Abstract
This article explores the relationship between God and a posthuman representative of humanity in Octavia Butler’s “The Book of Martha” (2005). Using Daphne Hampson’s feminist post-Biblical ideas, the article argues that the story, as a sample of science fiction, exposes a posthumanist perspective where existence and subjectivity of human kind is defined based on a mutual, non-hierarchical relationship between human being and God. The article aims to explore the capacity of the story to embody a positive standpoint of science fiction towards the transformation of the human. This article suggests that “The Book of Martha,” reflecting this transformation together with an unothered perspective of the God-human relationship, illustrates the potential for a more humanitarian life on Earth. The relationship is investigated through an unorthodox theological perspective that confronts Christian norms, particularly the norms dealing with what is considered as true femininity. In this way, the story describes a fictional space in which the Christian concept of human as a fallen, condemned, and passive object before a ubiquitous Almighty is substituted with a non-Christian active concept of the human entity. This active representation is based on the recognition of a posthuman agency which is free from surrender to divine power. “The Book of Martha” is about the gradual awakening of a black woman who, in interaction with God as the source of goodness, becomes aware for the need to redefine an authentic sense of self beyond that of an obedient servant before a masculinized God. This article explores this awakening. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1603-09
Highlights
“The Book of Martha” is a story that deals with the concepts of power and agency in the God -human relationship
According to Jones (2003), “sf is a genre devoid of convincing characterization” because it is “bound to foreground the imagined world, the action-adventure and the gadgets” (p. 171). This is worse when it comes to women because science fiction is a masculinist genre which reflects human as man (Hollinger, 2003, pp.127134)
In this article, using Daphne Hampson’s post-Biblical perspective expressed in her concept of “theology as experience” as well as Virginia Woolf’s notion of “centeredness,” we will try to demonstrate that the characterization of the protagonist could be seen as Butler’s unique representation of posthuman identity
Summary
“The Book of Martha” is a story that deals with the concepts of power and agency in the God -human relationship. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK “The Book of Martha” narrates a feminist post-Biblical perspective of the God-human relationship Butler develops her story by revealing a non-Christian approach to this relationship in which a benevolent God accompanies a woman in her journey towards real understanding of self and the world which surrounds her. From the first page of “The Book of Martha,” Butler puts forth a feminist challenge to substitute the Christian image of the God-human relationship with a new one She, it seems, creates a feminist “conceptual space” as a “different system of thought” to “critique the past from a feminist perspective,” and transform it to a “life-style, a value system, and a way of conceiving of the self” It is clear that when someone is present to another one, s/he is practicing “attending.” “The Book of Martha” vividly reflects such practices
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