Call for papers: SCI-PHI (2024)

"Wonder is the emotional heart of sci-fi": this is the motto Farah Mendlesohn chooses to set up her reconstruction of the historical roots of science fiction. Wonder, thus: it is a category that immediately resonates with philosophy. On this intimate link between science fiction and conjectural thought wrote the very same Umberto Eco, opening up dialogues with authors of the caliber of Nicholas of Cusa, Popper, and Peirce. And it is not rare to read critics such as B. Stableford daring to trace the genre harbingers back to texts such as New Atlantis by Bacon and The City of the Sun by Campanella, seminal works for the philosophical tradition.

Sci-fi somehow defies its origins – given that its aforementioned noble forerunners inevitably mingle with its more "pop" facets, emerging by the close relation of the genre with pulp literature during the first half of the XX century – and eludes every precise definition. But it clearly shows a constant speculative power and a theoretical dignity worth considering. By their mythopoeic charm, science-fictional landscapes often lay the groundwork for drafting possible futures, pinpointing clusters of collective hopes and fears, and cooking up riveting fictional exercises. Exercises that, thanks to the clever game they set up between imagination and present scenarios, reveal a spontaneous prophetic cunning.

This issue of Filosofia wants to glimpse the philosophical value of sci-fi "dangerous visions" by exploring occasions where science-fiction has been working as an interpretive tool for its times, re-thinking and re-writing their dynamics, even those apparently more deterministic. Indeed, the main sci-fi polemic target seems to be precisely determinism and, along with it, any form of epistemic presumption, whatever the philosophical area of the questions they try to "solve". Science fictional narrative opposes those imperative solutions with a multifaceted, polychronic, and boundless variety of new questions, suggesting a precise intellectual posture: its unique uncertain foundation is the reasoning by hypothesis and abductions (Eco). Among the many possible ways to reflect on the question of this issue, we wish to suggest to the authors some possible lines of thought among different philosophical areas:

Ontology/metaphysics (see, as potential references, Philip K. Dick’s works and Matrix metaphor)

• How does sci-fi deal with the concept of 'reality'?
• How do science-fictional visions represent the relationship between the human and the technological? What is the 'human' for sci-fi authors?
• How does sci-fi cosmological imagination portray time and space?

Ethics/politics (among the relevant works in this field, we can mention the dystopic novels written by Zamjatin, McCarthy, Orwell, Huxley, and Atwood)

• How and in which forms does sci-fi test political models?
• How can sci-fi play a constructive role in the ethical-political field other than a typical negative-polemical one?
• How can we classify sci-fi works that specifically focus on ethics and politics? What are the theoretical implications of these classifications (look, for instance, at the structural distinctions traced by Eco: euchronias, dystopias, meta topics/metachronias)?
• What kind of insights about political theory can we get from science fiction?

Theology (see, among the capital references, Zelazny’s novels and Dick’s VALIS Trilogy) 

• What are the role, meanings, and characteristics of the several messianic figures inhabiting sci-fi worlds?
• How is the problem of evil faced in sci-fi dystopias? Can we talk of an actual set of science-fictional theodicies?
• What is the function of religion in sci-fi imagery? Does it have a salvific power, or does it instead represent a disruptive force for humanity?
• How do the cultic practices invented by sci-fi enrich the various fictional landscapes? Which are their religious and anthropological implications?

Ecology

• How does sci-fi deal with theoretical questions about climate change from an ethical standpoint (transgenerational responsibility) and a heuristic one (resources and landscapes management)?
• What innovative lifestyles sci-fi pictures to access the problem of the relationship between humanity and natural elements (especially considering that a return to a state of natureis not the only explored option, as proven by Ursula K Leguin's worlds or in the “Area X” described by Jeff Vandermeer)?
• How does sci-fiction play with the concept of 'oikos', not forgetting that frequently the chosen settings are not terrestrial but rather “alien”?

RULES FOR SUBMITTING CONTRIBUTIONS

Please send an abstract of around 150 words in English in .doc file format (no pdf or other formats) to the following address: redazionefilosofia.dfe@unito.it

The deadline for the abstract submission is September 15, 2023. Acceptance will be notified by September 30, 2023. For those who receive positive notification regarding the abstracts, the deadline for submitting the full articles is February 15, 2024.

All articles will undergo a blind peer-review process. Authors will receive, along with the selection outcome, a detailed evaluation form completed by the two referees. The editorial board reserves the right not to consider contributions that do not meet the elementary criteria of readability and scientificity.

PROCEDURES FOR THE SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES

Please send the full articles to the following address: redazionefilosofia.dfe@unito.it. For each contribution, we kindly ask you to make sure that you are sharing:

- a .doc file (no pdf or other formats) prepared for a blind referee. The text of the contribution needs to be preceded by an abstract in English of around 150 words, and 5 keywords in English.
- a .doc file for use by the editorial board containing the author's name, academic affiliation, if any, and an active e-mail address.

We will consider the submissions written either in Italian or in English. The articles should comply with the following standards (Chicago Manual of Style, author-date): https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html

Text files should not exceed 40,000 characters (including spaces and footnotes).

For any further information, please contact: redazionefilosofia.dfe@unito.it