Redemptive Chronologies
Multi-Temporal Consciousness and Trauma
in Octavia Butler's Kindred
December 2002, Berkeley
“And every Moment is a new and shocking Transvaluation of all we have ever been.” -- T.S. Elliot
Fundamental to the human condition is the experience of three dimensions of space, an emergent confluence of lines, planes, and volumes, as illustrated so succinctly in the basic precepts of Euclidian Geometry. And if we turn to the physicists, we may understand a fourth dimension in constant affect of our lives -- a lovely phenomenon which Einstein called “Time.” For the most part, Time is conceived as a single line of cause and effect, moving in one direction. However, as geometry does not stop at the line, neither must we, necessarily, stop at a strictly linear temporality. Time, perhaps, has not only one dimension and one line, but perhaps many dimensions and many lines -- so many in fact, that we might conceive of such constructs as planes of time, volumes of time -- a veritable ocean of time, as it were, moving in as many directions as a human mind might conceive.
Dream away, of course -- it matters little that time might have three dimensions to match the three that make up space, so long as, in effect, and in our world, we perceive but the one. But should we leave aside mathematics, we might, at the very least, use this model of multi-dimensional time as a template for further exploration. The notion of a more complex time-geometry can serve to function as an enabling metaphor -- throwing open the doors to the examine the edges of experienced time within the field of Human Consciousness. Employed as a literary device, multi-temporal consciousness has a remarkable affect on both character development and human psychology. Octavia Butler employs a porous time stream in her novel Kindred to examine the trauma of slavery as it relates to the life of a modern woman. Here is an author who exhibits no squeamishness in turning time on it’s head, and the results of her explorations are, in my opinion, enlightening.
A second fundamental facet of the human condition is this: under precepts of a linear time stream, unfortunate events damaging to human life can, have, and will occur. A knife is the cause of a pain, anguish is the effect of oppression; what’s done is done and time plods ever forward, merciless. By living within the confines of linear time, we are open to the effects of cruelty and destruction, and living within the confines of pain, we are ever vulnerable to the long lasting reverberations of Trauma. In opposition to a singular wound or a temporary pain, Trauma be understood in terms of those moments, within the linear time stream, which in addition to their initial effects, have a perpetually painful and corruptive influence on subsequent events and experiences. Trauma is a wound that does not close -- a pain that does not end, but moves instead progressively forward through time, emanating from its moment of inception. These inceptions manifest in many forms: the reception and administration of abuse and oppression are traumatic for the individual, while abominations like slavery and genocide traumatize whole collectives. In either instance the initial truth of the event has effects that last so long, it begins to seem as though Time itself lies damaged, and waits to be healed.
Trauma, of course, is the prevalent theme throughout the fantastic temporality employed by
Slavery was a trauma for countless individuals past, and remains a trauma for the collective human race to this day. Edana Franklin, born long since Slavery released mankind from its clutch, is nevertheless emblematic of this un-sutured wound in the history of our species. Her sudden rupture through the time-stream, and her continued transference between pre-emancipation
But the eruption of this loop into her consciousness does more than merely make her “aware” of a troubled past. She says also, “I remember” -- insinuating that a deeper connection has been uncovered by this transference -- as though the trauma of her ancestors has been imprinted on her neurons and needs only a stitch in time to burst forth. The initial experience of time travel is deeply personal and deeply violating. “Maybe I’m just like a victim of a robbery or rape or something -- a victim who survives but doesn’t feel safe anymore.” (17). Dana is not a passive observer to the past -- the past rather has encompassed her -- this initial instant is the immediate instigator of panic, and in this sense it also acts as the immediate initial release of collective trauma. In the course of ten minutes, a woman has come to know what it means to lose control of her body and fear for her life. Her state of mind has become instantaneously aligned with the voices of the enslaved -- as though time travel had all at once brought her back physically while initiating a release of her ancestors psychically. “I feel like it could happen again -- like it could happen anytime. I don’t feel secure here.” (17). Dana is referring to the transference, but the transference itself is so ineffable that the “it” referred to implicates a much deeper fear, and a much deeper pain. It is the panic of losing oneself. From the vantage point of outside-time, the distinction becomes blurred as to how much of the panic is the result of disorientation, and how much is the result of a traumatic reverberation through the collective itself. The point is, it very much can happen again, and in fact it does. Dana is about to enter the shared consciousness of her ancestors, to make what peace she can.
