Survivalist Anthropology

Abstract

This chapter looks at postapocalyptic fiction that brackets the direct, immediately productive relationship between occupation and mentation. It explains how postapocalyptic fiction posits the need for constant ontological practice as a prerequisite of survival, which is considered an adversarial strategy in posthuman survivalist fiction. It also refers to Octavia Butler's Parable novels, wherein the Earthseed writings of her protagonist that sustain eucharistic functions of community creation and group adhesion in an unstable world. The chapter elaborates Earthseed's ontological claims as a requirement for admission to the survivor group and as an understanding that human beings' relationships with one another are directly commensurate with their relationships to other living beings. It analyzes Butler's figure of the Sower that fulfills the organic meaning of apokalypsis.