An Intersectional Approach of Octavia Butler’s Kindred

Fantastika Journal

This podcast is part of the LGBTQIA+ Fantastika Graphics Symposium.
Join the discussion on discord (https://discord.gg/XwrFvMEJc8) or on our zoom webinar on 20 Nov 2021. See fantastikajournal.com for details.

Background music by scottholmesmusic.com
Podcast by: Marietta Kosma

An Intersectional Approach of Octavia Butler’s Kindred
Through Butler’s graphic comic Kindred, numerous tensions are raised around the notions of accessibility, disability, equality and inclusion exposing the crisis of black futures. This podcast focuses on the way that Dana’s positioning as a queer subject is informed by race and disability. This podcast focuses on the way that disability informs Dana’s experiences in the context of slavery and her positioning in the contemporary discourse of neo-liberalism.
Very few scholars perceive Dana’s subjectivity as an actual state of being that carries value both materially as well as metaphorically. The materiality of disability has not constituted part of the larger discourse of the American slave system. The different figurations of space and time exposed through Dana’s time travelling help conceptualize her accessibility in different structures.
Through rendering disability both figuratively and materially, this podcast establishes a connection between the past, the present and the future. The different figurations of space and time exposed through Dana’s time travelling help conceptualize her accessibility in different structures.
Previous scholarship has been extensively focusing on the origin and legacy of trauma, inflicted on the black female body of the twentieth century, however there has been too little, if any criticism in relation to the active construction of black female subjectivity, located at the level of the body. This podcast explores how spectacles of violence against black female bodies function in the wider political imagery of the twenty-first century. The physical and psychological displacement of Dana, as a black queer female body exposes her traumatization and the difficulties she faces in order to reclaim her subjectivity in a society burdened by a history of violence and exploitation.
Even though Kindred was written before the black lives matter movement emerged, it could be analyzed in a way that asserts the continuity of African-American trauma, the perpetuation of systematic racism in USA and the crisis of blackness in the future.

About the Speaker: Marietta Kosma is a first year DPhil student in English at the University of Oxford at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research interests lie in twentieth-century American literature, post colonialism and gender studies. Her research focuses on the construction of African American female identity in contemporary neo-slave narratives. She has written in a wide variety of journals and newspapers. She is a peer-reviewer and an editor for academic journals.
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The views expressed in these podcasts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Fantastika Journal and its editorial board.
This podcast edited by Kerry Dodd