A Study On Black Desires In Jazz

Jazz(1992)is the sixth novel of Toni Morrison(1931-2019),the first African American female writer awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.In this novel,Morrison recounts the story of an African American couple,Joe and Violet who follow the migrant wave in the 1920s to the New York City in order to get rid of the southern poverty and violence,masterfully exposing the social reality that how African Americans struggle to survive in urban community during Harlem Renaissance.This thesis,based on Lacan’s desire theory,is designed to explore this novel from the perspective of individual,family and community.It also embarks on revealing African Americans’ predicam ent and their struggles for access to a better life to arouse people’s humanistic concern about minorities in mainstream society.The thesis unfolds from three aspects to elaborate on the three steps of desire development.The first chapter approaches the origins of African Americans’ desires on three levels:individual,family and community.According to Lacan’s desire theory,the object of desire is absent at the beginning which is the origin of desire.In terms of individual case,Golden Gray,one of the representatives of upper-class African Americans,is instilled by white ideology and lacks subjectivity of self-identity,so he creates strong desire for white identity.Lower-class African American individual,represented by Dorcas,has no idea about loving and being loved and she mistakes the jealousy of others as the criterion of love.Hence,she yearns for attention from others.On the family level,Joe and Violet both come from the incomplete African American families.Therefore,they are eager for the warmth from family love.As for black community,African Americans’ racial confidence is severely depleted due to the longstanding white repression so that they crave to be accepted by the mainstream society.In short,despite the diverse forms of desires,the origin of desire is the lack of the object of desire.Chapter two mainly examines African Americans’ struggles for the others’recognition.First,black individual is perplexed about self-recognition due to lack of subjectivity,resorting instead to irrational behaviors for self-recognition.Second,the prosperity of big City aggravates people’s sense of loneliness in African American families,increasing their desire for domestic love,especially love from mother.Joe and Violet,on behalf of black family members,resort to violence to gain family recognition.Third,driven by the sense of racial inferiority,African Americans take pains to procure recognition from white-dominated society at the cost of leaving their familiar South,disguising their original habits and abandoning their culture.In brief,African Americans’ process of satisfying desires is characterized by irrationality,violence and inferiority.The last chapter explores the result of African Americans’ struggles for desire,which is the negotiation between self-desire and the other’s desire.First of all,individuals attempt to reconcile the conflicts between subjective cognition and objective reality.Golden accepts his black identity,dispelling the perplexity caused by double identity.Based on self-centered pursuit,Dorcas redefines the criterion of love.Furthermore,African American family members transform violence into love,changing from betraying family into trusting family.Joe and Violet manage to rebuild family to make up for their missing domestic affection.In the end,African Americans realize that the precondition of being recognized is self-recognition.Only by relocating into the new society confidently,can they get rid of the various dislocations brought by the migration like that of identity,economic and cultural orientation.This thesis argues that African Americans’ process of social integration can be considered as the evolution of desire.Suffering from the material scarcity and spiritual trauma,African Americans produce a strong sense of self-negation and intend to get other ’s recognition.However,the fact that desire can never be satisfied is doomed by its nature,so African Americans need to strike a balance between the subjective and objective recognition to cast off the governance of desire.Morrison amplifies the process of desire generation,expresses her great concern towards African Americans’dilemma of self-identification and believes that they are capable of seeking outlets.