Change

One cannot truly understand another until one walks a mile in another's shoes. As much as writing that cliche makes me want to vomit - and I apologize for using it - the idea was so clearly present in Dawn that I felt obliged to do so. In the world of Dawn, one (human) cannot understand or feel a part of the Oankali until she is part Oankali - meaning that she carries genetic traits that are distinctly Oankali. Lilith cannot avoid feeling as though she is an experiment, a pet, and the Oankali's intent to "trade" with humans furthers this dynamic. One cannot feel as though he is being treated fairly, humanely, as long as such a dynamic exists. Spillers comments in her analysis of the slave trade in America:

This profitable "atomizing" of the captive body provides another angle on the divided flesh: we lose any hint or suggestion of a dimension of ethics, of relatedness between human personality and its anatomical features, between one human personality and another, between human personality and cultural institutions. To that extent, the procedures adopted for the captive flesh demarcate a total objectification, as the entire captive community becomes a living laboratory.

The tension between humans and Oankali creates an interesting perspective for the reader. It is apparent that at the beginning of the novel, we readers are human, as we are encouraged to follow Lilith's more selfish, humanistic inclinations:

"She shifted suddenly from the subject of his sleeping to her own" (16).

"Lilith followed that thought to its obvious conclusion. 'I'm twenty-six'" (23).

Lilith's trail of thought continually, and perhaps naturally, leads her back to herself, relating every idea to her own existence. Such is the life of a human.

As Lilith grows closer to the Oankali, eventually to the point of engaging in sexual acts and sharing offspring, our perspective as readers seems to become less and less human. We are, however, reminded that our perspective cannot complete the transformation to Oankali. Just as Kahguyaht says, "Your children will know us, Lilith. You never will." We will be human. That much will remain constant.

On the film Alien:

Aliens are survivors. That seemed significant to me. Anyone have thoughts?

Otherness and Captivity

Earlier, while discussing Neuromancer and Blade Runner, the idea of "otherness" came up. This week's reading echoes and expands upon this idea. In human history, as discussed by Spiller, African slaves were the captive other while white slave owners were society. Dawn contrasts with this familiar story by turning the surviving remnant of humanity into the captive other. Whereas in other science fiction, including Blade Runner, machines replace race as the other that defines society, Octavia Butler imagines a world where we are all put in the position of the helpless slave. Alien provides a similar, though less extreme commentary on captivity. In the movie, the human crew are caught by the alien. While we don't know the alien's thoughts or motivation, the crew's actions are nonetheless determined by the necessity to survive the alien's control of the ship.

Dawn tells the story of Lilith, a woman who finds herself Awoken by aliens with a job for her. The Oankali want to use her to further their plan to change themselves and humanity through genetic engineering. However, this story is interesting because of how closely it echoes the slave narratives discussed in Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe. Lilith starts out frightened and ignorant of all that surrounds her and only slowly regains control of her emotions as she acclimates to the new world. Similarly, Africans experienced a similar period of confusion and isolation due to language barriers during the Middle Passage. Later, once Lilith has become used to her new reality, she is put to work by her captors. Although she does not want to help them in their plot to change her species, Lilith doesn't truly have a choice. Such forced labor is an obvious similarity to slavery. Spillers also mentions how "diseased, damaged, and disabled" slaves were used in medical experiments. In Dawn, humans were only saved from their nuclear war because of their potential value as medical research. Also, I found it eerily similar how the Oankali spoke of being attracted to humans and how Spillers said, "the captive body becomes the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality." Through their absolute control over the humans, the Oankali became slave owners, even as they used euphemisms such as trading and sharing. Because Dawn is constructed so that the reader will sympathize with Lilith, the reader takes the position of a slave, which for most modern readers will be an uncomfortable and disorienting. It causes the reader to imagine being a slave in both the futuristic setting and the historical.

