Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought

PART I

PART I Difference, Identity, and Colonial Experience in Feminist Science Fiction As gendered and racial subjects, black women speak/write in multiple voices—not all simultaneously or with equal weight, but with various and changing degrees of intensity, privileging one parole and then another . One discovers in these writers a kind of internal dialogue reflecting an intrasubjective engagement with the intersubjective aspects of self, a dialectic neither repressing difference nor, for that matter, privileging identity, but rather expressing engagement with the social aspects of self (‘‘the other[s] in ourselves’’). —Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, ‘‘Speaking in Tongues’’ Born in 1947, the science fiction author Octavia E. Butler was raised in Pasadena, California, by her mother and grandmother, as her father died when she was very young. The women in her life worked hard to support their families, and Butler learned early about the invisibility and economic vulnerability of working black women. She learned to love reading science fiction when she was a child, and she started writing when she was only ten years old.1 In 1978, in Contemporary Authors, Butler recalled: When I began to read science fiction, I was disappointed at how little . . . creativity and freedom was used to portray the many racial, ethnic, and class variations. Also, I could not help noticing how few significant woman characters there were in science fiction. Fortunately, all this has been changing over the past few years. I intend my writing to contribute to the change. (F. Foster, 38) 36 DIFFERENCE, IDENTITY, AND COLONIAL EXPERIENCE Twenty-five years later, Butler has published twelve books and is considered ‘‘the’’ major African American woman science fiction writer.2 She depicts complex societies in which alien species force-breed with humans and humans mutate into alien forms, in which time travel and shapeshifters exist, and in which humans have telepathic abilities. Her style is engaging; her stories captivating. Butler’s science fiction narratives are intriguing because of the complex and at times contradictory reading experience they offer; they juxtapose affirmation of difference with experiences of colonization and slavery. At the center of her narratives, which Ruth Salvaggio defines as ‘‘stories of power,’’ are the struggles of strong female characters who negotiate contradictions of ‘‘enslavement and freedom, control and corruption, survival and adjustment’’ (Salvaggio, ‘‘Octavia Butler ’’ 6). Butler’s writing raises issues of how to resist racism, sexism, and exploitation in ways that elucidate many of the concepts we encounter in feminist thought.3 Two themes that run through Butler’s literary narratives are the focus of Part I of Alien Constructions. The first is the theme of colonial experiences , which is discussed in Chapter 1. The second, which is closely connected to the first and examined in Chapter 2, is difference, through which the ‘‘other’’ is constituted, and its relation to identities. Central to Butler ’s narratives is the notion of negotiated as opposed to given identities ; she challenges colonial discourses of the colonizer as superior ‘‘self,’’ and the ‘‘native’’ as inferior ‘‘other.’’ Butler’s focus on both colonial experience and alternative ways of dealing with difference invites at times seemingly contradictory interpretations. This apparent contradiction is especially visible in the Oankali, the alien race in her Xenogenesis trilogy. An anticolonial context highlights their negative role as colonizers, while a critical examination of the relationship of identity and difference points out the alternative, anti-essentialist logic of identity they embody. These conflicting narrative constellations are typical for Butler, who rejects a onedimensional understanding of complicated processes. Butler’s often troubling narrative contradictions derive from her engagement with several discourses: science fiction, black women’s writing, and anticolonial and feminist debates. Through her characters’ negotiations of power and her rewriting of cultural and religious myths, Butler addresses contemporary political issues linked to diaspora and anticolonial movements that are problematized in feminist debates. In accordance with the critical position of analyzing how popular texts reflect and produce cultural and political identities,4 I believe it is necessary to place Butler’s science DIFFERENCE, IDENTITY, AND COLONIAL EXPERIENCE 37 fiction within the wider framework of black women’s imagination as well as that of science fiction and cultural identity.5 Science fiction’s exploration of colonial experiences through metaphors of aliens and space travel reaches a diverse audience often not included in theoretical debates on anticolonial identities. The objective of the critical readings offered here is not to give a close textual analysis of individual narratives...