Appleton, Nayantara Sheoran, and Danya Glabau. “Critical Engagements on Making Kin Not Population: An Epistolary Review Essay.” American Anthropologist, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13780.

• Overall essay raises and addresses concerns with Haraway’s piece relating specifically to the population control aspect. This is one of the less “traditional” papers I read, which at first I was a little wary of, but don’t believe it strays too far as to be “radical”. I believe having a paper that is “non-traditional” can also be beneficial to my topic which deals with “traditional” family/relations/power dynamics and viewing them in re-imagined ways as presented in the novels included.

Clausen, Daniel D. “Cli-Fi Georgic and Grassroots Mutual Aid in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Western American Literature, vol. 56 no. 3, 2021, p. 269-286. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/wal.2021.0040.

• Clausen’s application of mutual aid to Parable of the Sower makes for a good application to the idea of making kin. There is the belief that everyone in the community is able to contribute something different and valuable to each other’s lives and in doing so everyone is playing a role in each other’s upbringing and growth. One of the important ideas is that this isn’t charity, but that it is something that everyone benefits from. As shown in Parable of the Sower and Talents, people are given a choice to be a part of the community and participate in this way that is beneficial to all. It is also worth noting that while they aren’t being coerced to join, the other options are almost certain death or slavery.

Guerrero, Paula Barba. “Post-Apocalyptic Memory Sites: Damaged Space, Nostalgia, and Refuge in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, 2021, p. 29–45.

• Guerrero argues that nostalgia is used by Butler as a tool to analyze the past to create an improved future. Guerro argues that Lauren’s view of family and home is different than her parents and that this becomes the main catalyst for change. The main reason Lauren’s views differ is largely because of social and political imbalances that lead to an uneven displacement of power that leads to generational trauma. Guerrero’s arguments will play a role in my argument to help reimagine Haraway’s “making kin” in terms of new family and community relations.

Haraway, Donna.  “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015.

• Haraway’s idea of “making kin” will be the main idea I focus on and use to look at other pieces. I will look at how her idea of “make kin not population” can be viewed as oppressive, but will look at less oppressive examples presented in Butler’s Parable series and Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.

Laurie, Timothy, and Hannah Stark. “Reconsidering Kinship: Beyond the Nuclear Family with Deleuze and Guattari.” Cultural studies review 18, no. 1 (2012): 19–39. https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v18i1.1612.

• While I would have really liked to use this piece, I don’t feel I have a complete grasp over the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari especially with regards to Anti-Oedipus. I think some of the ideas could lend themselves well to the ideas of kin-making presented in all of the novels we read this semester, but might just have to put a pin in using these ideas for now.

Leitch, Vincent B., et al. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch et al., Third edition., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

• Excerpt from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia introduction of the rhizome is what originally sparked my idea of looking at Haraway’s idea of “making kin” in a less oppressive and anti-hierarchical manner. I don’t believe I will be using anything specifically from this piece as my knowledge on the subject is still limited and I had difficulty finding related articles to the texts covered in class.

Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1998, pp. 336–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240705.

• I will be using Miller’s section on Sower. He talks about the power of fiction to help us reimagine a future for ourselves through Butler’s critique of capitalism. Some of his ideas go well with the idea of mutual aid that Clausen talks about. Here, Earthseed goes beyond the good for just the nuclear family and talks about the communities responsibility for looking after the children. I believe community is a central tenet to creating kinship.I think another crucial aspect of kin-making as presented by Butler is not the restriction of population, but an emphasis on the role the community plays in all children’s upbringing.

Prabhu, Gayathri (2015). Retelling Nature: Realism and the Postcolonial-Environmental Imaginary in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. Transnational Literature, 7(2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.48.1.0029

• This calls to question what is the relationship between people and animals. Piya’s western morals conflict with Fokir’s which creates a chasm between the two. How and if this chasm is felt by Fokir is largely unknown to the reader, but Piya feels that her ideals are more righteous in this situation, which shows her initial unwillingness to understand the reasoning and way of life of the indigenous people of the Sundarbans. The conflict is because Piya is unable to assert her will and sense of justice upon the situation because she believes she is in the right. This conflict is resolved toward the novel’s final pages when PIya eventually see’s the path to a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship between her, representing “the west” and the indigenous people of the Sundarbans.

White, Laura A. “Novel Vision: Seeing the Sunderbans through Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Hungry Tide.’” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 20, no. 3, 2013, pp. 513–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44087261.

• White looks at The Hungry Tides use of “nonvisual” ways of knowing. There is a big emphasis on learning the untold stories of those who are usually voiceless and repressed. There are many different ways to “know” something, but listening to all the ways to know something, in this instance, the Sunderbans, allows for a reimagining and less oppressive way to view relationships between humans and the relationships between humans and nature. I will look at some of these ways this can be used to review Haraway’s “kin-making” especially as Ghosh’s novel draws to a close.

