangers of worsening natural phenomena and rising sea levels due to climate change. Several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have recorded this (Mycoo et al. 2068) and warned about the consequences of unsustainable practices leading to ecological crises primarily affecting those who contribute least to it. Such documentation is crucial for policy-making and preparatory work. However, besides material threats, small islands also face a discursive challenge in politics and communication with the overuse of the “disappearing islands” trope, announcing that small islands will sink and disappear due to climate change. As museologist Fiona Cameron writes, “‘disappearing islands’ are operationalized as proof of climate catastrophe; as a means of concretizing climate science’s statistical abstractions and as a signifier of the urgency and uneven impacts of global climate change” (873). Similarly, environmental humanities scholar Elizabeth DeLoughrey denounces the “climate determinism” (“The sea is rising” 191) that often haunts the representation of islands, as if they only “enter[ed] the future […] via climate change” (188). Such overly reproduced images, they argue, risk ignoring local perspectives and desires, taking islands simply as tokens to better describe the climate crisis. Hence, a more critical approach to the futurity of small islands is necessary and relevant. Although studies of this trope have been mostly connected to islands in the Pacific regions, such imaginaries also haunt the material spaces of Caribbean islands.1 Responding to this, digital humanities scholar Schuyler Esprit affirms that “the decolonial project of home is to assert that the Caribbean is in the future, that we resist and persist” (emphasis added). In these spaces, the possible physical disappearance of islands in the future also echoes discriminatory discourses that have actively denied the future of certain bodies deemed different based on race, sexuality, or gender. Literary practices, performing and nurturing speculation and imagining otherwise, are important platforms where authors who experience these overlapping threats can articulate their concerns for the future. Notably, examples from queer and trans Caribbean speculative fiction disrupt the simplified and linear visions the “disappearing islands” trope proposes. They address how both islands and marginalized bodies face growing social and climate change challenges but still imagine these bodies and places having a stake in the future. By revisiting the histories and concerns of these spaces and their inhabitants, they project the Caribbean into a future, to paraphrase Esprit, of resistance and persistence. In this study, I delve into how contemporary Anglophone Caribbean speculative fiction grapples with these questions, especially in two short stories: Jamaican-Canadian Nalo Hopkinson’s “Repatriation” (2020) and Barbadian Ada Maricia Patterson’s “Broken from the Colony” (2022). These texts envision a future where Caribbean islands are not disappearing but transforming and surviving, together with the flourishing of queer and trans Caribbean subjects. Hopkinson presents the return of a same-sex couple to Jamaica to take part in the reconstruction of the island with local technologies. Patterson meanwhile brings a sunken island that reemerges, allowing new relationalities where transgender subjects can feel safe. In both accounts, non-heteronormative characters play key roles in island survival and illustrate how ecological balance and gender justice are inextricably connected to achieving its mutual realization. They contest the “disappearing islands” trope by daring to imagine islands in the future as transitioning and changing rather than simply ceasing to exist. Moreover, they foreground agency and responsibility as the collective effort needed to create social ecologies of justice where land and lives can thrive. Choosing short stories for the analysis is also a critique of gendered dimensions of Caribbean literature that traditionally have deemed the canon of male novel writers as “the pinnacle of formal achievement” (Brown and Rosenberg 22), disregarding short stories as “minor literature.” I defend that with its capacity for language subversion and deterritorialization (Awadalla and March-Russell 5), short stories also show the possibility of imagining plurally and yet collectively, as they often appear in compilations and decentralized open-access online platforms. With this in mind, attending to the diversity of practitioners of this genre in the Caribbean is also essential. Hence, this study purposefully brings Hopkinson—a multi-awarded and trailblazing figure in science fiction, with an extensive list of novels, short stories, and accolades—and her work next to the first incursion in speculative fiction of the young artist Patterson, signaling different trajectories and experiences but similar interests. Their stories coincide in the centrality of queer and trans folks in Caribbean ecologies through various examples of what can fall under the rubric of climate fiction, or “cli-fi.” However, as this term coined by Dan Bloom (Baysal viii) is increasingly popular in ecocritical studies, I emphasize that climate is an already widely present category in the Caribbean’s vast literary tradition, especially with the figure of the hurricane (Deckard) as a ubiquitous leitmotif. While acknowledging the challenges of climate change’s worsening of natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, it is paramount to recognize a long Caribbean tradition of periodically dealing with disaster and