'Make America Great Again': Ronald Reagan, Neoliberalism, and Medievalism in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed Series

The paper discusses the Reaganite period, the rise of neoliberalism that was heavily determined by Reagan’s policies and how his neoconservative stance was often defended through a rhetoric that relied on the use of the past, and specifically of the medieval past. In particular, the paper explores how the intersection of such themes is dramatized in the Afrofuturist dystopian scenario painted by Octavia Butler in her Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, the two novels that make up her Earthseed series published in the 1990s. This discussion intends to bring attention to the dangers of the political uses of medievalism to legitimate exclusionary ideological agendas.