Speech Sounds by Octavia Butler
Feminism and Breakdown of World Order in “Speech Sounds”
As statistics show, science fiction has long been a genre produced and consumed by nerdy, middle aged, white men, with little to no social skills. The content of science fiction has typically revolved around intergalactic interaction and male dominated adventure and exploration, most certainly do not imagine that science fiction can be used to write about feminist thoughts or ideas. However, this is exactly what Octavia Butler does in her short story “Speech Sounds.” Many scholars believe that feminist science fiction writers write toward a utopian society. Butler, however, tends to write more towards a confrontation with dystopia. A dystopian society, or anti-utopia, is a society characterized by misery, violence, and disorder, which is exactly what is seen in “Speech Sounds.” In a society that has been torn apart by the breakdown of communication, Rye, a female with the ability to speak, asserts a dominant presence and embodies a theory that language is the ultimate tool constructing World Order and the realities within it.
Science fiction is a genre of literature that utilizes fiction to engage the political realities of its time and as stated its visions where usually about war and conquest. However, science fiction started to change in the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of identity politics and feminism. Non-white female authors, like Butler, came into this genre and brought with them new topics and concerns with which to write about. The feminist lens would recognize these concerns having more to do with experiments in social justice than with planetary conquest directly. As more and more females started writing science fiction, a new subgenre of feminist science fiction emerged that dealt with issues that were of particular concern to equality. Feminist science fiction entails engaging questions about gender, family and the social structures, individual autonomy, and the individual’s ability to
As statistics show, science fiction has long been a genre produced and consumed by nerdy, middle aged, white men, with little to no social skills. The content of science fiction has typically revolved around intergalactic interaction and male dominated adventure and exploration, most certainly do not imagine that science fiction can be used to write about feminist thoughts or ideas. However, this is exactly what Octavia Butler does in her short story “Speech Sounds.” Many scholars believe that feminist science fiction writers write toward a utopian society. Butler, however, tends to write more towards a confrontation with dystopia. A dystopian society, or anti-utopia, is a society characterized by misery, violence, and disorder, which is exactly what is seen in “Speech Sounds.” In a society that has been torn apart by the breakdown of communication, Rye, a female with the ability to speak, asserts a dominant presence and embodies a theory that language is the ultimate tool constructing World Order and the realities within it.
Science fiction is a genre of literature that utilizes fiction to engage the political realities of its time and as stated its visions where usually about war and conquest. However, science fiction started to change in the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of identity politics and feminism. Non-white female authors, like Butler, came into this genre and brought with them new topics and concerns with which to write about. The feminist lens would recognize these concerns having more to do with experiments in social justice than with planetary conquest directly. As more and more females started writing science fiction, a new subgenre of feminist science fiction emerged that dealt with issues that were of particular concern to equality. Feminist science fiction entails engaging questions about gender, family and the social structures, individual autonomy, and the individual’s ability to