Octavia Butler's Kindred might not appear as startlingly postmodernist as other novels we've read (Mumbo Jumbo, for example) but her writing presents a powerful challenge to the kind of unilateral, hegemonic narrative that postmodern texts sought to deconstruct.
The story unfolds on a Maryland plantation decades before emancipation, grounding Dana's experience in a time when slavery would have felt virtually inescapeable. Dana realizes that the rift between her time and Rufus' time is more than temporal or spatial, but the two environments she's pulled between demonstrate completely different assumptions about humanity. She and Kevin first seek to understand their new environment through their history books from back home, which provide essential information about past laws and regulations. However, the knowledge found in history books can't capture the real experience of living as a slave on Weylin's plantation. Recounting facts about such a brutal era is worthwhile to help future readers understand their past, but historical accounts could never hope to explain events from a humanistic perspective.
Kindred is a novel about slavery and the human capacity for brutality, though Butler's narrative centers around Dana and her heroic struggle to survive. Her work becomes a story about family, and readers learn dozens of other family stories through Dana's eyes. Each family's history could be a novel in of itself: imagine a novel from Sarah's perspective, or one about Luke's experiences in the deep south. Butler's writing pushes against narrative singularity by exploring a web of profound family stories shaped by the horrors of slavery. Rather than attempting to "describe slavery" in a narrowly historical sense, Butler's text uses a multiplicity of family histories to develop a multifaceted view of the era.
Additionally, Butler infuses her novel with metafictional elements that confuse the relationships between author, text, and reader. The story begins while Dana and Kevin are reshelving their books, which evokes the idea that history can't ever be forgotten or "shelved" away. Once pulled back to Maryland, Dana and Kevin realize that they occupy a space between observer and actor. This confusing relationship destroys the familiar trope where characters are unknowing actors and readers are observers. How does the concept of character change when readers know that the characters play both roles simultaneously? Finally, Dana casually mentions that she's tried writing this story before and she plans to fully record her experiences when she's home in California. Kindred is no longer a spontaneous, organic object, but a text constructed for a purpose. These metafictional elements foreground the concept that all narratives are human-made, artificial, produced with subjective information.
Butler's writing is amazing. I agree, she really humanizes the way you "describe" slavery. You're not reading about slaves anymore, but about Carrie and Nigel and Sarah. Butler makes you remember that they weren't just slaves, they were people with families.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the basic “time travel” plot device, I’ve been having trouble seeing how Kindred really fits the mold of a post-modernist book, especially in comparison to some of the craziness of Mumbo Jumbo or Slaughterhouse 5. It’s structured for a fairly mainstream audience, and the plot follows a much more traditional path, meant to engage the reader. However, your post makes things a little clearer, and I like the argument that the roleplaying aspects of this story help illuminate the accepted dynamic between unconscious “character-actors” and conscious “reader-audiences.” Dana and Kevin’s need to play roles that are different from what we, the reader, accept as their “real” personalities, helps draw attention to the fact that both of these “roles” they play, 19th or 20th century, are all equal fictions. That’s a cool thought.
ReplyDeleteI find the idea that "history cannot be shelved" turning into a book where history is all too real, very intriguing. I love the way Butler shows the extremely different viewpoints of the Kevin and Dana during the 19th century. I feel the whole reframing of the history, as present as an idea is quite postmodernist, further more the contrast between Kevin and Dana only extenuates that. It just makes you question everything a little bit more, and for me, that made me not want to put the book down.
ReplyDeleteButler's postmodernism is subtle, but definitely present, as you pointed out. I agree that Butler is not just giving the readers a narrative of slavery in general, but she gives each person a backstory and character development. This brand of multiplicity makes Butler that much more postmodern, as well as the distortion between "actor" and "observer." I did not even think about the metafictional elements of the story (in terms of Dana writing her own story), so it was also very interesting to read about that.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really insightful post! Like Elizabeth, I'd had a much harder time seeing the postmodernism in Kindred compared to the other novels we've read this semester, given the much more conventional narration especially, but this really pulls out all of the little elements that make the novel postmodern. I also wonder if, if we'd read the novel when it was published, it would more clearly appear to be post-modern in nature, if some things we accept as common in stories now were much more radical at the time than we are capable of recognizing.
ReplyDeleteWow you're right, I also found it hard to figure out what was postmodern about the novel at first, but I do think that the concept of time travel actually is very post-modern, the sense that time isn't necessarily linear. But you're last point is really important and I'm gonna think about it for a while, but this idea that postmodernism is questioning the "organic" nature of stories. What is organic, and what is constructed? How does it change the stories that we tell?
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