Essentialism and anti-essentialism in "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", by

Despite the fact that feminist íiterary criticism can boast a much longer history than that of the feminist critique of science, both can be grouped under the umbrelia term "gender studies" and are abie to jointiy illuminate certain issues related to questions of gender and science. In the present work, we propose to carry out a reading of Octavia Butler's The evening and the morning and the night' which departs from these feminist battlegrounds, dealing with the opposite yet complementary viewpoints from the biológica! and social sciences. Special attention is given to the concept of essentialism, as Butler's work. in ali its complexity, can both confirm and disrupt its precepts. Resumo: Apesar d a crítica literária feminista possuir uma história bem mais longa que a da crítica feminista da ciência, ambas podem ser agrupadas sob o termo guarda-chuva "estudos de gênero', sendo capazes de, juntamente, iluminar certos assuntos relacionados às questões de gênero e ciência. Neste trabalho, é nosso propósito realizar uma leitura do conto "The evening and the morning and the night" a partir dessas arenas teóricas feministas, lidando com os pontos de vista ao mesmo tempo opostos e complementares das ciências biológicas e sociais. Atenção especial é dada ao conceito de essencialismo, que o conto em questão ao mesmo tempo confirma e estilhaça.

The word is made flesh in mortal natii^ecultures.

Introduction
Virgínia Woolf's groimdbreaking and still inspiring tract A Room ofOne 's Own (1929) opens up the path to a kind of reading approach whlch observes issues related to gender representation and to the production and circulation of women-authored texts. Almost eighty years have passed since the publication of Woolf s analysis and feminist literary criticism, or gender studies (as the area has been named recently), still offers instigating ways of looking at literary texts. The feminist critique of science, however, has a much shorter history. For ovar three decades now, "feminists have successfully used the lens of gender to critique the extent to v,^hich androcentric bias has distorted the theory and practice of science" (ROSSER, 1991, p. 143).' With the present reflection, we continue somehow carrying out the programs of both of these extensive feminist tasks while, at the same time, sharing our experiences in the construction of an interdisciplinary reading practice.
This study presents partial results of our current research on the convergences between utopian and dystopian women-authored fictions, gender studies and the discourses of evolutionary biology and the social sciences. Since the publication of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein (1818), utopian and dystopian speculative fictions by women have dealt with the apparently opposed explanations for human behaviour which arise from both the biological and the social sciences. These explanations involve questions relating to gender roles, like maternity, motherhood, division of domestic chores, among several types of gender-bound activities (DE LA ROCQIJE & TEIXEIRA. 2001;DE LA RDCQUE. 2002. 2004, 2006a Cavalcanti on dystopias (2000;2003;2004; 2006a; 2006b), Funck on utopias (1993;1998), and De La Rocque on feministsciencefiction (2001. 2002.2004, 2006.2006a). as issues of gender and science in women-authored utopias and dystopias) have led us to carry out research which ínvoJves readings of feminist speculative fictions written ffom mid-20'^-century onwards in order to observe the famous and polemic debate between the biologicaJ sciences, specificaiJy evoJutionary biology, and the social sciences, withspecial focus on anthropology, in the of the relative importance of nature and culture m composition of such complex phenomena as constructions. We Icok at these fictions as a p médium for the foregrounding of issues involving and science and for the circulation of ideas related to interdisciplinary reading approach to literary narrativos, this paper focuses on the representations of such questions in the short story mentioned above. We propose to observe and analyze the fictional representation of gender at the crossroads between the biological and cultural aspects, in the light of the contested debate between biological determinism (and its critique) and social constructivism, a reading route which highlights the interplay of essentialist and anti-essentialist trends in the shaping of gender constructions.
Scíence and gender in "The evening and the morning and the night'"* In this part, we focus on the dose dialogue between Butler's story and the biological sciences. Its main characters, Lynn Moitimer and Alan Chin, suffer from a terrible rate and progressive hereditary disease (DGD -Duryea-Gode Disease), which, in their case, was inherited from both their father and mother.
The story begins by the narrator, Lynn, abruptly telling us how she had always known about the disease she carried, dormant yet in her genes but very much alive in her consciousness; When I was flfteen and trylng to show my independence by getting careless with my diet, my parents took me to a Dureya-Gode disease ward. They wanted me to see, they said, where I was will probably be to "help start a retreat in some other part of the country", as "Others are badly needed"(61-62). The story ends as Alan and Lynn leave Dilg, the narrator speculating about her possible future, about the social responsibilities that suddenly loomed upon her, that could be seen as partly laid on her by her genetic load and that, although not particularly attractive or agreeable, she thought she was bound to consider.
