We Need the Stars: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower and

Parable of the Talents

Mathias Nilges

Callaloo, Volume 32, Number 4, Fall 2009, pp. 1332-1352 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/cal.0.0553

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cal/summary/v032/32.4.nilges.html

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WE NEED THE STARS Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

by Mathias Nilges

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce. Karl Marx It is in her treatment of the concept of change that many critics locate the most accessible basis for an examination of the politics of Butlers Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talentsand rightly so. The Parable novels, spanning a time frame of over sixty-five years (from 2024 to 2090), revolve around the attempts of Lauren Oya Olamina, a young African American woman, to overcome the loss of her family in the destruction of her former home Robledo, a small Californian walled-community. Central in Laurens effort is the attempt to form a new community, based upon a new understanding of individual and collective existence, which is designed to accept the fact that the post-apocalyptic world surrounding them lacks any form of permanence or stability. The expression God is Change becomes the central credo of this new community and forms the philosophical cornerstone of a quasi-religious system Lauren creates. All that you touch/You Change./ All that you Change/Changes you./The only lasting truth/Is Change./God/Is Change (Sower 3). This excerpt from the Book of the Living, the collection of truths Lauren writes down and advertises as the basis for her vision of a progressive community, is commonly considered evidence that supports readings of Butlers novels as arguments 1332
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for the necessity to leave behind outdated conceptions of community and society, trading them in for the progressive ideal of change. Such readings of the Parable novels frequently refer to classic postmodern arguments regarding the liberatory potential contained in concepts such as diversity, pluralism, the incredulity toward repressive meta-narratives, or the embrace of difference.1 From this perspective, the Parable novels can seemingly be construed as postmodern visions of a progressive politics of community and identity. Yet, such a reading of Butlers novels, especially of Butlers treatment of the concept of change in the context of a destabilized and deregulated world, quickly reveals itself as onedimensional, undervaluing the true scope of Butlers critical intervention. Furthermore, labeling Butlers novels postmodern misses a crucial shift in literary history. As we shall see, Butlers Parable novels are not postmodern but post-Fordist novels.2 Despite the fact that the terms Fordism and post-Fordism are becoming more prevalent in critical discourse, it appears prudent to begin this analysis by establishing the ways in which these terms will methodologically and analytically operate in what follows. By post-Fordism I do not merely designate a shift in the dominant mechanisms of production of Western capitalism over the course of the last few decades. Instead, I assign the term a more expansive descriptive force, rooted in its conceptual antecedent: Fordism. Fordism is not just defined by the assembly line. More importantly, the term Fordism describes a mode of production that for the first time in history invades, standardizes, and regulates virtually every aspect of the lives of its subjectstheir social, political, cultural, geographical, and even medical lives. By extension, the term post-Fordism, as I use it in this essay, does not just describe the shift in production from national, regulated, industrial economies to globalized, deregulated service and immaterial economies, but also a vast shift in the entirety of social and political life, including politics of the state, nations, and, notably for the purposes of this essay, cultural and intellectual production. Methodologically, I base the following inquiry on the writings of the French Regulation School, whose insistence on the importance of analyzing the ways in which capitalism progresses and changes depending on its social regulation provide an invaluable tool for contemporary cultural critics. Regulation theory insists that we can arrive at a fuller understanding of the material dynamics behind the progress of history by studying the perpetual dialectical struggle between capital and its social dimension, which understands history a heterogeneous process of perpetual change with only moments of relative stability that correspond to moments of structural dominance (such as full post-Fordism).3 In what follows, I extend this analytical model and focus on the central role culture takes on in capitalisms social regulation, which in turn becomes an invaluable tool for understanding recent literary history. Culture, therefore, can be understood as the battlefield upon which the social regulation of contemporary capitalism is carried out, where new sociopolitical and socioeconomic arrangements, attitudes, and beliefs are born and buried, contested and disseminated. It is also here that we can locate the intervention of Butlers novels: a finely nuanced mediation of the psychological and political pressures arising out of the transition into post-Fordism. Furthermore, we will see that Butlers treatment of the concept of change indicates a necessary periodizing distinction between postmodernism and post-Fordist culture. Postmodernism, usually simply defined as the cultural expression of postmodernity, is from this perspective more accurately understood as the culture of emergent 1333

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postmodernity or as the culture of Fordism in crisis and must be clearly differentiated from post-Fordist culture, the culture of full postmodernity or of the completed transition into post-Fordism. Unlike postmodernism, which is centrally marked by the celebration of change, progress, and supersession of traditional sociopolitical structures, post-Fordist culture, as Butlers novels forcefully illustrate, is marked by a much more complicated relationship to full postmodernity or post-Fordism. Butlers treatment of the concept of change in post-Fordism focuses on the social and political consequences arising from rejections of post-Fordism that produce nostalgic desires for the resurrection of lost metanarratives. Through her presentation of the changed significance of the concept of change in a post-Fordist context, Butler is able to capture the complexity surrounding the present socioeconomic significance of this concept, consequently producing a narrative about the tragic consequences of rejecting change by means of restoring paternalistic structures. As Butlers novels illustrate, within the desire to restore the idealized protective father, a desire that appears to be an inevitable byproduct of the transition into post-Fordism, lurks the potential to revive his shadowy double, the punitive father. In other words, the value of closely examining the concept of change in Butlers novels is twofold: we get an insight into elements of the periodizing distinction between postmodernism and postFordist culture and into Butlers contribution to contemporary political art that locates within the struggle with post-Fordism the potential for the resurrection of Fordist and even totalitarian structures.

Nostalgia for the Future Critics frequently read Butlers description of Laurens politico-philosophical project as the basis for a utopian society, which rejects, as Peter G. Stillman claims, sociopolitically problematic ideas such as individualism, private property, and discrimination based upon race or gender. Instead, he argues, the ideal upon which Lauren founds a new, progressive community is the the conscious interdependence and agreement of its members, who must know, trust, and be able to work with each other for shared purposes (Stillman 2223). Similarly, Butler is often lauded for her extraordinary ability to grasp the social complexities of the present and envision necessary political and social solutions in her narratives of the future. Jerry Phillips praises Butler for her affirmation of the centrality of change that reveals a crucial awareness of the dialectical progress of history and envisions future potentiality without resorting to simple determinisms, producing a new ethics of Being (302). However, while critics locate the force of the Parable novels correctly in Butlers extraordinary ability to grasp the complex interrelation between the forces that have throughout the last few decades radically transformed the constitution of the United States socioeconomic system and the need to reformulate ideas of community and selfhood, analyses of the Parable novels have thus far failed to capture the complexity of Butlers examination of the significance of the concept of change itself. By truly situating Butlers critique within the present, analyzing the ways in which the concept of change functions within contemporary American society and the ways in which this function is represented in Butlers Parable novels, it is possible to appreciate Butlers novels as a significant me1334