restoration. These experiences reaffirm that disaster does not define Caribbean existence and propose novel perspectives for understanding and grappling with catastrophe. Considering these contexts and genealogies, multiple rich theoretical apparatuses already active in the Caribbean enable researchers to analyze future-oriented narratives. For example, Caribbean temporalities can dispel the linear and singular thinking behind the “disappearing islands” and its alienation from other notions of time.2 As Cameron reflects, “constructed as both a climate front line and a microcosm of a planet in crisis, a perception has been created that low-lying islands will disappear before climate impacts manifest elsewhere” (883) (emphasis in original). By contrast, past, present, and future collapse in Caribbean narratives and bring a more capacious understanding of temporality outside conventional linearity. This nonlinearity is embodied in the work of many Caribbean writers. Jamaica Kincaid, for example, considers how “To the people of a small place, […] an event that occurred one hundred years ago might be as vivid to them as it were happening now. No action in the present is an action planned without a view of its effects on the future” (54). Accordingly, Odile Ferly, Tegan Zimmerman, and Joshua Deckman have recently coined the term chronotropics, reframing the Bakhtinian chronotope through narratives that “actively challenge the anthropocentric and androcentric logic propelled by European capitalism according to which space is delimited, privatized, tamed, and subject to extraction and time is measured, linear, singular, arbitrarily standardized, and teleological” (2). To focus on the plural ways Caribbean people experience time and place does not respond solely to an interest of moving away from “eurochronologies,” which Eric Hayot defines as “a progressive history of aesthetic innovation in which the contributions of the non-West remain supplemental, or constitute thematic appendixes to form” (6). Instead, it emphasizes the intrinsic value of the narratives emerging from the vibrant Caribbean chronotropics. This concept is part of a homonymous edited volume that addresses the persistent preoccupation with time and place in Caribbean women’s writings, thus providing a framework for my analysis. The concept includes time, temporalities, and gender, articulating “a new Caribbean, where bodies and imaginations come together to propose other modes of being in the world, ways that dissolve and break through the sediment of colonial-heteronormative patriarchy” (7). I argue that the chronotropics can also enable imaginative pathways toward island survival and gender justice, attending to how queer and transgender practices are deeply entangled with processes of futurity. Attesting to this, for example, Cuban-American cultural theorist José Esteban Muñoz reflects that queer lives already drastically reject the constraints of a present notably marked by pervasive homophobia and dare to imagine otherwise (169). Likewise, Puerto Rican anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla concludes in her analysis of transgender performers in post-hurricane Puerto Rico that many the future is thus a future” Although deeply entangled in their I queer studies scholar by I to that which of the and to the challenge of gender on embodied experiences and Moreover, I the with in queer and trans ecologies to the contributions from the Caribbean in such I and in with the the authors in and literary In their writings, I the of both queer and trans as that actively the future of the “disappearing as by the two short and are that have traditionally in to by novel to gender and As aesthetic Hopkinson and Patterson and to contribute to the that the “disappearing islands” trope In they about islands as “a of in not disappearing but rather and for the survival of islands and They the of that the of islands, and also that be a disappearance islands other in the Caribbean This does not climate change’s and material threats to islands’ and I not that these stories in which islands are Instead, I argue that in these Caribbean islands have multiple of being in the future via and While the faced by small island and queer and trans they challenge and of the present with and more capacious of the Caribbean chronotropics. 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Hence, it is to the that climate on queer of these the two in this are not or but on their to in the needed change in their the of the Caribbean as only moving toward the global narratives have a long in Caribbean and in this queer subjects in to the and also the of island disappearance rather than an land the emphasizes Jamaica as a place of and and in without being As and in to the of Caribbean are by the from an and by the from land Hence, the Caribbean and its as a home that has not been with more of ecological The rich for the future of queer and Caribbean in “Repatriation” a new futurity that and of to a place for new and more Such a approach to an by also queer By this, I not only that queer characters are crucial in these processes but also that the to imagine otherwise, not to the and also play roles in of as the the couple that processes being of the of to the with and by of them often to in the people that are more and to local and their for the future. This is for a home that does not with and as the this futurity only through and The that and and the the of new together with the this to the also in the with the “the the under and many As Caribbean of them are in the space as one of agency and the challenges of but other relationalities that away from and The new island survival in with queer folks and also a on a The of sunken for and the future of the as a to the and of with and not the In these the of islands and not as I have also in queer ecologies on futurity. the of queer time has been as and not in the future this presents imaginative a to the survival of island spaces and the flourishing of queer Hence, both “Repatriation” and “Broken from the as I challenge the of as the only to imagine futurity. 