Page:  of 303
 
8 Domesticating Terrorism
A Neocolonial Economy of Différance

KENT A. ONO

In the prologue to each Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard announces: "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." The triumphant music following these words signals the beginning of a dramatic, neocolonialist narrative -- a patriotic reveille for today's couch potato. Whenever I hear Picard utter this manifesto, I wonder: "Who seeks?""Who explores?""Strange, to whom?" and "New, to whom?" As part of the larger dynamic of the show, and perhaps of television itself, a third-season episode titled "The High Ground" draws viewers' attention into the dramatic action of the characters and takes attention away from the overall narrative design hinted at in Picard's prologue. The episode's complex story relies on women's nurturing and obeisant role within the family; the maintenance of masculine, patriarchal superiority; and the Other's familiar submission to the superiority of the show's heroes. This focus accompanies TNG's raw celebration of technology, space, power, and geography and creates the basis of a colonialist narrative.

In this chapter I argue that TNG produces a unique space wherein viewers may imagine the continuous recreation of empire through the simultaneous articulation and elimination of difference -- a move similar to what Jacques Derrida ( 1982) calls diffirance. TNG imagines a space where colonial power finds, controls, and eliminates difference, specifically, in this case, race and gender differences. Star Trek produces these systems of difference to coordinate and articulate hegemonic relations through which future differences can be understood, assimilated, and reconstituted within a narcissistic narrative framework. TNG produces a carnival of differences in order to help us imagine what successful systems of knowledge/power might look like in the future. But this is not a nonhierarchical system; the

-157-

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. Contributors: Taylor Harrison - editor, Sarah Projansky - editor, Kent A. Ono - editor, Elyce Rae Helford - editor. Publisher: Westview Press. Place of Publication: Boulder, CO. Publication Year: 1996. Page Number: 157.
    
This feature allows you to create and manage separate folders for your different research projects. To view markups for a different project, make that project your current project.
This feature allows you to save a link to the publication you are reading or view all the publications you have put on your bookshelf.
This feature allows you to save a link to the page you are reading, which you can later return to from Projects.
This feature allows you to highlight words or phrases on the publication page you are reading.
This feature allows you to save a note you write on the publication page you are reading.
This feature allows you to create a citation to the page you are reading that you can paste into your paper. Highlight a passage to include that passage as a quotation.
This feature allows you to save a reference to a publication you are reading for your bibliography or generate a bibliography you can paste into your paper.
This feature allows you to print a range of pages or a single page from the item you are reading, including your notes or highlights (IE users must have "print background colors and image" setting selected.)
This feature allows you to look up words in a dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopedia.
  About Questia Tools
Close Window  
Questia's powerful research tools allow you to highlight, take notes, bookmark and even create instant citations and bibliographies. To use these features and save hours of work, you must be a subscriber to the Questia service.
Need a Questia account?
Choose a subscription plan to save tons of time, stress and hassle, and experience faster, easier research.

» Click here for our subscription plans

Already have a Questia account? Login now!
Error
Working...
Choose one of the options for printing:
Print this page (No Charge)
Print pages to *
Print pages to *
Quick Print Center
View Shopping Cart
*charges may apply