"Octavia E. Butler’s Speculative Fiction: Trans(per)forming Embodied Narrative"

In this paper, I will focus on the intersections of mythogenetic themes in the speculative fiction of Octavia E. Butler and Jung’s understanding of individual healing and collective transformation. As an African American female writer of speculative fiction, Butler uses narrative and writing as reparative sites of healing and possibility, and re-imagining individual personal experiences within history, culture, and society. Butler’s works exemplify the postmodern, multicultural expressions of the birthing of new myths that are simultaneously trans(per)formative, embodied, and regenerative. Themes in her work have to do with tales of survival, power, (sometimes literally) conceiving the other, integrating the shadow, transcendence, and the human body as a site of conflict. Butler excels in re-structuring popular representations of individuals within society as a mode for achieving more equitable personal and collective social relations. She does this by depicting multicultural characters, female protagonists, and imagining ruptured landscapes that are both alien and recognizable. She addresses issues of race, wealth, poverty, social ills, and xenophobia by embracing miscegenation as a positive and potentially transformative process. The hallmark of speculative fiction is that it delves into the question “what if” and proceeds to respond with the answer of “how?” This brings about not only

Ayana Harris

individual awareness but also a process of bringing consciousness to collective needs, voices from the margins, and possibilities for transformation. Manifestations of mythogenesis like Butler’s are crucial ways of mapping shifts in awareness and situating the individual within larger historical, cultural, and social contexts. These forms of narrative embodiment demonstrate ways to occupy transitional space, (re)vision difficult experiences, engage community, and strive to embody multiple and possible realities. Lastly, Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction can bridge the gap between theory and practice and reorient Jungian theory about the individual and the social calling attention to the social and cultural dynamics through which people see themselves as social actors.