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Ce mémoire explore les notions de race et d’identité féminine à travers le récit afro-futuriste Wild Seed d’Octavia Butler. Décrit comme le nouveau genre de la ‘fiction spéculative’ par les théoriciens universitaires, l’afro-futurisme joint le spéculatif au réalisme afin d’explorer les conjonctions entre les diasporas africaines, l’écriture africaine américaine et les technologies modernes. Cette thèse propose une analyse critique et théorique du roman Wild Seed d’Octavia Butler, en se concentrant particulièrement sur ses divers concepts et ses allégories historiques. Plutôt que d’ignorer le rôle que jouent les notions de race et d’identité dans la science-fiction, Butler les met en avant dans le roman Wild Seed et les questionne en adressant des sujets tels que l’après-colonisation, la tyrannie intime, l’hybridité, la différence, l’altérité, et l’identité. Dans le premier chapitre, j’examinerais tout particulièrement l’influence de la domination de la colonisation patriarcale occidental et l’occidentalisation des africains-américains. Puis, à travers les thèmes du trauma intergénérationnel lié à l’esclavage et de l'objectification des corps noirs qui apparaissent dans le texte, j’analyserais les contradictions présentent dans la lutte des Noirs pour la liberté, la race, et l’incarnation raciale. Le second chapitre explorera les différentes formes de résistance, dramatisées à travers le personnage d’Anyanwu, ainsi que l’utilisation des notions d’espace et de temporalité comme techniques pour comprendre et associer ensemble les problèmes d’incarnation et d’identité des genres: afin de survivre à la domination et au pouvoir perpétrés par la société patriarcale de Doro, Anyanwu doit résister, redéfinir, et reconquérir son identité. / This thesis explores the notions of race and female identity through Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturist narrative Wild Seed. Described as a new genre of ‘speculative fiction’ by scholars, Afrofuturism converges speculative and realist modes in order to explore conjunctions between African diasporas, African American writing, and modern technologies. This thesis provides a theoretical and critical analysis of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, with a particular focus on its various concepts and historical allegories. The novel Wild Seed addresses such topics as post-colonialization, intimate tyranny, hybridity, difference, otherness, and identity, questioning and foregrounding the role race and identity plays in science fiction. In the first Chapter, I will specifically examine the influence of dominant patriarchal Western colonization and its Westernization of African Americans. Then I will analyze the contradictions within the black struggle for freedom, race, and racialized embodiment through the themes of the intergenerational trauma of slavery and the objectification of black bodies found in the text. The second chapter will explore the different forms of resistance dramatized through Anyanwu’s character, as well as the use of space and temporality as a process to understand and connect the issues of embodiment and gender identity: Anyanwu has to resist, redefine, and reclaim her identity in order to survive the domination and power of Doro’s future patriarchal and biogenetically altered society.

This essay considers the interplay between character narrators, the implied author, and the authorial audience in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents. The aim of the study was to investigate how narrators, the implied author, and readers position themselves in relation to each other and in relation to the novel’s ethical dimensions. The theoretical framework is based on James Phelan’s theories on the rhetorical and ethical aspects of fiction. The essay argues that the implied author’s communication to the authorial audience is one of the reasons that the novel, like its prequel Parable of the Sower, often succeeds to function as warnings to the audience of dangers ahead. This is especially true regarding one of the implied author’s most consistent messages to the audience throughout the Parable novels: every choice has consequences, and those consequences need to be considered when we decide how to act and react in different circumstances, both as individuals and as a society.

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This thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood – originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis – Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel Mendel's Dwarf, and the first two books in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction MaddAddam series: 2003's Oryx and Crake and 2009's The Year Of the Flood. I argue that the inclusion of genetic engineering has changed as the technology moves from science fiction to science fact, moving from the fantastic to the mundane. Throughout its recent literary history, genetic engineering has played a role in complicating questions of sexuality, paternity, and the division between nature and culture. It has also come to represent a nexus of potential cultural change, one which stands to fulfill the dramatic hybridity Haraway rhapsodized in her "Cyborg Manifesto" while also containing the potential to disrupt the ecocritical conversation by destroying what we used to understand as nature. Despite their four different takes on the issue, each of the texts I read offers a complex vision of utopian hopes and apocalyptic fears. They agree that, for better or for worse, genetic engineering is forever changing both our world and ourselves.

