Octavia Butler was the first science fiction writer to win the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grant. Born in 1947, Butler grew up in California, raised by her mother and grandmother after her father died at an early age. Butler says that she was drawn to science fiction and fantasy at an early age, finding in genre fiction an escape from her shyness and general social discomfort. Kindred, Butler's 1970 neo-slave narrative, provides a powerful point of comparison with Morrison's Beloved. Using the conventions of the Wells-ian time travel narrative, Butler constructs a slave narrative that allows her protagonist to literally become a slave at the same time that she remains a contemporary woman. How do Butler and Morrison's depictions of slavery diverge? Why does Butler choose a science fiction format to construct a neo-slave tale?
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler was the first science fiction writer to win the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grant. Born in 1947, Butler grew up in California, raised by her mother and grandmother after her father died at an early age. Butler says that she was drawn to science fiction and fantasy at an early age, finding in genre fiction an escape from her shyness and general social discomfort. Kindred, Butler's 1970 neo-slave narrative, provides a powerful point of comparison with Morrison's Beloved. Using the conventions of the Wells-ian time travel narrative, Butler constructs a slave narrative that allows her protagonist to literally become a slave at the same time that she remains a contemporary woman. How do Butler and Morrison's depictions of slavery diverge? Why does Butler choose a science fiction format to construct a neo-slave tale?
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First off, I think my experience reading Kindred suffered a bit by being read directly after reading Beloved. Obviously these are two very different projects, but the relative clunkiness of Butler’s prose compared to Morrison’s lyricism me critique her writing along the way, which distracted me a bit from the larger issues the novel raises. It’s obviously not fair to compare the two, especially since Butler is writing a type of science fiction genre and isn’t attempting to write capital “L” Literature in the way that Morrison is. I also am averse to sci-fi in general and find myself wasting time poking holes in the logistics of whatever the conceit I’m supposed to believe in to enjoy the story.
ReplyDeleteThere were some things that Butler’s neo-slave narrative was able to accomplish that Beloved did not. I thought Kindred did an excellent job of showing just how easily people can get used to the system of slavery. While Dana obviously deplores all of the violence she and the other slaves are subjected to, she repeatedly points out how quickly she is able to shift into the role of a slave after being a free woman in the present. She and Kevin also increasingly feel like the Weylin plantation feels “like home” in a way that their apartment in 1976 (and more broadly the whole modern world) does not. Butler portrays slavery less as a spectacle that from our contemporary perspective we are horrified by, but rather a social system that anyone can carve out a life in and even get used to, while at the same time being continuously compromised by it.
Another thing that Kindred that Beloved could not (because Morrison’s novel takes place wholly in the past) was to show how race relations are still troubled in the modern era. Bulter does this in a heavy-handed way by pointing to Apartheid, but the more effective example of this was the reactions of Dana and Kevin’s relatives to the idea of them getting married. Their resistance is indicative of latent mistrust of black and white that is the residue of slavery.
Again, I find myself curious about the label "postmodern" being applied to a work of literature such as Kindred. Steinberg writes, "Thus, she [Butler, as author] reclaims control over text and ideas, significant postmodern concepts" (467). However, control of the text seems like a very modernist concept - postmodern concepts like deconstruction are grounded in the specific view that the text cannot be controlled completely, as opposed to say, the New Critical view which claims it can be studied to the point of science.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I would have to argue that a novel that deals with history is not specifically postmodern, nor is a novel that deals with time travel. The only thing that seems potentially postmodern about these two concepts is their juxtaposition; in other words, the ability of a time travel narrative to juxtapose past and present. Despite this, I'm not sure that this is operative in this novel: rather than destabilizing the privileged position of the present, the time travel in the novel only seems to affirm it. True, Butler does reference the Apartheid conflicts in South Africa, but also comments that they seem to belong specifically to the 19th century and not to the present.
I guess my point is that we need to be careful in throwing around the term postmodern. Contemporary does not mean postmodern. Subversive does not mean postmodern. Postmodernity is a very specific way of thinking that questions metanarratives; it does not simply dispense with one in favor of another.
