Canonising the other: deconstructing empathy in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Abstract

In today’s divisive world empathy, simply understood as caring deeply for others, has come to occupy a pivotal position in discussions of social relationships. Empathy is one of the primary issues at stake in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, a narrative of human and alien interaction. Lilith’s Brood presents us with a formidable “other” in the Oankali aliens – hardly a candidate for human empathic bonding. The story revolves around complicated issues of alien takeover and forced interbreeding that can also be interpreted as well-intentioned salvation politics depending on positionality and perspectival reading. Under the circumstances, empathy for the other, whether human or Oankali, becomes a complicated, loaded issue. This article follows the trajectory of Butler’s protagonists as they move from repulsion and loathing to affinity and empathy for the other. The process, I argue, ultimately redefines empathy as a discourse of the body, an embodied empathy, needed to understand the lived experience of others in order to truly empathise with them.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS