In Between the Law and Literature: Time Traveling within Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823) and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979)

ABSTRACT This article explores the interplay between legal discourse, historical narrative, and speculative fiction to challenge the portrayal of legal history as neutral, orderly, and linear. Through a close analysis of the 1823 Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh and drawing on Sora Han’s (2015) concept of the “recursive legal present,” this article argues that legal history employs recursive logic as a form of time travel, blurring the boundaries between past and present. This process ultimately produces a seemingly empty and lifeless historical narrative that legitimizes capitalist and colonial violence. In contrast, this article offers a reading of Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) as a means of disrupting this linear, sanitized version of history. Butler’s use of time travel creates an embodied, chaotic, and relational understanding of time that resists the law’s efforts to contain and neutralize historical violence. Through this comparative analysis, the paper advocates for a reimagining of legal history—one that acknowledges its complex entanglements with violence, power, subjectivity, and memory.