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In this Patterson the of the to the a trans that the of and the of more in this to and her The as trans scholar challenges notions of as the and the enable a and the of new from a to the of the to change practices that the future to the of global and it can the lives of trans people of Moreover, in the of the means that and such can also be how they have been as an for the of many bodies also in this of Caribbean as the of the land that place on these islands only possible with the extraction of of of Patterson that a of is to new of of on this new land to be one of and “Broken from the The of these is to understanding the her emphasizes the of perspectives on islands that are not disappearing but Patterson that a critical of what islands are In “Broken from the the land emphasizes the of new and that from the people what who or what on or This with a tradition of understanding the of in the Caribbean, as the hurricane is as both a disaster and a of change to As Patterson and hurricane With the new it can create a in the of with place for is a for this not a but a reconstruction of ecological and and of the does not toward the from the that to dissolve her Instead, new for especially with the only of the They are a who the the the time her and they new with other who the The island a space of not only as an but as work and for the of the future. 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Hopkinson’s “Repatriation” and Patterson’s “Broken from the Colony” narratives of and that break Caribbean as of and extraction and Caribbean Muñoz To they articulate narratives of gender and and critical to with climate and social through narratives of in the now. they describe of and the “disappearing islands” trope by ecological with a more capacious the of based on gender or Their the of environmental collapse in with a critique of gender and Considering and the of narratives is paramount for understanding and a and future. of the with politics of and the or the roles in these in to and such as and Moreover, they as an for islands and The is also a that the capacity of to other possible a that and taking of Caribbean by its These narratives imaginative practices that for who will in them by revisiting of the with a as they present is not ecological but also the and of and transgender subjects. a future address and such the processes of bodies and from This is possible by the of and on the islands, toward that respond to and from These texts propose and for their mutual They foreground queer and trans with their ecologies that growing from and of providing more than In both the sea an that can or take lives but also an for into Caribbean and such as the islands also these in the Hopkinson’s that a can its if land is an By contrast, Patterson presents an island being to In both land is a as and histories on it. than simply into of Caribbean, or these stories are examples of in queer and trans ecological new in the face of discursive and material The islands present of to of and enable their through and Such are important to vibrant contemporary speculative work and recognize practices as other for to a rich tradition of speculative the authors that such a genre in the of and a for in understanding how such as gender and ecologies are connected in the of these to climate is key to futurity not solely based on and but also on imaginative and cultural these practices are more through a growing of decentralized digital platforms that and the of In of environmental and social crisis, the collective imaginaries of futurity to the perspectives queer and trans narratives and Caribbean speculative fiction places on the of thinking about climate change through gender and queer and trans narratives to the Caribbean in the future. my analysis has the contributions of such I emphasize that these not and I not that queer or trans authors are more to or in ecological I to that queer and trans stories often respond to and denied to them through as in the of these two short stories, they can articulate new relationalities that as for the of important is that they land from discursive and physical this action the and to the Caribbean which to and By of gender and “Repatriation” and “Broken from the Colony” imagine where Caribbean spaces and subjects and different ways of in with their ecological

Changhee Kim

