kodwo-eshun-the-oankali-turned-its-tentacles-towards-me-1

XGDG THE OANKALI TURNED ITS TENTACLES TOWARDS ME THE OANKALI TURNED ITS TENTACLES TOWARDS ME

THE OANKALI TURNED ITS TENTACLES TOWARDS ME XGDG

XENOGENESIS DIAGRAMS

To Octavia Estelle Butler

CONTENT 2 XENOGENDER Dan Wu 12 KINSHIP: TOWARDS A XENO THEORY OF RELATIONALITY Alice Escorel Boudreau 18 REASON ≈ INSTRUMENTALITY Roland Mbessa 26 BIRTH OF XENO Ghalas Charara 42 LILITH AND THE JUDAS GOAT: A XENO-PROCESS OF FORMATION Marguerite Davenport 54 TRAPS IN THE LOOP: INSTRUMENTAL THINKING Joo Young Hwang 64 LEARN AND RUN! THE DEVIATION OF HUMAN NATURE Nadia Elamly 76 LABYRINTH: THE STRUGGLING NOT AGAINST NONHUMAN ALIENS, BUT AGAINST HUMANITY’S OWN KIND Léa Gallon 82 DEONTOLOGIZING HUMANITY Fatima Wegmann Guinassi 90 ALIEN-HUMAN EROTICS IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S DAWN Chloe Sugden 100 RECIPROCATION FIELD Laila Torres Mendieta 106 ‘YOUR BODY SAID ONE THING. YOUR WORDS SAID ANOTHER.’ Maïté Chénière 112 XENO-KNOWLEDGE Shima Asa

XENOGENDER XENOGENDER ALIENATION INTENTION OF ALIENATION 2 super-denaturalization

ALIEN COMMUNITY HUMAN COMMUNITY MALE / FEMALE / OLOOI / NEW HUMAN GENDER MALE / FEMALE denaturalization neurochemical modification NEW HUMAN GENE TRADER XENOPHOBIC attempt failed attempt to conform 3

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KODWO ESHUN AND DAN WU’S DISCUSSION ABOUT OOLOI [ALL EMPHASIS ADDED] Dan: So, here is my diagram: XENOGENDER, in which I study the gender attributes of ooloi in Lilith’s Brood. Before I start to talk about my diagram, I would like to ask some questions that arose while I read the book regarding what exactly the ooloi is. Let’s look at the end of p.21, where Jdahya talked about the ooloi for the first time. He says: ‘My relative is not male—or female. The name for its sex is ooloi. It understood your body because it is ooloi. On your world there were vast numbers of dead and dying humans to study. Our ooloi came to understand what could be normal or abnormal, possible or impossible for the human body. The ooloi who went to the planet taught those who stayed here. My relative has studied your people for much of its life’ Then, he continues to explain how ooloi study: ‘They observe. They have special organs for their kind of observation. My relative examined you, observed a few of your normal body cells, compared them with what it had learned from other humans most like you, and said you had not only cancer, but a talent for cancer. […] Maybe perceiving would be a better word…’ Well, from these excerpts, the point which confuses me regards ooloi attributes. As I understand it, human gender is an attribute of the human body, as in when we say ‘she is female’ and ‘he is male’. But when Jdahya talked about ooloi, it sounds to me like he is talking about a special, separate kind of being. It’s like an ‘it’. But in fact, ooloi is the third gender of oankali. So it is a kind of attribute, right? Kodwo: Yes… What he is talking about is the fact that ooloi have special qualities: ‘They have special organs for observation’. This is what ooloi do, they have a special capacity, or perception for studying. […] In human terms, they are neutral, they are not female or male. Of course, Oankali is not really female or male either, but ooloi are some kind of OTHER GENDER. And in the book, this question of different sex is denaturalized. This means the relation of sex to gender is one that cannot be understood in terms of a so called ‘natural relationship’, so the relation between sex and gender undergoes denaturalization. This means you can’t differentiate 10 gender from sex, and you don’t understand what gender is anymore, and you don’t understand what sex is anymore. And that is related to not understanding what a body is anymore. So this is the ooloi. The ooloi is sex, gender and body denaturalized. The oankali are as well, but the ooloi are even more so. So this is the point of the book, which is these aliens, oankali, ooloi, these aliens are something like thought experiments in denaturalization. An alien is an experiment, a fictional experiment in thought. So, that’s why it’s difficult to understand what’s going on here. What you describe is one example, or a case. So, in your statement, these questions of sex and gender have to be related to this question. This is the most important process in the book: denaturalization. Or we can put it in another way, you can say: ontology = being; ontogenesis = becoming; deontologization = the undoing of being. So, it’s ontology unbound. So all of these questions: sex, gender, attributes, qualities, capacities, individualities, all of these are undergoing denaturalization. This means that they now operate differently, under different rules, under different conditions in different way. So the point is denaturalization—it’s easy to understand it in terms of, say, the environment, if we say the environment is being denaturalized, it’s clear that the environment is changing, it’s much harder to understand the denaturalization of sex and gender and qualities and capacities. It’s difficult for humans to grasp the denaturalization of the human. And so this is why the ooloi are so fascinating, […] the ooloi are a study in denaturalization, they are the denaturalized parts of the denaturalized part. They are the super-denaturalized element. Because the oankali are already denaturalized, but the ooloi are the most alien of the alien, they are like the aliens of the aliens. Dan: Oh… The aliens of aliens! Kodwo: Yes, that’s what they are.

XENOGENDER This diagram is actually a summary statement. It’s an example which shows why and how the Human community and Alien community try to change each other’s gender status, and what the subsequent result is. The relation between Oankali and Human is opposition and unification. They resist each other, but they also need each other. So, I chose the element from Taijitu (Yin Yang Symbol) to represent these two communities. Here, I classify the gendermodified human as alien. I call them the ‘new human being’. The Oankali form new human beings whose gender is fluid. However, the new human beings’ fluid gender troubles the ‘human resisters’ in the story because most of them still think gender has to be stable. The ‘human resisters’ notion of gender as a stable attribute compels them to regulate every subject whose gender is different from theirs. Humanity is intrinsically xenophobic1. The Human community cannot understand or perceive the gender fluidity of the Oankali, nor do they understand ooloi’s sex attributes. Then, the stable gender human attempts to conform the gender-fluid humans whose gender had been modified by Oankali, but those attempts fail. Then, what made new human beings gender-fluid? I believe it was the ooloi’s attributes. Frida Beckman, in her book Deleuze and Sex, describes concretely how the ooloi operate in Oankali’s sex relations and how the ooloi connect Oankali and human bodies. She says: ‘Male and female Oankali have two arms, but ooloi have an additional two “sensory arms” through which they can form direct neurochemical connections with humans and other Oankali. Via these connection, ooloi are able to heal, modify human anatomy, perform genetic repairs, and bring about interspecies reproduction. During neurochemical contact with an ooloi, the ooloi secretes an “ooloi substance”, which imparts intense pleasure to humans and Oankali alike, while at the same time instilling deep bonds of attachment, which Lilith describes at one point as “literal, physical addiction to another person”. The reproductive unit in the creation of “constructs” consists of a male-female human couple, a male-female Oankali couple (typically siblings), and an ooloi, both couples profoundly bonded to the ooloi, and the group of five functioning as a monogamous pentad (if one can speak of monogamy in such a configuration). Sexual contact between the human male and female takes place only through the ooloi’s simultaneous neurochemical manipulation of the couple, who do not physically touch one another; the same is true of the Oankali couple’s sexual interaction with the ooloi. Through contact with its mates, the ooloi extracts semen and ova from the human couple, extracts comparable substances (never specified) from the Oankali couple, creates optimal mixtures of the extracted genetic materials, and then implants one embryo in the human female and another in the Oankali female (since the human couple and the Oankali couple do not have sex with the ooloi at the same time, it is not clear precisely when the embryos are implanted, whether during subsequent sexual contact or while the ooloi is connected to the female alone in some sexual or nonsexual way).’ By reading her description we can better understand the left part (Alien community) of my diagram. The Oankali are natural genetic engineers, and are driven to seek out new lifeforms and trade with them in order to keep themselves from overspecializing and stagnating. Oankali are gene traders. The ooloi puncture and inject neuro-chemical material into the human body with their ‘sensory arms’ in order to modify humans’ genes. Ooloi denaturalize the human body, and then form new human beings whose gender is fluid, unstable, and have the same gender status as the aliens by the second penetration of Oankali body. It is the super-denaturalization. Via this example I want to point out this question about ooloi’s gender attributes: ooloi = xenogender = new human + ooloi + new human alien = oankali = denaturalization ooloi = alien of alien » undergoing denaturalization ooloi + human = new human » the becoming alien of gender {new human + ooloi + new human} = {new human + alien of alien + new human » gender outside of the natural order of gender} = superdenaturalization = xenogender Dan Wu 1. ‘A true xenophobia—and apparently she was not alone in it.’ p.23 11