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diation of what is not an embrace of the ideal of change but indeed its widespread rejection. Butler does not consider the concept of change purely in its potential for the future. Rather, the Parable novels explore the concept of change as centrally connected to the logic of post-Fordist capitalisms sociocultural regulation in the present. In their analyses of the concept of change as it functions within the novels as a basis for ideologically structuring a community, critics tend to treat change as a progressive alternative to repressive and segregating social structures that need to be overcome. Patricia Melzer, for example, argues that, One of Butlers contributions to this discourse [utilizing the concept of difference in an attempt to formulate progressive utopian narratives] is her concept of change that lies at the basis of every political interaction. Instead of freezing the manifestations of difference within the theoretical conceptualizations (i.e. gender, race, class), she emphasizes the fluid and transforming aspect behind the term. At the same time, she makes these manifestations concrete and rams them into a moment of agency by claiming that they can be shaped. Change and its implications inject a transformative element into the conceptualizations of difference that enables not only a new perception of difference, such as Audre Lorde calls for in Sister Outsider, but that demands a constant redefinition of its categories. It is especially in this respect that Butlers utopian desire contributes to the feminist discourse on difference. (36) Melzers article is indicative of what I consider to be a lack of historical specificity regarding Butlers project of locating Laurens struggle and her engagement with the concept of change in direct relation to the present, a lack of specificity that has direct consequences for our ability to grasp the full complexity of Butlers critical analysis of contemporary American society. What I would like to suggest is that change does not function as a utopian impulse or as grounds for utopian imagination in the novels. While there is great value in insisting on a definition of utopia as change, this is not the way in which change functions for Lauren and her community. Change is not an alternative opposed to a generally strictly and repressively regulated society, or a progressive solution to the problems posed by a repressive social dominant. It is clear that the critics mentioned above treat the novels as examples of literary postmodernism, interpreting change as functioning in a way comparable to the ways in which difference operates as a category of liberation in postmodernism. However, as becomes clear in the novel, change is in fact the dominant socioeconomic logic of the United States as Lauren finds it. Change is the functional norm of the world Butler describes. In other words, it is significant to understand that Butler does not represent change as a solution in the novel but first and foremost as societys central problem. Butlers Parable novels, as indicated above, are not postmodern but postFordist artifacts. The assertion that change does not function as a solution but as a problem in the novels may initially appear counterintuitive, or even simply wrong. After all, Laurens community that is founded upon change is presented to us as fundamentally progressive in its collective practices based upon change, in its celebration of diversity, and its acceptance of different sexual orientations. However, if we consider the intricacies of the concept of 1335

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change as represented by Butler it becomes clear that the true force of Butlers critique of the present is located in a more complex understanding of the concept of change than merely representing it as a quasi-utopian, postmodern critique advocating the blurring of the boundaries of traditional social norms. The post-apocalyptic setting of the novels leaves little doubt that such a departure from repressive structures is not the most direly needed project. Instead, Butlers novels raise a more rewarding question: what happens to change and to the progressive politics based on the ideal of change (in other words to the postmodern project) in a time in which change is not a utopian ideal but the logic of a present that is precisely because of its instability perceived as scary and chaotic? Change no longer functions as the ideal that promises liberation from repressive traditional structures. Instead, change has become the very logic of the post-Fordist present, the period in which the liberatory demands of postmodern culture and theory have been fulfilled, yet with a different outcome than previously imagined. The liberatory potential postmodern culture imagined in its representation of the future and a changing present have revealed itself in contemporary or post-Fordist culture as nothing more than the central logic of post-Fordist capitalism. In other words, post-Fordist culture begins at the moment at which postmodernism starts to reveal itself not as a liberatory movement but as the cultural and socio-philosophical project that made way for a new structure of social regulation, as the very impulse, thus, that made the transition into a post-Fordism, into a form of capitalism based upon change and productive chaos possible. This transition, as Butlers novels suggest, is widely perceived as an apocalyptic one. From the beginning of Parable of the Sower there is little doubt that the post-apocalyptic setting of the novels is an allegorical representation of the dominant socioeconomic developments of our time. Traditional forms of stability such as the nation state begin to lose significance (we can read Robledo as a miniaturized example of this), the government as a regulating force is virtually nonexistent, and the country is run by corporations and rampant free-market capitalism within which even the police force has been privatized. Furthermore, Parable of the Talents contains a passage in which Franklin Taylor Bankole, Laurens husband, provides the reader with a few clues regarding the historical events that climaxed in the apocalyptic events that have come to be referred to as the Pox: I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises . . . . I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people. (Butler 8) This description of the apocalyptic transformation is an instance where the parallels to the socioeconomic and political problems of our present are particularly thinly veiled. In the Parable novels, change (or difference, pluralism, deregulation, decentralization, etc.) does not function as something new. It is no longer an alternative to the socioeconomic dominant whose full implementation can be the basis for imagining future 1336

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potential. Change is neither associated with utopian imagination, nor is it associated with the future. Instead, change is an aspect of pragmatic realism and a central characteristic of the present. Laurens belief system (Earthseed), by extension, is Butlers representation of a subjects struggle with the need to catch up with socioeconomic developments by attempting to formulate an idea of selfhood and of community that accounts for the changed structural context. The novels are less about the value of embracing change than about the struggle with the necessity of having to do so. Lauren never claims that embracing change will provide for a utopian alternative that stands opposed to present problems. Instead, she realizes that the present problem is that embracing change is necessary in order to formulate an individual and collective existence that corresponds to the world surrounding them. It is thus impossible to read Laurens relation to the idea of change in a one-dimensional manner that describes it as a positive alternative to the exterior world. Rather, the value of Butlers novels may lie primarily in her striking ability to represent the psychological struggle that arises out of the confrontation with change. Lauren and her group struggle to catch up with a world that has already left behind the forms of stability and community they are just beginning to realize as no longer functional. The purpose of Laurens religion/philosophy is to provide a basis for the articulation of forms of subjectivity that correspond to the radically changed environment. Butlers novels are thus primarily interested in the psychological mechanisms that create the negative perception of change in the context of a post-Fordist situation, as well as in the troubling social and political consequences of this rejection of change. As we shall see, the motto God is change does not constitute an embrace of change but indeed its categorical rejection. The novels main critical intervention consists in the examination of the regressive sociopolitical consequences of this rejection. However, Butler does not merely point toward the causal relationship between change and the desire for stability within post-Fordism. In the Parable novels she attempts to represent the complexity of the experience of post-Fordism as a situation which simultaneously harbors the potential for both hope and tragedy, arising from the fundamentally ambivalent relationship of the subject to change: God is Change. I hate God! (Sower 131). What, apart from this brief outburst on Laurens part (I hate God!) that voices discontent regarding the necessity of having to accept change, suggests that Lauren and her community might in fact reject change? After all, the central credo of the group seems to claim the opposite. The reader follows Lauren from the destruction of her walled community through various attempts to rebuild new communities to the final development of an internationally powerful and affluent religious organization about to colonize new planets. The main conflicts in the novels, as they seem to present themselves at first glance, are those between Earthseed/Acorn and the various forms of adversity Lauren has to overcome in her attempt to build a community and a belief system that structures this community in a world that is dominated by chaos and disorder, in other words by change. The function of Laurens new belief system, Earthseed, is to find a way to cope with the post-apocalyptic world by providing the community with a set of beliefs that will allow them to accept the chaos that surrounds them: God is Change. Members of Earthseed must, according to Lauren, recognize that chaos, disorder, and change are central concepts for life as they find it and cannot be fought but must be embraced. It is this belief, then, 1337

