The Chronotope and Kindred : A Graphic Novel Adaptation

In the 1990s, I analyzed science-fiction writer Octavia Butler’s 1979 neoslave narrative Kindred by employing Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, which focuses on how time and space are fused together in literature: time “becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes … responsive to the movements of time, plot and history” (Bakhtin 84). The chronotope, moreover, “defines genre and generic distinctions,” as well as shaping the constitution of characters and the meaning of narratives (85, 250). In Butler’s novel, African American Dana, who is its first-person narrator and protagonist, is repeatedly thrown back in time from her house in Pasadena, California, in 1976, in order to save her white ancestor’s life in Maryland in the early 1800s. In the process, she has to adapt to a time and place where she is regarded and treated as a slave. This paper will focus on Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (2017) by Damian Duffy and John Jennings. The chronotope has proven to be productive in scholarly discussions on the relatively new genre of the graphic novel, and I will briefly address the specific relations between time and space in graphic novels in general compared to the comic book, the novel, and film, before presenting how time, space, and time travel are depicted in this graphic novel adaptation of Butler’s novel in terms of the chronotope. Different aspects of history, as well as cultural history, are obviously important to this speculative neo-slave narrative from the 1970s and its adaptation almost 40 years later.