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

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 "gender
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