I found Haraway’s idea of “making kin” abrasive and potentially oppressive. Despite my initial ire toward Haraway’s piece, I found myself looking at the potential merits of the idea and I saw it was represented in all the literature we read throughout the semester. Two names that continued to appear on the periphery of class readings and discussions (Haraway’s piece for one) were Deleuze and Guattari. I read a selection from A Thousand Planteus: Capitalism and SchizophreniaI and was drawn to many of their ideas, particularly with the rhizome and how it represents an anti-hierarchy. Although my understanding of what they outlined may be superficial and flawed, the connection I made was how “making kin” can be a non-oppressive, non-hierarchical exchange while considering Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome, which I believe influenced Haraway in addition to meshing well with her ideas.

My search process for finding articles started on OneSearch. I initially searched for articles relating to Lerner’s 10:04, using the keywords “Lerner” and “10:04”. There were a lot of reviews of the book and only one academic paper that showed up on the first page. I then looked through GoogleScholar and was able to find a few additional peer reviewed papers, however I ran into issues accessing some of them. I then found that if I searched for the journal and the author on OneSearch, I was sometimes able to access the article I couldn’t access through GoogleScholar. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything written about 10:04 that would work for the piece I have in mind, but may still do some additional searching. It was much easier finding results related to Haraway, Ghosh, and Butler. One search I used on OneSearch and GoogleScholar was Haraway paired with one of the other authors. This produced very limited results, but gave me two pieces that will work well for what I have in mind. I also searched each author’s name with other keywords such as: chthulucene, pedagogy, kin, family, etc. The results were varied. Something invaluable I discovered while using GoogleScholar was it will search for synonyms of keywords provided. I will continue to do additional research to see if I can uncover further papers that will assist in my argument, which may include requesting some pieces I didn’t have immediate access to. There is also a chance I may tweak my initial question based on how annotating the papers goes.

Appleton, Nayantara Sheoran, and Danya Glabau. “Critical Engagements on Making Kin Not Population: An Epistolary Review Essay.” American Anthropologist, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13780.

Guerrero, Paula Barba. “Post-Apocalyptic Memory Sites: Damaged Space, Nostalgia, and Refuge in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, 2021, p. 29–45. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.48.1.0029.

Haraway, Donna.  “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015.

Laurie, Timothy, and Hannah Stark. “Reconsidering Kinship: Beyond the Nuclear Family with Deleuze and Guattari.” Cultural studies review 18, no. 1 (2012): 19–39. https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v18i1.1612.

Leitch, Vincent B., et al. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch et al., Third edition., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1998, pp. 336–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240705.

White, Laura A. “Novel Vision: Seeing the Sunderbans through Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Hungry Tide.’” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 20, no. 3, 2013, pp. 513–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44087261.

How can Haraway’s idea of “Making Kin” help re-imagine western pedagogy, as explored in: Butler’s Parable series, Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Lerner’s 10:04

In 10:04, Ben Lerner presents a world through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, simply known as “the author”. Lerner explores a metanarrative through “the author”, who then explores additional narratives through his own writing, which reference different versions of himself. This blurs the line of what is reality and what is fiction within and throughout the novel. This unreliability is further explored through “the author’s” anxiety due to a potentially deadly health condition and questionable mental health. Lerner’s use of such a narrator creates a lens to view our current era which reveals the uncertainty that tomorrow holds and the struggle for a generation to live authentically.

The question of “the author’s” mental health arises within the first page. As he sits atop The Highline he says, “I am kidding and I am not kidding when I say that I intuited an alien intelligence, felt subject to a succession of images sensation, memories, and affects that did not, probably speaking, belong to me…a terror localized my extremities” (4). “The author” introduces himself as someone who is experiencing events that don’t belong to him. He continues, or perhaps another author continues to question his authenticity, as shown in the following passage: “the more intently the author worried about distinguishing himself from the narrator, the more he felt he had become him” (66). “The author” is blurring the line between reality and fiction, which of course is compounded by the fact that he continues to reference another “author”. In a way, Lerner is calling attention to the struggle for our current generation to find an identity or truth, but as “the author” demonstrates, it is a search filled with false ideals and imitation.

The looming threat introduced early in the novel is “the author’s” potentially deadly heart condition, which as Lerner writes, “I was now burdened with the awareness that there was a statistically significant change the largest artery in my body would rupture at any moment”(5). In addition to the questionable veracity of the narrative, there is also the unreliability of the narrator’s future. The ever present threat of catastrophe continues the theme of the uncertainty of modernity. Humanity lives in a world that is constantly at the mercy of world leaders who possess the power to bring destruction to all of civilization with the push of a button. There is also the less abrupt but equally destructive specter of climate change. “The author” becomes a mirror that reveals and reminds the reader the fragility of life.

Lerner is without a doubt the author of 10:04, and there is little doubt that Lerner projects himself  through “the author” in 10:04. The author is writing about “the author” who further goes on to write about additional “authors”. This calls to question, who is writing about who? Which perspective is the genuine one? Which “author” is writing about which “author”? Because names are changed or omitted, it’s also reasonable to assume personality traits have been swapped or combined. There’s a chance that some light will be shed on these questions by the end of the novel, but when viewed through a postmodern lens, it doesn’t matter. The idea of finding truth remains just as abstract as the narrative presented throughout the first part of the novel.

I came across this satellite image of the Sundarbans when I was reading about the orcaella on wikipedia. I thought it was a really stunning image and wanted to share.