Link to polyandry article: http://io9.com/5925324/polyandry-or-the-practice-of-taking-multiple-husbands

Link Jane E. Brody’s article: well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/we-are-our-bacteria/

As I read the sections of Fledgling that described Ina culture, it reminded me of what I learned while I was taking an anthropology course at my local community college. While I studied cultural anthropology, I learned about many cultures that were extremely different from mine. These differences include how individuals group themselves in terms of family dynamics (having one partner or mutual) or in terms of their dietary customs. This made me reflect on the fact that members of these cultures may regard certain traditions/habits within my culture as being “bizarre.” Why? Because their culture is not the same as mine. Throughout my involvement in this course, I also learned the reasons why particular cultures had certain lifestyle habits. As a result, this made it a lot easier for me to understand these cultures and their way of life. In , Shori constantly learns about Ina culture and the reasons why certain lifestyle habits are the way that they are.

As I studied anthropology, I learned about the marital practice of polyandry. Polyandry is when a woman has multiple husbands. Kind of similar to Shori and her multiple symbionts, right? In Esther Inglis-Arkell’s article “Polyandry, or the act of taking multiple husbands”, she explains that polyandry was used as a way to control the population (because a woman could only have 1 pregnancy at a time) and was also used as a way to manage property. At first glance, many people may think “wow, that’s different” and not even attempt to find out the cultural motives behind polyandry. Instead, they just consider it to be a foreign concept. So, how does my experience studying anthropology connect with Fledgling? Well, within this vampire novel Butler brilliantly creates a brand new species that has its own culture, traditions, and way of life. The Ina even had their own legal system which was the Council of Judgment. However, even though different cultures have different customs from one another we must keep in mind that we are all human beings. In Jane E. Brody’s article “We Are Our Bacteria”, she breaks this point down a little further and states that although we may regard ourselves as human beings, in reality we are all just “a mass of microorganisms housed in an a human shell.” Given this statement, if every single person is a “mass of microorganisms”, why are we so different from one another? Even though the Ina are not technically human, comparing Ina culture with my own made me realize that what’s “normal” to one person may not be “normal” to another, just like the practice of polyandry may not seem normal to many people although it is prevalent in other countries.

Personally, I could never identify Ina culture as being “normal” not only because it’s fictional, but simply because it’s very different from mine. Within Ina culture, having multiple symbionts is completely normal and it was frowned upon to have only a small number of them. I know many individuals in my life who consider polygamous marriages as “not normal” and don’t agree with them whatsoever. Ina mating habits are drastically different from only having one partner at a time, which is common in my culture. Within the novel, Wright had an extremely hard time accepting Shori’s mating habits and way of life because of the fact that they were not the same as his. Wright desperately wanted Shori to himself and did not want to share her with anyone else despite the fact that this desire did not match up with her Ina culture. Due to the fact that not everyone has the same ideas, beliefs, and habits as one another, we must be open to adapting these different customs to our lives as we are exposed to them. This is similar to Shori having to learn Ina culture all over again due to her impaired memory as she entered back into Ina culture.

In the Ina culture the idea of multiple “partners” is acceptable. What I find strange is that a person in the Ina culture can have multiple humans as symbiont, where in most of human culture we find it unacceptable to have multiple partners.  If it is so unacceptable to have multiple partners in the “human world,” why are humans becoming a part of the “Ina World?” Even though in Fledgling we see how seductive an Ina bite can be and it may be hard to break free from it, there are still opportunities to leave. Throughout the novel there have been times where Shori told Wright that he could leave and just forget about her, but he never did because he became too attached. Is the idea of the “human world” being taken over and controlled by the “Ina world” throughout this novel?

For a lot of people in the “human world” having multiple partners “defaults” to the idea of polygamy, when a man has many woman partners. After doing some research on polygamy in the “human world,” I found an article entitled When Taking Multiple Husbands Makes Sense, on polyandry. Polyandry is the practice with one wife that has multiple husbands. Even though in Fledgling it is different in the sense there is one woman to multiple males and/or females, there are still other situations that can occur which are similar. In the article they refer to a recent paper in Human Nature co-authored by two anthropologists (Katherine Starkweather and Raymond Hames) that found 53 anthropological accounts of societies that recognize and allow polyandrous unions. Half of these groups are considered “hunter-gatherer societies.” These societies could be related to that of the Ina culture. For example, early on in Fledgling Shori survives by hunting for her food and gathering stuff such as clothes to help her survive. Continuing on through the novel Shori and her Ina group gather what is left behind from the humans when they attack.

Given the similarities, the “Ina world” and the human polyandry world could be said to be similar or even the same.  Polyandry allows women to be in control (in this case Shori), giving a new sense of feminism!

