Posthuman appreciation of life in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood

This article applies a critical posthuman perspective to investigating how – in the context of symbiotic relations defined by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis – Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood outlines and explores issues relating to enslavement and rape. The universe created by Butler invites such an analysis as the writer discusses the issues in relation to both human and non-human persons as well as looking at new evolutionary opportunities offered by merging with an alien civilization. This theoretical framework provides a powerful research tool since critical posthumanism seeks to embrace difference and topple all hierarchies which stifle human potential. I attempt to reach this goal by tracing and exposing human anxieties and phobias transpiring in Butler’s novel. It is my contention that such unfounded phobias hinder human development and lead to uncalled-for conflicts, which – as the novel shows – have already led humanity to self-annihilation.