Link: check out the comments on Matt's post about ToeJam and Earl for this week's post
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Brother From Another Planet
This is not the newest example of Afrofuturism, but I like it. It's a film and this is what it's about:
"** Nominated for Sundance Grand Jury Prize ** Cult classic. The Brother is an alien who has crash-landed in New York City. While he can't talk, he is very empathic and handy. His attempt to make a place for himself in Harlem. Meanwhile, two bounty hunters from the Brother's planet arrive to capture him.The story is an allegory for the immigrant experience in the United States. "
"** Nominated for Sundance Grand Jury Prize ** Cult classic. The Brother is an alien who has crash-landed in New York City. While he can't talk, he is very empathic and handy. His attempt to make a place for himself in Harlem. Meanwhile, two bounty hunters from the Brother's planet arrive to capture him.The story is an allegory for the immigrant experience in the United States. "
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
A multi layered question
How is the ship described in Dawn and is it animal or plant? How does the relationship between the aliens and their ship differ from the relationship between the humans and Earth as it is displayed in the novel? What kind of future is Butler writing in terms of environmental issues? Do you think her ideas about biomimicry and genetic engineering are just a little too out there?
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Racial Alienation in Clay's Ark
“’Maybe uninfected people are sterilizing the city in the only way they can think of … In Louisiana there’s a group that has decided the disease was brought in by foreigners—so they’re shooting anyone who seems a little odd to them. Mostly Asians, blacks, and browns.’” (Butler 624).
-Stephen Kaneshiro relates the news reports to Keira
This passage wraps up Butler’s novel Clay’s Ark with a racial punch, leaving us with a final image of white people gunning down anyone non-white in a panic of apocalyptic proportions. How ironic for Butler to put this in her fiction because it actually happens in our non-fiction world. Look at our own communities and notice the ethnic enclaves that unite because people like to be with others who are like them. But, when times are tough, the ethnic enclaves blame each other and sometimes become violent. The L.A. race riots of the 90’s are one example in the United States of this racial tension.
I am seeing racial overtones throughout Clay’s Ark as I am reading the extraterrestrial/human mutation not as a literal problem but as a figural alienation. The Clay Arks become figurative aliens to the rest of the Earth. Most of the Clay Arks in the desert community are representatives of ethnic minorities in the outside communities. Eli, the astronaut who brings the alien virus to earth, is a black man. When Meda confesses her romantic intentions to him, her brother comments: “’If that guy were white, I’d tell you to marry him.’” (505). Eli is ostracized by the community he infects because of his race. Lupe is Hispanic and speaks to her child in Spanish. Butler even manages to represent mixed race individuals in the characters of Keira and Rane.
So what about the question of the humanity of the Clay Arks. Why would their humanity be in question? Eli even questions himself, as our narrator relates: “In his own mind, his humanity had been in question for some time” (457). Eli has perhaps internalized the racial alienation inflicted on him by his society.
This reminds me of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Metamorphoses” in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes one day to find himself transformed into the body of a giant insect and totally alienated from his family. There is no explanation as to how this happens to Gregor, there is only the fact that he is literally alienated from his fellow humans and therefor utterly worthless to them. What gives Gregor his humanity—his ability to financially support his family—is destroyed, and he withers and dies. The same fate could threaten Eli in Clay’s Ark without his ability to form his own enclave of individuals who are similar to him. He infects others to create more figurative bugs in his desert community.
But the Clay Arks also have strange abilities, superhuman powers. If this racial reading stands plausible, then what is Butler suggesting with the special abilities that her alienated characters possess? Perhaps the powers are a kind of twisted manifestation of the racial threat that minorities pose to their white counterparts. The Clay Arks have enhanced capacities to procreate, to control, to dominate. As Rane says, “There’s going to be an epidemic” (575).
-Stephen Kaneshiro relates the news reports to Keira
This passage wraps up Butler’s novel Clay’s Ark with a racial punch, leaving us with a final image of white people gunning down anyone non-white in a panic of apocalyptic proportions. How ironic for Butler to put this in her fiction because it actually happens in our non-fiction world. Look at our own communities and notice the ethnic enclaves that unite because people like to be with others who are like them. But, when times are tough, the ethnic enclaves blame each other and sometimes become violent. The L.A. race riots of the 90’s are one example in the United States of this racial tension.
