David K. Seitz

In A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of ‘Deep Space Nine’, David K. Seitz argues that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “prophetic critiques of 1990s U.S. politics, which in many ways deepened the foundations of our current crises, have been vindicated politically, to a degree most scholars and even many fans have yet to appreciate. DS9 still matters because it cut against the grain in the era when U.S. elites feted the putative end of global class struggle and embraced ‘free’ trade, the ‘War on Crime,’ The Bell Curve, and attacks on queers and the welfare state” (p. 7). Seitz focuses on the character of Benjamin Sisko, the portrayal of Cardassian settler colonialism, the Jem’Hadar and their place in the Dominion, the Ferengi as reflective of our own society, Chief O’Brien’s family, and the queer inheritances of the empires in DS9. As he notes, “doing justice to the complexity of DS9’s narratives, influences, world-building, character development, and aspects of its production history and reception requires taking advantage of cultural geography’s intellectual promiscuity, drawing concepts and examples from a wide ambit” with a foundational focus on “racial capitalism, imperialism, settler-colonialism, place, and social reproduction” (p. 11-12).

Seitz argues that “Brooks’s work as Sisko takes up the intellectual and political legacy of Black freedom struggles in ways that scholars have only begun to fully appreciate” (p. 34). Of the Cardassians and Bajor, Seitz argues that “DS9’s Bajoran story lines offer a sympathetic allegorical treatment of Indigenous challenges to settler colonialism, including, but not only, struggles for Palestinian self-determination. Although creators’ decisions to cast predominantly white actors to play Bajoran roles must be problematized, there remains much to learn from reading DS9 allegorically and affectively” compared to “the Federation’s ‘soft’ imperialism” (p. 73). Examining the Jem’Hadar and other Dominion forces, Seitz “reads the Dominion as a repository for the repressed content of U.S. exceptionalism and imperialism – content that is disavowed by neoliberal multiculturalist narratives only to be projected onto external Others” (p. 114). Turning to the Ferengi, Seitz argues “that DS9’s more sustained, layered elaboration of the Ferengi refashioned them to create a rich satire of racial capitalism’s neoliberal ethos in the 1990s” (p. 144). Of the O’Brien family, Seitz notes that “Keiko reminds us that even in the putative postscarcity utopia of the Federation, someone still has to pick up the socks, and only social struggle, rather than technological ‘innovation,’ can transform gendered and racialized social divisions of labor” (p. 180). Finally, Seitz argues that “DS9 points audiences to struggles over social reproduction as key sites of racial-capitalist contradiction. But social reproduction is also intimately connected to geopolitical contradictions, to the questions of empire and colonization that are likewise at the heart of the series” (p. 199).

This work will appeal to scholarly Trekkers as well as those teaching media studies or one of the fields Seitz touches upon, such as gender studies, imperial studies, and more. Each chapter may be read as its own article in a classroom setting or the book may be used to teach these analytical skills to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students. Seitz’s work is accessible to lay readers, though will primarily appeal to an academic or scholarly audience. His text reflects the most up-to-date scholarship as well as the current state of the Star Trek franchise at time of publication. It is a fitting tribute to Deep Space Nine on the series’ 30th anniversary.… (más)