The Biopolitical Effect of Cold War Containment in a Coming-of-Age Narrative:On Postcolonial Subjectivity in Hagedorn's Dogeaters1 Chang-Hee Kim (bio) Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt posit that the migration of Third World immigrants, transferring their "existence globally to the promised land" by fleeing from local colonizers to the United States, is "symbolic of the transcendent postcolonial" (28). Such postcolonial migrations to the country rose remarkably in the 1960s when the ideological cause of Cold War containment began to wane with the rise of civil-rights movements. In escaping the terrorist or totalitarian regimes of their homes, these migrants seek universal human rights, political freedom, and economic success in the United States. Instead, the U.S.-led free-market economy of late capitalism became globally dominant and increasingly disempowered the regulatory power of vested institutions, deepening social inequality, income disparity, and political injustice (Douzinas 96). As a result, Third World immigrants, in their endeavor to assimilate into the United States and succeed in its neoliberal market economy, never fulfilled the bourgeois fantasy called the "American dream," for the desire to "become American" only worked to facilitate and sustain the excessive, incessant supply and consumption of human capital that configured and incited the very dream itself. Accordingly, the price of Third World immigrants blending in society [End Page 89] and achieving their American dream was assimilation, as they became "processed" in terms of what Robert Lee calls "symbolic castration" (39); their particular ethnic identities ended up being tamed and disempowered by, and in turn adapted to, American nationalism, thereby enabling them to pass as "good" subjects of U.S. consumer culture. The American dream remains a reified fetish, even as they are exploited to sustain the myth as commodities. They are simultaneously celebrated as good neighbors, with an exotic otherness that supposedly diversifies society, yet deplored as bad neighbors with an unfathomable otherness posing a threat to the social order. Particularly in the post-Cold War milieu of neoliberal multiculturalism, they held a negative valence as a potential threat to be eliminated from society unless offered up for its "healthy" consumption. In other words, only as tokens are migratory subjects essential to the liberal constitution of the U.S. body politic where they are exoticized but "prized possessions," "living proof of desired diversity even as their voices are ignored or silenced" (Singh and Schmidt 28). However, the postcolonial, as well as migratory, subject's accommodation to the ideological edifice of United States' free-market capitalism and its related "melting pot" polices began in earnest with the advent of the Cold War rather than in its wake. In response to the post-WWII formation of the Communist bloc, the United States strategically employed a biopolitical technique of regulation and control in its attribution of citizenship to immigrants. It aimed to secure and integrate a Free World without communists and their sympathizers as much as possible, engaging in a soft war against communist popular front tactics of winning people's minds by nonmilitary means during the Cold War. Thus, Third World immigrants, especially from countries in Asia and Latin America, increasingly became pivotal to rationalizing the United States' containment policy of keeping Soviet communism at bay from the 1950s through the 60s. In an effort to pull themselves out of the uncertain state of identitarian ambiguity, they strained to "become American" to the extent that they put their migratory life on such a biopolitical threshold that "distinguishes and separates what is inside from what is outside" (Agamben 131). To put this in a historical context, in 1957, the year of the "Sputnik crisis," then Vice President Richard Nixon claimed that the dictators of Moscow aimed to subvert the governments of free countries, not by military means but rather by seeking to foment "economic, psychological, and [End Page 90] subversive activities," fooling the minds of "well-intended people" to plot "ruthless control and domination" all over the world (130). At stake in this speech is a Manichean division separating the human from the non-human race: "We [the human] believe in the spirit of man; they [the non-human] treat man as a machine. We believe in justice and the...

Margherita Long

Hagio Moto’s Nuclear Manga and the Promise of Eco-Feminist Desire Margherita Long (bio) In April 2012 the leading shōjo manga artist Hagio Moto published a collection of five new works in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Titled Nanohana (Rape blossoms), the volume was hailed by a review in the Mainichi newspaper as proof that manga subculture responds to societal problems “more quickly and more incisively than any other medium” (Figure 1). 1 But the Mainichi review, like those in the Yomiuri and Asahi Weekly, stopped short of spelling out the exact nature of Hagio’s insight. 2 And there were also disgruntled otaku bloggers who complained that Nanohana merely repeats the same antinuclear slogans (“It’s not safe!”) we have already been hearing for decades. 3 In this essay I propose that what is interesting about Hagio’s contribution to Japan’s denuclearization debates is the way she connects the problem of the nuclear with the problem of desire. In “Purūto fujin” (Madam Pluto) and “Ame no yoru: Uranosu hakushaku” (A rainy night: Count Uranus), radioactive elements take human form and become irresistible to everyone but a tiny minority who refuse to forget their chemical properties. With wry precision, Hagio equates the ability to be humanly wanted with the inability to be materially questioned or acknowledged. The target of her critique is our dominant [End Page 3] model of desire, in which it is only after some original, physical object goes missing that we can begin to desire its substitute, which is de facto entirely cultural. