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12 pages, 278 KiB

Open AccessArticle

by Domietta Torlasco

Humanities 2024, 13(2), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020045 - 5 Mar 2024

Viewed by 2427

This essay takes the notion of “flesh” as the point of departure for exploring the viability and contemporary relevance of what Maurice Merleau-Ponty has called an “ontological psychoanalysis”. Primary interlocutors will be Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred and Hortense Spillers’s essay, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s [...] Read more.

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literature, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis)

16 pages, 308 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Body Horror in Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark

by Maria Holmgren Troy

Humanities 2023, 12(5), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050120 - 16 Oct 2023

Viewed by 2525

Abstract

African American science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s works have attracted a great deal of academic interest since the 1990s onwards. Clay’s Ark (1984), however, has not gained as much scholarly attention as some of her other novels, and the centrality of Gothic aspects, in particular those related to body horror, has not been addressed. By focusing on how these aspects inform the structure, setting, and characters’ actions and relationships in this novel about an extraterrestrial infection that threatens and changes humanity, this article demonstrates how Butler employs and adapts strategies and conventions of Gothic horror and body horror in order to explore various attitudes towards difference and transformation, paralleling these with a particular brand of antiblack racism growing out of American slavery. Although the 1980s are already receding into American history, and a few aspects of the imagined twenty-first century in this novel may feel dated today (while many are uncomfortably close to home), Clay’s Ark is a prime example of how aspects of popular culture genres and media—such as science fiction, the Gothic, and horror films—can be employed in an American novel to worry, question, and destabilize ingrained historical and cultural patterns. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gothic American Imaginaries: The Gothics of Race in American Literature and Film)

13 pages, 226 KiB

Open AccessArticle

For My Daughter Kakuya: Imagining Children at the End(s) of the World

by Candace Y. Simpson

Religions 2023, 14(9), 1204; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091204 - 20 Sep 2023

Viewed by 4162

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed individual and institutional anxieties about the apocalypse. Pastors and activists alike turned to the depiction of the apocalypse in popular media to describe the urgency of decisive action. Implicitly, these depictions offer a curious method for engaging and imagining children. Assata Shakur writes compelling poetry in her autobiography about her hopes for the world. In one poem, entitled For My Daughter Kakuya, I argue that Shakur engages in Afrofuturist speculative fiction as she envisions a future world for her daughter. This paper explores how writers living through these times themselves imagine Black children at the end of the world. What would happen if we took seriously the notion that the “end of the world” is always at hand for Black people? This article explores the stomach-turning warning that Jesus offers in Mark 13:14–19 regarding those who are “pregnant and nursing in those days”. Using a reproductive justice lens, this paper explores the eternal challenge of imagining and stewarding a future in which Black children are safe and thriving. It also explores the limits and possibilities of partnering with radical Black faith traditions to this end. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Faith and Religion Among African Americans)

19 pages, 354 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reproductive Rights and Ecofeminism

by Sally L. Kitch

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020034 - 11 Apr 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 6994

Abstract

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs decision in June 2022 came as a shock. Yet, upon reflection, the decision simply reinforced what history has shown: women’s rights and opportunities have always been subject to controls, fluctuations, and specious rationales. Dobbs is one in a long line of legal edicts in the U.S. and elsewhere that either allow or curtail and control female agency, including reproductive agency. The decision’s devastating consequences for U.S. women’s reproductive lives are damaging enough, but they are only part of the story. In addition to its hobbling effects on reproductive rights and justice, the Dobbs decision goes hand in hand with the underlying causes of today’s unparalleled environmental emergency. This article argues, through ecofeminist theory and feminist and Native American climate fiction, that Dobbs is a catalyst for understanding the role of patriarchy—as a particularly insidious form of androcentrism—in the destruction of our planet. Evidence is mounting to support claims made by ecofeminists since the 1970s: patriarchy and resulting masculinist values have been foundational to the extractive and exploitative attitudes and practices regarding marginalized peoples, colonized lands, and racialized entitlements to natural resources that have endangered the earth’s biosystems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reconstructing Ecofeminism)

34 pages, 360 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Beyond Literal Idolatry: Imagining Faith through Creatively Changing Identities

by Daniel Boscaljon

Religions 2022, 13(9), 810; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090810 - 31 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1971

Abstract

This is Part I of a triptych. It addresses the latent potential of the imagination in constructing a sense of identity. Included is the role of faith in overcoming the obstacles presented by a social imaginary dominated by literal idolatry that leads to unnecessary suffering. The initial foundation examines the process of growth and the role that the imagination plays in the construction of narrative identity—an important part of human development. Literal idolatry interrupts this original process through the creation of a social imaginary that corrupts natural measures for self-correction. At the same time, a creative faith contains the capacity to dislodge the rigid boundaries of literal idolatry. A creative faith narrative identities in ways that open beyond simple coherence and completeness. It can also revitalize social institutions and public spaces. The argument concludes by arguing fictional narratives augment the work of theology in grounding and inspiring creative faith. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Modern Religious Changes from the Perspective of Narrative Theology)

22 pages, 810 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Stories: Managing Climate Change with Literature

by Gesa Mackenthun

Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 4049; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074049 - 6 Apr 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6445

Abstract

Literary and cultural texts are essential in shaping emotional and intellectual dispositions toward the human potential for a sustainable transformation of society. Due to its appeal to the human imagination and human empathy, literature can enable readers for sophisticated understandings of social and ecological justice. An overabundance of catastrophic near future scenarios largely prevents imagining the necessary transition toward a socially responsible and ecologically mindful future as a non-violent and non-disastrous process. The paper argues that transition stories that narrate the rebuilding of the world in the midst of crisis are much better instruments in bringing about a human “mindshift” (Göpel) than disaster stories. Transition stories, among them the Parable novels by Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020), offer feasible ideas about how to orchestrate economic and social change. The analysis of recent American, Canadian, British, and German near future novels—both adult and young adult fictions—sheds light on those aspects best suited for effecting behavioral change in recipients’ minds: exemplary ecologically sustainable characters and actions, companion quests, cooperative communities, sources of epistemological innovation and spiritual resilience, and an ethics and aesthetics of repair. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Human Reaction: Transformation, Governance, Ethics, Law)

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