Goncerning the representation of biology, more specifically of genetics, and of gender, the reading of "The evening and the morning and the night" evidences that these are imbricated issues in the narrativo (DE LA ROCQUE 2001; SANTOS, R. 2007). Biology is a field of study present in the work not only because Lynn is an undergraduate student in the area who visits an institution (which specializes in medicai research), but also because questions relating to genetics are central to the plot for being a decisive factor for the contraction of the Dureya-Gode Disease. DGD is a fictional fusion of three actual rare diseases; Huntlngton 's disease, phenylketonuria and Lesch-Nyhan disease.^ Similarly to these illnesses, DGD is a genetic disease, its carriers having inherited it from one parent -single DGD -or both -double DGD. Ironically, the first DGDs carne out as a result of their parents having undergone a specific drug treatment for the cure of câncer. Resulting from a combination of the non-fiction illnesses mentioned above, DGD main symptoms include loss of consciousness, violent behaviour and self-mutilation, as described in gruesome details in many passages of the story.
In fact, the relation of this fictional disease that Butler has made up to real life maladies goes far beyond the sharing of symptoms. It must be kept in mind that this story first carne out in 1987, when the rise in the importance of molecular genetics was in its wake. Butler, like many 5 In her Afterwordio the story. Butler herself reveals the sources she drew from in her search for the elements to build DGD. Cf. Butler, 1996, p. 69. science fiction writers, was undoubtedly endowed with a foreshadowing ability, as well as keen to make the most of the science themes circulating through the media for, according to Marcelo Leite: Certainly, the identification of genes associated to rare genetic diseases (irmate metabolism defects) had seen a dramatic rise in the 90s, even before the completion ofthe spelling out ofthe human genome, based on the gene mapping in course (reducing to months a research time that used to take years or decades). CoUins (the director of the Narional Human Genome Research Instirute) himself, then in the University of Michigan, took part in the location and transcription of the gene which defect could lead to cystic fíbrosis, a disease in which an excess of fluid production can be lethal; despite of this discovery, which took place in 1989, until nowadays, the knowledge of the location of the gene in the genome and of its sequence has not originated either a treatment or a cure. (LEITE, 2006, p. 35-36) The so far unfulfilled hope that finding out more about genes would eradicate the related diseases is reflected in this statement of Lynn's, when trying to convince her boyfriend Alan to remain at Dilg after they graduate: "Genetic engineering will probably give us the final answers, but for God s sake, this is something we can do now!" (BUTLER, 1996, p. 64). Despite Lynn's apparent trust in the future results to be drawn from the field of gene therapy, it is clear, however, that the cure for the terrible imaginary infirmity is still lost in the research horizon, although the gene responsible for the malady is known to be embedded in the region of the sex chromosomes. In fact, this location is directly implied in the imbrication of scientific and gender-related issues in Butler 's futuristic dystopia, which is made evident when Beatrice, the scientist who develops research with DGD patients in Dilg, explains to the protagonists that the genetic modification suffered by the DGD carriers affects women and men differently. Again, this sex effect difference is not something Butler just made up, since in diseases like hemophilia this pattern is also found: The genes responsible for producing Factors VIII and DC, the mutant genes in hemophilia, are situated on the X chromosome. This makes hemophilia a sex-linked genetic disorder Carriers (only women) have one normal X chromosome and one abnormal X chromosome.
The normal X chromosome produces a certain amount of Factor VIII or IX clotting factor. This protects carriers from the most severe form of hemophilia in which the levei of clotting factor is less than 1%. (http;//www.hemophilia.ca/en/ 2.5.1.php) If, in hemophilia, women are mostly carriers and men directly affected by the disease, it is not hard to see for instance that, in a family where there are affected men, who got it from their carrier mother, there may be more than a little social pressure enveloping the atmosphere between its members. This sex difference in the disease pattern, and its reflection on the social and gender sphere, is also very much felt at the end of "The evening and the moming and the night", when the protagonist' s important, almost mandatory future role in running an establishment like Dilg is played out agaínst her medicai student boyfriend' s relative uselessness in the disease control. Thus, it can be said that, in Butler 'swork, reflecting what may happen in reality, the difference effected in the bioloô f human beings (in their genetic load) has extensions in their social behaviour. For gender-informed readers, this plot detail inevitably leads to questions of essentialism and anti-essentialism in feminist thought and theory, which will be addressed in the next section.
The essentialism/anti-essentialísm debate Judith Butler contends that when Simone de Beauvoir stated, in the late 1940's, that "one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one"^, the French philosopher herself did not envisage the "seemingly radical consequences" implied by her theory (BUTLER, 1990, p. 12). Indeed, the famous statement opened up the controversy between essentialist versus anti-essentialist views of woman that was to structure feminist thought to the present time. In general terms, "[ejssentialism is classically defined as a belief in true essence -that which is most irreducible, unchanging, and therefore constitutive of a given person or thing". Essentialist views have informed a variety of discursive practices, reactionary or progressiva depending on reading positions, ranging from the scientific discourses of biologia determinism concerning sexual differences to second wave feminist thought, being "located in appeals to a purê or original femininity, a female essence, outside the boundaries of the social and thereby untainted (though perhaps repressed) by a patriarchal order" (FUSS, 1990, p. 2).