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that seemingly becomes central to all of Laurens attempts to reconstitute a feeling of the social in a post-social world, of replacing her lost community and family. Butlers complication of the psychological reaction to the centrality of change is contained within this very credo. Through its paradoxical logical constitution, Earthseeds credo God is Change expresses the fundamental trauma of the post-Fordist situation. While Lauren recognizes the centrality of change, she is, upon closer scrutiny, tragically unable to think a form of subjectivity that truly responds to this situation. Rather than a utopian imagination or solution directed at the future, the credo carries within itself what Butler represents as the most frequent and most problematic reaction to change, namely the desire to escape a world in which change dominates and return to a social situation that is marked by stability and order. By turning change into God, Lauren regressively transforms change into a religion, which, of course, makes change into as permanent a structure as one can imagine: a religion as a strong set of rules that have ultimate truthvalue for the believer, a system of explaining and mapping ones environment with the ability to radically simplify and explain all complexities of an increasingly unmappable world.4 Earthseeds assertion that God is Change is thus less a way to embrace change but to reduce complexity by transforming change into the basis for a universal system of determination, effectively replacing complexity and difference with simplicity and centralized, stable rule/dogma. While recognizing that change is the dominant logic of the world surrounding her, Lauren refuses to formulate a sense of self out of this situation, remaining nostalgically attached to traditional teleological narratives that promise stability. Earthseeds transformation of change into a religion is the basis from which Butler launches her exploration into the psychological struggle with post-Fordism, which contains the potential for creating politically and socially regressive desires. Asserting that God is Change is thus a radically different claim than identifying change with difference and liberatory potential for the future. Earthseed restores a paternalistic social structure by shaping change and difference into a new set of laws of the father. Butler sets the stage for her representation of the struggle with post-Fordism in the first pages of the novel, describing a recurring dream that seems to haunt Lauren. In this dream Lauren has a conversation with her stepmother about the stars, learning that in her stepmothers youth it was impossible to see the stars due to the mass of city lights illuminating the skies. Lights, progress, growth, her stepmother tells her, are now all things they are too poor to bother with any more, hinting at the disappearance of Fordist industrialization in Butlers post-apocalyptic scenario. Laurens stepmother counters Laurens remark that she would rather have the stars with a notably pragmatic counterargument: the stars are free. Id rather have the city lights back, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars (Sower 56). The stars, a traditional symbol of freedom, have in the Parable novels been reduced to their purely material properties and consequently been absorbed into a sobering account of freedom in the post-Fordist age that differs greatly from postmodern notions of freedom and progress. The real object of desire for the society surrounding Lauren, as it appears from the beginning of the novel, is not a distant idea of freedom but the pragmatic wish to return to a Fordist, repressive, yet ordered, stable, and paternalistically protected social arrangement that stands opposed to the chaos surrounding the walled community. Likewise, Earthseeds project of forming a community that, as Lauren tends to put it, will take root among the stars in the future, is a project that must be primarily 1338

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understood as aimed at filling the gap left by the disappearance of centralized paternalistic power and rule. We need the stars, Bankole, Lauren explains, We need purpose (Talents 179). Earthseeds teleological narrative of settling the stars, however, is not a narrative of ultimate freedom. It is not a narrative that is directed at the stars, or at the future. Instead, it is a narrative that locates the future in a return to the past, specifically in the return to paternalistic structures and centered forms of subjectivity.5 It is thus not solely chaos, disorder, or other forms of adversity that present the main obstacles to the development of a functional form of subjectivity that responds adequately to the new historical conjuncture described in the novel. Rather, it is the reaction to complexity and change, represented by Butler in the form of the fundamentally regressive, historically escapist longing for a structure such as Earthseed itself that constitutes the central problem for Lauren and the people of Earthseed. As already anticipated in Parable of the Sower, what spells disaster for Lauren and Earthseed in Parable of the Talents (hence tragically repeating the isolationism and escapism that marked the community of Robledo) is the general refusal of the group to find viable ways of dealing with the vast global changes, which are in the narrative reduced to a mere backdrop (wars, major changes in global power structures, an economy built upon indentured slavery, etc.). A clear indication of this is the circular structure of Parable of the Sower, which begins in Robledo and ends in the founding of the Acorn, the new settlement of the people of Earthseed, which in both architecture and ideology is entirely congruent with Robledo. As the Parable novels indicate, in an era in which we have indeed departed from rigid structures and transitioned into a society based upon change, we seem prone to developing a regressive attachment to the structures of stability we feel we lost. Ironically, this tends to result in the idealization of the very structures we used to oppose. The same repressive structures postmodernisms celebration of difference hoped to be able to unearth appear in post-Fordist culture as antidotes to the anxiety induced by the dominance of change and difference. The true tragedy Butler cautions us about is hence the lack of utopian narratives and the inability to envision potentiality in the future. Hence we must understand Butlers description of Earthseeds engagement with change in relation to this rejection of change tied to a crisis of futurity. On the surface being directed toward the future (the stars), Earthseed in fact seeks its answers in the past, transforms change into God and thereby into a traditional, universalizing, teleological narrative that revives with it all repressive structures that characterized such narratives in the past. It appears thus that the regressive return to an idealized past is motivated by the nostalgic longing for stable narratives of the future, for teleological narratives that offer an escape from a present dominated by change that is unable to offer a sense of purpose or stable forms of subjectivity. Rather than presenting itself as hostile to individual and individual needs, contemporary capitalism champions the explosion of various identities and needs. Post-Fordist surplus production rests on the deregulation and diversification of identities and ideological structures. Yet, it is precisely the increasing negative perception of change and the association of post-Fordist deregulation not with freedom but with repressive desublimation that underlies the various forms of discontent characteristic of contemporary cultural production. In The Seeds of Time, Fredric Jameson anticipates precisely this paralyzing effect of absolute change on theoretical discourse. It is not surprising, Jameson argues, that a society resting upon the standardization of difference in which seemingly nothing can 1339