I am seeing racial overtones throughout Clay’s Ark as I am reading the extraterrestrial/human mutation not as a literal problem but as a figural alienation. The Clay Arks become figurative aliens to the rest of the Earth. Most of the Clay Arks in the desert community are representatives of ethnic minorities in the outside communities. Eli, the astronaut who brings the alien virus to earth, is a black man. When Meda confesses her romantic intentions to him, her brother comments: “’If that guy were white, I’d tell you to marry him.’” (505). Eli is ostracized by the community he infects because of his race. Lupe is Hispanic and speaks to her child in Spanish. Butler even manages to represent mixed race individuals in the characters of Keira and Rane.
So what about the question of the humanity of the Clay Arks. Why would their humanity be in question? Eli even questions himself, as our narrator relates: “In his own mind, his humanity had been in question for some time” (457). Eli has perhaps internalized the racial alienation inflicted on him by his society.
This reminds me of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Metamorphoses” in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes one day to find himself transformed into the body of a giant insect and totally alienated from his family. There is no explanation as to how this happens to Gregor, there is only the fact that he is literally alienated from his fellow humans and therefor utterly worthless to them. What gives Gregor his humanity—his ability to financially support his family—is destroyed, and he withers and dies. The same fate could threaten Eli in Clay’s Ark without his ability to form his own enclave of individuals who are similar to him. He infects others to create more figurative bugs in his desert community.
But the Clay Arks also have strange abilities, superhuman powers. If this racial reading stands plausible, then what is Butler suggesting with the special abilities that her alienated characters possess? Perhaps the powers are a kind of twisted manifestation of the racial threat that minorities pose to their white counterparts. The Clay Arks have enhanced capacities to procreate, to control, to dominate. As Rane says, “There’s going to be an epidemic” (575).
Have the Clay Arks lost their humanity because of their powers? What does it mean to be human according to the novel: i.e. what is humanity anyway? Why does Butler want us to ask this question? Are you afraid of Aliens?
Another question:
What are some biblical references in the novel? How do you view Clay’s Ark in relation to Noah’s Ark given that the characters in the novel refer to the conscience as archaic and god as dead? refer to 473, 479, 491
What are some biblical references in the novel? How do you view Clay’s Ark in relation to Noah’s Ark given that the characters in the novel refer to the conscience as archaic and god as dead? refer to 473, 479, 491
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Binaries in Butler's Wild Seed
“‘It is better to be a master than to be a slave.’ Her husband at the time of the migration had said that. He had seen himself becoming a great man—master of a large household with many wives, children, and slaves. Anyanwu, on the other hand, had been a slave twice in her life and had escaped only by changing her identity completely … She knew some people were masters and some were slaves. That was the way it had always been. But her own experience had taught her to hate slavery” (Butler 10-11).
-Anyanwu on slavery
When you have lived for three-hundred years how can you adopt this attitude on slavery? Anyanwu has been a slave twice in her life, and she admits to hating the institution: yet she agrees it is better to be a master than to be a slave and allows herself to perpetuate the binary. What a choice! To accept the binary—master or slave—is to be insensitive to the reality of servitude. Anyanwu loses her humanity when she loses her compassion for her fellow creatures. After being around for three-hundred years how does she not see some way out of the master-slave cycle?
Perhaps she sees the only way out of the binary is through her children. Since she herself is a wild seed and exists outside of the enslaved progeny of Doro, her offspring too may live outside his enslaved communities. With this hope for the future of her children, maybe Anyanwu finds an escape from the cycle of slavery despite the fact that she herself remains in acceptance of it.
This hope for her progeny relates to the larger topic of eugenics that runs throughout the novel. The narrator tells us Doro’s motivations for seducing Anyanwu: “He had to have the woman. She was wild seed of the best kind. She would strengthen any line he bred her into, strengthen it immeasurably” (23). He wants her because she can give him children with her special abilities to shape shift and heal; she wants him because he offers the hope of giving her children that will never die. He wants to breed children with Anyanwu gifts so that he may consume their bodies. She wants children who will live as long as herself in freedom. In either case the parents are trying to improve the qualities of the human population that they are creating. I suppose when you have tens of spouses and hundreds of children the thought of eugenics might cross your mind.
Anyanwu’s numbness to the cycle of slavery also connects with the lack of sensitivity Doro has when he kills. Doro must kill almost daily as a matter of survival. He is dull to the pain and the loss of a human life. The value of human life is perverted into the measure of how well the body will sustain Doro’s existence until he needs a new body.
