Description

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A different kind of Star Trek television series debuted in 1993. Deep Space Nine was set not on a starship but a space station near a postcolonial planet still reeling from a genocidal occupation. The crew was led by a reluctant Black American commander and an extraterrestrial first officer who had until recently been an anticolonial revolutionary. DS9 extended Star Trek’s tradition of critical social commentary but did so by transgressing many of Star Trek’s previous taboos, including religion, money, eugenics, and interpersonal conflict. DS9 imagined a twenty-fourth century that was less a glitzy utopia than a critical mirror of contemporary U.S. racism, capitalism, imperialism, and heteropatriarchy.

Thirty years after its premiere, DS9 is beloved by critics and fans but remains marginalized in scholarly studies of science fiction. Drawing on cultural geography, Black studies, and feminist and queer studies, A Different “Trek” is the first scholarly monograph dedicated to a critical interpretation of DS9’s allegorical world-building. If DS9 has been vindicated aesthetically, this book argues that its prophetic, place-based critiques of 1990s U.S. politics, which deepened the foundations of many of our current crises, have been vindicated politically, to a degree most scholars and even many fans have yet to fully appreciate.

About the Author

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David K. Seitz is an associate professor of cultural geography at Harvey Mudd College. He is the author of A House of Prayer for All People: Contesting Citizenship in a Queer Church. For more information about the author, visit davidkseitz.com.

Praise For…

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"Drawing comparisons between our current cultural milieu and the universe as depicted in DS9, Seitz presents us with a much more nuanced view of the typical utopian-oriented views of science fiction. . . . In A Different Trek author Seitz gives us a lot to think about as we contemplate our present and our possible futures."—Kevin Folkman, Association for Mormon Letters

“Like the Orbs of the Prophets, David Seitz’s A Different ‘Trek’ illuminates the deeper teachings of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. An incisive analysis of DS9, Seitz gives us a compelling examination of how the stories of the series, while imperfect, go where no Star Trek has gone before, challenging the consequences of militarism, colonialism, and capitalism that are too often overlooked in the liberal utopianism of the franchise. Clear-eyed and thoughtful, A Different ‘Trek’ is the close read of Deep Space Nine that we have been waiting for, built on respect and recognition of the Black intellectual and radical work foundational to both the field of cultural studies and the art of generations of Black Star Trek actors.”—Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred

“A remarkable guide to a remarkable series. Equally versed in contemporary debates in Black studies and critical theory and in Star Trek lore—and equally skilled in explaining both to outsiders—not only does David Seitz make the case for the relevance of Deep Space Nine for Leftist thought. His critical yet generous stance also provides a model for future investigations into the ways that commercial entertainment can transcend its origins and speak creatively to the political dilemmas of its age.”—Adam Kotsko, author of Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital
 

“Deep Space Nine extended the critical promise of Star Trek into our homes in an unprecedented way. Students of recent history, twentieth-century geographies, contemporary militarism, queer studies, and Afrofuturism should read A Different ‘Trek’. David Seitz reopens this chapter in popular culture to remind us that staying in place—especially on a planet like ours, with its bloodstained maps and shifting tides of power—affords us every possibility to confront legacies of injustice and imagine radical futures.”—andré m. carrington, author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction

“David Seitz displays a vast knowledge of Star Trek lore, storylines, and fandom and masterfully deploys a constellation of lenses—queer and critical race theory, Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis—to turn a penetrating but generous gaze on the Trek universe. He brilliantly explores the anticolonial and inter-imperialist struggles central to Deep Space Nine as an unstable allegory of neoliberal racial capitalism from the United States to Palestine.”—Tim McCaskell, author of Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism

“This is a rich and conceptually diverse account of political possibility in the series Deep Space Nine. Through his characterization of racial capitalism at the heart of the Star Trek universe, David Seitz powerfully draws out the geopolitical tensions between the possibilities of 1990s U.S. liberal humanism and its constitutive violences. I now want to go back to the beginning of the series to re-view it in light of the insights and observations offered in the book.”—Jo Sharp, professor of geography at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and author of Geographies of Postcolonialism