Counter-discourses to social inequalities and urban modernity: Subaltern women in post-2000s Chinese science fiction

The issues of resurgent class and gender inequalities, rapid urbanization, and huge regional disparity were a notable focus of many post-2000s Chinese science fiction, which vividly created images of subaltern females. This paper looks at how contemporary Chinese sci-fi authors seek social justice by representing the experiences of various subaltern women within the specific genre of science fiction. It argues that the images of socially and culturally marginalized women were used as effective tools for questioning the intersectional social inequalities in contemporary China. The works discussed in this article all problematize the nature and influences of urban modernity by revealing the intersections, tensions, and contradictions between subaltern women and the classed, gendered modernization process. The sci-fi realist portrayal of subaltern agency and gender struggle also helps to generate powerful counter-discourses to urban modernity and technological utopia.