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change any longer would create fatalist proclamations such as the end of ideology or the end of history (Seeds 18). This is precisely the context within which we witness the exhaustion of the postmodern project. Out of this point of exhaustion, as Butlers novels illustrate, emerges post-Fordist culture, part literature of exhaustion and part literature of replenishment. Change in the novels is not interesting because it is utopian, but precisely because it no longer primarily functions as the basis for utopian impulses. It is from the grip of the standardization of change and progress that Butlers critique of post-Fordism tries to wrest the idea of replenishment, clearly differentiating between good and bad utopia. Within this project the desire for the restoration of paternalistic structures Lauren and Earthseed are invested in reveals itself as the bad utopian desire obscuring a truly progressive, dialectical formulation of future possibility. Out of the post-Fordist situation emerges what Butler represents as a distinct nostalgia for the future. This form of nostalgia for a time in which it was still possible to formulate stable individual and collective life narratives typifies contemporary cultural production. However, Butler leaves little doubt that this logical operation is not only flawed but also that it must lead to tragedy. Locating the future in a reactionary return to an idealized form of the past cannot provide a truly progressive narrative of the future. Butlers novels hence can be read as cautionary tales, warning us of the regressive nature of nostalgia for the future frequently produced out of the confrontation with post-Fordism. The regressive desire to restore lost paternalistic structures finds expression in contemporary narratives of weak or absent fathers, which stand in for the nostalgically idealized lost structures of (Fordist) paternalism. Butlers representation of Laurens development as a religious leader and of Laurens attempts to respond to change by the reactionary desire to avoid it and return to a stable, centralized social situation hence foregrounds nostalgia for the future as one of the most significant escapist desires produced by the post-Fordist condition. Notably, however, Butler understands that the regressive desiring mechanisms created out of post-Fordism are fundamentally connected to totalitarian tendencies. In fact, the true tragedy represented in the novels, as will be illustrated, is that the new totalitarianism of a decentralized society in fact creates a form of nostalgia for the restoration of past paternalistic structures that are romanticized to the degree that they possess the force to convince large parts of the population that paternalistic totalitarianism is not only the lesser evil compared to the chaotic totalitarianism of post-Fordism, but comparably even desirable. Following Laurens struggle with the absence of a centralized struggle, told through the narrative of the absent father, will help explore this point in detail. After all, as Jameson notes in Archaeologies of the Future, especially in the present historical conjuncture the increasingly difficult search for utopia raises an old question: what if one misguided group embraces patriarchy, or something even worse? (219).

Are You There God? Its Me, the Post-Fordist Subject Butler quickly establishes the figure of the father as one of the guiding metaphors that structure the novels. From the beginning of Parable of the Sower it is clear that three terms form the motor of the novels plot: (Laurens) subjectivity, change, and the father/ 1340

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paternalism. The novel opens with a scene set the day before Laurens birthday, which coincidentally is also her fathers birthday, establishing immediately the parallel between Lauren and her father we will follow for the rest of the narrative. Lauren is plagued by a recurring nightmare. It comes to me, she explains, when I am my fathers daughter (Sower 3). In this dream she sees the wall that protects her city burning, foreshadowing the tragic fall of her city that is to come. Following the fathers rule, being her fathers daughter, is hence immediately associated with tragedy, with an existence that is doomed to fail. Furthermore, Lauren herself discusses father figures in the tripartite form that will inform her future struggle: A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-copGod or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of superperson. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of . . . . So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected. (15) The father is associated with three main structures: the father of the family, the religious father, and the state. In all three variations, as Lauren understands, the father represents control and a protective structure people long for, especially in times of insecurity and instability. However, Lauren also realizes clearly that this longing for the father presents a form of escapism, of avoiding confrontation with the actual complexity of her situation. From the beginning, thus, the Parable novels are concerned with the interrelation between the subjects reaction to change and the role of those structures that contain change, that erase difference and instability or protect people from it. What also becomes clear is that this way of avoiding change is clearly a regressive desire, which not only lacks any concrete future potential but in fact leads to tragedy. Consequently, as Lauren anticipates throughout the entirety of the narrative, the fall of Robledo cannot be avoided, since it is a structure that clings to the logic of paternalism and centralized protectionism. The actual fall of the city is foreshadowed by the disappearance of Laurens father, notably also the citys priest. Within a short period of time Lauren loses the father structure in all three manifestations: she loses her actual father, she loses her priest as father who endowed the community within the city with a stable framework of social and moral rules, and she loses the city as protective father itself, standing in for the disappearance of the protective nation state as a whole. As we learn throughout the novel, the fall of Robledo is by no means an isolated incident. Rather, it is the norm, marking the desire to avoid the chaos of the surrounding world as a futile attachment to outdated logic, as a social arrangement that cannot but fall in the face of the dominance of instability and change. In fact, in the novels the United States nation state as a whole is subject to the same forces that erode traditional structures of stability, lacking a social support system overseen by a strong president. Channeling an examination of the nation state, religion, and collectivity through the figure of the father, Butler also introduces another plot line that will run through the narrative, namely that following the events leading up to the election of President Jarret. In the beginning of Parable of the Sower the United States is run by President Donner. Lauren accurately attributes the widespread attachment to a president who does not wield a lot 1341

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of power to peoples need for what she calls a human banister, a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we are pushed into the future (56). The persistent attachment to the figure of the president appears to Lauren to be motivated by the same reason that people remained invested in Robledo or in the idea of a protective God: the confrontation with change creates anxiety, which again creates a nostalgic desire for clearly outdated structures of stability. It is this form of a banister that the populace misses after the disappearance of the father representing stable and protective law and it is precisely this idealization of the past that marks one of the main psychological reactions to a future that is not a future of choice but a future of insecurity forced upon a populace that still idealizes stable life narratives. Furthermore, Lauren recognizes clearly that this desire cannot present the basis for the future: things are changing now, too. Our adults havent been wiped out by the plague so theyre still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and theyll change more. Things are always changing (Sower 57). David Harvey presents a similar argument about contemporary tendencies to resort to traditional structures of stability as a response to the confrontation with change: It is also at such times of fragmentation and economic insecurity that the desire for stable values leads to a heightened emphasis upon the authority of basic institutionsthe family, religion, the state. And there is abundant evidence of a revival of support for such institutions and the values they represent throughout the Western world since about 1970. (Harvey 171)6 Metaphorically connected to the centralized law of the father, the desire to respond to a situation of socioeconomic instability by idealizing the return to the three areas Harvey identifies has become a common concern in contemporary American literary and cultural production. Rather than merely considering change to be a solution to social problems, Butler displays an extraordinary sensitivity to the ways in which change itself can produce quite the opposite of liberation from repressive structures. Paradoxically, as she seems to caution us, at the precise point at which change has become the functional logic of postFordism it begins to contain within itself the potential for its own undoing. As she displays such great insight into this politically regressive potential that arises out of a situation of social instability, we expect Lauren to avoid the pitfalls of this desire and be able to think selfhood and collectivity in ways that do not replicate this nostalgic form of escapism. Yet, Butlers account of the complex social existence of change and the problems it creates would not be as finely nuanced if she readily granted us an easy solution to the problem. Rather, Laurens Bildung indicates to us that even the ability to spot the nature of the social problem may not guarantee the ability to find adequate answers to it and so, despite Laurens best intentions, Earthseed ultimately evolves merely into another facet of the all-pervasive nostalgia for the future. Doubtlessly, Laurens intentions, as we will see, are far more progressive than those of President Jarret, who utilizes the widespread social instability to seize power by providing the nation with the rigorous and repressive form of centralized paternalistic order it appears to long for. Yet, if we truly examine the (ideo)logical constitution of both communities, that of Earthseed and that of Jarrets Christian America movement, we cannot help but conclude that they are structur1342

