Deborah Bailin

dbailin@umd.edu

MLA 2009

Proposal for “Postapocalyptic Utopias and Dystopias”

“Homo Ethicalis”:

Evolution as Apocalypse in Bernard Malamud’s God’s Grace

&nbs= p; Whether one classifies Bernard Malamud’s postapocalyptic final novel, God&= #8217;s Grace (1982), as science fiction, philosophical speculation, or naturalistic fantasy, it is hardly the first work to explore evolutionary themes. Since The Origin of Species was published in 1859, no other scientific theory—in its political, social, and spiritual implication= s—has generated so much controversy as has Darwin’s theory of evolution. Earlier representations that examine these implication= s, notably fiction from the classic phase of literary naturalism, have prompted criticism that questions the political motives, historical roots, and faulty premises behind the ideological distortions of Social Darwinism. Malamud’s novel, however, reflecting a century of cultural controvers= y, explores evolutionary themes with a keener consciousness of the arguably ap= ocalyptic challenges to Western humanism raised by a theory that demonstrates common human/animal ancestry and raises the possibility of a posthuman future.

&nbs= p; Given its complex, intertextual design, God’s Grace deserves more attention than it has received, for, with but few exceptions, criticism has considered its engagement with the Old and New Testaments but has avoided i= ts evolutionary elements. Yet, questions of human identity, meaning, and purpo= se directly linked to the cultural impact of Darwin’s ideas are at the h= eart of this novel that begins with the self-destruction of the human species by nuclear war and quickly progresses to the development of a dystopian, multi-species primate society led—and ultimately destroyed—by t= he last remaining human being. What does it mean, M= alamud seems to inquire, to be an animal that can ask the question: “What do= es it mean to be an animal?” What responsibilities does the knowledge of “animality” bring for a species that has learned to create itself through language and = culture and to destroy itself through technology? And with what critical tools can = we begin to approach this novel’s complexities, given both the potential= ly restrictive influence of cultural humanism on our own discipline and postmodernist skepticism towards scientific discourse?

&nbs= p; Drawing upon both Darwin and Derrida, I will examine the primate dystopia at the ce= nter of God’s Grace—a society that looks both backward and forward on many levels—as a beast fable for our time. The novel, I wi= ll argue, envisions the knowledge of evolution as cultural apocalypse.

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Adam Johns, University of Pittsburgh, (jajst34@pitt.edu)

Abstract for “Postapocalyptic Utopias and Dystopias?”

<= /i>

Bios as Eschatos: Octavia Butler’s Darwinian Utopia

        &= nbsp;   To begin, I want to briefly reflect on the genealogy of “apocalypse̶= 1;: the word refers not

principally to destruction, but to the revelation of the divine order. The two, of course, often go

hand in = hand, in science fiction as well as in the Bible: the revelation of divine purpos= e in the

wake of widespread destruction characterizes such works as Canticle for Leibowitz and the

Philip K. Dick / Roger Zelazny collaboration Deus Irae.

        &= nbsp;   A post-apocalyptic utopia or dystopia, then, would literally require only the creation of a

utopia or dystopia in response to a divine revelation. Yet, what does divine revelati= on even mean

to sec= ular intellectuals and science fiction writers? For Darko Suvin, science fiction= is defined

by the hegemony of a novum whic= h is validated by cognitive logic: science fiction must make
sense, no= t by the precise details of a given science, but by scientific reasoning, unders= tood as a

coherent who= le.

        &= nbsp;   I am interested in the confluence of “postapocalyptic” in the ordinary sense (post

destruction) an= d the original sense (post divine revelation), with the additional demand that an= y

contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction should adhere broadly to scientific principles. Is there any

postapocalyptic dis= /utopia which is simultaneously reasonable and divine?

        &= nbsp;   Octavia Butler’s Parable nove= ls fit this definition perfectly. They are concerned with a

new div= ine revelation, summed up in the simple line “God is Change,” a revelation which comes

to Lau= ren Olamina amidst the disintegration of the Western world. Yet this “divine” revelation

is pur= ely immanent: life is life, death is death, and God literally is change: God is neither kind

nor cru= el, neither attentive nor vengeful. God is change itself.