Alien operates similarly, causing discomfort by making the main character helpless. We don't like to imagine situations where we lose control. The fear inherent in being prey to a greater hunter is something to be avoided at all costs. However, when forced to examine such a situation, the automatic response is to rationalize one's action and imagine that one would make better choices than the characters in the movie. Rather than really thinking about being helpless and facing that primal fear, I found my train of thought gravitating to more comfortable topics, such as how such complete powerlessness could have been avoided. Humans love power. Striving for control defines a large part of the human experience. When all hope for power is removed, we become very uncomfortable, both because of the idea's inherent unpleasantness and because it reminds us of what we have done to others to maintain our own illusion of power.

No sex please, I'm human

Throughout Octavia Butler’s Dawn, I was always wondering if there wasn’t some way that humans and the Oankali could come to a compromise that benefited both peoples. However, it soon becomes apparent that everything about the relationship between them, from basic physical differences to the abhorrent but necessary act of sex between humans and ooloi, is leading them toward inevitable conflict.

Lilith’s fear of the aliens is overwhelming at first. However, while this physical revulsion never quite goes away, we do see a remarkable progression in Lilith from complete revulsion to the willingness to partake in what could only be described as a sexual experience with these aliens. There seems to be some hope for a peaceful union between the two races. For example, at the beginning, she was unable even to touch the tentacles, yet by the middle of the book she was unfazed by Nikanj’s caresses - “[it] touched her face and burrowed into her hair with its tentacles”, and by the end of the book she was “perversely eager for what it could give her”.

Lilith isn’t the only one who experiences this change. People like Curt, who initally could not even face the ooloi without being drugged, willingly take part in this sexual experience with their Ooloi mates. However, eventually, the humans attempt to escape, and Curt among others try to kill the ooloi. Why is that?

One might argue that the what the Oankali are offering something good to the humans. For example, after this genetic “trade”, Nikanj promises that Lilith’s children will be able to “regrow a limb”. It’s a much more mutualistic relationship compared to the violent parasitic relationship exhibited in the film Alien, where the only thing awaiting a human who served as a host for an alien young was a violent death. Shouldn’t the reaction of the humans be different in Dawn, as opposed to in Alien? Why do both approaches, one violent and parasitic, the other supposedly benevolent and mutualistic, meet with revulsion and violence from humans?

The reason would be that so many facets of the Oankali approach to creating this harmonious trade between themselves and the humans were wrong. For one, there are the basic differences between the two species that can never, ever be surmounted. This is seen in Lilith’s need to speak to another human - “only another human could reassure her, or at least understand her fear”. Even the Oankali, who are themselves advocating the joining and genetic “trade” between the humans and Oankali, tell Lilith “Your children will know us....you never will”. That, obviously, because Lilith’s children will be Oankali, and as it is repeated time and again in this book, no amount of time spent together can quite take the place of actual racial commonality.

The second aspect would be control. How could humans ever take on the role of an animal, modified and reared at the whim of an alien overlord? When Lilith ruefully reflects that the way the Oankali were rearing and taking care of their captive humans’ immune systems was similar to the way “[humans] used to treat animals”, we see a recipe for disaster. The humans may have been told that they were participants in a “trade” but that implies equality, and the way their bodies were tampered with, for example their inability to conceive without an Oankali, definitely had more in common with slavery. To borrow a phrase from Hortense Spiller, the humans were like captives, their bodies embodying “sheer physical powerlessness”. Frighteningly, the Oankali seemed to believe it was totally within their rights to “fix” these shortcomings. From that moment, you realise that Lilith will never go along with the Oankali plan willingly. Right till the end, even after she faced the realization that she would “never again have a chance to be one of [the humans]”, she still harbored plans to teach a new batch of humans how to run, and how to escape the Oankali. Even an existence marred by suspicion from her own kind was preferable to a life whose path was dictated by aliens who clearly understood nothing about the human need to be in control of his or her own destiny.

