Of Alterity, Oppression and the Testimonies of Lived Time: Deconstructing Margins of Disability in Literature through Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Toni Morrison’s Sula

Abstract

Disability Studies has critically repositioned disability not as a mere individual medical deficit, but as a politically charged, socially constructed condition shaped primarily by historical trauma and systematic oppression. Building upon this theoretical premise, this paper centers on Octavia Butler’s Kindred, arguing that disability in literature should not be reduced just to personal tragedy or metaphorical limitation; rather, it represents an embodied manifestation of racial trauma and historical violence. This argument is supported and deepened by reference to Toni Morrison’s Sula. Grounded in Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s theory of disability being a social construct and core part of human experience, and Alison Kafer’s notion of ‘crip time’, the paper analyzes Dana’s involuntary temporal journeys to antebellum slavery, leading to her eventual amputation. Her lost arm serves as a permanent marker of slavery that she’s unable to fully escape, resisting traditional narratives of linear historical closure or personal recovery. Furthermore, the analysis illustrates how disability can become a state of defiance, a mode of resilience, asserting existence outside ableist norms of temporal and normative productivity. Despite her physical lack and racial trauma, Dana’s perspective never really descends into the morose spiral fixated on the suffering of the blacks. Her ability to actively fight for her survival despite being repeatedly pulled back to a traumatic past exemplifies the tenacity and agency of black women, subverting the conventional notion of seeing disability as a sign of weakness or inadequacy. Supporting this primary analysis, Morrison’s Sula similarly places disability as socially and politically produced, through Eva Peace and Shadrack. Shadrack, a marginalized WWI veteran, initially experiences PTSD-induced cognitive disruption caused by the disabling nature of war, echoing Dana’s experiences of crip temporality where both of them somehow inhabit liminal spaces between past trauma and present existence. Eva’s deliberate amputation reflects disability as a strategic measure for survival, transforming bodily impairment into an active act of agency against racial and economic oppression. This paper, utilizing Butler’s Kindred and Morrison’s Sula, eventually questions whether Blackness could be considered disabling in African-American history, and can disability be necessarily empowering?