• The critique of present-day hierarchies
  In multiple interviews and essays, Butler explained her view of humanity as inherently flawed by an innate tendency towards hierarchical thinking which leads to intolerance, violence and, if not checked, the ultimate destruction of our species.[5][8][37]
  
  "Simple peck-order bullying", she wrote in her essay "A World without Racism",[38] "is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world." Her stories, then, often replay humanity's domination of the weak by the strong as a type of parasitism.[37] These "others", whether aliens, vampires, superhuman, or slave masters, find themselves defied by a protagonist who embodies difference, diversity, and change, so that, as John R. Pfeiffer notes, "[i ]n one sense [Butler's] fables are trials of solutions to the self-destructive condition in which she finds mankind."[8]
  
  
• The remaking of the human
  In his essay on the sociobiological backgrounds of Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, J. Adam Johns describes how Butler's narratives counteract the death drive behind the hierarchical impulse with an innate love of life (biophilia), particularly different, strange life.[39] Specifically, Butler's stories feature gene manipulation, interbreeding, miscegenation, symbiosis, mutation, alien contact, rape, contamination, and other forms of hybridity as the means to correct the sociobiological causes of hierarchical violence.[40] As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai note, "[ i]n [Butler's] narratives the undoing of the human body is both literal and metaphorical, for it signifies the profound changes necessary to shape a world not organized by hierarchical violence."[41] The evolutionary maturity achieved by the bioengineered hybrid protagonist at the end of the story, then, signals the possible evolution of the dominant community in terms of tolerance, acceptance of diversity, and a desire to wield power responsibly.[37]
  
  
• The survivor as hero
  Butler's protagonists are disenfranchised individuals who endure, compromise, and embrace radical change in order to survive. As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai note, her stories focus on minority characters whose historical background makes them already intimate with brutal violation and exploitation, and therefore the need to compromise to survive.[41] Even when endowed with extra abilities, these characters are forced to experience unprecedented physical, mental, and emotional distress and exclusion to ensure a minimal degree of agency and to prevent humanity from achieving self-destruction.[5][14] In many stories, their acts of courage become acts of understanding, and in some cases, love, as they reach a crucial compromise with those in power.[37] Ultimately, Butler's focus on disenfranchised characters serves to illustrate both the historical exploitation of minorities and how the resolve of one such exploited individual may bring on critical change.[5]
  
  
• The creation of alternative communities
  Butler's stories feature mixed communities founded by African protagonists and populated by diverse, if similar-minded individuals. Members may be humans of African, European, or Asian descent, extraterrestrial (such as the N'Tlic in Bloodchild), from a different species (such as the vampiric Ina in Fledgling), and cross-species (such as the human-Oankali Akin and Jodahs in the Xenogenesis trilogy). In some stories, the community's hybridity results in a flexible view of sexuality and gender (for instance, the polyamorous extended families in Fledgling). Thus, Butler creates bonds between groups that are generally considered to be separate and unrelated, and suggests hybridity as "the potential root of good family and blessed community life".[41] Many of her books feature father figures as wanderers and not tied to family units, perhaps due to her growing up without a father. Doro in 'Mind of my Mind' and the alien/human bred males in the Xenogenesis Trilogy for example. They also often feature the subservient protagonist, being used for breeding plans, planning and finally overcoming the authority figures.
  
  
• Relationship to Afrofuturism
  Charlie Rose: "What then is central to what you want to say about race?"
  
  Butler: "Do I want to say something central about race? Aside from, 'Hey we're here!'?"
  
  --From Butler's interview on Charlie Rose. Thursday, June 1, 2000.[42]
  Author Octavia E. Butler is known for blending science fiction with African American spiritualism.[43]
  
  Butler's work has been associated with the genre of Afrofuturism,[44] a term coined by Mark Dery to describe "speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture".[45] Some critics, however, have noted that while Butler's protagonists are of African descent, the communities they create are multi-ethnic and, sometimes, multi-species. As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai explain in their 2010 memorial to Butler, while keeping "an afro-centric sensibility at the core of narratives", her "insistence on hybridity beyond the point of discomfort" and grim themes deny both the ethnocentric escapism of afrofuturism and the sanitized perspective of white-dominated liberal pluralism.[41]
  
  Wild Seed, of the Patternist series, is considered to particularly fit ideas of Afrofuturist thematic concerns, as the narrative of two immortal Africans Doro and Anyanwu features science fiction technologies and an alternate anti-colonialist history of seventeenth century America.[46][47]
  

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jul 3, 2022