The third would be the failure of the sexual aspect of the relationship between an Ooloi and its male and female human counterparts, and this is intrinsically related to the basic racial differences discussed above. Sex was necessary to the trade, but it is also a sacred and important part of every human’s identity. Even if humans could one learn to accept the Oankali from a distance, their expectation that humans would willingly make inter-special intimacy a norm, was naive. Toying with someone’s sexuality is probably one of the most humiliating things that could possibly be done to a person. In Peter’s mind, when he realised he had been having sex with an alien, he felt that his “humanity had been profaned. His manhood had been taken away”. On top of the fact that they were being given pleasure by an alien, we see very often that characters such as Paul Titus and Joseph perceive incorrectly that the Ooloi are male. So in Peter’s mind, and certainly in many of the other men’s minds (who had already been shown to be heterosexual), they were now also facing the troubling fact that they had committed a homosexual act.

It certainly feels that sometimes, race is a huge obstacle to overcome, not just because of basic differences, but also because of the difference in perceptions and beliefs, for example, the Oankali’s inability to foresee that humans would not take kindly to tampering with their, and their children’s, genetic makeup. It would be a stretch, though not a terrible one, to try and apply the lessons learnt in this book in real life. For one, not giving people a say in their own destiny is a recipe for disaster. And secondly, the need to be aware of the importance of race in any person’s decision making process.To pursue any course of action while ignoring that would be equally futile.

Octavia Butler definitely has a type. Just like in Parable of the Sower, her protagonist is a strong, perceptive, black female who must lead and press on when those around her loose focus or even hope. However, Lilith lacks Lauren’s unwavering commitment to follow her morals. Whereas Lauren creates a new religion and leads a group of followers to salvation, Lilith continually alludes to Christianity, an old religion from a world that sickened itself to its own demise, admitting her own role as Judas, the traitor of her own kind. And yet, she continues to play her role as Judas. To the very end, she looks forward to training another group of humans from within the Oankali’s clutches, though her own lover is dead and her dream of returning to Earth will never be realized (p. 247).

Is Lilith a protagonist or an antagonist? Is she the fearless human leader that Nikanj has molded, or the alien-loving traitor that Curt and Peter see her as? Is she even human anymore at the novel’s close? Just like her morals, Lilith’s very humanity is subtly eroded throughout the novel. While she maintains her mental identity as a human, she allows her genetic material to be tweaked, the results of which are unchecked until she awakens more humans, more than halfway through the book. The oddest thing about Lilith is that she refuses to respond to the complaints of the other humans. While they complain of her foreignness and alien nature, she continues to stay distant and withhold information. She refuses to see her disconnect with the other humans as a disconnect with humanity itself, and her alien adaptations as a tradeoff for her most basic identity. She encourages the humans to run away, and would hope to do so herself, but she can never escape the changes she has made to her own self. How can someone who is no longer wholly human hope to restart humanity?

Despite her modifications from Nikanj, Lilith still retains one of the most human qualities of all, obliviousness. She refuses to admit that she has changed, still clinging to a perfect vision of an imperfect past, until that which she feared most, a hybrid child of human and Oankali, is growing within her own skin. And still she believes she will save and purify and humanity.

