"All That You Touch You Change": Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Patricia Melzer, Femspec Issue 3.2

By Patricia Melzer

This analysis examines two literary narratives by Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) that elucidate the intersection of three fields in Western thought: the notion of utopia, feminist politics and theory, and feminist science fiction. This intersection is crucial for feminists in that it provides tools for negotiating difference within feminist politics. I lay out the dynamics within Octavia Butler’s feminist utopian/dystopian writing that define her concept of “utopia” as both a utopian desire and a longing to transform. These allow her to theorize about future social relations and inform the strategies for feminist politics that she develops.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Femspec Journal
• Release date: Dec 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311833495

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FEMSPEC

Volume 3.2 (2002)

an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to challenging gender through science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore and other supernatural genres

Femspec V3.2

Copyright © 2002 by Batya Weinbaum. All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

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Femspec: All that you touch you change: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

Patricia Melzer, Temple University

This analysis examines two literary narratives by Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) that elucidate the intersection of three fields in Western thought: the notion of utopia, feminist politics and theory, and feminist science fiction. This intersection is crucial for feminists in that it provides tools for negotiating difference within feminist politics. I lay out the dynamics within Octavia Butler’s feminist utopian/dystopian writing that define her concept of utopia as both a utopian desire and a longing to transform. These allow her to theorize about future social relations and inform the strategies for feminist politics that she develops.

Feminist debates on difference address the complex ways in which women are positioned in relations to power based on race, class, and sexual difference. Within these debates, many postmodern feminist theories reject the essentialist notion of woman as an identity and instead emphasize the interrelated construction of gender and other social categories, such as race and class.¹ Butler’s utopian writing contributes to the deconstruction of difference as the other to a stable identity. Here difference is not the opposite component of identity, but becomes a part of the self. While others have discussed Butler’s treatment of difference mainly in terms of her miscegenation between species (an approach Donna Haraway introduced in Primate Visions), I explore how difference in her narratives relates to notions of utopia. At the center of Butler’s utopian desire lies the concept of change that adds an element of process to the feminist discourse on difference. It not only places categories of difference into a historical context, but also connects them with time. This temporal aspect that complicates absolute concepts of identity/subjectivity based on race, class, and gender, I believe, is a valuable contribution to the feminist debate on how to negotiate difference politically and theoretically.

UTOPIA, FEMINIST POLITICS, AND SCIENCE FICTION

The concept of the ideal community - nation, city, and/or village - is central to Western thought, and finds its most direct expression in fiction. Defined by Ernst Bloch as the principle of hope,² the human urge to transform and re-create living environments is the foundation of most politics, including feminist. It constitutes also the most challenging component in feminist theories, in which the