WIRED magazine’s February 2021 issue focused on a futuristic dystopian novel and termed this genre of cautionary tale a “vaccine”, an approach strikingly similar to the 2019 launching of the French Minister of Defense’s project to create a “Red Team” of science fiction writers whose mission is to “imagine the threats” of the near future. To see how such notions function more specifically in French science fiction, this panel explores how contemporary French-language science fiction works by women writers serve as “vaccines”, warning us of the dangers of futures in topics ranging from artificial intelligence to digital surveillance to posthumans, and more particularly how, in the case of French women writers, these topics both continue and expand upon some of the major thematic areas often associated with women’s writing, all with the ultimate goal of reminding us of our own fragile humanity that can so easily be lost.

This panel will include three presentations, each examining how a specific science fiction novel functions as a cautionary tale, simultaneously exploring the narrative and its functions, all of which are tied to questions of humankind, its evolution, and the body’s role in the understanding of humankind’s transitions. Through the presentations and subsequent discussions, we will draw larger conclusions concerning how French science fiction cautionary tales treat the topic of humankind and its reaction to technological change, as well as the significance of the fact that these works are written by women. This latter point is of particular pertinence in relation to studies, such as Shirley Ann Jordan’s Contemporary French Women’s Writing—in which she points out “some major thematic areas around which women work out individual and collective identities” (42) in the corpus she has studied—since we will explore how the three works presented here, which are more recent than those Jordan examines, both continue to focus on similar thematic areas and simultaneously expand upon them. Furthermore, this panel will provide a new perspective in French science fiction studies by examining the interrelations between this genre and women writers.

The panel will open with a brief introduction by the presider before leading into the three presentations, organized chronologically in terms of the future worlds, near to distant, of the novels studied. Elisabeth Herbst Buzay’s “Humanity’s Survival and Technological Dependence in Virginie Tournay’s Civilization 0.0”, an exploration of this 2019 political dystopian novel by a member of France’s “Red Team”, will examine how, in the near future of 2062, the interactions and communications of a human man and the female artificial intelligence incorporated in his body that ultimately breaks down, followed by the man’s encounter with an “unconnected”, pre-computer science society, bring to light the topic of technological dependence, as well as larger themes of identity, feminism, and culture, all of which are leveraged to depict a world that questions our values and expectations of future societies.

Next, Emmanuel Buzay will present his “The Resistance & the Refusal of Global Surveillance in Marie Darrieussecq’s Our Life in the Forest”, which will focus on the different stages of awareness of the main character, a woman who finds refuge in a forest with her clone and other companions of misfortune, to examine how her refusal of the global surveillance by examining her body modifications leads her, her clone, and others to a state of resistance in the forest, which is itself in turn the cause for a form of therapy, a physical place of refuge, and a key to understanding cloning.

Finally, Tessa Sermet’s “Beyond the Threshold: Viral, Spatial & Bodily Transformations in Dufour’s Le Goût de l’immortalité” rounds out the panel with her study of this dystopian novel that contemplates the prospects of humankind by focusing—under the guise of science fiction—on specifically postmodern reflections, fears, and anxieties. Sermet harnesses the term “sas” (airlock or pressure chamber in English) to identify transitional stages in conjunction with a morphological analysis of the places and spaces where those transitions happen. She ultimately extends the notion of transitional stages to corporeal spaces as well, with the body serving as the most significant “sas.” In reading this text, she mobilizes contemporary theories of spatial and cultural studies, as well as posthuman/ist theories and science fiction studies.

The panel will close with brief remarks by the presider pulling together the common threads of these three different approaches to French science fiction cautionary tales by women writers, before opening the panel to a discussion of this topic, inviting presenters and the audience alike to offer their interpretations and questions.