The trouble, it turns out, is deeply embedded in Dana’s very genes. The immediate paradox of her situation, and it’s cause, is the fact that she is descended from both slave and master. To ensure her own survival, she must ensure the survival of young Master Rufus and young Slave Alice, the unlikely progenitors of her continued existence. For Dana to exist as a modern woman, liberated and whole, she must literally make peace with her ancestry. The genetic connection serves as a springboard for a trans-temporal psychic alignment. In this sense, Dana is not only coming to terms with the occurrence of slavery -- she is being called upon to make whole that part of herself -- that is, her own aspect as a collective identity -- that remains trapped in the reverberant trauma; she is confronting that part of herself which is still enslaved. “Most of the time, I’m still an observer … it’s nineteen seventy-six shielding and cushioning
Dana’s progression from observer to participant is gradual, paced as much by her own internal resolutions as by the actual length of time she remains stranded in the past. She begins her journey as a visitor and finds herself doing household work as a volunteer -- her situation is precarious due to popular sentiments about the color of her skin, but her freedom remains more or less intact. “Time passed. Kevin and I became more a part of the household, familiar, accepted, accepting. That disturbed me too when I thought about it. How easily we seemed to acclimatize. Not that I wanted us to have trouble, but it seemed as though we should have had a harder time … adjusting to our places in the household of a slave owner.” (97). Understandable, of course, that anyone would want to escape these conditions -- and yet for Dana a deeper struggle ensues over her ability to accept slavery as a day to day present-time reality. Whereas from her vantage point in the future, slavery could be stomached only with a certain amount of distance, life lived within a slave paradigm begs for a deeper resolution. The experienced reality of I am a slave is the source of the trauma -- to accept that such a thing could be accepted at all is to understand the root of the problem. For Dana, observation is not enough. “The whipping served its purpose as far as I was concerned. It scared me, made me wonder how long it would be before I made a mistake that would give someone reason to whip me. Or had I already made that mistake?” (92). An understanding of the psychology of terror is observed -- but with it has come a further confusion of temporality. Surely, if Dana had already made the mistake, her punishment would have come, she would have been whipped already. Her questioning of the existence of this mistake seems trans-temporal -- physical abuse haunts her as an inevitable facet of the transgression she has come to face. From the standpoint of a trans-temporal collective, what has happened to them is happening to them -- And in Dana’s aspect, what is happening to them is happening to me. And so it is. For all the distance the centuries bring, Dana herself comes to find her body violated. “This was only punishment, and I knew it. Nigel had borne it.
And Dana sees.
In order to ensure her own birth, Dana is forced to rendezvous with the past; in order to carry on their lives and carry on their lines, the slaves are forced to subsist under conditions of slavery. The temporal chains that bind Dana to her quest are very much like the chains that bind the slaves to their toil. And initially, to be certain, Dana’s feeling of temporal violation and helplessness is what places her in similar mindset to her brethren. “I don’t have a name for what happened to me, but I don’t feel safe anymore.” (17). Her experience begins with a robbing of agency -- she cannot see the how or the why of her displacement. Nor is the reader ever granted a specific delineation of the mechanisms by which this trans-temporality operates. The quest to understand the situation of enslavement also comes to include a quest to regain an active agency in temporal placement. Although Dana begins convinced that she has no control whatsoever over what is happening to her, a baffled husband encourages her to start thinking creatively. “You may have more control over your returning than you think.” (49). Self preservation, it is quickly concluded, is a guaranteed return trip -- in fact self-preservation seems to be the point of the entire trip. Dana quickly accepts the necessity of the process when it seems clear that by returning to the past, she will ensure the events leading to her own birth. This is in fact the first advent of choice into the matter, and choice, as it turns out, is the first step towards redemption. A cornerstone of the inceptive trauma was the robbing of choice from an entire collective. The slaves retain a degree of choice only insofar as they may keep their own beliefs and reactions amidst a world that enslaves them. Dana, as the carrier for redemptive consciousness, finds her own agency increasingly enabled by making choices about the conditions of time travel itself. “Time passed slowly, uneventfully, as I waited for the birth of the child I hoped would be Hagar.” (229). Ensuring the birth of her next ancestor becomes the primary legitimation for remaining enslaved. In any case, this is the conclusion Dana comes to for herself -- the mechanisms of time travel remain silent. One begins to wonder, though, at the recovery time Dana is granted between visits -- short enough to keep her psychically engaged in the past, but long enough to allow for physical recovery. She assumes that she has not control -- and yet control becomes precisely the thing she is seeking to regain -- insofar as a solution remains to be found, Dana will recover her ability to choose as inevitably as she will come to experience enslavement.
