Narratives of Resistance in Black Speculative Fiction Joshua Burnett
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2014 My Left Arm, Her Twin Blades: Narratives of Resistance in Black Speculative Fiction Joshua Burnett Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE! UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS! AND SCIENCES ! ! ! ! ! MY LEFT ARM, HER TWIN BLADES: NARRATIVES OF RESISTANCE IN BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION ! ! ! ! ! By! JOSHUA BURNETT! ! ! ! ! A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy! ! ! ! ! ! ! Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2014 © 2014 Joshua Burnett Joshua Burnett defended this on March 5, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: ! David Ikard Professor Directing Dissertation Maxine Jones University Representative ! Alisha Gaines Committee Member Candace Ward Committee Member ! ! ! The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ! !ii ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! This dissertation is dedicated to my wife Casey Yu, who makes me better in every way; to my children, Matthew Burnett, Lindsey Yu, and William Burnett, who make me laugh like nobody else in the world; to my committee members, who have helped me along; and to Jane Lazarre, whose mentoring and undergraduate courses on race, writing, and identity set me off on the intellectual path leading to this dissertation. !iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ! I would like to thank a number of people for their invaluable assistance, advice, feedback, and, above all, time during the process of writing this dissertation: The members of my doctoral committee, including Professor Alisha Gaines, Professor Candace Ward, Professor Maxine Jones, and, especially, my Chair, Professor David Ikard, for their intellectual acumen, for their generous willingness to help me through the process of writing this dissertation (and surviving graduate school generally), and for talking me down off the ledge more than once. Terry Rowden for his extensive feedback and assistance on the Samuel R. Delany chapter, in conjunction with the special issue of African American Review on Delany he is guest editing. Bénédicte Ledent and Daria Tunca, organizers of the What is Africa to Me Now? Conference. both through the conference itself and through the special issue of Research in African Literatures they are guest editing, they have provided me with extensive feedback and assistance with the Nnedi Okorafor chapter. My wife and fellow graduate student, Casey Yu, without whose support and understanding I could not possibly have gotten this far. For more than twelve years, we've been through everything together, and having her in my life makes me so much better in so many ways. Finally, Liz Polcha, Regina Bradley, Lisa Bolekaja, Shelah Woodruff, Karin Johnson- Butler, and Jenna Adler for their kindness taking the time to read and provide feedback on chapters from this dissertation. !iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................vi 1. INTRODUCTION: RECLAIMING THE PAST, REWRITING THE FUTURE: CONSIDERING BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION ...................................................................1 2. “MY LEFT ARM”: ALLIES, COMPLICITY, AND THE PROBLEM OF RESISTANCE IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S KINDRED ................................................................................................21 3. SECOND ELEVATION: THE HOPE FOR RACIAL UPLIFT IN COLSON WHITEHEAD’S THE INTUITIONIST ....................................................................................................................45 4. THE GREAT CHANGE AND THE GREAT BOOK: NNEDI OKORAFOR’S POSTCOLONIAL, POST-APOCALYPTIC AFRICA ..................................................................71 5. THE COLLAR AND THE SWORD: QUEER RESISTANCE IN SAMUEL R. DELANY’S TALES OF NEVÈRŸON .................................................................................................................91 6. CONCLUSION: BEAUTY, DEFIANCE, AND RESISTANCE .............................................117 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................130 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................134 ! ! ! ! ! !v ABSTRACT My Left Arm, Her Twin Blades: Narratives of Resistance in Black Speculative Fiction, explores contemporary (1979-2010) Black Speculative novels by four key writers in the genre, including Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, The Shadow Speaker and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and Tales of Nevèrÿon (the first volume of the four-part Return to Nevèrÿon series) by Samuel R. Delany. Using these five texts, I explore resistance to both everyday and political oppression, as well as to hegemonic racist, sexist, and homophobic ideology as a persistent theme within the field of Black Speculative Fiction. Not only are these five texts (and others in the genre) interested in resistance, they challenge and trouble our understanding of what resistance means. Central to all five is the question of resistance's potential (or lack thereof) for producing meaningful counterhegemonic change. What's more, they simultaneously pose and complicate new models for resistance and identity in the African American and Diasporic African cultural context, particularly queerness and sexuality as models for resistance. My Left Arm, Her Twin Blades explores and analyzes these critiques of and new models for resistance, and argues that these texts point toward a new conceptualization of black identity, which I am calling "Speculative Blackness." Speculative Blackness is a deessentialized vision of blackness (and broader racial identity) which nevertheless insists upon the constant interrogation of race and racial history as both a personal and political imperative. Furthermore, Speculative Blackness integrates queerness into blackness, locating non-heteronormative sexuality (be it same-sex attraction, interracial coupling, nontraditional forms of polygamy, BDSM, or radically equitable heterosexuality) as a key site for black resistance to oppression. Speculative Blackness draws on !vi Foucauldian conceptualizations of of sexuality and identity as culturally constructed categories that relate and respond to power relationships in complicated ways. While scholastic engagement with Black Speculative Fiction is hardly new, most existing criticism that treats the field as a whole has tended to be historical in scope, establishing the genre through unearthing its often neglected history. While this focus has been useful in establishing a Black Speculative canon and dispelling notions of African American Literature and Speculative Fiction as mutually exclusive categories, insufficient critical attention has been paid to mapping out the tropes and cultural constructions that distinguish Black Speculative Fiction from mainstream/white Speculative Fiction, as well as to theorizing how these tropes and contributions play out across the genre. With the intent of addressing these difficulties, my dissertation utilizes an intersectional approach to Black Speculative Fiction's unique formulations of black identity with particular attention to exploring how gender and queerness inform diverse experiences of racialized subjectivity and resistance strategies. ! ! !vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: RECLAIMING THE PAST, REWRITING THE FUTURE: CONSIDERING BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION ! "This I learned from Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany's science fiction: any and all truth is a tale I am telling myself" - Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid ! "There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption" - Colson Whitehead ! This dissertation explores five contemporary (1979-2010) Black Speculative novels by four key writers in the genre, including Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, The Shadow Speaker and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and Tales of Nevèrÿon (the first volume of the four-part Return to Nevèrÿon series) by Samuel R. Delany. Using these five texts, I explore resistance to both everyday and political oppression, as well as to hegemonic racist, sexist, and homophobic ideology as a persistent theme within the genre of Black Speculative Fiction. Not only are these five texts (and other Black Speculative texts) interested in resistance, they challenge and trouble our understanding of what resistance means. Central to all five is the question of resistance's potential (or lack thereof) for producing meaningful counterhegemonic change. What's more, they simultaneously pose and complicate new models for resistance and identity in the African American and Diasporic African cultural !1 context. I explore and analyze these critiques of resistance and new models for resistance, and argue that these texts point toward a new conceptualization of black identity, which I am calling Speculative Blackness. While scholastic engagement with Black Speculative Fiction is hardly new, most existing criticism that treats the field as a whole has tended to be historical in scope, establishing the genre through unearthing its long but often neglected history.