The discussion of Octavia Butler's Kindred generated varying responses. Many of you were disappointed in the book, and found it to be fundamentally flawed when it comes to representing atrocity. But many of you also enjoyed the book. I'd like to open this post up for you to further discuss your feelings about the novel. Use specific examples from the text when possible.
I feel that it's the prose that really does Butler in--I can tell straight away that she's really a sci-fi writer because it's all plot driven as opposed to, in my opinion, a more effective way of using lyrical and intimate prose to make the reader more sympathetic towards Dana.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I do appreciate is the clever way Butler depicts these moments of time travel as very violent and jarring experiences paralleling the African slave trade--the capture, the transportation, the severe trauma. After Dana comes back from her first experience she tells Kevin, "I don't have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don't feel safe anymore" because this immersion into slavery is a confrontation with the heinous reality of the way an entire civilization of people were stripped of their rights to humanity. Butler forces us to really dig for the gems in this piece but to her credit, there are some, they're just stuck under her heavy handed prose.
Response to the class discussion on the comparison between US Slavery and the Holocaust in Octavia Butler's Kindred.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the image created when she compares the life condition of the slaves to the suffering of the Jews in the concentration camps is one of the most important moments of the novel. And one of the most relevant to the purpose of our course. According to Dana, a modern woman who knows probably as much about the holocaust as we do, the situation of the "American slaves is so bad that the only thing she can compare it to is the event that is considered the biggest tragedy of human history. And this is why this comparison is so important! Slavery (here and in Brazil too), seems to be an issue already forgotten, or accepted, by people in their everyday lives. Hearing of slavery is not as shocking as hearing about the Holocaust. But why? The miserable life conditions, the tortures, the dehumanization and the slaughter of black people lasted centuries, not some years, and it was accepted by all population in general.
Of Course that was the thought of the time - that blacks are not human, that they are something below human that could be turned into property. However isn't accepting the thought of the time as an excuse to slavery something as horrible as accepting the thought of the Nazi, that Jews are not human, and that they could be exterminated?
It was said in class that slavery was different because the people at the time considered blacks property and they were getting the most they could from their property. Well, the Nazi thought Jews were a "non human enemy" so they were destroying them! I must confess that the refusal to compare the tragedies made me somewhat uneasy. Is it harder to accept the assassination of White European Jews during the 6 year of war, than the assassination and exploration of blacks brought from Africa during centuries of the country's history?
I agree when it is said that we have to be careful when comparing genocides. That each genocide is horrible and unique, and none is worse. Nevertheless, I find the strategy of comparing the somewhat accepted reality of slavery to the more recent (more explored by the media), and more appealing events of the Holocaust, rather than lazy, an extremely valid maneuver to call attention to a part of US history that should, in the writer's opinion, be given more thought than it has been. That US people don't need to focus on another country to see atrocity, since it's been present in their own history since its beginning.
Weekly Critical Question : Kindred by Octavia Butler
ReplyDeleteAfter finally reading Kindred, the idea of Levinas' theodicy still interests me as related to Butler's circular temporality. Can we find a role for theodicy in the novel? Is it possible to find evidence of this philosophy in Butler's writing? Even if this was not her intention I am wondering if we can read her and kevin's actions in the past as having a religious aroma, a godlike presence. Of course we must keep in mind that this is labeled as "sci-fi" and perhaps you our disbelief and examination of religious undertones must be suspended.
In " Useless Suffering" by Levinas we read about the " Theodicy and End of Theodicy" starting on ( Levinas 159) there is mention of a certain view of suffering with an " end in view", an end brought about by divine hands. This theodicy of suffering speaks of trauma that is "tempering to the individual character" . Levinas' description of the rationalization of theodicy it brings us back hauntingly to slavery/manifest destiny rhetoric at times. So when we look at the inexplicable "jarring" jumps that Dana feels they are the 'ends' in sight of her suffering, do you find there is an undertone, a faint lingering of non-secular belief in a moving Hand, an intelligence swooping Dana and Kevin from 1815 and back?
Levinas mentions how theodicy of trauma makes " god innocent". Do you find that the suffering in Kindred points toward the evil sinning person vs. an absent god. The human, the individuals of 1815 are released from guilt by Dana's refrain " they don;t know better". So when she is released from her violent jump and returned to present day is there a clear separation between the " conduct of our wicked ancestors ( Levinas 161)". And the racism of the present? Has the present of something theological made the black- white relations "today" more refined and ethical? Or is this the work of theodicy; " we have paid for our sins"?
Are there places in the book where we find evidence of redemption, work toward catharsis through re-living during Dana's work in the past? If so, does this redemptive action speak toward a reasoning, a "making sense" of the evil past existing to pave way for an "enlightened future". Does Butler go too far, does she dip into unethical territory in her treatment of " these people's suffering" and the appropriation of past trauma and genocide.
Also , I have a question about the following conversation between Kevin and Dana where Kevin tells Dana it is her own fear of dying that brings her back. It is pure belief that changes things. Does this belief really speak of something else, something deeper? Is Dana taking some kind of sci fi neo-spirit journey or is she engaged in some kind of working through of post-trauma, of her education of ancestral trauma? Or perhaps, finally, is this conversation just another plot spice, a fantastical and convenient , thin plot device written in to allow Butler's tale to exist ?
"I wouldn't dare act as if I didn't believe. After all when you vanish from from here you must go someplace" ( Butler 48)
" getting home may be simpler than you realize"..No-.I don't have any control at all"
" Getting home? Here?"
" Here. You may have more control over your returning than you think..You might...The point is you believe you are...You believed your life was in danger..my own death sends me home " ( Butler 50)
Unlike most of my fellow classmates, I really enjoyed Kindred. I thought that the story was well organized and engaging. While not very plausible, the constant question of when she was going to transport back in time kept me interested.
ReplyDeleteOne particular aspect of the story that I found intriguing was the constant change in Rufus and his father Tom Weylin. Each of the men showed both the domineering side of slavery and the human side of their personalities. For example, Tom Weylin sends the letter to Kevin because Rufus made the promise to Dana, yet he threatens to hit her if she doesn't understand her place.
I also really enjoyed the symbolism of her arm being stuck in the wall of her new home at the end of the story. Dana isn't complete without the past, yet she should be present in her current life.
I do understand some of the criticisms about lack of character and a deeper understanding, but overall I enjoyed Kindred.
While I enjoyed reading the book, I did however think that there were flaws in terms of representation. Because Dana did not grow up a slave and was not an actual slave, I do not think that the trauma of the slaves is part of her own trauma. We, of course, should not compare trauma, but it is important here to differentiate between Dana's individual trauma involving time travel and the collective trauma of slavery.
ReplyDeleteOn page 17, returning home after her first trip to the past, Dana reflects, saying: "maybe I'm just like a victim of robbery or rape or something--a victim who survives but who doesn't feel safe any more [...] I don't have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don't feel safe anymore." Here we begin to see how traumatizing it is for her to be thrust back and forth between past and present. I think this quote is important because it shows how, in fact, Dana's personal trauma is more related to the unannounced trips into the past than the traumas she views in the past. There is an important distinction between the trauma of African American slaves in the ante-bellum south and her own trauma of unexpected time-travel. I think that if Butler had identified this distinction more specifically and kept the trauma of the past in the past, this could have been a more successful and less problematic representation.
Everything that Dana experiences in the past is traumatic, but more in the sense that she is viewing trauma than in the sense that it is happening to her own life. She still has her life in the present (or the future). I think this is the other problem with Butler's representation. Because of this distinction, Dana experiences the trauma of slavery in an entirely different way than the actual slaves do.