Refiguring Hybridity in Star Trek

Elizabeth Gellis, Purdue University

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the ways in which the Star Trek franchise posits hybridity. Examining three hybrid characters—Spock and B’Elanna, both half-human, half-alien, and Data, an android—I explore how each character relates to their hybrid identity and envisions their own hybridity. Rejecting previous models for hybridity that use an additive, percentage-based logic, I use these characters to create a new framework for hybridity. Beginning with the figure of the Jew as an example of alternative Otherness, I posit hybridity as an emergent entanglement, a unifying force that reconciles and reinforces the disparate parts of the self—while retaining an Otherness all its own. Ultimately, I envision this hybridity as a useful framework not only within Star Trek and science fiction, but as a larger framework to carry throughout theoretical explorations of identity and selfhood.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Rickert, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Rhetoric|Mass communications|Film studies

COinS