        &= nbsp;   The centrality of change to life - indeed, the insight that life is nothing oth= er than

perpetual cha= nge - is an insight ultimately rooted in Darwin, although it also parallels the work of thinkers from Bergson to Deleuze. Butler takes a brutal, burely Darwinian world, in wh= ich Los Angeles liter= ally struggles with cannibalism and, rather than imposing a transcendental divine revelation upon it, articulates an immanent divine revelation within it. The insight that “God is Change,” in an environme= nt in which the principal form taken by “change” is post-apocalyptic struggle implies that the Darwinian struggle for survival is itself the immanetized eschaton. The full significance of Butler’s vision, I will argue, is= not in the details of her postapocalyptic (in the conventional sense) world; it= is in the paradigm shift by which the perpetual flux from which the divine was supposed to shelter us becomes the divine. I will end by arguing that the difficulties Butler had writing the projected third book in the Parable seri= es may well have been theoretical: she could not, or would not, pursue the idea of= a utopia built on the premise that the Darwinian struggle is divinity itself;= I will further propose that a turn to the thought of Henri Bergson can help us conceive of this utopia as being a utopia in the ordinary sense - an ideal society not strictly from an internal point of view, but from an external o= ne as well.

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Rebekah Sheld= on

Department of English

City University of New York Graduate Center

rebekah.c.she= ldon@gmail.com

Abstract for “Middle Apocalypse”

This essay begins with the observation that recent post-apocalyptic representations no longer feature either dystopian or utop= ian societies, but instead project an ambivalent and discomfiting post-apocalyp= tic interminability, which I am calling “middle apocalypse.” Unlike Joanna Russ’s Whileaway or Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead, fully elaborated future societies shaped by already-completed disasters, contemporary post-apocalypses are set in the prolonged now of catastrophe. Through an investigation of one such middle apocalypse, Cormac McCarthyR= 17;s The Road (2006), I read this new mutation in the post-apocalyptic tradition as in dialogue with, and as an historical counterpart to, re-conceptualizations of ecology in the wake of postmodernism.

Postmodernism has often been defined by its disinteres= t in the apocalyptic telos, insisting instead on seeing itself as the terminal address of history, with no need for special mandate or justification beyond its own success. In Fredric Jameson’s formulation, postmodernism̵= 7;s sense of an ending (of nature, for instance) signals the domination and incorporation of challenges to subsumptive capitalism. As has been particul= arly evident lately, the subsumption of everyday life into the decentralized flo= ws of late capitalism has not resulted in either the end of history or the end= of nature. Instead, its turbulence has engendered a reencounter with non-human agency. In locating the middle apocalypse as a counterpart to the resurgenc= e of interest in ecology, I claim that these narratives reflect renewed desire f= or, but also profound anxiety about, apocalyptic revelation and the consolation= of human distinctiveness it promises.

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Kinitra D. Brooks, Ph.D.
COLFA Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of English
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, Texas 78249-0652
kinitra.brooks@utsa.edu

Severing the Heads of Decrepit Stereotypes: The Black Superwoman in the Land of Zombies

Hortense Spillers insists that black female flesh is b= oth unprotected and ungendered in her famously complex article, “MamaR= 17;s Baby, Papa’s Maybe.” The purpose of this paper is twofold; the first is to connect Spillers’ insistence with the myth/stereotype of the “Black Sup= erwoman” using the writings of Hazel V. Carby and Michele Wallace. The second purpose demonstrates how these ideas are reinforced or complicated in contemporary dystopian fantastical horror, specifically those featuring zombies. This pa= per explores the portrayal of Michonne, the main black female character in Robe= rt Kirkman’s sprawling comic epic, The Walking Dead. I analyze the depiction of Michonne’s horrific rape by The Governor and how it reinforces centuries-old mischaracterizations of black female flesh by acti= vely stripping her of her humanity and femininity. I then juxtapose Michonne’s problematic representation against that of Selena, the female protagonist in director Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. I demonstrate how Boyle problematizes black female stereotypes by complicating the character of Selena and allowing her to become a fully realized, complex protagonist. I place both texts within the black feminist framework, whose basic tenets insist that a unique form of oppression occurs when the hegemony mixes the social constructions of race, gender, and class= . As each form of oppression builds upon and complicates the other. I end my pap= er with a look forward to the growing number of black women writing in the hor= ror fantasy genre and the need for their voices to be heard in other forms of t= ext, including comic books, graphic novels, and film.