. . . I turned to say good-bye to Alice, called her name once. She was beating a pair of Rufus's
pants, and she kept beating them with no break in her rhythm to indicate that she had heard me.
"Alice!" I called louder.
She did not turn, did not stop her beating and beadng of those pants, though I was certain' now
that she heard me. . . . "Good-bye, Alice," I said, this time not expecting any answer. There was none. (Butler, 185).
Hua makes importance on the way Alice lacks engagement to Dana which can be viewed as a host of antilock and antifeminist tendencies that are present in contemporary liberal analysis. Hua believes that this passage is the most sentimental of scenes and also the most problematic. "...the scene's interpretation and impact within the text and among scholars replays a host of antilock, antifeminist tendencies that continue to embed themselves in contemporary liberal analysis." (Hua, 391). Speculative time and the literary and culture production of violence in abolitionist literature in the nineteenth century helps better understand the moments of radicalization during this scene. Speculative time is the interaction between whiteness and future that is shaped through slave trade- overall it is, "the material transformation of temporal experience". (Hua, 391). Hua essay establishes the affective refusal rather than incapacity by looking at black feminist sentimentality. Black feminist sentimentality is the way we naturally look at history, intimacy and love in a sentimental way. Hua continues to analyze Kindred through the setting as a basis for antiblack and antifeminist ideology. Therefore, Dana's miscommunication with Alice during the scene solidifies Alice's miscommunication as a two-dimensionality in continuity of this investment in speculative time.
Hua breaks her analysis into three sections: Speculative Time: History and Sentimentality, Temporal Ethics: History as Alibi and Critical Time: Black Feminist Sentimentality. The first section, Speculative Time: History and Sentimentality expresses the relationship between Alice and Dana as the core of black feminist politics due to the promises and obstructions off alliance of black feminist sentimentality. As Dana leaves Alice, it demonstrates the unethical sentimentalism of romance dealing with patriarchal lineage and the promises of speculative time meaning that Dana must side with Rufus to keep her lineage alive. Dana must naturalize the violence and stand the violence towards Alice to reinforce her future. The second section, Temporal Ethics: History as Alibi introduces a classic narrative of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Fredereick Douglass's Narrative of the Life which are classified as the genre of sentimental fiction. Kindred can be categorized as a neo-slave narrative. Hua touches base on the questioning by black feminists about how racist capitalist securities in the future shape our perception of history by violence acted upon Afro-American women and also Afro-American people in general. The third section, Critical Time: Black Feminist Sentimentality, deals with the actions of Dana that are considered as "undetectable moments of radical black feminist agency that rewrite hierarchical models of love and sentimentality, crucial acts of rebellion performed by Alice and Nigel that change the meaning and story of Kindred." (Hua, 400). The politics of black feminist sentimentality gestures our understanding of critical time in a political and personal sense while also viewing the myth of speculative time that underscores the origins of trade and enslavement of Afro-Americans. Hua main point of this article is to help us understand our attachment to history in a sentimental view and also see how violence is produced in the critical present like it was in the critical time of antebellum Maryland. By understanding Alice's role in Kindred we are able to overlook and overwrite a demonstration "..of a critical kind of love that is black, feminist, and ethically sentimental." (Hua, 404).
Hua, Linh U. "Reproducing Time, Reproducing History: Love And Black Feminist Sentimentality In Octavia Butler's "Kindred.." African American Review 44.3 (2011): 391-407. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Time Travel, Violence and the Impacts on Relationship illustrates how time travel has an affect on her relationship with others and also how violence during her time in antebellum Maryland has affected these relationships. The author states his opinion about how he believes that time travel has affected Dana's relationship with her husband, Kevin, and how violence in the past and present affect her relationships in both Pasadena and Maryland. In the beginning, Dana's time travel confuses herself and Kevin and also worries him that she is going back into the past. When Kevin begins to time travel that is when their relationship starts to become hectic. The author focuses on their response from being away from each other in the past as separate people and also their response from their distance away from each other.
Time travel occurs when Dana is in danger. By attending to back in the past when Rufus is in danger, she begins to form a relationship with him but that is soon destroyed when violent acts by Rufus are taken upon Dana. Another act of violence that is portrayed in Kindred is the scene when Dana cuts herself- an act that will send her to time travel to the present. "Since violence is a key factor to time travel it can be an essential factor to Dana’s relationships in determining the time period she is present in, in order to decide how she is going to portray herself in those relationships with the people she is around." (Kindredmania). The author also states that these are key factors when trying to understand the characters and their motives. Violence and time travel are essential when understanding Dana's relationship with those when in the past and present. Overall, I agree with this analysis of Kindred because I do feel like violence and time travel are important factors in Kindred. Time travel affected Dana and Kevin's relationship by allowing them to encounter history that they were never apart of. Because of Kevin's privilege of being a white male, it in a way influences his way to look at Dana as not his wife but an Afro-American slave woman. There are many other examples of how their relationship with each other changed and was affected by antebellum Maryland.
I believe that the scholars analysis is the strongest interpretation due to many sources that were cited throughout the essay. However, it was the least engaging. I found it very hard to read and follow due to the particular voice and the audience it was directed towards that would be more familiar with the language being used. I understood some of what the Hua was saying but most of it, was unfamiliar to me because I am not particularly known to read scholarly articles by those that are recognizable in this field. The scholarly analysis is the supported the best due to the 18 pages of sources that were cited. Some of these sources were from Ashraf H. A., Darlene Clark Hine, Barbara Smith, Adam McKible and many others including their literature works. Whereas the website article had no other sources cited except for one from Kindred. I do fully agree with the website analysis because it was easily accessible to read and understand. I do believe that violence and time travel, as stated before, are key themes in this book.
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