Thesis
The history of the future: time and space in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Wild seed
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2014
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103189
Abstract
I argue that Octavia Butler's neo-slave narratives Kindred and Wild Seed utilize time and space in such a way to demonstrate the interdependency of history and geography on understandings of African American literature and official narratives of American history. Rather than conforming to a linear, progressive model of time, I argue that Butler's novels construct a temporality which situates past, present, and future as simultaneously critical sites in historical revisionary work, where all three modes of temporality are altered through the project of recovering and reincorporating Black women's voices throughout history. I argue that by revisiting history through the genre of the neo-slave narrative, not only is our historical understanding of slavery and African American history changed, but the future is altered as well. Crucially, I argue space must be considered a component of this historical revisionary work, with a special attention paid to how geography is both a relative and socially constructed force, and how the political constructions of geography produce and reproduce social conditions. I include a literature review to establish the always already present concern among African American authors in how Black voices will be remembered in past, present, and future, as well as the iii concern for establishing, maintaining, and supporting spaces for African American culture. I engage Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's theory of subaltern historiography, Michel Foucault's theory of counter-memories, Jack Halberstam's theory of queer temporality, and Edward W. Soja's theory of postmodern geographies.
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Details
- Title
- The history of the future
- Creators
- Lindsay Williams
- Contributors
- Aaron Oforlea (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525200201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis