Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction
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Patrycja Kurjatto-Renard
Abstract
This essay analyzes the representation of illness in Seed to Harvest, African American Octavia Butler’s tetralogy of speculative fiction published between 1976 and 1984, particularly its third volume, which dwells on the onset of a mysterious and highly contagious disease. An extraterrestrial virus effectively turns human beings into aliens by quickly modifying their bodily characteristics, but its full effect can only be measured in the descendants of the infected. Seed to Harvest introduces and juxtaposes two populations: the Clayarks, the offspring of those infected by the virus, and the Patternists, endowed with extraordinary mind powers. At various points in the cycle, both populations are shown as outcasts and their predicament as a curse that isolates them from the larger society. Eventually, the modifications of the human body and mind give rise to a real shift of power on the planet, but they are shown to occur insidiously among the poor and the disinherited in our day and in our past. The ‘dangerous classes’ - the uncontrollable, filthy, diseased, unbounded, in some cases unable to work for their own sustenance - are depicted as already living in our midst. This chapter explores changes in social status, physical appearance, and bodily appetites of the diseased. It analyzes how the illness fits in with the depicted world’s social issues, becoming one of the master illnesses, expressing “a sense of dissatisfaction with the society as such” (Susan Sontag 1978).
Abstract
This essay analyzes the representation of illness in Seed to Harvest, African American Octavia Butler’s tetralogy of speculative fiction published between 1976 and 1984, particularly its third volume, which dwells on the onset of a mysterious and highly contagious disease. An extraterrestrial virus effectively turns human beings into aliens by quickly modifying their bodily characteristics, but its full effect can only be measured in the descendants of the infected. Seed to Harvest introduces and juxtaposes two populations: the Clayarks, the offspring of those infected by the virus, and the Patternists, endowed with extraordinary mind powers. At various points in the cycle, both populations are shown as outcasts and their predicament as a curse that isolates them from the larger society. Eventually, the modifications of the human body and mind give rise to a real shift of power on the planet, but they are shown to occur insidiously among the poor and the disinherited in our day and in our past. The ‘dangerous classes’ - the uncontrollable, filthy, diseased, unbounded, in some cases unable to work for their own sustenance - are depicted as already living in our midst. This chapter explores changes in social status, physical appearance, and bodily appetites of the diseased. It analyzes how the illness fits in with the depicted world’s social issues, becoming one of the master illnesses, expressing “a sense of dissatisfaction with the society as such” (Susan Sontag 1978).
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
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Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
- Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
- “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
- The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
- Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
- Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
-
Disease: Pathologizing the Other
- Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
- De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
- Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
- Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
- African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
-
Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
- Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
- Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
- Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
- Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
- Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
- Notes on Contributors 351
- Index 355
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
-
Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
- Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
- “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
- The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
- Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
- Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
-
Disease: Pathologizing the Other
- Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
- De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
- Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
- Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
- African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
-
Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
- Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
- Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
- Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
- Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
- Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
- Notes on Contributors 351
- Index 355
