Living with the Virus: Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark and Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
After almost two years with SARS-CoV-2, causing COVID-19, we all have experience of living with a virus on a global scale. It has meant changes in how we conduct our everyday lives, at least temporarily. Although this virus can infect all human beings, this pandemic has made glaringly obvious differences concerning age, health, gender, social status, ethnic backgrounds, professions, access to technology, etc. and has reinforced local, national, and global inequalities and injustices based on lack of means, solidarity, and democracy.
In this paper, I will examine how two women science-fiction writers envision humans living with an extraterrestrial virus in novels written in the 1980s and 1990s: African American Octavia Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984) and British-American Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite (1992). In Butler’s novel the virus is brought to Earth by a returning astronaut, who tries to keep the virus from spreading; in Griffith’s the virus infects people who try to colonize another planet and kills the men. The remaining women settles the planet, and many years later, which constitutes the present of the novel, the Company sends an expedition to try out a vaccine. Both novels depict newly infected main characters who experience that the virus changes them and ultimately empowers them in certain ways. It also irreversibly changes the conditions under which they live. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s theories, as well as Octavia Butler’s ideas as expressed across her oeuvre, I will discuss the relationship between the human host and the virus in the two novels, and its impact on the individual and society within the imagined worlds. In particular, the paper will highlight issues of gender and sexuality.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022.
Keywords [en]
Octavia Butler, Clay's Ark, Nicola Griffith, Ammonite, Virus
National Category
Languages and Literature
Research subject
English
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-89890OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-89890DiVA, id: diva2:1659818
Conference
Maple Leaf and Eagle conference, Helsinki University, Finland, 18-20 May, 2022
2022-05-222022-05-222023-06-20Bibliographically approved