Compared to the other books we've read so far, Kindred is much more restrained in its use of postmodernism. In general it seems like Butler is more interested in the characters and specifically in Dana's experiences than just in postmodernism. She uses it as more of a tool than a subject. The most obvious way she uses it here is the time travel, which while it's just a sci-fi trope, here it lets butler put Dana into situations it would be impossible to otherwise, and it forces her to reflect on the history of America and it's connection to 1970s America. Butler pretty much sidesteps most questions about the details of how the time travel works, probably because it's already the source of many of Dana's motivations and Butler is much more interested in how she reacts to 1800's Maryland than how she reacts to the time travel. I think that's also why Butler reveals so quickly that Rufus is the one pulling Dana into the past, since it clears up enough questions about the time travel to move on to more interesting questions.
Another effect of Butler's use of postmodernism is that it also puts some focus on the more ontological questions that she's asking about 1970s America, and whether we've ever really moved on from the past. By bringing these worlds much closer together Butler raises the question of how far has America actually come? The fact that Dana's perspective get's slowly warped by the past, as well as her resemblance to Alice, also shows how the past still looms over the present. If Dana can't escape it than it seems unlikely that the everyone else has. The irony of having everything come to a head on the bicentennial anniversary also brings attention to our relationship to the past, since to Dana, it wouldn't really seem worth celebrating. It seems Butler's suggesting more that we should try to better understand and reconcile with the past than just blindly celebrate it.
It's also interesting how different Butler's use of postmodernism is from E.L. Doctorow's in Ragtime. Here the focus is much more on Dana as a character, unlike how in Ragtime the characters are more like figures that represent either some archetype of the time, or the history that they originate from. I think Butler is still using Dana as a figure representing more of 1970s American culture, but it's more to to show the contrasts between her world and 1800s Maryland. Butler also does something similar with most of the people on the plantation, outside of Tom Weylin. They could just be representations of the institution they represent, but Butler is more interested in what happens to these characters when they interact with Dana. One way Butler's use of Postmodernism is similar to Doctorow's though, is how they both sidestep most questions about the actual plausibility of the narrative. Butler just doesn't bother to explain, and Doctorow tries to make up potential holes in history that could validate it. They're both much more interested in just seeing what happens when you create these situations, and in these cases especially, that is a much more interesting question.
The time traveling aspect of the novel is definately vital. With slave narratives, it's easier to brush history off and say "it's in the past." Readers might not feel as connected to historical narrators as they do with Dana. Butler using a modern narrator with familial ties to the past pushes readers to face history head on and realize that ignoring the past is not productive. Great post on dissecting the use of postmodernism in Kindred!
ReplyDeleteI had been a little fuzzy on how Kindred relates to postmodernism, but your blog post has cleared things up for me. I like the comparative of Doctorow filling in the gap vs Butler just ignoring them. The questions and thoughts broguht up by reading Kindred are very postmodernist tho, like the how far are we really from the past that we seem to gloss over or condense?
ReplyDeleteI like how you compared Butler's version of postmodernism to Doctorow's. It seems as though Butler is asking questions of America in the 1800s through Dana. In Doctorow's version of postmodernism, it seems to me that he fills these questions in with his own narrative. Ultimately, postmodernism is up to the author's discretion and Butler and Doctorow view things differently, but perhaps similar at the same time.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I almost completely forgot that Kindred was a postmodernist novel when I was reading through it. However, after drawing parallels with Doctorow's Ragtime, it became more clear. It also made me wonder if by focusing less on the specifics of time travel, Butler enhances the emotional profoundness of Dana's journey?
ReplyDeleteOne way to summarize how _Kindred_ differs from _Ragtime_ might be to say that while Doctorow's novel is largely defined by irony (how many of our class discussions centered around the question of the "irony meter"?), Butler's is almost entirely devoid of irony. As you note, this has a lot to do with its first-person narrative: Doctorow constantly hovers somewhere above or apart from his characters, smirking at their foibles and undermining their sincerity through the way he narrates them, but Butler narrates as if she WERE Dana, as if she HAD been through this harrowing experience and is eager to share it with readers. There is nothing "playful" about Butler's use of time travel--it is in fact deadly serious, quite literally, as there are no guarantees Dana will survive this ordeal, and we know from the start that she returns grievously wounded.
ReplyDeleteI dare say that Butler's postmodernism is especially pronounced, less so in its magnitude but with how visible it is.... Certainly, she does not manipulate the plot or insert herself within the narrative in the same way the Doctorow does, but I think she very intentionally weaves the postmodernist uncertainty into the plot. I think your point about Butler's focus to be quite interesting as well - Butler does take on a dialogue-heavy, existential prose that may be more modernist in appearance. Perhaps this co-opting of a purely postmodernist narrative allows for the novel to be more approachable for the general reader?
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