This essay examines two works of feminist speculative fiction, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), against the historical backdrop of neoconservatism in the long Reagan era (roughly 1979-1993).  I argue that feminist speculative fiction began to shift towards the dystopian in the 1980s, which coincides with the rise of neoconservatism in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. I contend that a central aim of neoconservatism was to destroy the welfare state in favor of an unbridled capitalist economy. To accomplish this aim, neoconservatives fabricated a series of norms related to poverty and mothers of color. Additionally, these norms worked to justify other aims of neoconservatism, such as reproductive control over poor people of color. These novels reject the norms of neoconservatism by offering horrific images of what could come of them. In short, I argue that the speculative genre is mobilized by Butler and Piercy to both show how gendered and racialized stereotypes were being used by neoconservatives to naturalize inequality—and to denaturalize it. Additionally, the novels offer their own utopian visions of an alternative future to their neoconservative dystopias. 

Both Emily Lutenski and Ben Looker of the American Studies department extremely influential in developing this project. Emily helped create the project and decide on its parameters during an independent study. The project which would later be developed into this thesis, which Ben was immensely helpful with. Additionally, Ben offered advice on turning the paper into a presentation.