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Cover image from the first edition of Nanohana (Rape blossoms) (Shōgakukan, 2012). This essay expands my reading of Nanohana by drawing out its affinity with an earlier and much longer work by Hagio, Sutaa Reddo (1980, Star Red). Here Hagio not only sharpens her critique of desire-as-usual but offers a brilliant alternative. The heroine Sei is a galaxy-traveling shōjo who refuses to accept “love” as compensation for the destruction of her beloved planet, Mars. In the process, she teaches her lover Erg how to go back to his own culture’s dead planet. There, at her insistence, he relearns human love by reawakening his capacity for human/nonhuman interaction. The result is joyously eco-positive—the rebirth of a planet! And yet, in the rich body of [End Page 4] Japanese feminist writing on Hagio, this eco-critical element has gone mostly unremarked (Figure 2). Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Cover image from a later edition of Sutaa Reddo (1980, Star Red) (Shōgakukan Bunko, 1995). At stake, I think, is how we conceive our relation to material origins. What does it mean to love a planet the way Sei loves Mars? Do we really need to sever our relation with the physical object before we can begin to make sense of it? Desire it? Desire each other? Indeed, what would it mean for intra-human relations if they were not founded in a prior sacrifice of the material world? These are questions that a group of North American feminists has recently begun to ask under the rubric of “new materialism.”4 What I propose in this essay is that a similar set of questions is key to a rich but tantalizingly incomplete debate that has been swirling around Hagio’s work since the 1980s: the debate about the hyper-girl. [End Page 5] “Hyper-girl” (chōshōjo) is a term coined in 1984 by critic Miyasako Chizuru in her study of Hagio’s early manga, Chōshōjo e (1984, Toward the hyper-girl). Miyasako argues that we can situate Hagio’s heroines along a continuum of feminist progress from the shōjo demanded by patriarchy, to the hishōjo (anti-girl) of works like Heart of Thomas (1974, Tōma no shinzō) and Pō no ichizoku (1972, The Poe clan), who seizes agency as a “boy with no genitals.”5 Then, even more positively, we have the chōshōjo of Star Red, who takes the stage emphatically as a girl. The chōshōjo draws her identity...

Kate Harts

As a parent of a teenage daughter and as a teacher of adolescents, I try to stay in touch with their entertainment world. I listen to their music, go to some of the “teen” movies, read adolescent novels, and watch television targeted to the teen audience. Two years ago, my daughter invited me to watch her favorite television program with her. Initially, I would simply enjoy sitting with her and sneaking in some conversation during the commercials. Since that time, I am surprised and a little embarrassed to discover that I frequently find myself sitting alone watching this program while my daughter busies herself with other activities. I'm hooked. That program is Buffy, The Vampire Slayer starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers. The series, which premiered on March 10, 1997, is a spin-off from the 1992 movie of the same name. Although the movie was not a box-office hit, it developed a loyal following of viewers who kept video rentals and sales active. The scriptwriter for the movie version of Buffy, Joss Whedon, also serves as creative executive—writer, producer, and director—for the television series (Genge). Although the show airs on the upstart network, WB, and is targeted at adolescents, it has received a significant amount of attention in entertainment and mainstream media. Buffy has been described as “the very best horror has to offer” (Genge xv); with “powerful] ludic elements [in] symbolism and language” (Wilcox 23); offering “transgressive possibilities for reimagining gendered relations and modernist American ideologies” (Owen 25) in “brainy, goodhearted, gloriously expressive TV poetry” (Carson 37) with “delightfully campy dialogue” (Genge xiv) centering around a slight, blonde, ex-cheerleader who “kicks vampire butt.” The framing narrative is about a young woman who inherited special skills as a vampire-slayer, and each episode sees her face assorted demonic forces challenging her and threatening humanity. The first three seasons were set in Sunnydale High School; the present season has moved to the campus of the college in the same town. Buffy has an assortment of friends and foes who are regulars or semi-regulars in the series. Her “Watcher” (or guardian) is Giles (played by Anthony Stewart Head) who has been charged with the duties of training and assisting the Slayer. Her best friend, Willow (played by Alyson Hannigan), displays exceptional computer skills and dabbles in witchcraft. Two other friends, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Oz (Seth Green), round out Buffy's inner circle who get entangled in demonic battles. Another character, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) has left the series to join Angel in a spin-off show. Cordelia plays a shallow, narcissistic young woman who epitomizes the homecoming queen popularity of traditionally mainstream adolescent experiences. The show has generated an active following. My daughter has bookmarked several web pages that serve as electronic equivalents of fan clubs. These pages include episode summaries, electronic bulletin boards, current news regarding future episodes, personal information about the stars and Joss Whedon, lyrics and artists of the music heard in the show, and links to other related sites. Several of the sites solicit and receive stories and songs written by viewers that stay true to the characters, plots, and themes of the show. Recently two sites ceased including transcripts and sound recordings from the shows after executives (and probably their legal affairs department) contacted them