The Body as a Critical Text

Hortense Spillers in her article "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book," writes that "[the] body ... focuses a private and particular space, at which point of convergence biological, sexual, social, cultural, linguistic, ritualistic, and psychologic futures join" (67). The body as a signifier is crucially important to understanding this week's readings and film, as the intimate is the most vulnerable and most personal.
In the world of the Oankali, Octavia Butler plays off the deepest human fears. Lilith, the protagonist, awakes in captivity to find she is being held by aliens and that Earth as she knows it is uninhabitable. The Oankali thrive by modifying their own genes by taking the best genes from other organisms, and are capable of developing genetic variations for others. Jdahya explains that they've fixed the cancer gene, modified the process of reproduction (so that it now requires ooloi as well), and strengthened the immune system, a process that will result in a species that is not quite Oankali, but not quite human. Although Lilith comes to accept this reality, she's never comfortable with it, always seeing it as invasion of sanctity. She wonders to herself: "Experimental animal, parent to domestic animals? Or... nearly extinct animal, part of a captive breeding program? Human biologists had done that before the war - used a few captive members of an endangered animal species to breed more for the wild population. Was that what she was headed for?" (58).
In addition to altering the very genetic code, Butler plays with concepts of sex and gender. The oankali have not just male and female, but also ooloi, and the involvement of all three sexes is necessary for pleasure or reproduction. Lilith is initially very uncomfortable with this, but grows to accept and enjoy the new form of intercourse, noting that it less physical and more psychological. The second time she has intercourse with it and Joseph, "She positioned herself against it and was not content until she felt the deceptively light touch of the sensory hand and felt the ooloi body tremble against her" (191).
The idea of comfort with the body as a sign of security and belonging is key. At the beginning, when she first leaves the isolation chamber with Jhadya, he explains that the Oankali never wear clothes generally, but that he wore them for her comfort. He then says, "You'll be free to wear clothing or not as you like." She is quick to respond, "I'll wear it!," even after being told that there are no humans about. Yet, near the end, when Nikanj lies wounded on the battlefield, she has no qualms about stripping to help save its life (231). A similar text runs through the final scene in Alien. Ripley, having managed to escape the spaceship despite the death of all her colleagues, believes herself to be alone and safe on the lifeboat. She takes off her clothing, again a signifier of safety. It is the appearance of the alien at this particular moment that offer the biggest shock, because of her vulnerability.
The body is also a source of differentiation. Octavia Butler's characters are notably multi-racial in Dawn, but the bigger difference is between the human species and the Oaknali. All of the humans experience some initial repulsion or at least uneasiness; some manage to overcome it, others die because they can not. Yet, it is about unification in the end, in some sense, not discord, for Lilith puzzles, "No words had been spoken. Strangers of a different species had been accepted as family. A human friend and ally had been rejected" (196). Alien is much less subtle. The alien is quickly created as a menace that must be destroyed, an object of exoticism that intends to destroy all the humans. While the Oankali are not truly humanoid, they are discussed in human terms and personalities, but the Alien is not, just seen as a monster.
If we view the body as a critical text, what extrapolations can be made from these readings and film about our collective security in our bodies, both concretely and abstractly? How do these readings challenge or affirm our identities? How is humanity defined?

Images of Slavery

Octavia Butler’s Dawn and Hortense Spillers’s Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book all are groundbreaking pieces. However, this is not what draws the three together. They are related instead by their use of the African American female and her role in history.

In Dawn, Butler creates a dystopian world where the Earth’s population is nearly destroyed and the few survivors are “saved” by aliens called Oankali. Her heroine, Lilith, whose name is symbolic of Adam’s first wife who becomes the snake to lead them out of Eden, if awakened by the aliens, and it quickly becomes evident that they are not just here to save our “race.” Instead, the Oankali and the Ooloi view us as “trading partners.” The aliens have kept Lilith in suspended animation for approximately 250 years, and through her and other humans, they are able to take traits of our species and use them to adapt themselves.

When Lilith is awakened, it is reminiscent of a slave being startled by drastically different conditions. They keep her alone, and she nearly loses her saniy. Eventually Lilith comes to accept the Oankali, but it isn’t until she meets another human, Paul Titus, that she realizes her, and the other human’s purpose. They want her to “giv[e] them a human child to tamper with” (D 92), This suggests that the aliens have no interest in saving the humans, just evolving themselves into what they saw themselves as, a more perfect being. Like the white slave masters who saw some primal desire in the slave women they captured, the Ooloi have a twisted sexual desire for the humans. The Ooloi can also be viewed as slave masters because when they woke people, they didn’t automatically tell people what was going on, they interrogated them and “wanted to see how each individual broke” (D 120). This idea shows that the Ooloi needed to see what pushed each human to his or her limits, so that they could control every person.