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ally and logically closely related and that both exploit the same psychological condition in order to advance their agendas. As the lack of fathering becomes the central extended metaphor of Laurens experience, the recreation of fathering becomes the central logic of Earthseed and Laurens solution to the problem of chaos and change. Melzer reads the structure of Earthseed as fundamentally characterized by mothering, noting, however, that Butler seems to reject the white stereotypical ideal of the nurturing, self-sacrificing mother within patriarchal society (Melzer 43). Rather than reading Earthseed as a progressive version of a matriarchal arrangement that stands opposed to a patriarchal structure, analyzing Earthseeds structure and function in relation to change, that is, in relation to a situation of fatherlessness, reveals that it contains all the characteristics of a traditional paternalistic arrangement. Earthseeds project of forming a community that, as Lauren tends to put it, will take root among the stars in the future, is a project that aims to fill the gap left by the disappearance of centralized paternalistic power and rule. Earthseeds teleological narrative of settling the stars, hence, is not a narrative of ultimate freedom. It is not a narrative that is directed at the stars as a promise of freedom, or at a future built upon the acceptance of change. Instead it is a narrative that channels change into a quite traditional teleological narrative that locates the future in a regressive return to paternalistic structures, most importantly in a return to organized religion. Identifying Jarret as a totalitarian, paternalistic leader whose Christian America movement attempts to restore lost order and control is relatively easy. Butler, however, once again does not allow us to take pleasure in seemingly easy answers and an analysis of the novel that clearly distinguishes between good and bad, regressive and progressive characters and sociopolitical projects. As we see in her novels, regressive patriarchal structures can seemingly paradoxically be justified and re-created out of an anti-paternalistic sentiment. Lauren is not exempt from the psychological influence of post-Fordism and while she may not recreate a paternalistic structure in relation to gender politics, the figure of the father, as indicated already in the beginning pages of Parable of the Sower, can be recreated in many forms and functions. After all, as we all know, possession of a penis is not a requirement for the re-creation of paternalistic structures.7 Nevertheless, Laurens quest to found a new community poignantly begins with an act of cross-dressing, which initially serves the purpose of utilizing Laurens rather masculine physical proportions as a deterrent for potential attackers. However, whereas Lauren eventually sheds the disguise and with it the masculine role physically, she remains the leader of the group, filling the role of the absent father herself. As the leader of the group, Lauren makes decisions, assigns roles, and provides the group with structure and order. Even after meeting Bankole, a medical doctor Lauren falls in love with (who, being almost forty years older than Lauren, hence the age of her father, clearly presents another example of her desire to fill the lacking father role), Lauren maintains her position as the groups religious guide. Soon after Lauren establishes herself as the father of the group and her belief system as the fathers law that provides the group with rules and order, she begins to display the signs of a deep investment in traditional paternalistic logic. Gradually, the belief system Earthseed becomes to Lauren the most important aspect of her existence and the rationale for her decisions regarding the future of the groupthe group must fulfill Earthseeds Destiny and take root among the stars (Sower 222). Quickly, Laurens construction of Earthseed begins to replicate not only the positive function of a 1343

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traditional belief systemoffering hope through stability and a teleological narrative but also its evils, such as the need for expansion and conversion. During their northward migration, Lauren begins to transform the group into a stable identity based upon her teachings and begins to refer to it collectively as Earthseed. Wandering on Highway 101 Lauren notices that the highway has become a river of the poor that flows north (223). Laurens realization that she should be fishing the river as she follows its current displays a decidedly new attitude toward change and instability (229). Whereas it was previously clear to her that change creates within people a form of existential anxiety that produces the regressive desire to return to lost paternalistic structures (human banisters), Lauren now sees in the flow of people subject to instability and change the potential for expanding her community by means of conversion. Hence, her previous insight into the social and political effects of change that made Lauren criticize the desire to return to the past has given way to the positive perception of widespread existential anxiety as an opportunity to spread Earthseed. Similarly, one cannot help but note the degree to which Lauren is suddenly willing to justify repression as a necessary component of the project of establishing Earthseed as a paternalistic structure. However, it is also clear that Lauren never identifies it as a paternalistic structure, which suggests that she does not intentionally bring about this transformation. According to her perspective, she judges Earthseeds structure to be free and progressive. Regarding the future plans of Earthseed, Lauren writes in a journal entry: And then what? Find a place to squat and take over? Act as a kind of gang? Not quite a gang. We arent gang types. I dont want gang types with their need to dominate, rob, and terrorize. And yet we might have to dominate. We might have to rob to survive, and even terrorize to scare off or kill enemies. Well have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us. But we must have arable land, a dependable water supply, and enough freedom from attack to let us establish ourselves and grow . . . . We might be able to do itgrow our own food, grow ourselves and our neighbors into something brand new. Into Earthseed. (22324) In this remarkable scene Butler movingly captures Laurens interior struggle as she explores the limits of being able to justify her logic and her desires. She clearly does not want to recreate repressive paternalistic structures. She clearly does not want to become another group of gang types, and yet she seems unable to completely convince even herself that Earthseed is not fundamentally and inevitably connected to repressive logic. Moreover, Lauren realizes that in order for Earthseed to flourish she must be able to justify actions that are clearly reminiscent of the logic of religiously motivated colonialism, which historically also was often motivated by what appeared to the colonizers to be the best of intentions. Part of Earthseed will inevitably be the fight for property and land, as well as its expansion through conversion. By the end of the first novel, Lauren and the members of Earthseed have settled in the northwest of the United States and founded a community that (apart from the absence of proper walls that have been replaced by geographical isolation) is structurally and in its logical constitution virtually indistinguishable from Robledo, foreshadowing another inevitable downfall. 1344

