Histórias de uma psicologia do futuro: representações de ciência e tecnologia em fundação, de Isaac Asimov

Abstract

Science fiction is a literary genre whose elements of estrangement and cognition – modeled on the appearance of the modern sciences paradigms – are essential and sufficient elements. From its origins to the present day, its importance and influence in society is strengthening and its relevance as a social critic is increasingly recognized. Among the authors of the genre, Isaac Asimov stands out as one of the most important of the twentieth century and the Foundation series as one of the most representative part of his work. With a special emphasis on the relationship between the original trilogy, written and published between 1941 and 1953, with its 1982 sequel, Foundation´s Edge, this research combines a Bakhtinian analysis of discourse and discussions on Technology and Society to problematize the evolution of the tension between determinism and emancipation represented in Psychohistory, novum used by Asimov to construct his fictional world. From the editorial and thematic context, the analyzes indicated that the narrative structures, style and language choices, and the construction of the chronotopes of the romances establish a dialogue with the sociohistorical evolution of Science Fiction and the theoretical-critical problematizations of the studies on Science, Technology Society field. It has also been identified that the positions resulting from these dialogues between context, arguments and narrative elements are a dynamic and dialogic construction that privileges the thought emancipation its recipient to the detriment of the monological attempts to silence divergent positions eventually observed. We believe that this research corroborated the initial hypothesis that the vision on Science and Technology expressed in Asimov’s analyzed works is responsive to social transformations with an increasing critical character against the technological determinism that consolidates in the form of confrontation between political and technical systems in Foundation’s Edge.