The Rise of a New Lilith: The Posthuman Monstrous Mother of Demonsin Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis (Lilith’s Brood)
Oftentimes, women writers turn to science fiction—and other forms of speculative fiction—as a means to retrieve and reclaim old female figures from patriarchal foundational myths and reproduce them in a different fashion. That is to say, they choose to question old sexist and stereotypical female im...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Sevilla (US) |
| Repositorio: | idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:idus________::e16a8de88ea05b02ed716276aa96ae52 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/11441/185303 http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/REN.2025.i29.7 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | posthumanism ecofeminism female gothic afrofuturism myth-criticism motherhood posthumanismo ecofeminismo gótico femenino afrofuturismo mitocrítica maternidad |
| Sumario: | Oftentimes, women writers turn to science fiction—and other forms of speculative fiction—as a means to retrieve and reclaim old female figures from patriarchal foundational myths and reproduce them in a different fashion. That is to say, they choose to question old sexist and stereotypical female images by introducing a more human and feministapproach to the characters, far from the already familiar and stale gender roles.This is exactly what Butler provides with her trilogy. Xenogenesis, also known as Lilith’s Brood, is an Afrofuturistic and postapocalyptic science fiction trilogy that was written by Octavia E. Butler in the late 1980s. As we will attempt to demonstrate, in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, focusing on the continuity of the human race, by means of the creation of a new Human-Oankali hybrid species mothered by the Afro-American protagonist Lilith Iyapo, Xenogenesis partakes in the posthuman retelling and challenging of the patriarchal birth myth of the Genesis. In order to do that, drawing from Gothic, ecofeminist, and posthuman theories, we will be exploring how a monstrous posthuman ecofeminist agent can be created. |
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