Everyday Sci-Fi and Practical Orientalism

This chapter considers the sense that the world had become strange, which was pivotal in the decision to leave the nongovernment-controlled territory and added impetus to the military conflict itself. It adopts the term “everyday sci-fi” to describe how people saw their lives as similar to living in a science fiction drama. Viewing people in the separatist controlled territories as “zombies” might be viewed as a tactic for absolving people of wrongdoing and thereby maintaining everyday peace. The chapter looks at the fantastical language of human “herds,” mysterious “waves,” and gender mutants that formed the basis of an embodied and practical orientalism that divided the social world. Conflict-affected people painted a world so uncannily altered by violence that it felt as if they were living in a science fiction drama.