"MARK DERY: The positioning of oneself, literally, as a stranger in a strange land.
GREG TATE: Right, and there are certainly long-standing spiritual traditions that lend themselves to that impulse: Santeria, voudon, and the hoodoo religion that Ishmael Reed talks about.
MARK DERY: It’s worth pointing out, in the context of what I’ve chosen to call “Afrofuturism,” that the mojos and goofer dust of Delta blues, together with the lucky charms, fetishes, effigies, and other devices employed in syncretic belief systems, such as voodoo, hoodoo, santeria, mambo, and macumba, function very much like the joysticks, Datagloves, Waldos, and Spaceballs used to control virtual realities. Jerome Rothenburg would call them technologies of the sacred.
GREG TATE: I agree, although I think you’re putting the interstellar carriage before the Egyptian horse, in a way. I see science fiction as continuing a vein of philosophical inquiry and technological speculation that begins with the Egyptians and their incredibly detailed meditations on life after death."
“But Wayna’s body was hers. No one else owned it, no matter who her clone’s cells had started off with. Hers, no matter how different it looked from the one she had been born with. How white.”
This stuck with me because of my slight knowledge of the
Egyptian beliefs concerning life after death. I know that a main belief was
that a part of a person’s soul, called the ka
(body double) continues on into the next plane of existence. While it is possible
to reach some sort of reward on this plane, one must have a sin-free heart and
know the proper spells. Those who don’t serve Osiris as his workers.
However, it was also believed that if the body wasn’t
properly embalmed, the soul would be reborn in another body, or reincarnated.
It is in this way that Wayna’s plight is similar to Egyptian musings on the
after-death.
Wayna has full consciousness of what her life was before
this new body. She remembers being dark (we must assume, otherwise why would
she mention how white the body is?), remembers her past pains and pleasures.
But she has been placed in this new body, reincarnated in a way, because her
old body was handled improperly as punishment.
In contrast, Wayna’s upcoming experience is more like the ka ascending to the next plane of
existence. Although we can’t be absolutely certain of Wayna’s innocence or
guilt, because she doesn’t deny the validity of her incarceration we must
assume she committed some sort of crime. Therefore her heart is not pure of
sin, and she has been assigned to be Osiris’ worker, or a colonist on Jubilee.
I suppose in a way Wayna’s sentence embodies both elements
of life after death: reincarnation and
the afterlife. It’s a truly unique construct that belongs strictly to Deep End.
Questions:
- One of Wayna’s prevailing struggles is to identify with the body she’s been placed into. It’s alien to her, and yet she is expected to be grateful for the opportunity to live in it. Though written in 2004, the text provides the opportunity to examine debates in the political world today concerning woman’s health. How might Dr. Ops attitude concerning Wayna’s pains compare to the Republican attitude represented by Rick Santorum concerning women’s health?
- Wayna has two lovers in the story—both a woman and a male to female transgender person. Considering her willingness to take Thad’s body, what might this suggest about Wayna’s own sexual identity? Can Dr. Ops unwillingness to allow her this switch suggest yet another control over Wayna’s physical form? What explanation might there be for transgender transfers to not be allowed?
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