Religión, cuidados y cambio climático en La parábola del sembrador de Octavia Butler: colapso, semilla y oscuridad

Abstract

This study addresses the role of religion as a cohesive force and tool for the exercise of care and “respons-ability” (Donna Haraway) within the context of the climate crisis and the resulting social and cultural collapse as represented in Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower (1993). The argument states that the novel develops a form of “speculative theology” (Nick Eirhear) that wonders about what religion would be capable of doing if, instead of presenting itself as a solution, it presented as a tool that allows human consciousness to “respons-ibly” connect with a collapsing world and focus on the projection of life cycles through the connections between darkness and seeds (instead of life after death). The analysis examines the traditions and imaginaries that nourish the non-anthropocentric religion that is written, preached and ritualized by a young, black and female protagonist; among them, black feminism, the black church and Afrofuturism. This study explores, form a situated perspective, and with the help of a local translation of the novel into Chilean Spanish, the resurgence of an interest in Butler’s work within the context of the global COVID pandemic and the threat of extreme climatic events that are common to all human experience within the Anthropocene.