It is ironic that Butler’s hero is a black female because the African slave woman was often left out of slave history, as Spillers says. Spillers says that for the African slave woman, “rape … [became a series of ] externalized acts of torture” (68). When comparing this to Lilith’s description of the sexual acts with Nikanj, her Ooloi companion, she says “it would have outsold every illegal drug on the market” (D 170). Obviously this sexual connection could be used to control the humans. Butler mirrors her story off the story of slavery, by having the Oankali wipe the humans minds of being saved, it directly parallels the fact that woman weren’t discussed in the Middle Passage. Also, the fact that Lilith, a black woman, is the leader is ironic because as Spiller says, in “African cultures… [women] performed hard tasks… so much so that the quintessential ‘slave’ is not a male, but a female” (72-3). This is shy the Oankali decide to make a woman the leader, she is used to being the leader of the home and is also easier to control.

In the end of the novel, they travel northward down a river on an illusion of Earth, which is obviously symbolic of slaves heading north to freedom. Unfortunately, the human’s cannot escape since they aren’t really on Earth, but it is here where Nikanj reveals the true price that the humans are paying. They can no longer reproduce without the Ooloi. This means that our species is now dependent on them, and that the children created will not be human, “[i]t will be a thing. A monster” (D 246). While Nikanj tries to comfort Lilith by telling her that her child will be mostly human, this final scene breaks her, because she will never be able to return to Earth now. Nikanj says “it will be my first child” (D 246); this takes away the child from Lilith, and makes it not her own child. This is something that was common in slavery, and as Spillers says on pages 77 and 78, “even though the enslave female reproduced other enslaved persons, we do not read ‘birth’ … because the female, like the male, has been robbed of the parental right.” This shows the ultimate cost of the Oankali’s actions. Humans are a tool which the ooloi can control society. We have lost everything, and are now truly slaves without a hope of real freedom.

Black Matriarchy?

"In certain human societies, a child's identity is determined through the line of the Mother [...] 'In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure [...]'" (Spillers 5).

Are black women relied upon solely for their matriarchal instincts and abilities? Do others automatically assume them to have a motherly and educational disposition? This seems to be the case for the situation in which Lilith finds her self in the society of the Oankali. As compared to other humans living with the Oankali, for example Fukumoto or the human doctor, who are sought out to do work other than with children, Lilith seems to be immediately regarded as a tool to help, guide, and teach children. Once Lilith passes the apparent teaching and communication test with Sharad, she is placed with Nikanj to teach it her culture and language and to help it through his maturation. Lilith describes to situation: "This was a little like having Sharad with her again. But Nikanj was much more demanding - more like an adult in its persistence. No doubt she and Sharad had been given their time together so that the Oankali could see how she behaved with a foreign child of her own species - a child she had to share quarters with and teach" (Butler 59). Although there does seem to be an easier option for the method of Lilith's learning of the Oankali language, she is instead placed with Nikanj to teach it her language and in return learn its. As opposed to just allowing Lilith to simply learn the language and customs quickly and directly in order that she could get to work sooner, she must pay for her new knowledge by sharing her old knowledge with Nikanj. The Oankali use her maternal instincts to help their young in it's education and eventual maturing process. Later, it is clear that Nikanj views her as a mother figure, as well, through its choice to ask her to be with it through the long process of maturation it will soon be going through. Evidently, Lilith is once again seen as a reliable mother figure. It seems that Lilith too, before the Earth's destruction, really did not see herself as much more than a mother figure. When discussing her role in her husband and child's lives, Lilith describes herself as existing and working only for her family. When asked by the Oankali "what work had she done" while on Earth, Lilith mentally responds, "none. Her son and her husband had been her work for a few brief years. After the auto accident that killed them, she had gone back to college, there to decide what else she might do with her life" (Butler 6). She admittedly only goes to get an education and to work after her husband and son are out of her life and there is no one to mother anymore. It is apparent that Lilith is character in Dawn is predominately regarded as a motherly tool for education and comfort. Is this instinct and, therefore, duty of Lilith's more than just a central trait of her character? Could it be reflective of her race, sex or a combination? The ideas Spillers bring about regarding black matriarchy lead me to believe the latter.