Hegemonic Slavery and Racism as an Impetus of Colonial Oppression in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed

Abstract

This paper attemptsto discover colonial oppression depicted in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seedby applying post-colonialism. Two important concepts thus will be applied: Homi Bhabha’s concept of ambivalence and Edward Said’s concept of Self-Other relationship. The study,accordingly, tries to unravel how the black Africans and the white Americans perceive each other on the basis of racism and slavery by dint of oppressive hegemony. On the one hand, the Africans see the Americans as cruel, exploitive, but charitable. On the other hand, the Americans judge the Africans as inferior but have the right to resist in order to reclaim their cultural identity and freedom. By analyzing this relationship, the study will show how the opposition between the white Americans and the Afro-Americans is not reconciled, and it has an everlasting colonial ambivalence between black Americans and the white American colonial masters. Thus, the study’s gap lies in its exploration of colonial oppression as an impetus of hegemonic slavery and racism is brought into terms by ambivalence and self-other relationship.