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Nostalgia for the Meta-Narrative: Re-Filiation and Totalitarianism Whereas Parable of the Sower primarily functions as a means of introducing the psychological struggle resulting out of a chaotic social arrangement, Parable of the Talents must be read as an exploration of the potential outcome of this situation. It is in Parable of the Talents, thus, that Butlers critique of the nostalgic reaction to the concept of change appears the most urgent and timely. The second novel illustrates to us the potentially terrifying consequences of acting upon the politically regressive desires identified in the first novel. Parable of the Talents is a novel about the potential for totalitarianism that lurks within the post-Fordist situation. Butler continues her analysis of the social and political effect of change by channeling it through the narrative of the absent father, whose restoration guides the plot of the second novel. The novel continues to be marked by the refusal to seek answers to chaos in the future, displaying a widespread, nostalgic turn to the past. Butler, however, does not merely point out that this form of nostalgia obscures prior moments in history. Instead, Butler stresses the degree to which post-Fordist nostalgia is connected to the re-creation of outdated structures that are envisioned to provide stability and protection. It is in this idealization of the past that Butler locates a tragic misrecognition. As famously argued by Freud in his The Uncanny, the father never singularly appears as the good father. Since all aspects of the good father are connected to the logic of a centrally regulating law of the father, the father must at times also be bad.8 Put differently, in order to uphold his centralized rule that can provide protection, a certain degree of repression is logically and structurally unavoidable. It is this dialogic relation between the protective and the punitive father that produces the structures of paternalism with which Lauren struggles. What Lauren begins to sense and what the people surrounding her tragically leave unaccounted for is the fact that the restoration of the protective father will inevitably carry with it the restoration of the punitive father. Lauren herself is quite aware that the return of the father cannot be associated with a return to a golden-age, as her analysis of Jarrets political project illustrates: Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, simpler time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. (Talents 19) The force of Jarrets political project is that he is aware of the ways in which he can take advantage of the widespread existential anxiety that is created out of chaos. To Lauren his project clearly appears to be founded upon repression and exclusion, resurrecting a centralized father-God whose law everyone is subjected to. She understands that this project stands in polar opposition to the celebration of difference, of change, instead celebrating safety based on structure, order, and sameness. The restored father-God once more returns to the center of a binary mechanism of identification that is based upon negative opposition. Yet, whereas Lauren clearly sees the danger within this desire, the 1345

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people portrayed in the novel appear to be strongly invested in the idea of forming a stable sense of self and returning to a protected existence. Consequently, Jarret is elected president and soon establishes what logically must follow the restoration of the father: an authoritarian state, a theocratic dictatorship that seeks to restore order through frequently violent repression, resurrecting the greatest of all evils of the twentieth century: fascism and the prison camp. As indicated before, Laurens insight into the problems associated with the return to a paternalistic social order seems to suggest that she should be able to avoid making the same mistakes. Once again, however, Butler does not grant us the ability to easily distinguish between the bad political project of Jarret and what we want to be the good political project of Earthseed. Instead, Butler seems to suggest, distinctions may not always be this clear. The ability to see the problems of one political project may not directly translate into the ability to avoid replicating them in a different form. A few years after the group has settled into their new community of Acorn, Lauren is surprised by the return of her brother Marc whom she had up to this point believed to be dead. While she is initially overjoyed by this reunification, the relationship between Lauren and Marc quickly becomes strained. Marc, who now wants to be referred to as Marcos, has during the time of their separation become a Christian preacher and takes offense to Laurens newly invented religion. Laurens reaction to Marcs skepticism and his desire to preach his own beliefs at the gatherings of the community is telling. Following her previously expressed belief in the need to tolerate other beliefs, a conviction she finds lacking in Jarrets politics, Lauren allows Marc to speak to her community. Lauren intentionally sets Marc up for failure, knowing that the people of Acorn will challenge his Christian rhetoric by referring to the logic that underlies Earthseed. In these gatherings Lauren does not speak to Marc herself and leaves the questioning to the rest of the community, illustrating once more the ways in which Earthseed has become a dogmatic structure, its laws internalized by its followers, operating independently from the father and, as Freud and Lacan famously suggest, ever more strongly in the absence of the father. As a result of this repeated humiliation and frustration, Marc leaves the community without saying good-bye to Lauren, an act that completely severs the ties between Lauren and Marc. Laurens analysis of the situation clearly illustrates her function not as the mother but as the father of Acorn: But now, instead of feeling important and proud, he feels angry and embarrassed. I had to let him inflict those feelings on himself. I couldnt let him begin to divide Acorn. More importantI couldnt let him divide Earthseed. (152) While Lauren is clearly distraught by the repeated loss of her brother, she also leaves no doubt where her priorities lie. In fact, Lauren displays the classic psychological struggle of a paternalistic leader who is forced to choose between sympathy for a justifiable action of a person close to him that might destabilize his rule and the stability of his society and his commitment to the structure. Much like King Creon is forced to sentence Antigone to death in order to uphold the law in one of literatures most famous explorations of this struggle, an action which, despite the fact that it will lead to personal tragedy, he must prioritize 1346

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as the paternalistic leader, Lauren realizes that she cannot choose mothering (prioritizing Marc) over fathering (prioritizing paternal law and Earthseed) without undermining the very structure that provides Acorn with stability and coherence. Ultimately, Parable of the Talents cannot be read as separable into three clearly distinguishable sets of ideological positionsthat of Lauren Olamina and Earthseed, that of her counterpart Jarret and his Christian America, and that of Laurens daughter Larkin. Instead, Larkins frame-tale sections function as another mechanism designed to force the reader to shift perspectives. Larkins point of view reveals that the logical structures of Earthseed and Christian America, albeit different in their practical implementation, are ultimately not distinguishable. Larkin identifies her mothers sociopolitical project as well as that of Jarret and her uncle Marc as the dangerous work of would-be world-fixers (110). Presenting a finely nuanced account of the regressive desiring structures arising out of the post-Fordist situation, Butlers Parable novels remind us of Marxs description of the progress of history. All important personages in history, writes Marx, appear twice: the first time as a tragedy and the second time as a farce. Post-Fordism, as Butler illustrates, contains the potential for a farcical revival of the figure of the father as the nostalgically idealized antidote to the chaotic present. The changed perception of categories such as change and difference hence indicates one of the internal contradictions of the post-Fordist condition. Rather than leading us toward the future as postmodern theorists imagined, difference and change under post-Fordism tend to create the desire to turn toward the past and toward the same meta-narratives postmodernism sought to leave behind. However, as Marx points out, this kind of repetition constitutes a historically farcical development. Fordism, under which paternalistic structures were the dominant socioeconomic logic, spawned tragic historical events such as new forms of alienation, domination, economic exploitation, and social segregation. The desire to revive the superseded structures of Fordism constitutes a historical absurdity, as paternalistic rule becomes nostalgically dissociated from its historical effects. After having talked a lot about nostalgia, it seems possible to formulate a somewhat stable definition of the concept in times of post-Fordism. To be sure, it is not my argument that nostalgia interferes with the project of arriving at an accurate or true understanding of history. Rather, nostalgia conflicts with the project of articulating a dialectical account of history, as well as using it in a dialectical manner. Walter Benjamins famous description of the project of historical materialism hence gains a special significance in times of post-Fordism: To articulate the past does not mean to recognize it the way it was (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. (255) Butlers work can thus be located in the context of such a moment of danger that both authors acutely recognize, necessitating a self-conscious attitude regarding cultures central function in the regulation of capitalism. 1347

