Octavia Butler and the Aesthetics of the Novel

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therí A. Pickens
Keyword(s):  
Female Identity ◽  
Mental Disability ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
The Social ◽  
Octavia Butler ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Black Female Identity

Octavia Butler depicts a character with physical or mental disability in each of her works. Yet scholars hesitate to discuss her work in terms that emphasize the intersection with disability. Two salient questions arise: How might it change Butler scholarship if we situated intersectional embodied experience as a central locus for understanding her work? Once we privilege such intersectionality, how might this transform our understanding of the aesthetics of the novel? In this paper, I reorient the criticism of Butler's work such that disability becomes one of the social categories under consideration. I read two prominent analyses of Butler's work because their interpretations—black feminist in orientation—centralize black female identity as a category of analysis. I contend these analyses grapple with ideas that can only be fully understood with disability as an integral portion of the discussion. Since categories of analysis like race, disability, and gender require and create cultural tropes and challenge accepted forms, I outline three components of Butler's aesthetic: open‐ended conclusions that frustrate the narrative cohesion associated with the novel form, intricate depictions of power that potentially alienate the able‐bodied reader, and contained literary chaos that upends the idea of ontological fixity.

Who’s holding up the sky? On Rymba, a novel by A. Bushkovsky

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuchkova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Flood Zone ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian North ◽  
And Gender

The article deals with A. Bushkovsky’s novel Rymba that goes beyond the topics typical of Russian North prose. Rather than limiting himself to admiring nature and Russian character, the author portrays the northern Russian village of Rymba in the larger context of the country’s mentality, history, mythology, and gender politics. In the novel, myth clashes with reality, history with the present day, and an individual with the state. The critic draws a comparison between the novel and the traditions of village prose and Russian North prose. In particular, Bushkovsky’s Rymba is discussed alongside V. Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora [ Proshchanie s Matyoroy ] and R. Senchin’s The Flood Zone [ Zona zatopleniya ]. The novel’s central question is: what keeps the Russian world afloat? Depicting the Christian faith as such a bulwark, Bushkovsky links atheism with the social and spiritual roles played by contemporary men and women. The critic argues, however, that the reliance on Christianity in the novel verges on an affectation. The book’s main symbol is a drowning hawk: it perishes despite people’s efforts to save it.

scholarly journals Fare gli italiani dell’anno 3000

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Campani
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Italian Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
And Gender

In 1897 the Italian anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza published The year 3000. A dream, a science fiction novel in which he described the future order of mankind through the journey of a couple. While recent historiography has focused on the eugenic elements of the book, this article discusses the social and gender matters that underpin the novel. Indeed, on the basis of the emotional paradigm of romantic love, Mantegazza put the ‘sexual reform’ of the post-unified Italy at the centre of his work. Believing that «love was the first instrument of progress», he aimed to show how under the guidance of science, humanity as well as Italian society would have a future of happiness and prosperity.

scholarly journals RDoC, Psychopathology, and Naturalism: What’s New Is What’s Old?

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-25
Author(s):  
Douglas Porter
Keyword(s):  
User Participation ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Research Domain Criteria ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Research Domain

The Research Domain Criteria project, although innovative, remains thoroughly grounded in a naturalist conception of psychopathology. Exploring the meaning of psychopathology with reference to social categories such as race and gender makes it apparent that, by taking this naturalist approach, Research Domain Criteria runs the risk of treating contingent social norms as immutable facts of nature. The political impact of this approach is inherently conservative as it perpetuates the status quo, even if the status quo entails discrimination. These political effects are not an inevitable outcome of the application of neuroscience to the study of psychopathology. Exploring the implications of neuroplasticity demonstrates that maintaining rigid dichotomies between the biological and the social is untenable. Accordingly, taking a neuroscience approach to psychopathology actually reveals the significance of social science, phenomenological, and narrative-based approaches to research and ultimately points toward the ethical significance of service user participation in the science of nosology.

An egalitarian politics of care: young female carers and the intersectional inequalities of gender, class and age

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Başak Akkan
Keyword(s):  
Social Process ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Young Carers ◽  
Social Good ◽  
Feminist Literature ◽  
Care Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
And Gender

Feminist literature on care has extensively addressed inequalities that cut across the social categories of gender, class and ethnicity in relation to care work. One category that has received less attention in theories of caregiving so far is age. Built on the feminist literature of care and taking young (female) carers as its subject matter, this article tackles age as a third social category of intersectional inequalities along with class and gender. Firstly, through dealing with Nancy Fraser’s justice framework of participatory parity, it is argued that addressing the intersectional inequalities that young (female) carers face necessitates a justice framework that contemplates both the distributional and recognitional aspects of care. In this respect a dual conceptualisation of care is presented – both as a social good and a social process. Secondly, a critical analysis will be presented of the elements of the justice framework of Fraser, where the notion of subordinated status will be related to the identities of young carers. Lastly, the normative framework participatory parity will be discussed in relation to the politics of need, as care practices define the needs of young carers that are contextualised in the care processes, but also in a childhood space.

scholarly journals Language and Gender Representation in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Blessing U. Ijem ◽  
Isaiah I. Agbo
Keyword(s):  
Female Gender ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
The Social ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
And Gender

This article examines the linguistic construction of gender in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. It shows how this reflects the social reality of the relationships between women and men in society, which is firstly structured in the unconscious mind. The examination of language use in constructing genders in the novel is important as it unveils the relationships between the male and the female in society. This is because gender representation is influenced by unconscious and hidden desires in man. This study specifically examines Achebe’s use of grammatical categories in the construction of the male and female genders in Things Fall Apart. To this end, it reflects the pre-colonial Igbo society in its socially stratified mode, which language served as the instrument for both exclusion and oppression of women. This article shows that the male and female genders dance unequal dance in a socially, politically and economically stratified society where the generic male gender wields untold influence over women in that pre-colonial Igbo society. The study further shows that Achebe used language in Things Fall Apart to glorify masculine gender while portraying the female gender as docile, foolish, weak and irresponsible second-class citizen.