KINSHIP: TOWARDS A XENO THEORY OF RELATIONALITY EQUALITY RELATIONS CHARACTERISTICS 12

OANKALI ACQUISITIONAL NON HIERARCHIC INTER INTRA XENOPHILIC RECIPROCAL KINSHIP FLUIDITY 13

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KINSHIP: TOWARDS A XENO THEORY OF RELATIONALITY The previous diagram takes the point of view of the Oankali and demonstrates that their notions of kin are fluid. The diagram represents Oankali kinship formation from an Oankali point of view. To the Oankali, both their interrelations and intrarelations are reciprocal relations formed through acquisition. Acquisition takes on new meaning from the Xeno perspective of the Oankali. The non-hierarchic and xenophilliac characteristics of Oankali society open up the concepts of kinship, reciprocity, and acquisition. When Lilith asks Jdahya, ‘are they plant or animal?’ referring to the ship, she receives the mystifying answer ‘both, and more’. This excerpt is demonstrative of the blurred hierarchies and boundaries that most humans hold between Human, Animal, Plant, and Mineral. Whereas humans would create hierarchies between cell, tissue, organ, organ system of the organism to understand the level of importance, the Oankali do not appear to make this distinction/differentiation which demonstrates their non-hierarchic worldview. Oankali relationalities are ones humans would understand as symbiosis. This is described through/with their relation with the ship, their place of dwelling, their source of nourishment, transportation, and survival which simultaneously, is dependent on its Oankali kin for survival. The relation between the Oankali and the ship is one of mutuality, reciprocity, and interdependence: ‘There is an affinity, but it is biological—a strong symbiotic relationship. We serve the ship’s needs and it serves ours.’ Going on to describe the interdependence, ‘It would die without us and we would be planet-bound without it’. The Oankali have a ship growing tradition and they pass down ships from generation to generation. Their ancestors grew their ship and they have the responsibility of growing another ship for their descendants. This implies that this giving life fosters a relation of mutuality, also described as love: ‘The human doctor used to say it loved us’. Oankali’s xenophiliac drive is alluded to throughout the book and is demonstrated by their ability and need to make kin with non-Oankali beings. Their very existence depends on acquiring Xeno DNA from humans who in turn survive beyond Humanicide. Therefore, Oankalis intra and inter relations are ones of acquisition. In other words, the ship and the human kinship ties are forged by Oankali acquisition. However, in a non-hierarchical/egalitarian society acquisition becomes Xeno and pushes the limits of our understanding of acqui16 sitional/reciprocal relationality. The common understanding of acquisition is one of an uneven dominant-submissive binary between the acquiree and the acquired. The act of acquiring from Oankali worldview is a simultaneous act of survival, where mutually beneficial inter and intra relations are formed. Acquisitional relationality becomes a relation where the power struggle between acquiree and the acquired dissolve into acquiree/acquiree or between acquired/acquired. Oankali kinship is fluid and xenophillac begging the rethinking of acquisitional/reciprocal relationality within a non-hierarchical Xeno society. Alice Boudreau

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REASON ≈ INSTRUMENTALITY HUMAN ROADS OANKALI’S INFLUENCE LILITH AS A SUBJECT POSSIBILITIES FOR HUMANITY 18

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE HIERARCHICAL OANKALI HUMANICIDE INSTRUMENTALITY LILITH 19

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REASON ≈ INSTRUMENTALITY In Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy, Lilith Iyapo, an African American woman, awakens in a cell many centuries after the human race has effectively destroyed itself with nuclear weapons. She, together with a small number of other survivors, have been taken by a nomadic alien species called the Oankali. That species is searching the universe for new genetic information to keep evolving in order to expand their intelligence. Now the last number of humans must combine their DNA with the alien in order to redesign a new race purged of humanity’s self-destructive, hierarchical tendencies. Lilith, the chosen one, must become the mother of a new (in)-human race in order for humans to survive, in whatever form, on Earth. Humans have an incredible potential—cancer. The Oankali, the gene traders, who trade themselves through the Ooloi have an interest in cancer. The Ooloi perceives the cancer as a way for their species to evolve. Aside from cancer, humanity also has a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics: hierarchy and intelligence. These two together led the world to humanicide. For Jdahya, cancer and the two characteristics are similar and because of that, humanity has to reexamine itself periodically as long as it possesses these incompatible characteristics. Hierarchy is the older of the two terrestrial characteristics. The problem with humanity occurred and occurs when human intelligence serves hierarchy instead of guiding it. In my diagram, for Lilith the dotted lines represent the possibility of a future that can or cannot happen because she serves the intelligence and the Oankali at the same time. How to show the distinction between serving and guiding? My diagram does not have arrows so that we read every vector, every line, in two ways: does intelligence serve hierarchy or does intelligence guide hierarchy? Does hierarchy guide intelligence or does hierarchy serve intelligence? There are four relations here and we do not know which one is on top because they are co-constitutive—they are coupled together. What is the nature of this coupling? Intelligence is always coupled with hierarchy but is this coupling a serving hierarchy or a guiding hierarchy? Is intelligence serving or guiding? This is a complex question. On top of hier24 archy, Octavia Butler imposes serving-guiding. So we have intelligence-hierarchy and serving-guiding. Roland Mbessa

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BIRTH OF XENO WOMB FAMILY 26

ZOO ANIM CAPTIVE AL PET PRISONER EXPERIMENT EXPERIMENTAL BREEDING PROGRAM VICTIM JUDAS GOAT UNCOMPREHENDING OUTSIDER ALIEN MOTHER 27