Article: When Taking Multiple Husbands Makes Sense

Something caught my eye whilst reading Pramod Nayar’s article on Posthumanism in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. A few days ago, we had noticed in our group discussion during Friday’s class that we were having difficulty untangling the multiple ways in which Shori is cast as a hybrid other in the novel, both by humans and Ina alike. However, almost by accident I stumbled upon what seemed to be an appropriate term for what we had been grappling with; Nayar describes what Shori faces as a “double bind of alterity.” On the one hand, Shori is cast as animalistic to humans, the vampire-other, yet what really determines her more immanent otherness is her human-ness or non-Ina-ness with respect to her hybrid biology, her status as a racialized “mongrel.” The double bind is made most explicit in the case of Katherine Dahlman, who murders Shori’s symbiont, Theodora, as a ploy to reveal Shori’s alterity in front of the Council. As Shori describes in the novel:

Continue reading Alterity to the third degree in Fledgling →

The article “Top Yoga Studios Unite to Racially Profile Black “Yoga Thief,”” on the feminist wire by Sabrina Strings explains how a young black man has being considered the “yoga thief” because he has stolen various yoga instructors’ materials and is on the run. Various students at the yoga facilities have encountered this so called “yoga thief.” The extent of their fears of the young man compelled them to implicitly ostracize him. One woman, sitting in a café, could not believe he was sitting beside her and sent an email to her other colleagues telling them to watch-out for him. As I continued to read, I stumbled on these words, “…the petty theft of property by a black man surfaces as the underlying justification for his perpetual harassment, dehumanization, and criminalization. It is the typical U.S. politics of valuing property over humanity.” Continue reading Stolen Property →

Wednesday’s lecture really got me thinking about Octavia Butler’s Fledging a little more in depth. We discussed the concept of parasitism, which is a symbiotic relationship that is non-mutual between two different species. I researched parasitism a bit further and learned that in parasitism, one party benefits from taking something from the other. Some examples of parasitism that I found were between fleas and animals (a dog for an example) and tapeworms and animals, such as a dog (yes, I know. Not pleasant). This is EXTREMELY similar to Ina biting humans in order to benefit from their blood to receive nourishment. Once one party receives this benefit, the other is harmed. This is technically true in Fledging as the Ina feed off of their symbionts and make them temporarily weak.

The Ina need blood to live and they need it in order to survive. This whole concept made me take a HUGE step back and influenced me to analyze this novel a bit further. Does this mean that Ina bites are unethical even though they are essential to their survival? Is it ethical to take something from something else for nourishment even though it will not be to their benefit? Although I understand that it is Ina culture to have multiple symbionts to feed off of, from an outsider’s stand point I found this phenomenon extremely selfish overall. I, for one would not want to consent to some vampire feeding off of me and taking me away from my life. However, once Shori bit someone they immediately wanted to stay with her forever. Is this consent? After, parasitic relationships are non-mutual….

Theodora’s life was lost because of Shori’s addictive venom and her ability to attract her into her lifestyle. When Theodora died, I could not help but feel sad due to the fact that she had a former life outside of Shori and a daughter who truly cared about her. Parasitism exists in nature, and the relationships between Ina and their human symbionts acts as a form of it which I never really considered. Does this make it natural? In Butler’s world, the Ina exists and in our world different parasites exist. In the NECSI article that I have referenced, it states that the parasite and the host evolve with one another. In Fledging, when an Ina feeds off one of their symbionts, they evolve by becoming healthier and having the ability to live longer.

Link: http://www.necsi.edu/projects/evolution/co-evolution/parasites/co-evolution_parasite.html

In Fledging, I found the concept of “symbionts” a little strange. Although symbionts love their Ina, I find that love to be somewhat false. Clearly, the feelings that exist between the symbiont and the Ina would not exist if it weren’t for the Ina venom. If the human loved the Ina before the bite, and knew what he/she was getting into, then their connection after the bite would feel more genuine and more consensual. It seems as though the symbionts are stuck in that position, whether they want to be there or not. This is not true for all of them, however. For instance, the character Joel always knew that he wanted a female Ina to settle down with. He knew all about the life of being a symbiont before he chose to be one. Wright did not. In fact, I remember Wright complaining several times in the story that he didn’t know what he was getting into when he got involved with Shori. His line on page 161 stuck out to me: “We let them [take over our lives] because we have no choice. By the time we realize what’s happened to us, it’s too late.” Author Octavia Butler, in Conversations with Octavia Bulter, says, “The position of Wright…is an interesting one. He’s not that unhappy about where he ends up, but it’s not something he chose” (203).

Continue reading “Symbionts” – Consensual or Not at all? →