"Your Children Will Know Us, You Never Will": The Pessimistic Utopia of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy

* For three decades, Octavia Butler's writing has carried on a sustained conversation with questions of heredity and genetics, deploying unsettling visions of biological determinism, especially in regard to race and sex. In 1992 Nobel prize winner Walter Gilbert announced that "one will be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Extrapolation 2010-09, Vol.51 (3), p.414-430
Main Author: Stickgold-Sarah, Jessie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African American literature
Alcoholism
American literature
Butler, Octavia E
Children
Conversation
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Genetic engineering
Genetics
Literary criticism
Novels
Parenting
Science fiction & fantasy
Sexuality
Utopias
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Summary:* For three decades, Octavia Butler's writing has carried on a sustained conversation with questions of heredity and genetics, deploying unsettling visions of biological determinism, especially in regard to race and sex. In 1992 Nobel prize winner Walter Gilbert announced that "one will be able to pull a CD out of one's pocket and say, 'Here is a human being; it's me! '" (qtd. in Keller 6) Influenced by the totalizing discursive presentation of DNA as the new basis of heredity, today's writers imagine genetics as being able to overwhelm environmental or behavioral influences, and speculation about genes for homosexuality, alcoholism and violence is commonplace.2 As Judith Roof observes, "DNA has always stood for much more than what it is" (7) because the many analogies used to describe it bring their own baggage of cultural meaning and "encourage a hyperbolic sense of agency and control" (3).
ISSN:0014-5483
2047-7708
DOI:10.3828/extr.2010.51.3.6