The Discourse of Racist Violence in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
الموضوعات :
1 - Islamic Azad University.Larestan branch.Iran
الکلمات المفتاحية: Racist violence, Racial ideology, Internalized racism, Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye,
ملخص المقالة :
The present paper explores how Western's overpowering cultural ideals of beauty, founded on physical features function as tools of racial oppression. Alienation, self-rejection, self-loathing and ultimately self-destruction are Afro-Americans' reactions to the dominant standards of Western culture. Black laborers manifested a host of negatives linked with traditions and ideologies that portrayed blackness as evil, the devil, God's curse, nighttime fears and beauty's opposite. Thus the separation of blacks from other races of mankind was unquestionable. The objective of this paper is to explore psychological and ideological means that justify and internalize racism in the mindsets of both Euro-Americans and diasporic Afro-Americans. An amalgamation of Black gender feminism, psychoanalytic approaches, and linguistic racism in addition to critical discourse analysis was used to provide the innovative methodology practiced in this paper. A linguistic reading of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye offers a fresh sight at the gate of new literary interpretation methods; moreover, applying CDA as an interdisciplinary approach that looks at language as a form of social performance to trace racism in the slavery system is the innovative aspect of the present paper. This paper concludes that internalized racism is not only a psychological but an ideological problem. It is also concluded that although racism has an ideological basis, it cannot be reduced to ideology, as is often done in literary texts.
Aggarwal, Ruchee. "Feminist Perspective of Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye." Indian Journal of Applied Research Vol. 2, No.1 (2012):110
Banks, Kira Hudson, and Jadah Stephens. "Internalized Racism. Longing for Whiteness in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye". English Language & Literature Project Topics & Materials. Vol. 12, Issue1, January 2018.
Brembeck, Winston Lamont, and William Smiley Howell. Persuasion, a Means of Social Influence. Prentice Hall, 1976.
Brown, Laura S. "Not outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma." American Imago (1991): 119-133.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. Routledge, 2004.
Fairclough, Norman. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press, 1986.
---. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books, 1986.
Ferguson, Mary Anne, Ed. Images of Women in Literature. Houghton Mifflin, 10, 1973.
Goldman, Adria, and Damion Waymer. "Identifying Ugliness, Defining Beauty: A Focus Group Analysis of and Reaction to Ugly Betty." Qualitative Report Vol. 19, No.10 (2014).
Gravett, Sharon L. "Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye: An Inverted Walden?." Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations–Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye–Updated Edition (2007): 87-96.
Holm, Birgit Kristine Aas. Sexuality in Toni Morrison's Works. MS thesis. Universitetet i Tromsø, 2010.
Hooks, Bell. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. South End Press, 1981.
Jensen, Karen. "Toni Morrison's Depiction of Beauty Standards in Relation to Class, Politics of Respectability, and Consumerism in Song of Solomon", 2013.
Malmgren, Carl D. "Texts, Primers, and Voices in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2000, pp. 251-262.
Mao, Weiqiang, and Migquan Zhang. "Beloved and Oppositional Gaze". English Language Teaching. China CCSE, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2009): 27-34.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Great Britain: Chattu and Windas, 1979.
---. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Studi di Estetica, 14, 2007.
Pinkney, Corrin. "The Effects of Internalized Oppression on the Black Community." Stylus Knights Write Showcase (2014): 94-100.
Przybylo, Ela. "The Politics of Ugliness". The Politics and Aesthetics. University of Alberta, No. 16, 2018.
Slatton, Brittany C. Mythologizing Black Women: Unveiling White Men's Racist Deep Frame on Race and Gender. Routledge, 2015.
Sumana, K. The Novels of Toni Morrison: A Study in Race, Gender, and Class. Prestige, 1998.
Werrlein, Debra T. "Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in The Bluest Eye." Melus, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2005): 53-72.
Yancy, George. White on White/Black on Black. Ed. Cornel West. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
