Date of Award
11-27-2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Elizabeth West - Chair
Second Advisor
Dr. Layli Phillips
Third Advisor
Dr. Kameelah Martin Samuel
Abstract
Dana, the Black female protagonist in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1979), finds herself literally and figuratively in medias res as she sporadically travels between her present day life in 1976 and her ancestral plantation of 1815 – two time periods that represent two converse concepts of her identity as a Black woman. As a result, her time travel experiences cause her to revise her racial and gendered identity from a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences, to a Black woman who defines herself based on her present life and her personal and ancestral history of experiencing and overcoming racial and gendered oppression. Using Black feminist theory scholarship, this thesis examines Dana’s movement out of in medias res, through temporal double-consciousness, into a historically integrated identity or interstitial consciousness.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1059487
Recommended Citation
Smith, Roslyn Nicole, "Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness and Resistance in Octavia Butler's Kindred." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2007.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1059487