The elaboration in feminist thought and theory of the 1980's, which resulted in the recognition of the existence of historical. class-related, gender oriented, ageeffected differences among women, and thus, that they were not to be considered as a monolithic bloc, led to the articulation of an anti-essentialist position, based on social constructionism. Such trend, according to Fuss, insists that essence is itself a historical constniction.
Constructionists take the refasal of essence as the inaugural moment of their own projects and proceed to demonstrate the way previously assumed selFevident kinds (like 'man' or 'woman') are in fact the effects of complicated discursive practices. (2) While essentialists tend to view the subject as a natural, biological entity on which social forces act, anti-essentialists, following de Beauvoir, understand Leitura s Maceió, n.41, p. SS-73, jan./jun. 2008 that the very nature that defines the subject is in itself a social construct.
Despite the predominance of social constructionist positions in the feminist discourse produced in the 1980 's, 1990 's and early 21" century, "one can also hear echoing from the corners of the debates on essentialism renewed interest in its possibilities and potential usages, sounds which articulate themselves most often in the form of calls to 'risk' or to 'dare' essentialism" (xii).
In our reading, we argue that, in "The evening and the moming and the night", Octavia Butler 'dares' to (re)tum to essentialism in the shape of a very special type of biological determinism. The analysis that follows looks at Butler 's dystopia as a cultural expression of the 'risk' taken and suggests that the author deploys essentialism in an elaborate, strategic way in her narrative as a means to provoke a rupture with the dichotomous perspective on the essentialism/anti-essentialism issue. In so doing so, she reintroduces the ontology of the body in feminist discourse.
The word is made flesh...
The "word is made flesh" in Butler 's story in the sense that the representation of the sexed body is constructed in such detail so as to provide the somehow plausible explanation that chemicals may affect humans on the genetic levei; also to the extent that, depending on different female or male chromosomal configurations (XX for females and XY for males) such effects result in distinct consequences for men and women, as evidenced in the following passage, in "which we quote Beatrice s narration of the sexually-determined differences in the can be useful here because the DGDs can at least be made to notice them. The same for women who inherit from their mothers but not their fathers. It' s only when two irrespcnsible DGDs get together and produce girl children like me cr Lynn that you get someone who can really do some good in a place like this." She looked at me [Lynn]. "We are very rare commodities, you and I. When you finish school you '11 have a very well-paying job waiting for you. (BUTLER, 1996, p.61) This excerpt raises evidence that the genetically inherited and sexually differentiated impact on the carriers of the disease resuits positive for the double DGD women, like Lynn, who become "very rare commodities in the medicai scene. This detail provides a renewed take on essentialism: while essentialist discourse (specially the one characterized by biological determinism) has been one of the sites of gender oppression for women and other cultural Others^, Butler 's strategic deployment of essentialism acts on a contrary movement and favours women. This, in turn, provokes an instance of gender-role reversal. This is strikíngly clear in the passage in which Lynn reiterates Beatrice 's invitation for them to work at Dilg by arguing that this is something they can do as an attempt to help DGD patients and themselves. Alan's irritated reply ís-history, these effects are characterized by further difference within the same sex: only double DGD female carriers like Beatrice and Lynn have the pheromone which is decisiva in the treatment of the disease. These two aspects indicate for a fundamental difference in the treatment of the issue of essentialism.
By rearticulating essentialism in such a way that bodily-related biological determinism is conveyed with a difference, that is, as a phenomenon dependent on social factors, and by valuing the female role in the human pair of male/female, Butler's short-story is actually acting on the deconstruction of the "essence" of essentialism and providing a re-reading of this category which emphasizes its characteristic as a social construct. Our analysis proposes that the author draws an interesting illustration of the possibility of manoeuvring essentialism into good feminist use.

... in mortal naturecultures
In her Aíterwordto "The evening and the morning and the night", Butler affirms that she "began the story wondering how much of what we do is encouraged., discouraged, or otherwise guided by what we are genetically" (BUTLER, 1996, p. 69). In our view, by composing this thought-provoking narrativa, she has accomplished a lot more than that initial idea.
While the story actually succeeds in making the author 's point that "much of what we do" can be traced down to our genes, it also foregrounds the fact that the products of our genes are played out against undeniable social contexts, thus dismantling the dichotomous perspective on essentialism and anti-essentialism and reinforcing the feminist claim that sexed bodies are gendered bodies. By resorting to the convergence between genetics and the technologies that help shape our gendered bodies, Butler's story makes a feminist statement by raising our awareness concerning an understanding of our natures as shaped by the histories we are embedded in;