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BIRTH OF XENO This diagram grapples with the impossibility of narrating the becoming xenophile of Lilith. Throughout Dawn, and more precisely in the first two parts, Womb and Family, I tracked and collected the changing terms, attributes or nouns Lilith the narrator uses to designate herself in her relationship with the Oankali. Her reflections and self-redefinition each time follow an exchange with them or an action that repositions her in the power structure. Beyond the move from object to subject and her regaining—always relatively—her agency, she also lives a new, developing relationship towards herself, triangulating between the Oankali and other humans. I hesitated to do a timeline, but the words figured here do not punctuate specific moments of the narrative but infuse it as they fluctuate in and out from her interior monologues to her loud addresses. This movement is a word-becoming, Lilith’s lexicogenesis where terms breed and couple in an effort to enact a more complex definition of Lilith as seen by Lilith. From a reactive position she slowly learns to view herself recursively. Could the genesis of the Xeno be the birth of Lilith to herself, finally becoming her own mother? Ghalas Charara 40

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LILITH AND THE JUDAS GOAT: A XENO-PROCESS OF FORMATION 42

ABDUCTION PROCESS OF FORMATION LILITH HOMOPHILY ALIENATION erasure of history XENOPHILY 43

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LILITH AND THE JUDAS GOAT: A XENO-PROCESS OF FORMATION In Octavia Butler’s Dawn, Lilith refers to herself and is likened to a Judas goat, a biblical reference to an animal trained to associate with sheep or goats, often to lead them to slaughter. The diagram examines this xeno-process of formation, in which Lilith, under conditions of abduction by the Oankali, moves from states of homophily towards states of xenophily, or in this case, her reference to the Judas goat. Specifically the scene in which Lilith notices and asks for objects, utensils and access to artifacts of her history to record or ‘learn’, which are represented in the diagram by a state of homophily or familiarity, are denied by the Oankali. Lilith’s denied access to these objects and artifacts of familiarity is represented in the diagram as examples of erasure of her history, which are strategic in her xeno-process of formation by the Oankali, and a specificity of her alienation. The diagram is specific to the scene in which Lilith asks Nikanj to see the records, such as books, tapes, disks and films that the Oankali kept of people’s ‘history, medicine, language, science’, which Nikanj denies. Lilith states that ‘the Oankali had removed her so completely from her own people-only to tell her they planned to use her as a Judas goat. And they had done it all so softly, without brutality, and with patience and gentleness so corrosive of any resolve on her part’ (p.67). Although her alienation is intentionally ‘soft, patient and without brutality’, her process of formation is under a violent condition of abduction. Octavia Butler’s text questions the erasure of history under conditions of abduction in the formation of Lilith as the Judas goat, through an ongoing process of alienation from records, language tools, cultural objects and artifacts. The diagram illustrates how the process of formation in this scene of the book is relational to the xeno or outside becoming, the birth of the outside, or direct encounter with the outside’ in Dawn. Marguerite Davenport 52

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TRAPS IN THE LOOP: INSTRUMENTAL THINKING ∞ FUTURE OANKALI ENTRY POINT TO VIOLENCE & TRAPS LILITH PAUL T1 OANKALI’S TRAP FOR PAUL & LILITH T2 PAUL’S TRAP FOR LILITH T3 LILITH’S TRAP FOR PAUL 54

∞ PAST REPLICATION OF REPRODUCTION T3 T2 MULTIPLE REPLICATION REPRODUCTIVE EXTRACTION ARRESTED SEXUAL CAPACITY T1 55

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TRAPS IN THE LOOP: INSTRUMENTAL THINKING Paul is the first human Lilith encounters on the Oankali’s ship. The Oankali set them to meet each other in order for them to mate. However, Lilith refuses and Paul violently tries to rape her. Throughout and after the rape attempt, Paul sets traps for Lilith by preemptively considering the Oankali’s perspective about them and instrumentally using that to manipulate Lilith into behaving in a certain way. There are three traps: 1. The Oankali set a trap for Lilith and Paul to try and get them to mate so that the Oankali can have true trade. 2. By understanding themselves as instruments of the Oankali, Paul tries to set a trap for Lilith to get her to behave in a way that the Oankali would not expect. Paul’s preemptive understanding of the Oankali’s perspective about them is that theirs is a hunter’s perspective of a prey, which Paul in turn attempts to instrumentalize. 3. Lilith sets a trap for Paul by convincing him of the high probability that some of the females that he has impregnated are his relatives. Paul Titus hadn’t had any encounters with women for mating. However, he fell into Lilith’s trap nonetheless, becoming shocked with the possibility of having engaged in the anthropological taboo of incest—not the incest resulting from the heterosexual or so-called ‘natural’ order of reproduction— but that caused by multiple replications of reproduction by the Oankali, which results in a higher probability of him having impregnated his female relatives. Although the Oankali denaturalized ‘natural reproduction’, Paul was not free from the constraints of the taboo of incest. The Oankali blurred the boundary between reproduction and replication through their technological capacity. Lilith and Paul, the two instruments of the Oankali, engaged in a relationship of negative solidarity rather than one of commonality-based instrumental solidarity. Joo Young Hwang 62

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learn / xenogenesis SURVIVAL as xeno LEARN AND RUN! THE DEVIATION OF HUMAN NATURE 64

65 HUMANICIDE EXTINCTION as homo “HUMANITY” Oankali’s genetic engeenering scheme r u n / f u g it i v i t y FUTURITY HYBRIDITY

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LEARN AND RUN! THE DEVIATION OF HUMAN NATURE becomes possible—leading to an inevitable hybridization; first of knowledge and behavior, then of species. This diagram is an attempt to schematize the deviation of the initial learn and run plan set by Lilith to escape the Oankali’s gene trade. This point is what the human survivors seem to want to avoid at all costs: the ultimate corruption of humanity through a sexual union. This rejection makes them resist the learning process in order to avoid that ultimate step, a reaction that will bring them to the impasse revealed at the end of the book; the choice between death or coming back to the Oankali— humanity as known by the humans before the Humanicide is destined to extinction. Then the only possibility for the Awakened to survive is to live as xeno. The first appearance of this plan comes at the very beginning of the ‘Nursery’ chapter, right before Lilith must start choosing which human individuals to awaken to form the first group she will have to prepare to be the Oankali’s new trade partners-instruments. Anticipating the violent reaction of the awakened humans once they understand the process of genetic trade in which they are caught, and thus the impossibility for it to happen without more violence, Lilith elaborates a plan for her and the other captives to escape the Oankali’s genetic engineering scheme. As Lilith thinks about that plan, the notion of survival appears: on an individual scale—to avoid being put back into suspended animation or be killed at the slightest manifestation of resistance—as well as a species—to avoid having alien babies. The only hope remaining in order to survive and bypass the Oankali’s gene trade is to learn and run: since there is no way to escape the ship, their only chance is to accept their captivity and obey the Oankali until they are considered ready to be put back on Earth, where they finally will be able to flee the hybridization process. The intention for this diagram is to represent the deviations of Lilith and the Awakened from this initial plan. Those deviations reveal the illusion present at the core of this plan; the hope to escape hybridization and to save humanity as known before the Humanicide. Since the very beginning of the story, everything the human survivors were familiar with is not homo—the same—any more. From the genes of their own body to planet Earth, the intervention of the Oankali constituted an irremediable change. The very moment the Oankali intervened to save some humans from the Humanicide, these survivors, the ‘Awakened’, have been caught in the Oankalian genetic engineering scheme making hybridification inevitable from and within a survival perspective. As Lilith witnesses it, being on the ship implies an impossibility of escaping captivity. But going along with this captivity involves the process of learning—the process of familiarization with the Oankali until a sexual relation 74 Through her novel, Octavia Butler sets a situation where survival means or implies going through a constant process of xenogenesis. We could make a connection between such a process and an inhumanist perspective on the ontology of humanity, the philosophical position that considers humanity as a project of constant revision and that tends to subvert a conservative conception of ‘human nature’ and its normative implications. Humanity could be seen as a nonlinear trajectory. Such a perspective on ‘human nature’ could be connected to the deviations of Lilith and the Awakened from the initial learn and run plan—their exponential distancing and estrangement from their fixed conception of their own human nature. Nadia Elamly

