Abstract
This chapter ties together theories of slow violence, cruel optimism, and hyperobjects. Timothy Morton’s term hyperobjects describes things that are too enormous and yet all-encompassing for human minds to truly understand and respond to. In Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, her main character suffers from a fictional condition called hyperempathy. I argue that this hyperempathy is one response to encountering hyperobjects. Because Butler’s character can feel the pain of others, she cannot deny the impacts she has on other people, nonhumans, and the world. This forces her into a mode of utopian thinking that faces the realities of the constantly changing world in climate change and social upheaval. Only through feeling radical empathy can Butler’s character imagine a new way of being that does not perpetuate the harm that caused climate change.
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Notes
- 1.
See Bock for a discussion of the gendered stigma that surrounds these diseases.
- 2.
See Dubey, Allen, and Tweedy for more on Butler’s depiction of race in the Parable novels.
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Messimer, M. (2023). Hyperobjects and Hyperempathy in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. In: Apocalyptic California. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29920-9_4
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