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Without a doubt the most influential examination of the significance of nostalgia within the context of postmodernism is contained in Fredric Jamesons Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. For Jameson, one of the most important characteristics of postmodernity is its tendency to not only bracket, but in fact completely efface . . . the past as referent, which manifests itself in postmodern architecture that randomly and without principle but with gusto cannibalizes all the architectural styles of the past (19). This tendency to empty out the past of its historical content, as further described by Jameson in his by now famous reading of American Graffiti, which for him is the prime example of what he calls nostalgia films, indicates the desperate attempt to appropriate a missing past (Postmodernism 19). What characterizes postmodern culture for Jameson is that it accesses the past exclusively through its own cultural images, transforming history into a de-historicized assortment of simulacra.9 Yet, according to Jameson, we seem to feel as though we have lost touch with our past, with history; in a present that seems confined to its innate presentness, we simulate what Jameson calls pastness, represented through postmodern pastiche, resulting in the insensible colonization of the present by the nostalgia mode (Postmodernism 1920). While Jameson mainly discusses nostalgia in relation to what he considers to be a form of depthlessness characteristic of postmodernism, we must extend Jamesons analysis and examine the political implications of this form of nostalgia, which is less an aspect of postmodernism than of post-Fordist culture, since it is a direct consequence of the completed, not the emergent transition into post-Fordism. Jameson likens the re-creation of the past within contemporary culture to the phenomenon of dja vu, or to the Freudian description of the return of the repressed (Postmodernism 24). However, as Butler illustrates in her novels, the politically far more troubling function of nostalgia within post-Fordism is that it results in what could be more accurately described as a return to repression itself. The farcical nature of post-Fordist nostalgia is not only the historical doubling, but the process of emptying historical structures and personages of their historical content in a way that allows them to be perceived positively in contradistinction to the present situation. The danger of the nostalgia mode is not merely its failure to capture the historical real, but more importantly, its reactionary political potential. Nostalgic simulations of the past are consequently inherently anti-dialectical, farcical, and politically problematic once they become the widespread imaginative means of resolving the problems posed by post-Fordism. In its most troubling form, and this is one of the most forceful arguments advanced by Butlers novels, post-Fordist nostalgia ironically creates the renewed threat of totalitarianism out of a situation that seeks to structurally supersede the repressive structures of Fordism. Returning once more to the figure of the father can help clarify this point. Regarding historical progress Marx writes: men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past. (15)

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Marxs assertion here is that historical progress is a dialectical development that moves forward precisely due to the operations of what Hegel calls supersession (Aufhebung). This means that history moves forward by superseding but at the same time preserving that which has been negated in the process of supersession. Consequently, when Marx writes that we do not make history as we please but under circumstances transmitted from the past, he reminds us that each historical moment must be considered in relation to its own complex history. In order to understand a single historical moment we must analyze it as a product of supersession and preservation, not an isolated entity. Looking at Freuds analysis of the figure of the father we can see that the father at the same time represents precisely this description of historical progress as well as the progress of a single individuals dialectical development toward selfhood. In Oedipus Politicus, Jos Brunner indicates the affinity between the Hegelian dialectic and the Freudian theory of subjection. To be sure, this does not mean that both processes are dialectical, but rather that they complement each other in ways that allow us to illuminate different facets of a historical development. Comparable to Hegels dialectic, the figure of the father in Freud operates within a politically dialogic situation Brunner describes as a situation of obedience and emancipation, where dependence leads to autonomy (8788). Both logical systems establish a basic conception of freedom as contingent upon dependence, hence describing a process that denotes a transition whereby something is simultaneously abolished and maintained (Brunner 87). What, however, does this precisely mean for the problem at hand? Out of this description of the Oedipus complex and the figure of the father, which allows us to simultaneously talk about historical process and the psychological development of the individual, arises the possibility of identifying a major area of political contestation within post-Fordism: the nostalgic desire for the lost structures represented by the father while simultaneously emptying the father figure of its historical content. As Brunner argues, Freuds discussion of the father has from its early stages been an attempt to account for the complexity of interpersonal relations that stabilize a social arrangement, stressing that societies have often been formed based on the collective submission to one centralized, dominating structure. As Brunner argues, it is because they [human beings] share a love for the same father figure that they feel close to one another (81). The social bond, according to this argument, is contained in and made coherent by the centralized figure of the father. It is not love for each other that bonds human beings together, but the common love for the father. However, as Brunner himself admits, this Freudian tradition has been heavily criticized since it turns masculine behavior into the norm, is strongly phallocentric and authoritarian, and slides into mythical universalization (93). This stigma of Freudian theory constitutes in post-Fordism the precise object of regressive desires that seek an alternative to the dominant anti-Oedipal structures. It is important to assert here once again that in post-Fordist times the important question is not whether or not Freuds description of human relationships and individual psychological development is correct. Instead, we should feel obliged to follow the example of Butler and examine the effects of a form of de-historicizing nostalgia that leads to the conviction that Freud was in fact right, that the father is indeed the only structure that has the power to provide human existence with stability and save it from chaos.