So where is Butler going with this? She seems to be processing a mass desensitization in humankind that springs from a seemingly endless cycle of slavery and killing. Taking a Marxist approach to Butler’s novel can suggest that her character’s strife is a cause of their society’s economic base in large slave-owning households. But Marxist critics such as Georg Lukacs take the theory even further, as he says: “The greatest literary works do not merely reproduce the dominant ideologies of their time but incorporate in their form a critique of these ideologies” (Newton 85). So are these characters floating hopelessly in their slavery-based society, only reproducing and killing to give themselves momentary respite? In the final scene, Anyanwu is proposing suicide, and she says to Doro: “The human part of you is dying, Doro. It is almost dead … I cannot save it. It’s already dead” (Butler 250). Perhaps Butler’s critique is that these characters were so stuck in their binaries—life or death for Doro, slave or master for Anyanwu—and incapable of imagining alternatives that they can allow for atrocities like slavery to haunt their society. In other words, slavery and killing happens because some people accept it.
Newton, K.M. Ed. Twentieth-Century Literary Theory. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1988. 85. Print.
-Anyanwu on slavery
When you have lived for three-hundred years how can you adopt this attitude on slavery? Anyanwu has been a slave twice in her life, and she admits to hating the institution: yet she agrees it is better to be a master than to be a slave and allows herself to perpetuate the binary. What a choice! To accept the binary—master or slave—is to be insensitive to the reality of servitude. Anyanwu loses her humanity when she loses her compassion for her fellow creatures. After being around for three-hundred years how does she not see some way out of the master-slave cycle?
Perhaps she sees the only way out of the binary is through her children. Since she herself is a wild seed and exists outside of the enslaved progeny of Doro, her offspring too may live outside his enslaved communities. With this hope for the future of her children, maybe Anyanwu finds an escape from the cycle of slavery despite the fact that she herself remains in acceptance of it.
This hope for her progeny relates to the larger topic of eugenics that runs throughout the novel. The narrator tells us Doro’s motivations for seducing Anyanwu: “He had to have the woman. She was wild seed of the best kind. She would strengthen any line he bred her into, strengthen it immeasurably” (23). He wants her because she can give him children with her special abilities to shape shift and heal; she wants him because he offers the hope of giving her children that will never die. He wants to breed children with Anyanwu gifts so that he may consume their bodies. She wants children who will live as long as herself in freedom. In either case the parents are trying to improve the qualities of the human population that they are creating. I suppose when you have tens of spouses and hundreds of children the thought of eugenics might cross your mind.
Anyanwu’s numbness to the cycle of slavery also connects with the lack of sensitivity Doro has when he kills. Doro must kill almost daily as a matter of survival. He is dull to the pain and the loss of a human life. The value of human life is perverted into the measure of how well the body will sustain Doro’s existence until he needs a new body.
So where is Butler going with this? She seems to be processing a mass desensitization in humankind that springs from a seemingly endless cycle of slavery and killing. Taking a Marxist approach to Butler’s novel can suggest that her character’s strife is a cause of their society’s economic base in large slave-owning households. But Marxist critics such as Georg Lukacs take the theory even further, as he says: “The greatest literary works do not merely reproduce the dominant ideologies of their time but incorporate in their form a critique of these ideologies” (Newton 85). So are these characters floating hopelessly in their slavery-based society, only reproducing and killing to give themselves momentary respite? In the final scene, Anyanwu is proposing suicide, and she says to Doro: “The human part of you is dying, Doro. It is almost dead … I cannot save it. It’s already dead” (Butler 250). Perhaps Butler’s critique is that these characters were so stuck in their binaries—life or death for Doro, slave or master for Anyanwu—and incapable of imagining alternatives that they can allow for atrocities like slavery to haunt their society. In other words, slavery and killing happens because some people accept it.
Newton, K.M. Ed. Twentieth-Century Literary Theory. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1988. 85. Print.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
1st journal post
How does science fiction offer hope for the marginalized African voice? In imagining the future how do science fiction writers lift themselves of oppression? Kodwo Eshun in his essay “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism”, speaks specifically of the estrangement inherent in both science fiction and the Afrodiasporic condition and its discontents. Darko Suvin in his chapter “Estrangement and Cognition” describes a facet of SF he calls estrangement and that allows society to critically examine itself from outside perspectives. Black science fiction writers utilize the genre to revise a historical tradition that has silenced them.
