The Mattering of Black Lives: Octavia Butler’s Hyperempathy and the Promise of the New Materialisms

Abstract

This article argues that the ethical potential of “the nonhuman turn” advanced by the new materialisms is structured by disavowed social fantasies about black female flesh. The most recent new materialist publications draw upon the techno-scientific developments of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch defined by the cumulative effects of species-level human activity, to demonstrate the supposed inadequacy of poststructuralist “identity politics” for meeting the intellectual challenges of our time. But as a close reading of Octavia Butler’s Parable duology reveals, any model of ethics that dismisses considerations of race as such, and attention to the history of racial slavery in particular, will fail to address the most fundamental questions, ethical and otherwise, of the modern world.

What Matter Matters? Retaining the Critical in New Materialist Literacy Research

“…In considering what matter matters for equity-centered analyses of racialized youths’ literacy practices, we agree with Leong (2016) that we mustreckon with our political and libidinal investments in black flesh. This would require us to address how the entanglements of blackness, matter, and the human make only certain forms of matter both legible and desirable .…”

“…We submit that such diffractive readings require an eye toward history and power, purposefully turning the research gaze back to discourse and the human. Leong (2016) writes that “the limits of a new materialist ethics appear most forcefully . .…”

“…Others articulate similar ethical concerns related to how NMs approach historical becomings (Bruining, 2016). Leong (2016) takes issue with a “preconscious multisensorial” onto-epistemology that leads to perpetuating “ahistorical representations” and minimizes racial discourses based not on “ethical practice” (p. 5) but rather on “feeling right” (p. 9). This is apparent in some new materialist literacy research.…”

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises

“…Consequently, the centering of an undifferentiated humanity in much Anthropocene scholarship serves to reproduce white supremacist claims to universal knowledge. Moreover, it implies that the Anthropocene heralds a post‐racial future of generalized climate catastrophe and the dissolution of binary categories delineating “humanity” and “nature” (see Leong, ; Luke, ; Mirzoeff, ).…”

“…For example, in examining the afterlives of slavery, Spillers () calls attention to the ways that lasting inscriptions of a code of power into the flesh beneath colored skin coincides with the epoch whose name is being sought (Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene, or Plantationocene). Spillers () rejects the “American grammar” of signifying and naming the captive body, which actively denies Black humanity, particularly women, by focusing on Black practices of kinship and genealogy that resist the plantation property regime's rubric of Black (de)valuation (see also Jackson, ; King, ; Leong, ).…”