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The danger of post-Fordist nostalgia is thus not its tendency to obscure that past as a referent, but to anti-dialectically simulate the past as referent and regard it as a viable basis for political programs and social movements, transforming those elements of paternalistic structures that have been aufgehoben into the regressive turn toward a hyperreal and idealized past. Brunner quotes a famous passage from Freuds Moses and Monotheism that reveals itself as especially relevant in times of post-Fordism: [w]e know that in the mass of mankind there is a powerful need for an authority who can be admired, before whom one bows down, by whom one is ruled and perhaps even ill-treated. . . . It is a longing for the father felt by everyone from his childhood onwards. (9091) Butlers novels caution us that, regardless of whether or not this assertion has any historical truth, it is certainly rendered true by the regressive desires sparked by post-Fordism. The longing for the father is one of the dominant psychological conditions of post-Fordism that at best contains the desire to return to a simpler time, at worst the willingness to restore order by accepting the repression of a totalitarian leader-God-father. In Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism, Alain Badiou attempts to produce an insight into the connected politics of universalism and egalitarianism via the religious tradition of filiation within which universalism is born. By means of conclusion, it is worth quoting a significant passage in Badious work at some length: Philosophy only knows disciples. But a son-subject is the opposite of a disciple-subject, because he is one whose life is beginning. The possibility of such a beginning requires that God the Father has filiated himself, that he has assumed the form of the son. It is by consenting to the figure of the son, as expressed by the enigmatic term sending, that the Father causes us ourselves to come forth universally as sons. The son is he for whom nothing is lacking, for he is nothing but beginning. So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir (Gal. 4.7). The father, always particular, withdraws behind his sons universal evidence. It is quite true that all postevental universality equalizes sons through the dissipation of the particularity of the fathers. Whence the way in which every truth is marked by an indestructible youthfulness . . . . The resurrected Son filiates all of humanity. This constitutes the uselessness of the figure of knowledge and its transmission. For Paul, the figure of knowledge is itself a figure of slavery, like that of the law. The figure of mastery is in reality a fraud. One must depose the master and found the equality of sons . . . . This is what the metaphor of the son designates: a son is he whom an event relieves of the law and everything related to it for the benefit of a shared egalitarian endeavor. (5960) Following Badious description of the connection between religious filiation and egalitarian universalism, we can finally see what leads to the reversal of egalitarianism and its regression into the totalitarian structure Butlers novels thematize: a crucial misrecognition, mistaking the restoration of the father for automatically leading to filiation, mistaking a 1350

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structure that, if left unchecked by truly deposing the master, will inevitably lead to paternalistic domination instead of universal egalitarianism. At the heart of this misrecognition is the perceived need to first restore the father as an antidote to post-Fordisms decentralization of previous paternalistic structures, which seems to be the precondition for filiation. However, this logic of restoring the father in order to preserve the possibility of becoming sons again possesses the potential to stop precisely at this development, leading Laurens egalitarian ideals back toward the horrors of paternalistic authoritarianism that under post-Fordism become the tragic consequence of the desire for re-filiation. Egalitarian universalism carries with it under post-Fordism a dark counterpart, namely the restored, totalitarian meta-narrative that can appear liberatory in its potential to reduce complexity by reviving outdated but simpler forms of cognitive mapping. The value of contemporary cultural production is its ability to represent post-Fordist desiring structures that contain a potentially catastrophic longing for universalism ideologically connected to the figure of the father in all of its various historical manifestations. Works such as Butlers Parable novels allow us to trace the roots of politically and socially reactionary developments (expressed in the current renaissance of religious fundamentalism or militarism) that idealize re-filiation as a response to the dominance of the decentered subject in post-Fordism. Exposing these desires and self-consciously evaluating the function of culture in the creation of post-Fordism, thereby locating political potential within the contradictions contained in this process of formation, may be the mark of truly progressive political art within post-Fordism.
NOTES 1. The standard example of such a theoretical argument can be found in Lyotard 2749, specifically in his discussion of difference and meta-narratives. 2. For an extended discussion of the sociocultural regulation of capital and of the distinction between postmodern and post-Fordist literature see Nilges. 3. For a detailed introduction to the French Regulation School and its central concepts, including the distinction between Fordism and post-Fordism and the theory of social regulation, see Aglietta. 4. I rhetorically invoke here Fredric Jamesons famous account of cognitive mapping. For a definition of the concept see Jameson, Postmodernism 5154. 5. It should be noted that this crisis of futurity also manifests itself distinctly on the level of literary and cultural form, since the inability to truly produce representations of the future that do not merely constitute returns to past social arrangements and forms of subjectivity carries with it a situation of formal regression. Notable examples here include returns to realism and naturalism (even though certainly not all contemporary realist form can be called regressive), the sublation of the science-fiction genre by authors such as William Gibson and Kim Stanley Robinson, or the return to post-apocalyptic and dystopian literary forms. 6. See Arrighi. 7. To be sure, throughout the Parable novels there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Lauren understands the problematic history of the absent black father and her initial attempts to think a new social arrangement are centrally informed by her awareness of the problem of (contemporary) racism. However, Butler once more cautions us that awareness of the history of a problem is not a guarantee for being able to avoid replicating the problem in the future. Laurens different perspective and knowledge of the history of United States slavery is ultimately not a safeguard against arriving at President Jarrets version of retro-paternalism. Yet, Butler certainly illustrates the need to distinguish between the ways in which the politics of the absent father function for white and black subjects, simultaneously stressing that the restored black father is not automatically a progressive opposition to the history of anti-paternalism in the context of white racist domination and fragmentation

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of the black family. A detailed examination of this problem in Butlers novels, however, warrants a separate, future essay. 8. For his famous long footnote on the doubling of the father see Freud 93839. 9. We can see how Jamesons analysis of the effect of what he calls late-capitalism on history is congruent with Baudrillards assertion of the hegemony of the hyperreal, which saturates our possibilities of accessing the past, confining us to a simulated present, forever erasing the potential to access the past as an aspect of the Lacanian Real (see Baudrillard 127). The value of Baudrillards description, however, is that it avoids replicating the nostalgic attachment to a time when this was not the case, a form of nostalgia from which Jameson himself seems not entirely free.

WORKS CITED Aglietta, Michel. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The U.S. Experience. Trans. David Fernbach. New York: Verso, 2001. Arrighi, Giovanni. Hegemony Unraveling-I. New Left Review 32 (2005): 2380. Badiou, Alain. Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2003. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994. Benjamin, Walter. Reflections. New York: Schocken, 1986. Brunner, Jos. Oedipus Politicus: Freuds Paradigm of Social Relations. Freud: Conflict and Culture: Essays on His Life, Work, and Legacy. Ed. Michael Roth. New York: Vintage, 2000. 8093. Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. New York: Aspect, 1993. . Parable of the Talents. New York: Aspect, 2000. Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.Vincent B. Leitch, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001: 92951. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005. . Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. . The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Lyotard, Jean Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1963. New York: International, 1987. Melzer, Patricia. All that you touch you change: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Femspec 3.3 (2002): 3152. Nilges, Mathias. The Anti-Anti Oedipus: Representing Post-Fordist Subjectivity. Mediations 23.2 (2008): 2770. Phillips, Jerry. The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower. Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 35 (2002): 299311. Stillman, Peter G. Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butlers Parables. Utopian Studies: Journal for the Society of Utopian Studies. 14 (2003): 1535. Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies Vol. 2Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Minneapolis, U of Minnesota P, 1989.

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