Contact Zone Earth: Power and Consent in Steven Universe and Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood

Abstract

Donaldson examines how issues of power and consent thread through the relationships between humans and aliens in Steven Universe and in Lilith’s Brood, by Octavia Butler. Both texts center the stories of alien–human hybrid children who become emblematic of reproductive futurity. Donaldson uses Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of the umwelt and Donna Haraway’s theory of companion species to examine inter-species empathy and the experience of consciousness. The chapter argues that communication norms enable consensual symbiosis between humans and aliens. Despite the aliens in both cases conceptualizing themselves as more capable and complex, these norms lead to mutual respect and the sharing of power in Steven Universe in contrast to the eating of humans and exploitation of reproductive labor in Lilith’s Brood.