|
Octavia E. Butler --
-- born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California
-- spent her childhood in poverty. (more bio
info and picture)
"I'm a 53-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old
writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also
comfortably asocial-- a hermit in the middle of Seattle -- a pessimist
if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water
combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive." (source) |
|
Dawn
-- part of the Xenogenesis trilogy, called Lilith's Brood (which
includes Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago).
-
a "critical dystopia" (defined by Tom Moylan): "a narrative which points
to the socio-historic causes of the dystopian elements of our culture rather
than one which merely reveals symptoms." (Miller)
-
Cited by Donna Haraway in "A Cyborg Manifesto" as one of the "theorists
for cyborgs" (173).
("The cyborg is a 'hybrid' [149], a figure which breaks down the 'boundaries'
between 'human and animal' [151], 'organism and machine' [152], 'physical
and non-physical'[153], and self and other with regard to 'gender, race,
or class' [155]. A cyborg is a construct of transgressed boundaries,'
comfortable with 'permanently partial identities and contradictory
standpoints' [154]" qtd and explained in Miller 338.)
-
Regarded as "salvation history" but not utopian fiction by Haraway
in Primate Visions: "an imaginative site of experimentation where
new notions of identity and community are under construction. . .
.[It] 'requires readers radically to rewrite stories in the act of reading
them. . . to find an 'elsewhere' from which to envision a different
and less hostile order and relationships among people, animals,
technologies, and land' [15]" (Miller 33)
-
Contradictions in Xenogenesis: "These novels mix the typical science-fiction
'space-alien' story with elements of the slave narrative, the Genesis story,
the nature/culture debate, utopian/dystopian tales, captivity narratives,
and more. Butler's aliens are both colonizers and a utopian collective,
white the captured/saved humans are both admirable survivors and ugly xenophobes.
Lilith Iyapo, . . . , is both the mother of a new race and a Judas to humanity"
(Miller 339-40).
-
Controversies around Xenogenesis: utopian or dystopian, social constructivist
or determinist (humans' Othering tendency), the last two books failure?,
self-sacrificing mother, heterosexuality remaining unquestioned?
(Cf. Miller 343-44)
-
Contesting and revising our culture's most powerful originary discourses
(Biblical, biological, anthropological) by keeping one in dialogue with
the others: "XENOGENESIS resists 'recreating the sacred image of the same,'
not by merely re-telling one origin story with a difference, but by putting
the four originary discourses I mentioned above into a dialogic relation
with each other." (Peppers)
-
Adam's Others: Biblical Genesis and Slavery.
-
(Eu)Gen(et)ic Engineering: Sociobiology and Slavery.
-
Resisting a Paleoanthropological Recreation of the Same.
|
|
Major Themes:
xenophobia 1
I) Oankali as Aliens
1. appearance: Jdahya
p. 11; tentacles, pp. 12, 15; the arm movements: 164; 193; 236-37;
2. name & organization:
Dinso, Toaht, Akjai
--home, not going back,
34, 36
--acquisitive, gene trader
39
-- L's name 62
-- ooloi "treasured outsider"
104;
-- concept of parent 110
3, sex:
--the role of ooloi 20,
studying humans;
-- involving two humans,
two O's, and an ooloi pp. 189-190.
4. ship and transportation:
pp. 28-29; 35; dislike machine and their concept of trade 83
5. As Traders, their manipulation
of humans
-- Lilith's scar;
-- a series of questions;
-- not allowed to read,
nor write 61
-- send to be mated with
Paul;
-- rejecting their lover
without the medium of their ooloi 220; all co-opted;cannot resist their
own ooloi 240;
6. communication and unbridgeable
gap
--silence p. 31
--alienness of Nikanj 96
(after the Paul Titus episode); concept of family 99
-- K, "Your children will
know us, Lilith. You never will" 111
--rejected ooloi, sick and
withdrawn 206;
xenophobia 2
Lilith and Joseph as Aliens:
1. Lilith suspected
of not being human; Joseph -- "faggot" slanted eyes 159;
2. Joseph killed brutally
because of his healing power.
II) What is being "human" like?
1. Human society
criticized:
--Earth (after overall
destruction );
-- two problems 37:
intelligence and hierarchy.
e.g. Joseph condescension to Lilith 157
-- rape tendencies
178
2. Human body challenged:
memory: Oankali's
"gene map" of Lilith
cancer: a beautiful growth.
different ways of sex: p.
161-162;
3. Different ways of survival:
"Alive! Still alive. Alive . . .again."
A. Paul Titus -- 86- ,
-- his view of O's genders
87
-- his dependence on O and
refusal to go back 89,
-- his view of being manipulated
90 - wanting L to "surprise them"
B. Lilith --
1) Her adaptability:
"reality was whatever happened, whatever she perceived."
p. 132.
2). contradictory responses
to Nakanje and the other Oankali.
--her responses to the captors:
1. curses or not responds --> answer the questions; (pp. 7-9);
--first leaving her isolation
cell, accepts Jdahya's sympathy p. 36
--sympathy + resistance
38; know they want her to be close to N 106; feel N's sincerity yet still
resisting it 160-61.
-- Jdahya's offer of death
42
-- dislikes being patronized
by Kahguyaht 48, 49
--dislikes being manipulated
53, dislikes being treated as a house pet 55-56; experimental animal.
58, Judas goat (Sheep cannot readily be driven to slaughter but will follow
a goat. A Judas goat is used to lead the sheep to the killing pens.)
-- her attempts to feel
"human" and her existence: 1) see O lie, 2) see another human. p.
59; her Tiej trip 65-
-- wants her autonomy, does
not want to be changed. 74; her memory of Sam and Ayre 75-76; feels
being Paul's prisoner 87;
-- given more freedom (after
her memory is changed 101); getting books and pens 107, changes in her,
attached to N.
-- "home"?
C. the humans awakened by
Lilith:
1) Tate 132
2) Joseph and Lilith --
not "Tarzan and Jean" type;
3) Lilith -- not trusted
by her friends 214-15; "another chance with a human group"; "Learn and
run" 247
4. What does "being human" mean?
1. the rebels: Peter
192; "He died human." 196; "Were they strong? Or simply
unable to adapt?" 201;
2. Lilith's attempt to rescue
Nakanje 239
3. Lilith's pregnancy --
the child not "human" 246-47;
|
|
References:
Miller, Jim. "Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler's Dystopian/Utopian
Vision." Science-Fiction-Studies. 1998 July; 25(2 (75)): 336-60.
(Abstract)
"
In both the Xenogenesis trilogy and Parable of the Sower, Butler stares
into the abyss of the dystopian future and reinvents the desire for a better
world."
Peppers, Cathy. Science-Fiction-Studie
(SFS). 1995 Mar; 22(1): 47-62. http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/65/peppers65art.htm |
|
Related Websites:
|