The Conception of Female Subjectivity in Speculative Novels: A Study of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn & Parables

Defining female subjectivity has always been a challenge, from its modern conception by Sigmund Freud to its most recent analysis by contemporary feminist critics. Basing female subjectivity on an inherent lack in the psychology of Freud and later Jacques Lacan, promoted feminist critics like Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler to reinstate the concept in their theories. For Irigaray, females have their own unique subjectivity that is manifested in the difference of their bodies and language from those of males. She contends that this difference should be revealed not bridged or concealed. Judith Butler, believes that it is only through resistance and agency that a true subjectivity is revealed. The present article is a feminist study of women subjectivity in speculative literature. Feminist speculative literature has its primary goal in altering women’s debilitating self-image so that they can act upon such changes and make ideal societies based upon their new self-conceptions. Octavia E. Butler, writer of Dawn and Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, renders a resistant picture of females who go beyond their immediate male dominated environment and perform something that is near to Irigaray and Judith Butler’s conception of female subjectivity.