KINDRED: A STORY OF APPROPRIATION, BONDING, AND POWER RELATIONS

Abstract

Eve K. Sedgwick’s phenomenal study, “Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire”, examines male bonding. Sedgwick argues that though her title specifically mentions “male” homosocial desire, it is impossible to speak of this without taking gender, and the subsequent power relations, into consideration. Sedgwick bases her argument on René Girard’s idea of the triangular structure that brings together two rivals (usually male) through their desire for a common object (usually female). Girard, however, in Sedgwick’s interpretation, and Freud’s, for that matter, ignores gender and stresses that any rivalry between two entities over a common object of desire can form this triangle. For them, the triangle is symmetrical and is not affected by the gender of the participating entities. Sedgwick disagrees. In accordance with Sedgwick’s theory, I shall examine Octavia Butler’s Kindred, which illustrates the homosocial triangle as a structure that not only explains a power system based on race and gender, but also the issue of female bonding. Though Sedgwick’s book deals only slightly with 20th-century texts, I have used her theory as a useful way to talk about female bonding and the patriarchal power structure that governs societal relationships. Kindred also explores a power relationship that illustrates Girard’s theory of “acquisitive mimesis” and “conflictual mimesis,” with the female as the object of desire/appropriation. The text, Kindred, proposes an asymmetrical triangle with the white male attempting to exert power over the black female. But Octavia Butler also tries to show female bonding as a possible means of subverting this structure by acquiring an equal status for the female. However, Butler’s answer to the situation is not quite complete or final – the female bonding is temporary, and, finally, each woman must fend for herself.