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LABYRINTH: THE STRUGGLING NOT AGAINST NONHUMAN ALIENS, BUT AGAINST HUMANITY’S OWN KIND 1 HIERARCHY 2 MASCULINITY, GENDER, HETERO-NORMATIVE 3 RACE, NATIONALITY, PLANETARY 4 HUMAN VIOLENCE 5 HUMANITY HUMAN IN TRAINING FLOOR OANKALI SHIP/LEARNING LABORATORY 76

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LABYRINTH: THE STRUGGLING NOT AGAINST NONHUMAN ALIENS, BUT AGAINST HUMANITY’S OWN KIND There is a possible correlation between the struggle that awakened humans have to wage against their own human kind to reform their species in order to survive, and the Labyrinth myth. Theseus the male hero from Greek mythology must fight and destroy the Minotaur which is the personification of his internal trouble. To be reformed, human kind has to undermine—here thanks to the genesis of a outside—humanity, masculinity, race, gender, nationality, and the planet which had germinated, bloomed, expanded. The damage is done, it has inflated, grown and become a general cry, a universal chorus of hatred and proscription. This epic confronts philosophical questions through the possibility of renarration thanks to fiction. In this labyrinth there is no Theseus. As the potential ‘hero’, Lilith, doesn’t fit with the male hero archetype. The labyrinth centre has been multiplied. Instead of a proper centre there is a multitude of decentralized centres: the cores of the human being. The awakened humans would be the Ariadne thread that would allow their own survival as species through the denaturalization of their heteronormativity. In order to do that, they need to channel their violent human nature to survive as a collective subject. Léa Gallon 80

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DEONTOLOGIZING HUMANITY INHUMANISM HUMANISM TECHNOLOGY HUMAN NON-HUMAN 82

HUMANITY = HYBRIDITY 83

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DEONTOLOGIZING HUMANITY In Xenogenesis, the future of humanity is undetermined. The Oankali, an alien species, saved humans from humanicide and captured them to inhabit earth. In order to reproduce and have children, humans have no other choice than to interbreed with the Oankali. They have intervened into the reproduction capacity of humans; therefore it seems that the human race as we know it has no futurity. The concept of humanity is not only revised by the fact that human reproduction is over, but also by the fact that human genes can be changed by Oankali’s technology. Inhumanism is a commitment to the project of humanity because it revises what it means to be human constantly. To keep this commitment all the way, we need to take into account the reversibility of the human project and accept that, in order for humanity to embrace futurity, we might need technology and all the indeterminacy and contingency that comes from it. Fatima Wegmann Their technology is also capable of activating some latent abilities that humans have inherited from their non-human ancestors. Humans have a non-human potential that is latent. We are brought back to the moment of hominization or anthropogenesis, which is the moment before the formation of Homo Sapiens. Thus technology exposes humanity to threats and reveals that humanity is a reversible project. It also exposes the unknown unknowns of the human trajectory by unveiling the other possibilities that could have taken place. Hence, the concept of humanity is constantly challenged and needs to be revised relentlessly. Humanity is a reversible project. It is not an essence. We were never human in the first place. Humans need to understand themselves as hybrids from the start of the process of becoming human. In Octavia Butler’s novel, inhumanism1 is already happening whether humans like it or not. Lilith knows that to be able to survive, she has to accept Oankali’s technology and seize a more non-human nature. She is more afraid of what the others would think of her than her own transformation. Lilith’s commitment to humanity could be qualified as inhumanist because she is not afraid to revise what it means to be human rather than trying to keep a ‘human essence’ in the future. That could be explained by the fact that she’s a Nigerian American woman and thus, she’s already not compliant with the supremacist and canonical self-portrait of the human2. 1. ‘Inhumanism is the extended practical elaboration of humanism; it is born out of a diligent commitment to the project of enlightened humanism. As a universal wave that erases the self-portrait of man drawn in sand, inhumanism is a vector of revision. It relentlessly revises what it means to be human by removing its supposed evident characteristics and preserving certain invariances. At the same time, inhumanism registers itself as a demand for construction, to define what it means to be human by treating human as a constructible hypothesis, a space of navigation and intervention’. Reza Negarestani, ‘The Labor of the Inhuman, Part I: Human’, e-flux Journal #52 , February 2014. 2. Ibid. 88

Bibliography Majaca, Antonia. Parisi, Luciana. ‘The Incomputable and Instrumental Possibility’, e-flux Journal #77, November 2016. Negarestani, Reza. ‘The Labor of the Inhuman, Part I: Human’, e-flux Journal #52, February 2014. Negarestani, Reza. ‘ The Labor of the Inhuman, Part II: The Inhuman’, e-flux Journal #53, March 2014. Reed, Patricia. ‘Xenophily and Computational Denaturalization’, in Artificial Labor, e-flux Architecture, 2017. Wolfendale, Pete. ‘Rationalist Inhumanism’, https://www. academia.edu/26697819/Rationalist_Inhumanism_Dictionary_Entry_ (accessed on April 17, 2018). 89

ALIEN-HUMAN EROTICS IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S DAWN HUMAN TRANSCENSION FROM THE INSTRUMENTAL LOGIC 90 OANKALI-HUMAN SEX RITE DEIFIC ALIEN SUBJECTHOOD instrumentalisation overcome HUMAN’S DIVINE INITIATION Lilith DIVINE TRANSCENSION

HOMOPHILY ANTHROPIC DISGUST XENOPHILY SUBMISSION DENATURALISATION XENOPHILIAC CONSENT VERBAL BIOCHEMICAL ELECTROCHEMICAL GENETIC DESIRE ATTRACTION FEAR OANKALI INSTRUMENTALISATION 91

