Speculative Fictions of A Divided World: Reading Octavia E. Butler in South Korea

Abstract

This essay offers the late great Octavia E Butler’s work as an example of a Black diasporic speculative fictional practice from below that harshly illuminates and meaningfully responds to migration and demographic change; an emergent neoliberalism and ongoing imperialism and colonialism; the destabilization of national boundaries through global forces such as climate change; the eventual depletion of fossil fuels; and the volatility and violence of the global economy. I argue that reading Butler’s published work and her extensive archive of papers housed at the Huntington Library also requires us to think about how different kinds of technology reshape our sense of place, space, and the environment. In all of these ways, I suggest, Butler’s work anticipates and joins an emerging conversation about global inequalities, international and transnational divisions and connections, and climate change in recent science fiction and fantasy films in global mass culture, including some involving significant contributions by Korean cultural producers, most famously, The Host (2006) and Snowpiercer (2013), both directed by Bong Joon Ho.