Dana is faced with another kind of choice quite early in her travels. Pursued through the forest by a patrolman, she finds herself pinned to the ground by an attacker who more than likely intends to rape her. “In that instant, I knew I could stop him, cripple him, in this primitive age, destroy him. His Eyes. I had only to move my fingers a little and jab them into the soft tissues, gouge away his sight and give him more agony than he was giving me.” (42). The revelation is startling -- in this instant, the oppressor is unwittingly helpless to the woman he is attacking. And in this moment, there is another force in Dana -- a refusal to do harm -- a choice, albeit a slender one, to respect the human life before her. A parallel is drawn to her growing disconcertion over the possibility of harming Rufus as the novel comes to a close. With the birth of Hagar, there is no further excuse to return to the past under the paradigm of genetic preservation that Dana had adopted to explain her transference. And yet she does not doubt that there will be another trip -- a final encounter with the man who had thought to own her. Her conception of the reason behind her travels changes immediately, irrationally. “But how do I come home? Is the power mine, or do I tap some power in him? All this started with him, after all. I don’t know whether I need him or not. And I won’t know until he’s not around.” (247). Taken out of context, we may begin to wonder what this effusive “him” really represents. Who is this intangible figure who might hold so much power as to draw a liberated woman back into the slavery of her ancestors? “He” is emblematic of her struggle, in any case, “he” is the phantom slaveholder who has done so much harm, the whip from which the trauma has sprung. And try as she might to avoid it, for Dana, “he” has manifested as Rufus -- the drowning child she once unquestioningly saved. Why does she return a final time? Dana has at this point become psychically bound to Rufus -- she has saved him, educated him, healed him, and taken his abuse. “You’re not going to leave me!” Rufus cries, pointing a gun at his savior from the future. And this is the choice she has to make.
It is a terrifying notion -- to look upon a monster and realize that as a child, he was as innocent and vulnerable as any other. Dana remarks often that Rufus is a product of his time -- bound to role of slaveholder by his upbringing, as slave children are bound to be slaves. “I thought of Rufus and his father, of Rufus becoming his father. It would happen some day in at least one way. Someday, Rufus would own the plantation.” (68). Dana tries excruciatingly to communicate with Rufus, to teach him the error of his ways and to maintain an understanding of respect. Wary as she is of what he is quickly becoming, it may well be that Dana feels some love for the boy. At the very least, she strives to uphold a love for mankind whereby she would not take life of another. Within reason. “I’m not property … He has to leave me enough control of my own life to make living look better than killing and dying.” (246). Thus stated, a final confrontation is undertaken and the moment of redemption is at hand. Lost in his own narcissistic pain and confusion, Rufus tries to force Dana to make love to him against her will. “’So what else have I got to lose,” he asked. He pushed me back on the pallet, and for a few moments, we lay there, still. What was he waiting for? What was I waiting for?” (259)
What indeed?
Throughout the novel, Octavia Butler has demonstrated that part of what makes life as a slave bearable is acceptance -- a relaxation into the status quo -- the familiarity that comes from daily routine. Though there may be no hope of true respect between master and slave, in either direction, one might postulate that deep within, we have the capability to love those with whom we spend our lives. And in the passing of centuries and changing of paradigms, we may look back upon the transgressions of the oppressor onto the oppressed and despite ourselves begin to understand how such a thing could come to be -- acknowledging human frailty and fear and stupidity, we may even find it in our hearts to forgive. But here, now, in the present moment, between past and future, forgiveness of sins past cannot be confused with the enactment of new ones. “Slowly, I realized how easy it would be for me to continue to be still and forgive him even this … He was not hurting me, would not hurt me if I remained as I was … I would never be to him what Tess had been to his father - a thing passed around like a whiskey jug at a husking. He wouldn’t do that to me…” (260). It is heartbreaking -- the moment of wanting to forgive -- the moment when you realize that forgiveness is irrelevant. For all the lives lost and all the suffering lived, one yearns to know that there will be no more death and no more suffering -- a moment when weapons are cast aside and life on Earth begins.
Sometimes you just have to insist on closing the wound.
Edana Franklin has crossed the vestiges of time and space to look her demon in the eye, and strike. Redemption is forged in recognition and choice, and Dana has made a decision. Crossing time streams and merging through psychic collectivities, an agent consciousness emerges at the far end of the traumatized timeline like a beacon. The fact of Slavery, like a thread in a tapestry, finds the beginnings of completion and form through the trans-temporal agency of a solitary woman living in the ever present now.
And if time does have the width of a plane, we might call trauma the tragedy of getting stuck on a solitary line. Illuminated in