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ALIEN-HUMAN EROTICS IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S DAWN Out of the flesh of our Mothers come dreams and memories of the Gods.1 For the magi of the left-hand path, sexuality is even more than ‘a primary mode of being’—the altered state of extreme erotic ecstasy is a potentially divine mode of being, the chaotic dance of two magnetically attracted opposite energies that allows for the creation of a third power transcending the human.2 Defining the libidinal current of the Oankali aethyr3 In Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy, the human race has near-obliterated itself in nuclear war. Post-humanicide, those few who survive are abducted by a nomadic alien species, the omniscient Oankali. The Oankali are advanced, supernatural sky-beings who are repairing Earth for recolonisation. They are also nomadic gene traders, scouring the universe for other species whose DNA is useful to their genetic engineering program. In the first book, Dawn, Lilith Iyapo, an AfricanAmerican woman, is Mother of a new order of humans. Lilith wakes in solitary confinement on the Oankali ship after 250 years in incubation. This ship—the realm that she has literally and figuratively ascended to—is equal parts earthly, celestial and hellish. The threefold division of underworld, earth and heaven is murky in this aethyr. Lilith slowly learns that she has been chosen by the Oankali as the leader of the other humans. Her role is, in part, to wake others from their centuries-long slumbers and facilitate an Oankali-human breeding program. Lilith’s designated role as instrument, and her ecstatic, or divine transcendence of this role through Oankali-human sensuality, mark the end of a humanist, earthbound eroticism. There is a disruption or queering of homophilic4 sexual identity in the Oankali regime, as erotic gratification lies far outside normative sexual behaviour. Introducing its third sex, the ‘ooloi’ Oankali, Nikanj, gives Lilith and her lover, Joseph, an intimacy ‘beyond ordinary human experience.’ Further, Nikanj experiences the same immense (psycho)sexual pleasure that it gives. In Nikolas and Zeena Schreck’s words, a ‘multi-bodied panorama of polymorphous delight’5 takes place. Erotic acts of copulation with the Oankali subvert all beliefs about what it is to be human. As humans consent to—moreover, succumb to their deep seduction by—Oankali intercourse, an aroused acceptance of a (genuine) alien sexual invitation arises. Yet erotic impulse in the alien-human sexual dynamics of the Oankali realm is not easily placed. All of Dawn’s protagonists inhabit a space where earthly distinctions between humans and animals are dissolved, decaying the homophilic order. Lilith cannot entirely grasp the transcendental power, or shockingly Other physiology of the Oankali, even as she grows fluent in their tongue and adopts some of their alien physiology. As John Berger argues, ‘the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled… the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.’6 Initially, the Oankali are terrifying to humans in their carnal fluidity; they cannot be defined within the primary categories of species. Before their systematic deprogramming, humans on the ship understand Oankali physiology as a denaturalised perversion of homophilic human physiology. However, as this alien regime thrives by denaturalising and instrumentalising7 humankind, I must consider how human anthropic disgust is converted to desire, attraction and sexual submission. The Oankali arouse psychosexual affect in humans—desire, attraction, fear—firstly, through their godlike abilities to manipulate human biological functions. Secondly, through 1. British artist and occultist, Austin Osman Spare quoted in Drury, Neville. Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 153. 2. Schreck, Nikolas, and Zeena Schreck. Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic. London: Creation Books, 2002, 4. 3. Drawing on Egil Asprem’s writing, I use the term ‘aethyr’ in an Enochian sense. In the Enochian tradition, an aethyr denotes one of a series of successive worlds, or planes, which penetrates and extends beyond the material world. See Asprem, Egil. Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture. New York: State University of New York Press, 2012, 98. 4. I use the term ‘homophilic’ to refer to the social tendency of humans to maintain relationships with other humans who are similar to them. After their awakening on the Oankali ship, humans gradually shift from a homophiliac to xenophiliac erotic structure and libidinal economy. (See: xenophiliac, note 8.) 5. Schreck and Schreck, 4. 6. See Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972. 7. Antonia Majaca and Luciana Parisi explore Lilith’s experimental approach to instrumentality at length in their article, ‘The Incomputable and Instrumental Possibility.’ e-flux, no. 77 (November 2016). They ask: ‘Doesn’t the instrument itself possess its own “ends,” as Lilith does?’. 94

the deific allure of their biological difference, or their divine weirdness. The Oankali’s sensory limbs (or tentacles, organs), through which alien-human sex occurs, are textured surfaces by which the human agent participates in a hidden divine reality. In other words, through the tentacular sensory limb, the xenophiliac8 human body connects with the Oankali body as an extension of its divine alien corporeality. Like the ancient Greek deity, Pan (‘ruler of All’), the Oankali are also ‘unpredictable, lascivious, lecherous’9 and may be regarded as devilish. Unlike Pan and other mythological deities, however, the Oankali are not derived from human beings whose lives, at some time, became mythical—they have no cultural origins on Earth. Where Pan’s horns and hooves stand for natural, earthly energies, the Oankali’s pleasure-giving sensory tentacles stand for the denatural, extra-terrestrial energies of xenophily. The xenophiliac human body exists in this realm, far beyond its earthly lifespan, as a result of divine Oankali intervention in the Apocalypse, or Armageddon. The Oankali is the Pan of a new, xenophiliac nature—the abstract ruler and God of all living xenophilic nature. Oankali are the saviours and creation deities of the new alien-human species; benevolent, godly figures of a new age, giving unimaginable sensuous and spiritual pleasure (and at times, pain) to their (once-)human counterparts. In diagramming the denaturalised, divine erotic structure of Oankali/human intimacy, there are infinite factors to consider. At a bodily level, forces such as the electrochemical, the genetic, and the biochemical, entwined with the verbal, are at play. (The biochemical generally overpowers verbal dissent in xenophiliac sexual submission.) One must also consider the transition from homophilia to xenophilia, as denaturalisation gives way to xenophiliac submission. Further, as I will later discuss, the Oankali-human sex rite may be diagrammed as the human’s initiation and transcension into a deific alien subjectivity, as they overcome an instrumental logic. These multiplying, fluid forces form part of an incomplete system of erotic ethics for an age beyond humanism—a xenophiliac vocabulary for alien-human spiritual-psychosexual dynamics and desire structures. The Oankali-human sex act as divine initiatory rite; Lilith’s transcension from instrument to deific alien subject In their essay ‘The Incomputable and Instrumental Possibility,’ Antonia Majaca and Luciana Parisi fashion Lilith as a ‘sorcerer’ who innovates outside the traditional logic of the instrument. They argue that Lilith does not refuse her instrumentality, but ‘acknowledges,’ ‘politicises’ and ‘ultimately transcends’ it.10 According to Serenity Young, the human desire to be in contact with ‘sky-beings’ is a ‘longing for transcendence.’ Young argues that to transcend (through sex rite or by other spiritually embodied, initiatory or ritualistic means), is to surpass others and what has been done before; to be free from constraint (from instrumentality).11 Lilith symbolises the ancient human desire to break through restraints; the yearning to pass through the terrestrial, reaching new heights of extraterrestrial, embodied spiritual experience. She becomes a magical female alien-deity through sex acts with Joseph and Nikanj— acts which allow her to transcend a traditional instrumental logic as she sexually consecrates her alien divinity. Lilith’s transcendent approach to the logic of the instrument— explored, in this instance, through alien-human erotics—shares affinities with the Schreck couple’s descriptions of left-hand path sex magic in their book, Demons of the Flesh. Schreck and Schreck distinguish between the ‘profound pleasure’ of sex enjoyed for sex’s sake—as an embodied and aesthetic experience—and that sex which is utilised for ‘authentic magical or initiatory purposes.’ They describe the ‘third power transcending the human’ that is created in ‘taboo-overturning’ left-hand path sex magic. Throughout Dawn, Butler hints at those many modern autocracies that have maintained their power by severely ‘curbing the full development of sexual power in their subjects.’12 As such, Lilith and the Oankali species, together, represent a ‘third power’ that demystifies flesh from taboo. They initiate Lilith into their divine aethyr through 8. The word ‘xenophily’ or ‘xenophilia’ is derived from the Greek terms ‘xenos’ (ξένος; stranger, unknown, foreign) and ‘phila’ (φιλία; love, attraction). The word is not found in classical Greek as it is a modern term coined to articulate an affection for the unknown. See Liddell, Henry, and Robert Scott, eds. A GreekEnglish Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, 1189. By extension, the acts of love and sexual intercourse between humans and Oankali on board the ship may be expressed as xenophiliac. 9. Drury, 158. 10. Majaca and Parisi, n.p. 11. Young, Serenity. Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, and Other Airborne Females. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 6. 12. Schreck and Schreck, 5. 95