Nationalist Thought in Modern India: Exploration of the Idea of Freedom

2020 ◽  
pp. 097168582094339
Author(s):  
Prakash Desai
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Positive Response ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Indian Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Pandita Ramabai

Modern Indian nationalist thought has dealt with political ideas such as freedom, equality, liberty, democracy, so on and so forth. The idea of freedom received enough attention on the part of most of the modern Indian political thinkers. However, the idea of freedom as envisaged by the nationalist thinkers did not receive positive response from the other stream of modern Indian thought. Dalit-Bahujan political thinkers questioned the narration of freedom as propagated by the nationalist thinkers. Nationalist thinkers aspired for universal values and at the same time reaffirmed ancient religious principles. Such effort was questioned and doubted by the other thinkers of modern India. Thus, one can find different narrations of freedom, such as social, economic and political. The social categories such as caste, class and gender became bases for their narration on the idea of freedom. The ideas and arguments of B. G. Tilak, M. K. Gandhi, Pandita Ramabai, Jyotiba Phule, B. R. Ambedkar E. M. S. Namboodripad and others would help in larger understanding of the idea of freedom.

More Than “Multiple Jeopardy”: Navigating the Legal System as a British-Muslim-Woman-Litigant-in-Person

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
Suriyah Bi
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

Abstract Against the backdrop of rising Islamophobia and a deficit in the literature of Muslim experiences of resistance to discrimination through the legal action, in this article, I employ an auto-ethnographic methodological approach to critically reflect on my journey from classroom to courtroom, as a British Muslim woman of colour and litigant-in-person. While threading in excerpts of legal documents from the case, I highlight that: (a) as Muslims we must resist in ways acceptable to gate-keepers of the law, who are largely white and middle-class and unaware of the embodied realities of the inequality that minorities in Britain experience; (b) the law fails to take account of the “context” in which discrimination(s) takes place, as a result of which legal logic(s) and methodologies in cases of religious discrimination are flawed; (c) a religio-social capital operates against Muslims, negating positive social capital(s) such as education, and which, in the social penalties Muslims experience, accumulates greater weight than other intersecting subjectivity markers such as race, class, ethnicity, and gender. I contrast King’s theory of “multiple jeopardy” with my embodied experience of discrimination and inequality, which I demonstrate using the model of the glass Rubik’s cube.

Why we can’t and shan’t measure gender

Human Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Fúsková ◽  
Lucia Hargašová ◽  
Simona Andraščiková
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe aim of this article is to draw attention to the fact that the constructions of gender - frequently quantified in scientific research (and practice)—are unstable across time and space. In this regard, we look at the genesis of the measures and definitions reflective of the social change and knowledge that has shaped views on the gender dimensions. Our analysis of gender measures shows that the majority are based on definitions that conceive of femininity and masculinity as stable personality traits and that these measures are part of essentialist assumptions on gender roles and gender identity. We consider these measures to be strongly stereotypical and “outdated”. In the second part, we put forward evidence, from research findings, that indicates that perceptions of gender have not just changed over time. Different interpretations of masculinity and femininity exist within specific cultures, social categories and spaces.

Girasias and the Politics of Difference in Rajasthan: ‘Caste’, Kinship and Gender in a Marginalised Society

1993 ◽  
Vol 41 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 92-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Unnithan
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Way

Anthropologists have often contrasted ‘caste’ and ‘tribe’ as forms of social organisation based on opposite principles (eg ‘castes' are based on hierarchy, ‘tribal’ society is undifferentiated and egalitarian). The concept of ‘caste’ is both an imposed one, a product of colonial governmental and academic exercises, and one which has political realities. However, whilst such national and regional formulations of caste are important, they do not always reflect the social categories which are central to the organisation of people's lives at the local level. The Girasias (generally held to be a ‘tribe’ by others) live in Rajasthan in proximity to the Rajputs (generally held to be a ‘caste’; Girasias themselves claim to be a branch of the Rajput caste). On many points the way in which a group categorises itself does not correspond with the way in which it is categorised by members of other groups. In practice the Girasias share many social, economic and religious institutions with the other ‘caste’ communities in the region as also with the ‘tribal Bhils. This does not mean that these groups are indistinguishable, but ‘Rajput’ and ‘Bhil’ stereotypes were used within the Girasia group to express differences, identifications and evaluations. However the tribe/caste distinction and the corresponding division of labour between anthropologists and sociologists in India is thereby called into question. To the Girasias, patrilineal kinship and territory play a central role in their sense of ‘caste’ identity, unlike other communities (the Rajputs and Bhils are exceptions) for whom caste is a more dispersed, agnatic and affinal group. Descent is crucial. Although their kinship ideology emphasises a sense of separation rather than hierarchy, Girasia kin divisions present members with equal opportunities to be unequal. Lineal kinship provides the paradigm for talking about all relationships whether or not based on actual biological ties. Equally, gender provides an idiom for the construction of difference. Descent groups are differentiated according to the evaluation of groups from which they have been able to obtain wives. Both Girasias and outsiders use the attire and the behaviour of women and perceived gender roles to distinguish between themselves. Despite the local complexity of Girasia kinship and gender relations which cannot be expressed in the language of caste and tribe, outsiders (other castes, classes, government officials, academics) continue to regard the Girasias as tribal as a result of the politics of caste and gender at the local, regional and national levels.

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