Essentialism and anti-essentialism in "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", by Octavia Butler

Ildney Cavalcanti,Lucia De La Roque

doi:10.28998/0103-6858.2008v1n41p55-73

Abstract

Despite the fact that feminist literary criticism can boast a much longer history than that of the feminist critique of science, both can be grouped under the umbrella term studies and are able to jointly illuminate certain issues related to questions of gender and science. In the present work, we propose to carry out a reading of Octavia Butler's The evening and the morning and the night which departs from these feminist battlegrounds, dealing with the opposite yet complementary viewpoints from the biological and social sciences. Special attention is given to the concept of essentialism, as Butler's work, in all its complexity, can both confirm and disrupt its precepts. DOI: 10.28998/0103-6858.2008v1n41p55-73

Highlights

Virgínia Woolf's groimdbreaking and still inspiring tract A Room ofOne's Own(1929)opens up the path to a kind of reading approach whlch observes issues related to gender representation and to the production and circulation ofwomen-authored texts.Almost eighty years have passed since the publication ofWoolfs analysis and feminist literary criticism, or gender studies, still offers instigating ways of looking at literary texts
This study presents partial results of our current research on the convergences between utopian and dystopian women-authored fictions, gender studies and the discourses of evolutionary biology and the social sciences
Since the publication of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein (1818), utopian and dystopian speculative fictions by women have dealt with the apparently opposed explanations for human behaviour which arise from both the biological and the social sciences.These explanations involve questions relating to gender roles,like maternity, motherhood, division of domestic chores, among several types of gender-bound activities (DE LA ROCQIJE & TEIXEIRA. 2001; DE LA RDCQUE. 2002. 2004, 2006, 2006a).Our research interests(in feministcriticism as well

Summary

Introduction

Virgínia Woolf's groimdbreaking and still inspiring tract A Room ofOne's Own(1929)opens up the path to a kind of reading approach whlch observes issues related to gender representation and to the production and circulation ofwomen-authored texts.Almost eighty years have passed since the publication ofWoolfs analysis and feminist literary criticism, or gender studies (as the area has been named recently), still offers instigating ways of looking at literary texts.

Results

Conclusion