In Defense of Racebending

Authors

• Cathleen Muller, Marist UniversityFollow

Abstract

In an effort to diversify fictions, many creators use racebending, changing the race of a character from an original fictional work or person from history and incorporating the altered character into a new fictional work. While racebending has been used across many forms of popular media, from comics to musicals, there has been little philosophical attention devoted to it. In what follows, I attempt to fill that gap by discussing the aesthetic value of racebending, its moral value, and how it can be understood on several prominent metaphysical views.