[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-141484-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":81,"doc-detail-141484-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":74,"head_meta":76,"extra_data":78,"updated_unix":80},105,"en","space-hitler-and-saint-star-treks-emperor-georgiou-and-the-slippage-between-postfeminism-and-fourth-wave-feminism","Space Hitler and saint - Star Trek’s Emperor Georgiou and the slippage between postfeminism and fourth wave feminism","","Star Trek: Discovery (2017–present) presents itself as aware of tensions between its utopian claims and its actual representations, using a more diverse cast and an expanded Mirror Universe plot that complicates portrayals of women of color. At the same historical moment, fourth-wave feminism—emphasizing diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality—enters mainstream culture, even as postfeminism remains widely described as hegemonic. This paper examines how the shift between postfeminism and fourth-wave feminism appears in contemporary science-fiction depictions of women of color in Star Trek, focusing on Terran Emperor Phillipa Georgiou across three seasons.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/space-hitler-and-saint-star-treks-emperor-georgiou-and-the-slippage-between-postfeminism-and-fourth-wave-feminism/141484/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/space-hitler-and-saint-star-treks-emperor-georgiou-and-the-slippage-between-postfeminism-and-fourth-wave-feminism/141484.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Hazel","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-21","2026-08-25",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",6,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"What is the main focus of the paper?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"The paper explores how the slippage between postfeminism and fourth-wave feminism shows up in contemporary science-fiction representations of women of color in Star Trek.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"Why is Star Trek: Discovery considered self-aware in this study?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It is described as self-aware about contradictions between what Star Trek claims to be and what it actually is, especially through its diverse casting and Mirror Universe storyline.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"Which character is used to exemplify the tensions discussed?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The Terran Emperor Phillipa Georgiou from Discovery is used to exemplify tensions between postfeminist and fourth-wave empowerment in representation and character arc across three seasons.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},141484,1787657366,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,88,92,96,101,105,110,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":85,"show_sort_weight":86,"slug":87},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":89,"show_sort_weight":90,"slug":91},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":97,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":131},{"doc_id":79,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":111,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":117,"language":139,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":80,"read_time":103},137441390410,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/2000252f4ab5702993?_k=1776741390130283984","Space Hitler and saint: Star Trek’s Emperor Georgiou and the slippage between postfeminism and fourth wave feminism  \n> Janine Engelbrecht  \nThe Open Window, Pretoria, South Africa  \n[janine@openwindow.co.za](janine@openwindow.co.za) (ORCID: [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9681-5137](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9681-5137))  \nPublished by  \nOriginal research  \nABSTRACT  \nOne of the most recent Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present)(DSC), seems self-aware regarding the contradictions inherent in what Star Trek claims to be and what it actually is . In an attempt to realise Gene Roddenberry’s vision, DSC includes a far more diverse cast than any Star Trek series before it . As Judith Rauscher (2020:256) suggests, DSC’s ‘highly diverse cast’ combined with its extended Mirror Universe plot ‘complicates the representation of female characters of color’. At the same historical moment, a new wave of feminism—the fourth wave—that claims to be acutely aware of diversity, inclusivity, and intersectionality is entering the mainstream . While both Rosalind Gill (2016, 2017) and Nicola Rivers (2017) make convincing cases that we still live within a postfeminist “sensibility”, one cannot deny that recently, audiences and producers of popular cultural texts seem to have become aware of the overarching white, heterosexual narrative of postfeminism, and radical changes in terms of representation are taking place . In this paper, I explore how the slippage between postfeminism and fourth wave feminism manifests itself in contemporary representations of women in sci-fi—specifically women of colour in Star Trek. One character from DSC—the Terran Emperor, Phillipa Georgiou—exemplifies the tensions between postfeminist and fourth wave empowerment in terms of her representation and character arc over three seasons .  \nKeywords: Fourth wave feminism, postfeminism, Star Trek , sci-fi, diversity, Emperor Georgiou .  \nNumber 38, 2024  \nISSN 2617-3255  \npage 01 of 20  \nDOI: [http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2024/n38a4](http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2024/n38a4) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4 .0)  \nIntroduction  \nOne of the most recent series in the popular sci-fi franchise, Star Trek, namely Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present) (DSC), seems to be self-aware in terms of the contradictions inherent in what Star Trek claims to be and what it actually is . In an attempt to realise creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision, DSC includes a far more diverse cast than any previous Star Trek series . Although this is a point I return to in this paper, simply including a more diverse cast does not necessarily eliminate sexual and cultural stereotypes—as Judith Rauscher (2020:256) points out, DSC’s‘highly diverse cast’ combined with its extended Mirror Universe plot ‘complicates [especially] the representation of female characters of color’.  \nAt the same historical moment, a new wave of feminism—the fourth wave—that claims to be acutely aware of diversity, inclusivity and intersectionality is entering the mainstream . Although the fourth wave remains ‘ill defined’ (Rivers 2017:31) and many, such as Rosalind Gill (2016:609), are not convinced that feminism has entered its fourth wave at all, there is currently a notable shift taking place in both feminist thought and representations of women in popular visual culture (see, for example, Engelbrecht (2020) and Frankel (2020)) . Gill (2016:609), however, contends that we still live in an age of postfeminism and that ‘Like neoliberalism, it seems to [her] that postfeminism has [in fact] tightened its hold in contemporary culture and has made itself virtually hegemonic’. As Nicola Rivers (2017) also establishes, much of fourth wave feminist praxis suspiciously employs postfeminist rhetoric, and thereis a slippage between what some claim to be the fourth wave and what has been established as postfeminism over the past two decades .  \nDespite its contentious status, scholars such as Ru","cbCaivQhOSw1lmtp","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaivQhOSw1lmtp","pdf",1352306,"English","# Introduction\n## Fourth-wave feminism versus postfeminism\n## Overlap and unclear boundaries\n# Contemporary representations in Star Trek\n## Role of increased franchise iterations\n## Focus on Emperor Georgiou","[{\"question\":\"What is the main focus of the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper explores how the slippage between postfeminism and fourth-wave feminism shows up in contemporary science-fiction representations of women of color in Star Trek.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is Star Trek: Discovery considered self-aware in this study?\",\"answer\":\"It is described as self-aware about contradictions between what Star Trek claims to be and what it actually is, especially through its diverse casting and Mirror Universe storyline.\"},{\"question\":\"Which character is used to exemplify the tensions discussed?\",\"answer\":\"The Terran Emperor Phillipa Georgiou from Discovery is used to exemplify tensions between postfeminist and fourth-wave empowerment in representation and character arc across three seasons.\"}]","Space Hitler and saint - Star Trek’s Emperor Georgiou and the slippage between postfeminism and fourth wave feminism | PDF"]