Telepaths, Social Constructs, and Panoptical Power in Octavia Butler’s Patternist Series

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dc.contributor.advisorSchiffman, Marc
dc.contributor.authorMatthews, Aisha Alia
dc.date.accessioned2024-02-29T03:48:31Z
dc.date.available2024-02-29T03:48:31Z
dc.date.issued2017-09-05
dc.description.abstractTaking Octavia Butler’s Patternist series as its primary source of inquiry, this paper examines the ontology of power, intersubjectivity, and social reality through the science and speculative fiction tropes of body-swapping and self-transmutation. Butler’s re-invocation of American slavery opens new possibilities for understanding the nature of being and the definition of humanity, while encouraging new perspectives in postmodernist thinking, most notably centered on the belief in the socially constructed nature of identity. More broadly, this paper places such dialogues in conversation with theories on Foucaldian power structures, Cartesian duality, and phenomenology, ultimately concluding that the socially constructed nature of the self obfuscates the truly human desires, such as that for power, which transcend the demographic differences defining current social realities.
dc.description.degreeMaster Arts
dc.description.programEnglish
dc.description.schoolCollege of Online and Continuing Education
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10474/3818
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherSouthern New Hampshire University
dc.relation.requiresAdobe Acrobat Reader
dc.rightsAuthor retains all ownership rights. Further reproduction in violation of copyright is prohibited.
dc.rightsHolderMatthews, Aisha Alia
dc.subject.lcshEnglish Literature
dc.subject.lcshSocial Constructionism
dc.subject.lcshSpeculative Fiction
dc.subject.otherAfrofuturism
dc.subject.otherOctavia Butler
dc.subject.otherPanopticism
dc.subject.otherPatternmaster
dc.titleTelepaths, Social Constructs, and Panoptical Power in Octavia Butler’s Patternist Series
dc.typeThesis

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