Posthuman appreciation of life in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood

This article applies a critical posthuman perspective to investigating how – in the context of symbiotic relations defined by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis – Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood outlines and explores issues relating to enslavement and rape. The universe created by Butler invites such an analysis as the writer discusses the issues in relation to both human and non-human persons as well as looking at new evolutionary opportunities offered by merging with an alien civilization. This theoretical framework provides a powerful research tool since critical posthumanism seeks to embrace difference and topple all hierarchies which stifle human potential. I attempt to reach this goal by tracing and exposing human anxieties and phobias transpiring in Butler’s novel. It is my contention that such unfounded phobias hinder human development and lead to uncalled-for conflicts, which – as the novel shows – have already led humanity to self-annihilation

Aesthetics · Art · Biology · Brood · Literature · Posthuman · Zoology · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Themes in Literature Analysis · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

• 'The Human Contradiction'

  Jeffrey Allen Tucker•The Yearbook of English Studies•2007

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• Symbiotic Bodies and Evolutionary Tropes in the Work of Octavia Butler

  Maria Aline Ferreira, Maria A G V Ferreira•Science Fiction Studies•2010

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• Arboreal dialogics

  Andrew Plisner•African Identities•2009

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• Do Androids Pulverize Tiger Bones to Use as Aphrodisiacs

  Shelley A Cole, Simon A Cole•Social Text•1995

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• A Cyborg Manifesto

  Open Access•Neil Badmington, Donna J Haraway•Posthumanism•2000

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