sexual rites. Post-initiation, Lilith and the Oankali work together as, for lack of a better term, sexual guerrillas who destroy fundamental understandings of erotic relations; they ‘reinstate sexuality as a primary mode of being.’13 The mythological figure of Lilith first appears in Sumerian mythology in the third millennium, before entering the Jewish tradition in the Talmudic period.14 In the Zohar (the Book of Splendour; 2001 CE)—the foundational text in Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah—Lilith is depicted as the arch-shedevil, Mother of demons and feminine counterpart to Samael (Satan), with ‘the defective light of Lucifer animating her.’ She is described as ‘the end of all flesh’ and ‘the end of days,’ Goddess of the Underworld and the secret force of nature.15 Similarly, in Dawn, Lilith belongs to the category of the monstrous-feminine.16 The most unnatural, or de-natural of human females, Lilith displays both Oankali and human sympathies and features—including fluency in the Oankali tongue and possession of some of their supernatural powers. (These alienhuman psychological and physiological dualisms terrify the humans whom she wakes.) The intergalactic Oankali aethyr contains a divine potency which cannot be understood or articulated except through the mirror of a (pre-humanicide) earthly realm. As such, Lilith exists in-between, negotiating the economy of both human and Oankali erotic drives. Her infinite and mobile sexuality—her unbridled eroticisation of both Oankali and human subjects—is highly experimental. Innovative in her role as instrument, and transformative in her flesh and sexuality, she further ruptures and expands once-earthly human sociality. Majaca and Parisi are in accord with these sentiments, arguing that Lilith does not desire autonomy from the (Oankali) gods: ‘she embraces her abduction and starts to reason with the instrument […] [experimenting with an] entirely alien model of subjectivation’. Lilith ‘places trust […] [in her] hyper- denaturalised nature.’ Throughout Dawn, the Phallic period is over and Lilith narrates through her hybrid body—her denatural skin, her denatural energy. She audaciously inhabits her Oankali-human form, using ‘carnal and passionate body words’.17 Hélène Cixous describes woman’s body as a ‘limitlessly changing ensemble, a cosmos tirelessly traversed by Eros, an immense astral space not organised around any one sun that’s any more of a star than the others.’18 She writes: Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives […] hasn’t accused herself of being a monster? […] A woman’s body, with its thousand and one thresholds of ardour—once, by smashing yokes and censors, she lets it articulate the profusion of meanings that run through it in every direction—will make the old single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with more than one language.19 Lilith’s (inescapably) anthropomorphic descriptions of erotic sex acts with the Oankali inform us about her embodied, transcendent experience of divinity on the ship. In Dawn, she can only state in a vague manner, for example, that there is ‘nothing more seductive than an ooloi [Oankali; the third sex, after female and male] speaking in […] [a] particular tone, making [a] particular suggestion.’ According to Elliot Wolfson, ‘kabbalists maintain that the spiritual entities can be described in human terms, for the tangibility of the human body is determined by the divine body to which it corresponds’.20 Similarly, Lilith’s anthropomorphisms are not a mere testament to the limits of humanist reasoning and rationality. Her use of human body language accommodates human understanding of the higher, divine Oankali power, its corporeality, and her libidinal and spiritual connection and fusion with this alien species. 13. Ibid. 14. Drury, 158. 15. Rabbi Yehuda Shalom Gross’s writing on Lilith appears in the Ohr haZohar (1:148 (‫אור הזוהר‬a-148b (Vayetze: Passage 23). Originally published in Hebrew (Israel, 2001 CE). I quote the Zohar from Scholem, Gershom and Melila Hellner-Eshed. ‘Zohar’. Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 21. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, 647–664. 16. Young describes the ‘monstrous-feminine’ as a mythical female entity with both animal and human features: ‘the Gorgons, Sirens, Furies, and sphinxes of Greco-Roman mythology, demonesses of all times, and that most unnatural of females, Athena’. See Young, 8. 17. Cixous, Hélène. ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’. Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1976): 875–93, 886. 18. Ibid, 889. 19. Ibid, 876. 20. Wolfson, Elliot R. ‘Bifurcating the Androgyne and Engendering Sin: A Zoharic Reading of Gen 1–3’. In Hidden Truths from Eden: Esoteric Readings of Genesis 1-3, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Susanne Scholz. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2014, 88. 96

Some closing remarks; Reflections on a modern Hermeticism (against technocultural instrumentalisation) As demonstrated, when the Oankali introduce their third sex to the human DNA structure, a complex, xenophiliac system of erotics emerges. In the Oankali-human libidinal economy, as I have described, there are electrochemical, genetic, verbal and biochemical factors at play. These factors instil desire, attraction and fear in the human instrument, who becomes denaturalised when anthropic disgust transmutes to sexual submission. Eventually, I argue, this sexual submission transcends to a liberatory, xenophiliac divine sensuality. Yet, what does this xenophiliac pleasure and spirituality truly entail? Is Lilith’s sense of sexual salvation the final, most deceptive illusion in an all-consuming instrumentality? In discussing alien spiritual, sexual and political subjectivity, I must acknowledge the deep techno-cultural intelligence metaphor, obvious to contemporary Dawn readers. AI, Big Data and deep learning intersect with human sexuality, the desire structure, biochemistry and emotion regulation. Contrarians to my argument may contrast the Oankali, the alien Other, with the vast, emergent networked form, which maintains instrumental control over the human by dispensing similar desire, fear and attraction. Any notion of pleasure or desire fulfillment may be argued as, in itself, a paradoxically potent illusion. In its centralised form, xenophiliac submission to Oankali domination could be perceived as bringing defilement rather than salvation—the naïve intellect of the (once-) human macro-being ruled over by an extraterrestrial superintelligence—most poignantly through perceived pleasure and, in Lilith’s case, divinity. Yet all dehumanising activity need not be defiling. I stand by my argument that Lilith’s use of sexual rites to transcend to an alien subjectivity, (dehumanised, denaturalised), is an occult mechanism of autonomous power against instrumentality. Here, there is a connection between unorthodox (veiled, undemocratic) spirituality and political power. The libidinal economy is essential to the sciences of ‘brain-washing, mind-control, advertising, “public relations” and propaganda.’ In the opening of Konrad Becker’s Dictionary of Operations: Deep Politics and Cultural Intelligence, Hakim Bey reflects on these sciences as a ‘form of magic that happens to work’.21 He highlights the age-old connection between ‘Intelligence (spying) and Magic,’ including stage magic, illusion and occultism. Bey suggests that Hermeticism can be used ‘to free yourself from these vinculae and attain a relative autonomy or freedom from […] the hex or fix that disempowers you—perhaps even for the Big Lies that pass for Consensus Reality’.22 So, what is Hermeticism? Wouter Hanegraaff defines the esoteric tradition of Hermeticism as the teachings and doctrines in the philosophical Hermetica, including the treatises of the early Christian-era Corpus Hermeticum.23 Their authors were convinced that divine revelation leads to truth. The Hermetica teach ‘a way by which the soul can ascend to a divine realm above the sphere of the fixed stars.’ There, the soul ‘mingles with’ the divine powers, and by knowing God, becomes ‘absorbed’ in God.24 The Hermetic text, Poimandres explains: ‘This is the final good for those who have received knowledge [gnosis]: to be made god,’ or master of oneself. In this sense, as discussed, Lilith becomes an alien god—a near-equal to the Oankali and relatively autonomous—through sexual initiation, and her subjecthood is regenerated. Hanegraaff supports this argument, stating that such a deification can be an experience attained before death.25 In Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Frances Yates gives an account of the Corpus Hermeticum. She explains that treatises in this collection describe: […]The ascent of the soul through the spheres of the planets to the divine realms above them…[and give] ecstatic descriptions of a process of regeneration by which the soul casts off the chains which bind the material world and becomes filled with divine powers and virtues.26 Yates goes on to paraphrase the Italian Renaissance physician Marsilio Ficino’s assertion that ‘material forms in the world 21. From Hakim Bey’s introduction in Becker, Konrad. Dictionary of Operations: Deep Politics and Cultural Intelligence. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2012, 7. 22. Ibid. 23. Frances Yates explains that it is not known when the Corpus Hermeticum was first put together as a collection, but that it was known in this form to Psellus in the eleventh century. See Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: University of Chicago Press, 1964, 3. 24. Wouter, Hanegraaff. Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times. State University of New York Press: New York, 1997, 5. 25. Ibid. 26. Yates, 3. 97

