THE RISE OF A NEW LILITH: THE POSTHUMAN MONSTROUS MOTHER OF DEMONS IN OCTAVIA E. BUTLER’S XENOGENESIS (LILITH’S BROOD)
Keywords:
Posthumanism; the (Female) Gothic; Afrofuturism; Ecofeminism; (Monstrous) MotherhoodAbstract
ABSTRACT: 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 feminist approach 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.
Downloads
References
BARKER, Pat. The Silence of the Girls. Hamish Hamilton, 2018.
BELK, Nolan. “The Certainty of the Flesh: Octavia Butler’s Use of the Erotic in the Xenogenesis Trilogy.” Utopian Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, 2008, pp. 369–89. https://doi.org/10.2307/20719917.
BOOTH, Sherry. “Landscape, Metaphor and Biology: Rethinking Women and Nature.” Spatial Practices, vol. 10, 2010, pp. 329–51. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042030763_020.
BOTTING, Fred. Gothic, Routledge, 1996.
BRAIDOTTI, Rosi. The Posthuman, Polity Press, 2013.
BURTON, Jessie. Medusa, Bloomsbury, 2021.
BUTLER, Octavia E. Adulthood Rites, Warner Books, 1988.
BUTLER, Octavia E. Dawn, Warner Books, 1987.
BUTLER, Octavia E. Imago, Warner Books, 1989.
CARTER, Angela. The Passion of New Eve, Virago, 1982.
DAYAL, Smaran. “Octavia Butler and the Settler Colonial Speculative: Xenogenesis and Planetary Loss.” American Studies, vol. 60, no. 3/4, 2021, pp. 95–118. https://doi.org/10.1353/ams.2021.0030.
FEDERMAYER, Éva. “Octavia Butler’s Maternal Cyborgs: The Black Female World of the Xenogenesis Trilogy.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2000, pp. 103–18.
GAARD, Greta. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” Hypatia, vol. 12, no. 1, 1997, pp. 114–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1997.tb00174.x.
GIPSON, Grace. “Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism.” #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation, edited by Abigail De Kosnik and Keith P. Feldman, U of Michigan P, 2019, pp. 84–103.
HAYLES, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. U of Chicago P, 1999. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226321394.001.0001.
HARAWAY, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s.” Socialist Review, no. 80, 1985, pp. 65–108.
HILLARD, Tom J. “Gothic Nature Revisited: Reflections on the Gothic of Ecocriticism.” Gothic Nature, no. 1, 2019, pp. 21–33.
HOGLE, Jerrold E. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, edited by Jerrold E. Hogle, Cambridge UP, 2002, pp. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521791243.001.
JOHNS, J. Adam. “Becoming Medusa: Octavia Butler’s ‘Lilith’s Brood’ and Sociobiology.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2010, pp. 382–400. https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.37.3.0382.
KRISTEVA, Julia. The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia UP, 2024. https://doi.org/10.7312/kris21457.
MAGEDANZ, Stacy. “The Captivity Narrative in Octavia E. Butler’s Adulthood Rites.” Extrapolation, vol. 53, no. 1, 2012, pp. 45–59. https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2012.4.
MANN, Justin Louis. “Pessimistic Futurism: Survival and Reproduction in Octavia Butler’s Dawn.” Feminist Theory, vol. 19, no. 1, 2018, pp. 61–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700117742874.
MELLOR, Mary. Feminism & Ecology. New York UP, 1997.
MILLER, Madeline. Circe. Little, Brown and Company, 2018.
MOERS, Ellen. “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother.” New York Review of Books, 21 March 1974, pp. 1–12, https://janeaustensummer.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/moers-female-gothicthe-monster_s-mother.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2019.
MOORE, C. L. “Fruit of Knowledge.” The Best of C.L. Moore. Ballantine Books, 1975.
NANDA, Aparajita. “Power, Politics, and Domestic Desire in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood.” Callaloo, vol. 36, no. 3, 2013, pp. 773–88. https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2013.0164.
OKORAFOR, Nnedi. Who Fears Death. Daw Books, 2010.
OSHEROW, Michele. “The Dawn of a New Lilith: Revisionary Mythmaking in Women’s Science Fiction.” The National Women's Studies Association Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 2000, pp. 68–83.
PEPPERS, Cathy. “Dialogic Origins and Alien Identities in Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 1995, pp. 47–62.
RAMÍREZ, Catherine S. “Cyborg Feminism: The Science Fiction of Octavia E. Butler and Gloria Anzaldúa.” Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, edited by Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth, 2002, pp. 374–402.
ROUSSEAU, Vanessa. “Eve and Lilith: Two Female Types of Procreation.” Diogenes, vol. 54, no. 4, 2005, pp. 94–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192105059474.
RUSS, Joanna. The Female Man. Orion, 2010.
RUSS, Joanna. “What Can a Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write.” To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, edited by Joanna Russ, Indiana UP, 1995, 79–93.
SANDERS, Joshunda. “An Interview with Octavia Butler, 2004.” Medium, 22 June 2018, https://joshunda.medium.com/an-interview-with-octavia-butler-2004-8933300df98a. Accessed 15 May 2025.
SANZ ALONSO, Irene. “Ecofeminism and Science Fiction: Human-Alien Literary Intersections.” Women’s Studies, vol. 47, no. 2, 2018, pp. 216–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2018.1430408.
SAVOY, Eric. “The Rise of American Gothic.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, edited by Jerrold E. Hogle, Cambridge UP, 2002, 167–88. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521791243.009.
TSAI, Robin Chen-Hsing. “Technology, the Environment and Biopolitics in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Foreign Literature Studies, vol. 36, no. 6, 2014, pp. 18–30.
TUCKER, Jeffrey A. “’The Human Contradiction’: Identity and/as Essence in Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Xenogenesis’.” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 37, no. 2, 2007, pp. 164–81. https://doi.org/10.1353/yes.2007.0001.
VIZENOR, Gerald, and A. Robert Lee. “Discursive Narratives.” Postindian Conversations, University of Nebraska Press, 1999, pp. 79–94.
WANG, Wang, Alvin Y. “Gender and Nature: A Psychological Analysis of Ecofeminist Theory.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 29, no. 11, 1999, pp. 2410–424. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00118.x.
WOLFE, Cary. “Introduction: What Is Posthumanism?” What Is Posthumanism?, edited by Cary Wolfe, U of Minnesota P, 2010, pp. xi–xxxiv.
ZAKI, Hoda M. “Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, 1990, pp. 239–51. https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.17.2.239.
