A Vulnerable Sense of Place: Re-Adapting Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia in Parable of the Sower and Zone One

Abstract

Drawing on a number of theoretical works by space, trauma and dystopian studies scholars, this paper reconsiders the postapocalyptic novels of Octavia E. Butler and Colson Whitehead, Parable of the Sower and Zone One respectively, as instances of “narrative vulnerability” that reformulate dystopian conventions to denounce precariousness and social chaos in twenty-first century America. It is argued that these novels re-adapt dystopia (understood in terms of genre and space: dys-topos) to denounce the futurelessness and fragility of corporate (bio)political systems, which can easily turn into posthuman regimes that cannibalize and impinge on the rights of those deemed Other. My aim with this paper is to trace the authors’ depictions of time and space as reconsidered genre components that problematize narrative resolution, adhering to narrative closure and spatial vulnerability in an attempt to critically portray the victimhood and hopelessness of those for whom nation and home will always be inaccessible, merely dystopian land.