of sense can be […] reformed when they have degenerated, by manipulation of the higher images on which they depend’.27 E. Garin describes this process as the reconstruction of higher images in a way that divine influences are ‘recaptured and reconducted into the deteriorated sensible forms’.28 In line with this thinking, Bey refers to modern Hermeticism as ‘esoteric hermeneutics’, or ‘ta,wil, as the Suffis called it’— ‘an exploration and unpacking of things back to its origins’.29 As Lilith encounters the divine—by engaging in unknown, initiatory, alien ritual sex acts—she demystifies and recaptures, reconducts erotics and sexuality from the modern, homophilic hegemony. Her homophilic sex drive deteriorates and she accesses a higher, alien sense of spiritual, strengthened selfhood. This divine world she experiences is part of a reality we all discover through our sense perceptions. The Hermetic field’s emphasis on the mage as influencing and manipulating the (de)natural divine is pertinent. Bey suggests that modern esoteric Hermeticism may be used as a gesture of refusal, a radical dialectical weapon, for ‘the protection of life’ against the instrumentalising ‘antibiosis of [networked, algorithmic] Capital in its spectral form’.30 Lilith’s alchemy is her ability to transcend her captivity—through occult initiatory rite, she transforms enslavement to salvation and autonomy. Sex is the ‘secret key’ to her salvation. Extract from Trojan Woman Let me go into my ecstasy. Do not hold me from my ecstasy. I must go down, down Into the pit, beyond the pit of human darkness to find my special light. I will go down, down beyond the dreams of murderers beyond the murderer’s blood on the black axe beyond the black axe sunk in the bottomless swamp beyond the thoughts of horror that are half-stopped by fear —Euripides (480-406 BCE)31 In a Western world where Eros has been reduced to shocking banality, Dawn offers an empowering esoteric perspective on defying the regulated, libidinal boundaries of a secular earthly existence. As Majaca and Parisi emphasise, Butler fashions Lilith as Mother of a new species who subverts a dualistic master/slave, or enslavement/liberation logic of the instrument. One method by which Lilith refuses instrumentalisation is through initiatory sex rite. Chloe Sugden 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid, 65. 29. Ibid. 30. Bey quoted in Becker, 7. 31. Extract from the Ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Trojan Woman (415 BCE). Quoted in Constantine, Peter, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen Van Dyck, eds. The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. New York: Norton and Company, 2010, 163. 98

Bibliography Asprem, Egil. Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture. New York: State University of New York Press, 2012. Young, Serenity. Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, and Other Airborne Females. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Becker, Konrad. Dictionary of Operations: Deep Politics and Cultural Intelligence. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2012. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972. Cixous, Hélène. ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’. Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1976): 875–93. Constantine, Peter, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen Van Dyck, eds. The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. New York: Norton and Company, 2010. Drury, Neville. Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Liddell, Henry, and Robert Scott, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Majaca, Antonia, and Luciana Parisi. ‘The Incomputable and Instrumental Possibility’. e-flux, no. 77 (November 2016). Scholem, Gershom and Melila Hellner-Eshed. ‘Zohar’. Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 21. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Schreck, Nikolas, and Zeena Schreck. Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic. London: Creation Books, 2002. Wolfson, Elliot R. ‘Bifurcating the Androgyne and Engendering Sin: A Zoharic Reading of Gen 1–3.’ In Hidden Truths from Eden: Esoteric Readings of Genesis 1-3, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Susanne Scholz. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2014. Wouter, Hanegraaff. Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times. State University of New York Press: New York, 1997. Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: University of Chicago Press, 1964. 99

SEVAW CITEGRENE FO EGDIRB LANRETNI .6 RECIPROCATION FIELD METSYSOCE PIHSREHTOM .9 ecrof efil tneicfius-fles niam eht sa TSYLATAC LAIROSNES .8 100

REFSNART DNA DEEF YGRENE FO POOL .4 EDOC NAMUH .3 -retla eht yb dereenigne-er metsysoce renni sti fo snoita -BUS/NAMUH .1 EDOC DERETLA WEN .7 namuh-non dirbyh erutuf rof segnahcxe TUPNI ATAD ILAKNAO GNIWOLFNI .5 NOITCENNOCER FO DLEIF WEN .2 detadpu eht morf detanigiro snoitcaretni txetnoc ecaps/emit 101

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RECIPROCATION FIELD To illustrate the depth of exchange between Oankali and Human-hybrid (formerly human) it is instrumental to parallel this process of exchange to that of stellar bodies. 92.92 million miles away, a 4.5 billion year old Yellow Dwarf erupts in endless flares of combined gases (approx. 70.6% hydrogen and 27.4% helium) originating a fascinating and yet opaque phenomenon known as solar reconnection. The Solar reconnection is an atypical process of magnetic exchange between plasmas (gases that pose their own magnetic fields) and the stellar bodies they encounter either gravitating in a compound system or in the vacuum of space. Although the triggers and modulations in these exchanges are still obscure, it can be inferred that such processes of exchange are reciprocal as the magnetic systems are affected by the behaviour of charged particles and vice versa. The communication effect is complex, however, highly sensitive to variations and in a constant process of updating. A similar process of stellar reconnection can be hypothesized between [1] Human/Subject (Lilith) and [2] The Oankali ecosystem in which [3] parallels the process where plasmas come into contact with elements from the atmosphere of a stellar body and their magnetic fields produce an exchange. In this case [3] as the sun flares, represent a new human code that has been reengineered by the alteration of its inner ecosystem. By being fed on a continuous loop of energy transfer represented by [4], the inflowing Oankali data input expressed in [5] generates an internal bridge of energetic waves illustrated in [6] that will in turn provide the Oankali with new altered hybrid non-human exchanges, as seen in [7]while such processes will be supported by [8], which are the two sensorial catalysts whose role is solely to stabilize the exchange. To finalize the stellar metaphor, the mother ship [9] can be reflected upon as a type of sun, as it is a source of selfsustainable life force in its own right. It nourishes Oankali in many forms and provides them with the many tools/ resources and fuel, not only to survive the vacuum of space but also to instrumentalize transactions on a molecular level with other species. Laila Torres Mendieta 104