奧塔維亞•巴特勒《撒種的比喻》與《才幹的比喻》描述一個末日的反烏托邦世界。這兩本小說截取當今社會問題，讓我們對可預期的未來有所警惕。它們不僅提升我們對於現在社會問題的意識，同時不斷地注入並維持希望，為社會改變提供不同的解決方案。 做為批評式反烏托邦的現代文類，《比喻》系列小說透過融合末日小說文類，論述希望、烏托邦主義與生存之間的辯證關係。《比喻》系列小說藉由地球之種（Earthseed）的信念及其核心思想「改變即是上帝」（“God is Change”） 強調生存的重要性，並將生存進一步分為兩個層次：即時生存（immediate survival）及永續生存（lasting survival），而即時生存與永續生存之間亦存在一種辨證關係。本論文目的為探討《比喻》系列小說中的希望、烏托邦主義與生存在《比喻》系列中的互動，及它們之間獨特的辨證關係如何反映當今社會的處境與現代烏托邦文學的趨勢。 本論文分為五個章節：第一章將烏托邦定義為以社會改變為目的的思想及文類；第二章闡述烏托邦文學領域的發展，並將《比喻》系列定位為批判式反烏托邦，以建構希望、烏托邦主義與生存之間的辯證關係；第三章與第四章透過《比喻》系列的文本例證研究希望、烏托邦主義與生存之間的辯證關係如何運作，第三章探討《撒種的比喻》與即時生存，而第四章則探討《才幹的比喻》與永續生存；最後，第五章總結《比喻》系列所反映的當今社會局勢，從文本中發現希望、烏托邦主義與生存之間的辯證關係，並藉由這三者之間關係的理解，避免人類文明社會可能面臨的災難。 / Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents depict a postapocalyptic dystopian world, extrapolated from the problems of present day society to provide us with a warning of our conceivable future. They raise awareness of current social problems, while maintaining a locus of hope and providing possible alternatives for social change. In the contemporary genre of “critical dystopias,” the Parable series merges together with the genre of postapocalyptic fiction to demonstrate a dialectical relationship between hope, utopianism and survival. The importance of survival is emphasized in the Parables through the belief system of Earthseed and its core idea of “God is Change,” and can be further distinguished into two levels—immediate survival and lasting survival, which also exist in a dialectical relationship with each other. The aim of this thesis is to discuss how the concepts of hope, utopianism and survival interact in the Parables, and what this unique dialectical relationship reflects about contemporary literary utopias and the present. This thesis is divided into five chapters: Chapter One defines utopia through the function of social change; Chapter Two provides a brief overview of the development of the literary utopian genre and establishes the Parables as critical dystopias, a form that enables and constitutes the dialectical relationship of hope, utopianism and survival; Chapter Three and Four contain the textual analysis of how the dialectical relationship between hope, utopianism and survival functions in the Parables, with Chapter Three focusing on Parable of the Sower and immediate survival, and Chapter Four focusing on Parable of the Talents and lasting survival; finally, Chapter Five concludes with how the Parables relate to our present social conditions, and how understanding the dialectical relationship between hope, utopianism and survival may assist humanity’s effort to avert a major crisis.

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This paper considers the role of the human body in Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of theSower and the way it interacts with defined space to stage expressive forms of politicalopposition. Understanding the relationship between physical or metaphorical space and thecontradictions of the societies they encompass is crucial to deciphering Butler’s near-futuredystopia; a world where the problems of real-life Los Angeles and Southern California aredistorted into a gross carnivalesque of gender stereotypes, sociopolitical tensions, and vigilante warfare. This paper places a special emphasis on the areas of social and political stagnation found in Butler’s vision of near-future L.A., and analyses the dangers of clinging to archaic, patriarchal systems that no longer resonate with contemporary audiences. Focus is also placed on potential methods of resistance against oppressive social institutions, particularly exploring the limitations met by protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, in her attempts to voice concerns in a society where language is so nuanced by “traditional” gendered qualities that the female voice carries no political value. This papers also questions theories which promote violent confrontation as a means to social reform, disregarding collateral damage and victims of war in favour of insurgency. By exploring the movement of the human body away from defined space, this paper supports Butler’s notion of alternative prosocial action which celebrates the margins of society, positing a nurturing, constructive means to resist political opposition.