I am using this post to just get my ideas out on a really big idea from the book: the power dynamic in slave culture that is portrayed in Octavia Bulter's Kindred. Butler seeks to deepen and expand on the traditionally taught power dynamic of slave culture, all powerful slaveholder and completely helpless slave, and expand this simplistic model of power distribution into a dynamic rather than a one sided thing. Butler's claim seems to be that the distinction between power over physical things and freewill/religious freedom is extremely important in slave culture. Throughout the book, especially through the interactions between Dana, Alice and Rufus, Butler explores the limits to the extreme power of a slaveholder.
I started considering this concept when Rufus tells Dana to burn history book that she brought. Rufus goes in his usual cycle of approaches he uses to get people to obey him. Dana burns the book and the map but in the end she says she can get along without it and Rufus can't take the knowledge she has already away from her. He can only take the book.
The epitome of the power dynamic analysis in Kindred is the relationships between Dana, Alice, and Rufus. As mentioned in some of the panel presentations, Rufus sees Alice and Dana as two halves of the same woman thus leading the reader to the realization that this is a very interesting perspective. In regards to power and control, Alice and Dana can be seen as two halves of one person. Alice is the physical half, property of Rufus and totally used by him. Dana, on the other hand, represents the freer emotional/spiritual half. Rufus never actually bought Dana, even though she appears under his control. She, the emotional half, has a greater deal of freedom than Alice, the physical. Still, she is not completely free. She is tied to Rufus but not owned by him.
This explains the difference in his relations with both halves. With Alice, he is very physical which is what he knows works with physical property. His relationship with Dana is less physical because that seems not to work. The comparison is beating the body versus beating an emotion. One works and one does not. Also the fact that Dana is more educated than he is helps make her less material and more untouchable. Oh, and the fact that she just poofs away sometimes. With this comparison in mind, maybe the dynamic is between familiar and unfamiliar or controllable and un-controllable...
I think it is significant that Dana, Alice and Rufus all recognize that Rufus's power can't truly affect Alice emotionally. Limited power is what sets Rufus off and causes him to lash out.
Alice's suicide shows the difference between the physical and emotional/spiritual sides of herself. When Alice kills herself, Rufus is left with the body he bought but he can no longer have the other half. This also gets into the whole power dynamic of choices for slaves.
Choices for slaves often had no desirable options but still, any choice represents a degree of freedom. The ultimate choice was suicide. Dana tried it and Alice succeeded. Dana also tries to make commands from Rufus seem like choices she makes and she eventually learns to lie to preserve some ounce of freedom.
Well, I feel as if I've lost my focus and I have lots of other work to do so I'm leaving this topic for now and may revisit it in my paper or another post.
This is a really important set of observations--it's crucial in general, I think, to understand Butler's narrative of slavery not as one of mass-victimization, wherein the slaves are helpless before the dominant masters, but a much more complex negotiation. And you're right to point to the *limits* of Rufus's control. Of course, the idea that the BOOK can be burned but not the KNOWLEDGE cuts at one of the cornerstones of the slave-holder's power: the ability to control literacy. By teaching the children on the plantation to read and write, Dana is making a radical and potentially life-saving intervention in the order of things.
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