Abstract

In The Expanse, Naomi Nagata, the Roci's XO and engineering marvel, is a person caught between worlds, someone torn in multiple directions by the social situations she finds herself immersed in. Throughout the series, she embodies multiplicitous subjectivity. In Nemesis Games Naomi Nagata experiences the kind of inner conflict of the self that can occur in moving between worlds. Internal conflict illuminates the multiple worlds Naomi inhabits. Just as one can travel between Earth and Mars, “one can ‘travel’ between these [social] ‘worlds.’” Unlike places such as Earth and Mars, with worlds in the social sense, “one can inhabit more than one of these ‘worlds’ at the very same time.” In framing spaces of meaning, the establishment of borders between worlds creates borderlands.