Spectatorship And Black Female Subjectivity In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

The present paper makes an effort to consider the background stories in Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye through an interpretation of the author's subtle historical references to different forms of mass cultural representation. Looking closely at the codes of the capitalist visual culture and the sign system in the consumer society, and examining various forms of spectatorship and looking relations inscribed in and elicited by the predominant images, the paper investigates the different mechanisms of identification Morrison mobilizes in representing the process of subject formation, demonstrating that the visual system operating in a white supremacist culture frequently thwarts the development of an ontologically free subject. Morrison, however, seeks alternative sites of power where her women characters can break through the stultifying spectator culture and achieve a certain degree of agency.The present paper consists of five parts. Introduction offers a brief overview of the literary text under discussion, explains the critical approach and intention of the research, and outlines the major arguments of the paper. The first chapter closely examines various visual forms of the consumer culture discreetly alluded to in the text and makes an attempt to decode the visual messages in the sign system of the consumer society. The second chapter mobilizes Sean Nixon's theorizing about spectatorship and subjectivity in understanding how different characters in the novel come to confront and/or compromise their racial/cultural identity and in viewing the mechanisms of identification each of the major female characters in the novel employs in constructing her identity and hence forming her subjectivity. The third chapter adopts bell hooks's concept of the oppositional gaze in interpreting a radical form of black female subjectivity represented by Claudia, the narrator of the story. Conclusion offers a summary of what the paper sets out to accomplish, and points out possible directions in which future projects might advance.