Like Andy, I felt distracted from the novel's larger themes while reading Kindred. I kept thinking, this writing is just BAD. Some of Dana's interior monologue sounds like it could have been pulled from a Schwarzenegger movie:
ReplyDelete"She's here!" called Rufus. "I've got her!"
He would get something else too if I could reach my knife. (175)
"He would get something else too if I could reach my knife"? Come on, Octavia Butler, that's just downright corny.
But the concept here is extremely interesting, and I'm intrigued by how Butler is using the science fiction genre to fold the present into the past, to state, as Steinberg suggests, that our country must re-examine the past in order to have any hope of moving forward in the present. So while I initially felt that this ambitious and important project was hamstrung by the clunky writing, then again, maybe not. Maybe Butler's straightforward prose, and her choice to write in the science fiction genre, allows her to reach a wider, not-strictly-academic audience. To put it simply, it's not all about pretty sentences.
And by the way, I don't mean to knock Arnold. Predator is one of my all-time favorite films. Talk about the Alien Other...
I also thought a lot about how the often corny, almost-always clichéd prose complicated and hindered my reading Kindred. (And I have to admit that the writing wasn't making the reading difficult solely on an interpretive or critical level... I procrastinated reading this book A LOT last week because I didn't think much of it. It doesn't help that I just saw Hot Tub Time Machine.)
ReplyDeleteBut what if we look at the writing style as an affect of the work, as a rhetorical move on Butler's part in an attempt to say something else about the condition of slavery in juxtaposition (to borrow William's idea) with the clichéd, mechanical way that popular fantasy and science fiction novels are written? There are some things that alienate Kindred from the science fiction genre; Butler’s story breaks from several of the genre’s conventions. The most interesting difference to me had to do with the historical portion of the novel. In most decent science fiction or fantasy fiction, the “fantastical” elements are working as some type of metaphor, the author is essentially asking the reader “What if? What if the world was like this, what if your life was like this?” The speculative and existential questions that Butler asks do not rely on a fictitious premise— Butler’s subject matter is meant to be the realistic past, the “real” antebellum south. But the prose makes the story seem goofy, or unbelievable, and it’s not just the inexplicable time travel. Perhaps Butler is pointing out that the horror and brutality of slavery are difficult to imagine and difficult to realistically recreate?
The prose in Kindred is bad, yes. But even beyond that, I struggled to find the reason for Kindred’s existence. What is Butler really doing with this novel to change the slave narratives we’ve read many times already? While reading Beloved, I never found myself asking that question. The language was enough, the story, characters—it hadn’t seemed to matter if what she was doing was “important”. And yet in Kindred, each time Rufus calls Dana back to the past, I felt myself cringing at the prospect of having to endure yet another fifty plus pages of seemingly directionless action sequences in which Dana is called “nigger” and beaten and nearly raped. Oftentimes the scenes felt more like educational opportunities for Butler to show us another aspect of the ‘slave experience’ than scenes that help to establish conflict and character. In other words, all of the ‘strings’ seem to be showing in this novel; it is inelegant and transparent in its project.
ReplyDeleteYes, the protagonist is a modern black woman reliving her ancestors’ slave experience. That sounds interesting, that sounds different; there’s room there for exciting literature. But what we get isn’t exciting literature. Butler takes this unique situation and does nothing unique with it. She essentially redoes what’s been done before, but with a modern woman there to experience it this time. Okay. Yes. That is no doubt her point—that, within certain conditions, it is “easy” to fall into the role of a slave. This sentiment is repeated several times by Dana. And even in Yaszek’s essay we learn that Butler first conceived of this novel after having heard a black man complain about his parents’ subservient behavior; and that she wanted to defend his parents’ actions, demonstrate how their submissive behavior allowed him to survive. So yes, she is showing us that even a black woman from the ‘70’s, if thrust into the antebellum south, would behave in the same manner as her ancestors. But the problem is I still don’t buy it. She had 260 pages to convince me of this, and I still don’t buy it. Not because the concept is so untenable, but because she does such a poor job of making these characters and this situation believable.