Cognitive Estrangement in Latinx Speculative Fiction

is a term originally coined by Darko Suvin. It refers to the act in literature of deviating from our assumptions of reality and making the “unfamiliar” seem familiar. Latinx speculative fiction writers use cognitive estrangement as a tool to estrange themselves from normative present-day power structures, and create an environment with rearranged societal roles and meanings, without the boundaries of the stereotyped contemporary Latinx experience in today’s world.
Cogntive Estrangement as a Political Tool
According to Roberta Wolfson, a professor at California Polytechnic State University, cognitive estrangement is a political tool to distance writers from injustices that have been normalized and cemented into society. Speculative fiction allows for a re-imagining of the real world, and thus allows writers to transform injustices into monsters or unusual supernatural beings that reveal their horrific nature and harmful intent. Latinx writers use cognitive estrangement to undo many learned stereotypes of the Latinx community, and re-imagine what new narratives they want to adopt. Cognitive estrangement is a tool to mobilize resistance and to critique discrimination that is overlooked. To perform cognitive estrangement, both the writer and audience suspend their disbelief and participate in the alternate narrative world, without questioning it’s validity or it's potential to exist considering the way the present is structured. It is a revisiting of discomfort when what's known to be true is challenged. It is in these moments when the audience can tap into the life of the protagonists, and understand their new vision for a future world, without the crowding of learned stereotypes and feelings. In making the alien feel ordinary, readers are introduced to people, ideas, and spaces that they may not have had access to outside of literature, and this is helpful in choosing to be a more active participant in issues that feel far away to someone.
Cognitive estrangement has the ability to use a future space to create a revitalizing opinion on a situation. An example is of how sexual politics affect our social relations, and how society views this topic. To bring these issues to light, estrangement must occur. The reader must accept that these structures are flexible.
Cognitive estrangement in writing
Cognitive estrangement in writing by Latinx speculative fiction writers can be entirely political; a method to disrupt existing norms of thinking that are are unfair and proposing a solution. It can also be a space for Latinx writers to heal from damage of such stereotypes by creating a universe in which they are renewed from the pain, and redefine the things that have become harmful.
Latinx speculative fiction writers estrange readers using elements in their writing familiar to them such as the usage of multiple languages, traditional elements, and unconventional gender structures, but unfamiliar to a general public with minimal connection to Latinx culture. Right away, the reader enters a space in which they cannot read passively. Cognitive estrangement distances the reader from that which is second-nature, and urges them to evaluate the significance of the discomfort and challenge their habituation. Cognitive estrangement is also a pushing of what is seen as conventional and acceptable in literature, defying the norm of what “good academic” writing is because the use of multiple languages in one piece of writing is uncommon. It also pushes away the stereotype created by the majority in the US of what a Latinx/Chicanx person experiences. It is an opportunity to Latinx/Chicanx writers to insert pieces of themselves, their history and their vision into their work without it being deemed nonacademic. Cognitive fiction is powerful as it works gradually, to not overwhelm the reader with a different landscape. This way, the viewer is eased into this alternative universe, without fully feeling as if they are far away.
Cognitive estrangement is new to Latinx speculative fiction, but scholars are acknowledging that culture can shape the usage and experience with cognitive estrangement and science fiction.

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