Kadwo Eshun claims that Afrodiasporic persons experience firsthand the estrangement that forms a framework the science fiction genre: “Afrodiasporic subjects live the estrangement that science-fiction writers envision” (298). Since the underpinning estrangement of the SF genre is a reality for Afrodiasporic persons, it can offer a natural outlet for expressing their feelings. As Eshun continues: “Most science fiction tales dramatically deal with how the individual is going to contend with these alienating, dislocating societies and circumstances and that pretty much sums up the mass experiences of black people in the postslavery twentieth century” (298). The mass transplantation of African peoples to colonial nations still haunts contemporary society. Sci-fi is a fitting medium for exploring the African Diaspora.
Darko Suvin in his chapter “Estrangement and Cognition” further suggests how science fiction in the twentieth century can provide new horizons for the marginalized Afrodiasporic voice: “In the twentieth century SF has moved into the sphere of anthropological and cosmopological thought, becoming a diagnosis, a warning, a call to understanding and action, and—most important—a mapping of possible alternatives” (30-31). In inventing possible alternatives to the status quo, science fiction challenges the colonial historical record. In her science fiction short story “Deep End” Nisi Shawl explores notions of white imprisonment for a black protagonist Wayna. Wayna is uploaded into someone elses white body and is sent on a long voyage to work on a distant star. The story reads very much like a futuristic transplantation of the slave narrative of colonial America. In one scene, Wayna looks in the mirror and examines her pointed nose and grey-colored skin, noting her white features. She expresses her frustration with her new body as it causes her pain and exhibits some defect that escaped the cloners.
Kadwo Eshun describes how science fiction offers possibilities of a new frontier for black history: “To establish the historical character of black culture, to bring Africa and its subjects into history denied by Hegel et al., it has been necessary to assemble countermemories that contest the colonial archive, thereby situating the collective trauma of slavery as the founding moment of modernity” (288). Nisi Shawl’s story successfully estranges the slave narrative by transforming it into a fictional setting. This estrangement phenomenon does two things: establishes Shawl’s Afrodiasporic voice into the historical dialogue, and allows us to examine the diaspora from an unfamiliar perspective.
Discussion question:
Does Nisi Shawl’s story “Deep End” successfully deal with “How the individual is going to contend with alienating, dislocating societies and circumstances and that pretty much sums up the mass experiences of black people in the post-slavery twentieth century” (Eshun 298)?
Kadwo Eshun claims that Afrodiasporic persons experience firsthand the estrangement that forms a framework the science fiction genre: “Afrodiasporic subjects live the estrangement that science-fiction writers envision” (298). Since the underpinning estrangement of the SF genre is a reality for Afrodiasporic persons, it can offer a natural outlet for expressing their feelings. As Eshun continues: “Most science fiction tales dramatically deal with how the individual is going to contend with these alienating, dislocating societies and circumstances and that pretty much sums up the mass experiences of black people in the postslavery twentieth century” (298). The mass transplantation of African peoples to colonial nations still haunts contemporary society. Sci-fi is a fitting medium for exploring the African Diaspora.
Darko Suvin in his chapter “Estrangement and Cognition” further suggests how science fiction in the twentieth century can provide new horizons for the marginalized Afrodiasporic voice: “In the twentieth century SF has moved into the sphere of anthropological and cosmopological thought, becoming a diagnosis, a warning, a call to understanding and action, and—most important—a mapping of possible alternatives” (30-31). In inventing possible alternatives to the status quo, science fiction challenges the colonial historical record. In her science fiction short story “Deep End” Nisi Shawl explores notions of white imprisonment for a black protagonist Wayna. Wayna is uploaded into someone elses white body and is sent on a long voyage to work on a distant star. The story reads very much like a futuristic transplantation of the slave narrative of colonial America. In one scene, Wayna looks in the mirror and examines her pointed nose and grey-colored skin, noting her white features. She expresses her frustration with her new body as it causes her pain and exhibits some defect that escaped the cloners.
Kadwo Eshun describes how science fiction offers possibilities of a new frontier for black history: “To establish the historical character of black culture, to bring Africa and its subjects into history denied by Hegel et al., it has been necessary to assemble countermemories that contest the colonial archive, thereby situating the collective trauma of slavery as the founding moment of modernity” (288). Nisi Shawl’s story successfully estranges the slave narrative by transforming it into a fictional setting. This estrangement phenomenon does two things: establishes Shawl’s Afrodiasporic voice into the historical dialogue, and allows us to examine the diaspora from an unfamiliar perspective.
Discussion question:
Does Nisi Shawl’s story “Deep End” successfully deal with “How the individual is going to contend with alienating, dislocating societies and circumstances and that pretty much sums up the mass experiences of black people in the post-slavery twentieth century” (Eshun 298)?
Sunday, September 25, 2011
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