Performing the Abyss: Octavia Butler’s Fledgling and the Law

Using the courtroom scenes in Octavia Butler’s last novel, Fledgling, this essay traces the often obscured imbrications of law and performance. Through an analysis of the performative aspects of legal proceedings, I insist that the ritual theatricality of the legal system cannot be thought of in opposition to ‘truth.’ Foregrounding performative aspects of the law can move us away from the law as an individualized remedy for limited, state prohibited wrongs. Instead it points towards an understanding of the law as both a necessity and the necessary failure of legal remedy for large scale injustices such as slavery that have been inherited and that exist in the present.