Spatial Absence And Spatial Practice

As the first African-American writer and the second American woman writer,Toni Morrison is praised as one of the most influential writers in American literary world.The majority of her novels illustrate the history of black women’s tragedy and growth under the white supremacy and androcentric culture.Her representative work,Beloved,not only wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,but also receives the Nobel Prize in Literature,thus it has caused the literary critics,tremendous repercussion at home and abroad.This thesis aims to analyze the black females’ spatial absence and spatial practices in Beloved from the perspective of Lefebvre’s spatial triad.This theory includes three moments:the representation of space,representational space and spatial practice;among which,the representation of space stands for the powerful group’s ideology and makes the venerable group completely absent from space,which inevitably results in the weak group’s spatial practice so as to construct their own representational space.In Beloved,the black females,as the slaveholders’ producing machine,are completely marginalized and absent from space for a very long time,which eventually stimulates their consciousness of spatial practice.Although the three generations all make some attempts,Suggs,Sethe and Beloved’s spatial practices are doomed to be failed as the result of their passive,extreme or unreasonable methods.Differently,Denver,used to be an autistic girl,eventually steps out 124,unites with the compatriots and then drives away the ghost "Beloved"who is the incarnation of the traumatic history.By studying on the limited spatial practices made by the black females when confronting the absolute spatial absence in Beloved,this thesis aims to illustrate that the effective way to challenge the white’s representation of space is to stand up to the traumatic past,integrate into the social space and cooperate with their compatriots.After all,space embodies and internalizes the relationships among the characters,and the real spatial presence embodies itself in the harmonious,free,equal and independent social relationship with others.Thus,this thesis concludes that:in the face of hardships,people should bravely face up to them and conquer them with a reasonable method in daily life;when necessary,people also should learn to overcome the difficulties through solidarity with companions.