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‘YOUR BODY SAID ONE THING. YOUR WORDS SAID ANOTHER.’ ALIENATION 106

REVULSION ADDICTION OANKALI AUGMENTED SEX BODY pre-conscious WORD conscious HUMAN ATTRACTION 107

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‘YOUR BODY SAID ONE THING. YOUR WORDS SAID ANOTHER.’ It is true that The Oankali are the ones keeping the Humans on their ship, but they are themselves, in a way, captive of their own fascination for this particular species. Their move towards evolution and survival is by way of mutating, or more precisely ‘gene trading’ which is a process that involves reproduction with other species, and it is in that perspective that we can understand their attraction towards the humans. On the other hand humans have in general a physical and moral distrust/ defiance towards the alien. In the excerpt chosen here, Joseph clearly states his reluctance/ refusal to ‘share’ sex with Nikanj (and Lilith) but the Oankali have a slightly different notion of consent which considers the bodily, or bio-chemical and its own independent/ distinct voice to be more important/relevant than what is conscious or can be rationalized by the human mind. Ooloï are really talented at pleasing humans (but not only), they can read (their) bodies and, thanks to their sensory arms, stimulate the(ir) nervous system to make optimum neuronal connections. They offer a sort of ‘oneness’ service that is highly addictive. The need for satisfaction goes beyond revulsion. Humans find themselves trapped against themselves, craving for something that terrorizes them. They are alienated because they have a partial/incomplete understanding of how they function under Ooloï influence, and therefore no control. Furthermore it is often during sex that changes in the body chemistry are made. This addiction to ‘augmented sex’ is a vector of alienation at a cognitive and biological level. Maïté Chenière 110

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XENO-KNOWLEDGE HUMAN AWAKENING LILITH JOSEPH ALLISON GABE 112 XENO

ALIENNESS POWER KNOWLEDGE AGENCY 113

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XENO-KNOWLEDGE Dawn begins with the awakening of Lilith. ‘Alive!’ Gasping and in pain she situates/grounds herself and us in being alive. Initial narrative threads form around Lilith’s consciousness of her body, her memories and configuration of her surroundings. Imagination extends in and is exhausted by all her senses. Time suspended and space, indistinguishable. Changes have been made without her knowledge or consent and this is the world we will know of. First sign of another existence is a voice. Inside, in the isolation room with no borders, Lilith is being called. Jdahya, the Oankali who came to take her outside calls her name and asks her to get to know him, or rather to see him: ‘She was not afraid […] The unknown frightened her. The cage she was in frightened her. […] “Show me”, she said.’ And so she makes a decision to know and steps forward confronting the alien: ‘What do your people call themselves? We are Oankali. What does it mean in your language? Several things. Traders for one. You are traders? Yes. What do you trade? Ourselves.’ The Oankali (‘traders’ in their own words) have shifted the identification of their race from exclusiveness towards modes of exchange. Thereby opening the way for operative instrumentality of Xeno. Xenophilia for the Oankali, redefines species as the site of knowledge production. From the interactions between them and humans, we can see that they practice power within their knowledge of humanity. And it enables them to manufacture a genetically engineered evolution: ‘But what was the problem? You said we had two incompatible characteristics. What were they? You are intelligent […] [but] you are hierarchical.’ Throughout the book the Oankali use both characteristics of Lilith and other humans in order to train and prepare 118 a selected group for their return to the earth and for their future function following the trade. Those human beings who hold most tightly to their human identities are also the ones who exhibit the worst elements of humanity. Lilith seems alien to many, because of her knowledge and her adaptation. Lilith is the only one with the choice of awakening other humans and becoming versed in the language of Oankali. Lilith Iyapo becomes both the mother of a new race and a Judas to humanity. This diagram is based on a reading of four main characters in the book -Lilith, Joseph, Alison and Gabe- and schematizes their status in transitioning towards Xeno. Knowledge-Power and Agency-Alienness perform the axis that define growth of each character after her or his first awakening. Shima Asa

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Editor Kodwo Eshun Authors Shima Asa, Alice Escorel Boudreau, Ghalas Charara, Maïté Chénière, Marguerite Davenport, Nadia Elamly, Léa Gallon, Joo Young Hwang, Roland Mbessa, Laila Torres Mendieta, Chloë Sugden, Fatima Wegmann-Guinassi, Yael Wicki, Dan Wu Proof Readers Kodwo Eshun, Chloë Sugden Graphic Design Boris Fernandez Printing and binding CRICprint, Marly, Switzerland Thanks to Octavia E. Butler, Jean-Pierre Greff, Charlotte Laubard, Doreen Mende, Camilla Paolino, Julia Pecheur, Patricia Reed

THE OANKALI TURNED ITS TENTACLES TOWARDS ME was diagrammed, written and edited by the students of the TheoryFiction Seminar of the CCC Research Master Program from September 2017 to June 2018. The Theory-Fiction Seminar is conceived and led by Kodwo Eshun. THE OANKALI TURNED ITS TENTACLES TOWARDS ME is the second edition in the publication series TERMS/ES initiated by the CCC Research Master Program in Geneva.

TERMS/ES is an open format for publishing results developed from research undertaken around a specific ‘term’ or ‘termes’ by seminars at CCC. It provides the space for the formulation of new vocabularies in the expanded arts of the 21st Century. TERMS/ES is published online and in print according to the desires of the Seminar. The CCC Research Master Program is headed by Doreen Mende since 2015. CCC is one of the three Master Programs of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève. Its transdisciplinary and bilingual (English/French) curriculum consists of Research Practice and Situated Art Practice Seminars that discuss individual student research practice. Theory Fiction, Critical Studies, Curatorial and Political Studies Seminars work on new vocabularies. The Reading Group is a self-organised collective practice led by Research Program assistants. The CCC PhD-Forum operates in connection with the CCC Research Master Program.

HEAD — GENÈVE HAUTE ÉCOLE D’ART ET DE DESIGN AVENUE DE LA CHÂTELAINE 5 CH-1203 GENÈVE WWW.HEAD-GENEVE.CH INFO.HEAD@HESGE.CH CCC RESEARCH MASTER PROGRAM AND PHD-FORUM VISUAL ARTS DEPARTMENT HEAD — GENÈVE BOULEVARD HELVÉTIQUE 9 CH-1205 GENEVA HEAD.HESGE.CH/CCC CCC.HEAD@HESGE.CH TERMS/ES EDITION 002 PRINTED IN MARLY, SWITZERLAND IMPRIMÉ À MARLY, SUISSE GENEVA/GENÈVE JUNE/JUIN 2018