The Parables Ethic

Dystopian predictions pervade popular culture as humanity tries to make meaning of climate catastrophe, novel pandemics, and political instability. Young people, labeled “faith unbundled,” increasingly turn away from exclusivist religious visions. Following womanist ethics’ use of fiction with attention to queer and childist commitments, I turn to the Parables series by Black, female science/speculative fiction author Octavia Butler to uncover communal and survivalist ethical practices that align with young people’s current and future concerns. The Parables depict with uncanny accuracy current shifts to religious and political authoritarianism during a climate catastrophe which exacerbate class, racial, and geographic divides, setting new patterns for sexuality and reproduction. Butler does not treat young people as tropes or spectacles. Rather, the protagonist, Lauren Olamina eschews a saccharine Christian ethical vision of moral progress for the Parables ethic, which threads together speculative countermemories, erotic affective knowledge, and queer kinship.