The Science Fiction of Social Justice

This past Sunday, during the first service, I realized that I needed to trim my reflections before going in to the second.  The proverbial "cutting room floor" is often home to passages that, for one reason or another, were important or intriguing enough to include yet, ultimately, are not enough of either of those things to remain in the final draft.  Thus it always is for writers.

I remember once, early in my preaching career, emailing a sermon to a friend for her opinion.  Something just wasn't right about it, but I really couldn't tell what.  After reading through it she wrote back, "Erik, that's two of the best sermons I've ever read."  One of them ended up on that floor.

Still, that second sermon found its way off the floor and into the pulpit at some point, and today I want to expand on one of the things I didn't get too on Sunday.

This summer I read a fascinating book –  Octavia’s Brood: science fiction stories from social justice movements.  

Octavia E. Butler was a science fiction author -- the first science fiction author to be awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.  She was also something of a rarity in the world of science fiction literature for another reason:  there haven't been a lot of African American science fiction writers.  Her Wikipedia article notes that,

"Butler began reading science fiction at a young age, but quickly became disenchanted by the genre's unimaginative portrayal of ethnicity and class as well as by its lack of noteworthy female protagonists.  She then set to correct those gaps by, as De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai point out, "choosing to write self-consciously as an African-American woman marked by a particular history"—what Butler termed as "writing myself in".  Butler's stories, therefore, are usually written from the perspective of a marginalized black woman whose difference from the dominant agents increases her potential for reconfiguring the future of her society."

The editors of Octavia's Brood -- Sheree Renée Thomas and Walidah Imarisha -- dedicate their anthology to Butler:

"To Octavia E. Butler, who serves as a north star for so many of us.  She told us what would happen -- "all that you touch you change"--and then she touched us, fearlessly, brave enough to change us.  We dedicate this collection to her, coming out with our own fierce longing to have our writing change everyone and everything we touch."

The 23 contributors are, as Thomas describes them in her Introduction, “artists who in their other lives work tirelessly as community activists, educators, and organizers.” Imarisha notes in her Introduction that one of the things that makes this project so fascinating and exciting is that, "many of the contributors [...] had never written fiction before, much less science fiction."  She writes,

"When we approached folks, most were hesitant to commit, feeling like they weren't qualified.  But overwhelmingly, they all came back a few weeks later, enthusiastically, with incredible ideas and some with dozens of pages already written.  Because all organizing is science fiction, we are dreaming new worlds every time we think about the changes we want to make in the world."

That idea is what intrigued me and led me to include a reference to this in my last reflections.  I realized, though, that I could make the point I was trying to make without this reference and that, actually, this deserved more room than I could have given it there.

"All organizing is science fiction."  Think about that for a minute; let it sink in.  Whenever anyone works for justice, whenever anyone strives to help transform the world from what it is now into what we know it can be, we're essentially painting a picture of a world that does not (yet) exist.  That's the work of science fiction -- to show us alternatives to the reality we know.  Imarisha says,

“Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction.  All organizing is science fiction.  Organizers and activists dedicate themselves to creating and envision another world. […]”

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a great deal more about Middle Earth than showed up in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.  One of the reasons the world he created feels so rich, so full, so real, is because he knew more about it than what he needed to tell us for his stories.  And you can sense it.  You can feel it.

He even wrote his own creation story for this world.  The Ainulindalë is a really beautiful and profound myth; it's actually my own favorite of all the creation myths I've ever encountered.  It is the one that feels most "true."  Simply put,  Eru Ilúvatar, the One, creates the universe and all that's in it through music.  

"The story begins with a description of the Ainur as "children of Ilúvatar's thought". They are taught the art of music, which becomes the subject of their immortal lives. The Ainur sing alone or in small groups about themes given to each of them by Ilúvatar, who proposes a "great" plan for them all: a collaborative symphony where they would sing together in harmony."  (Wikipedia)

There are a number of important details, meaningful nuances, that I would hate to rush past.  I encourage you to get a copy of The Silmarillion, which collects much of this "backstory," or Google around until you find a copy of the text online somewhere.  

The reason I bring all of this up is the way the story ends.  After the "collaborative symphony" is complete, Ilúvatar invites the Ainur to look at what they'd created together.  They do, and it is beautiful.  It is good.  And then everything vanishes.  Void.  Emptiness.  And then Ilúvatar tells the Ainur to go into that emptiness and bring into being all that they saw.

I get shivers -- The Ainur are shown not just the blueprint, but the total, finished reality of all creation, and then they're tasked with actually making it real.

When I read Thomas' and Imarisha's words about organizers and activists being engaged in science fiction I immediately thought of Tolkien's myth.  Those who work for justice are those Ainur who have seen this not-yet world right here in the midst of the world as-it-is, and they have set upon the work of bringing into being what they've seen.  In another way they are Ilúvatar, showing their vision to anyone "with eyes to see" (as Jesus is remembered as putting it), and engaging them in the work of world building.

Perhaps all this talk about myths and science fiction seems trivializing of the real life-and-death struggle that is this world for far, far too many.  We don't need pretty stories.  We need action!  That later part is right, but the former misses an important truth.  Walidah Imarisha explains in her Introduction the importance of engaging the imagination in the work for societal transformation:

“[T[he decolonization of the imagination is the most dangerous and subversive form there is:  for it is where all other forms of decolonization are born.  Once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless.”

Sheree Renée Thomas adds one fascinating thought:

"[T]hose of us from communities with historic collective trauma, we must understand that each of us is already science fiction walking around on two legs.  Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us."

As someone from a historically centralized position, this reminds me that I have to listen not so much to the dreams of my ancestors, to the science fiction that comes out of my history.  Why?  Because that's the world we're living in.  The world that was imagined, the vision that was dreamed and worked for by straight, white, cis-male folks with good educations and incomes has already been brought into being.  It's the world that's so in need of transformation into something new.

This doesn't mean that my ancestors have nothing of value to offer, that their vision offers no beauty or strength.  It does mean, though, that if we're serious about bringing a new world into being then the movers and shakers of this world need to start listening to new stories, new dreams.  Or, rather, new to me.  These stories, these dreams, this visions have always been here; they've just been largely displaced by those that brought us to where we are.  Reading the stories collected in Octavia's Brook opened for me a library the existence of which, I confess, I was only faintly aware.  There is so much more to read, and it pains me that I'm only discovering it at 56.  (At least I'm not first discovering it at 57!)


Pax tecum,

RevWik

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