from 20th Century-Fox. Fans are being urged to write letters of protest. In addition to the web pages, there are several chat line sites where fans can engage in a conversation about the show. My daughter's email receives an average of eight to ten messages a week from the chat line to which she subscribes. In addition to the large adolescent following, clearly, something about this show has touched a chord in older viewers as well, witness the critical reviews cited above. The adult magazine George revealed Buffy as second in a list of “20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics.” To apply the term “postmodern” (or any other term) to contemporary society can be problematic. The complexity and vastness of our society defies simple one-word categorization. Postmodernism, as defined by M. H. Abrams extended the contratraditional movements in arts and literature of the modern age to the breaking point where modern works were deemed as conventional and “high art” was devalued in favor of popular art forms. Some postmodernist works celebrated the “'meaninglessness' of existence and the underlying 'void,' or 'nothingness' on which any supposed security is conceived to be precariously suspended” (120). Susan Bordo proposes various origins of the “postmodern age.” Some posit that the postmodern era developed as a reaction to the breakdown of the Enlightenment notions of humanism, rational thought, and beliefs in Truth and Objectivity. Some cite the failure of a cohesive hegemony of Western culture as the beginning of postmoderninity. Some discuss the “information explosion” as evidence of the new era. And some, including Bordo, point to the runaway consumer capitalism of our present culture as the most visible proof of a postmodern society. The term “postmodernism” is used in discussions about literature and the arts in much the same way “poststructuralism” frames conversations about linguistics and literary theory. Poststructuralists discuss meaning, or meaninglessness, by exposing “the naively representational theory of language” (Eagleton 124). Because we are all powerless over the universal influence of language, our agency or our free will is lessened; in a sense, we are de-centered within the circle of our experiences. These structures of language have presented society in terms of binary opposites, of opposing dualities. Poststructuralists reveal these oppositions within a text or any other cultural artifact and neutralize them by deconstructing the binary altogether. This process, outlined by Jacques Derrida, suggests that a deconstructive reader (or viewer) will look for evidence of grammatical or linguistic oppositions—rich/poor, strong/weak, right/left, man/woman—that conform to culturally accepted hierarchical relationships which privilege the first term (or signifier) in the duality while subordinating the second. After exposing the opposition, the hierarchy is inverted by privileging the second term resulting in a new vision of the relationship—poor/rich, weak/strong, left/right, and woman/man. The final step argues for the futility and meaninglessness of structuring binary oppositions in general by exposing them as ideological and cultural contexts that limit and marginalize us. The writers of Buffy play with discourse of cultural patterns in a way that deconstructs many of the dualities of contemporary society. A recent episode (November 23, 1999) is set on Thanksgiving, a cultural tradition rife with ideology. Buffy wants to re-enact a traditional Thanksgiving celebration with her “family of friends.” (Like many adolescent narratives, parents figure little in the action (Donelson and Nilsen). Buffy's father lives in another city and has only been seen in a few episodes. Her mother, Joyce (played by Kristine Sutherland), was oblivious to Buffy's secret slayer identity until the last episode of the second season.) Willow voices the cynical postmodern summation of the hypocrisy of celebrating the genocide of an indigenous culture. Nevertheless, Buffy convinces Willow, Xander, and Anya (played by Emma Caulfield)—Xander's demon girlfriend who grants spurned women retribution towards men—to come to a “real Thanksgiving dinner” at Giles' home. When Giles asks why the dinner has to be at his house, Buffy replies, “You're the patriarch; you have to toast the festivities or it's all meaningless.” Giles notes that it's more a matter of leaving him with the mess to which Buffy agrees. Later as the plot develops, avenging spirits of slaughtered native Americans begin to attack and kill. Willow is reluctant to help devise a plan to kill the spirits due to her nationalistic guilt. Into the mix enters another recurring character called Spike (played by James Marsters), although an enemy of Buffy's, he has come to her for help because he has been implanted (neutered) so that he can no longer “perform” as a vampire. He speaks with a British accent and adds commentary to the discussion about the avenging spirits. He scoffs at the guilt feelings expressed by Willow and speaks with the imperialistic voice of the “natural order” and “might makes right” in Western colonialism. Within this single episode, Buffy has offered ironic commentary and parody of cultural icons such as nationalistic holidays, patriarchal customs, masculine libido, and colonial expansionism. For poststructuralist feminists, the duality of male/female becomes the most troublesome and its inversion and subsequent neutralization is the object of a collective activity. Feminists seek means to subvert the patriarchal nature of Western society. 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