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t or dismiss utopia for its idealism, Warfield explainsthe need for a complication of both understandings, and particularly the
“unrepresentable future” of no-place utopianism (62). Warfield’s and Green’sreconsiderations of utopia converge because both emphasize the no-place aspectof utopia where human nature is flexible and open to change, whichmeans utopias must contend with what is outside rigid, static constructionssuch as binaries and hierarchies. Green’s analysis examines numerous works
by Butler, and Warfield uses her expanded definition of utopian discourse tointerrogate Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower. I argue that their ideas allowone to read Fledgling as utopian too.2
Green describes the blending of eu-topia and ou-topia to form the
word utopia as making “the utopian form already a miscegenation of sorts”(169). So, she provides a provocative connection to Butler’s latest utopia.Butler’s heroine in Fledgling, Shori, exists as a mixed-blood vampire: partvampire, part human, who possesses dark skin and is designated a “daywalker”because—unlike traditional vampires—she can function during the day.
Butler envisions a particular future as embodied by the vampire figure. Thisarticle posits that Butler’s vision in Fledgling can be read as a utopian worldthat is not free of problems but rather one where problems are confrontedand dealt with. This utopia embraces “difference, disagreement, and diversity”(Green 168) and never remains static. Through an exploration of race,hybridity, gender, hierarchy, and the restructuring of traditional representations
of the vampire figure, Butler’s novel provides a vampiric vision where
fixed categories and boundaries are challenged and human (or Ina) agency
~393~Brox Butler’s Vampiric Vision
can instigate change.
Plot

1 Gateward articulates a particularly succinct and insightful genealogy
of the vampire figure in her 2004 article “Daywalkin’ Night Stalkin’
Bloodsuckas”: “Scholarly literature has traced the evolution of the vampire
figure, relating the blood-sucker’s changing construction to shifting cultural
anxieties—questions of morality of imperialism and fear of reverse coloniza~
408~
~UTOPIAN STUDIES 19.3~
tion (Arata); as metaphor for adolescent sexuality (Evans), sexually transmitted
diseases such as AIDS (Dika), capitalism (Latham), and as a text concerned
with patriarchy and women’s sexuality (Demetrakopoulos)” (para. 3).
2 The works by Octavia Butler that Michelle Erica Green examines
include the Patternmaster novels, the Xenogenesis trilogy, Kindred, “Speech
Sounds,” “Bloodchild,” and “The Evening and the Morning and the Night.”
3 Laurel Bollinger makes a similar observation in “Placental Economy:
Octavia Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Speculative Subjectivity.” She briefly
mentions Fledgling near the end of her article: “But the blending makes Shori
herself an outcast among Ina, who see her as a product of something like miscegenation
(although it is her human, not her racial, antecedents that trouble
them)” (345).
4 Brody’s chapter, “Miscegenating Multaroons: Women of Colour,”
examines three Anglo-American Multaroons: Olivia Fairschild in The Woman
of Colour; Rhoda Swartz from William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair;
and Zoe Peyton from Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon.
5 Joan Dayan’s comparison, in “Codes of Law and Bodies of Color,”
of the 1685 Code Noir to the work of the Mar本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。