The Consciousness Of Constructing Black Community In Morrison’s Works From The Perspective Of Fantasy

Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s writing consciousness about constructing Black community has been successively manifested in her three early novels,The Bluest Eye,Sula and Song of Solomon,which have laid a solid foundation for her future writing.This thesis mainly employs Slavoj ?i?ek’s theory of ideological fantasy to analyze Morrison’s three early novels to explore her consciousness of reconstructing an inclusive Black community on the basis of deconstructing the dominant ideological fantasy in American society.Based on ?i?ek’s argumentation about the primal desire of the traumatized subject and the working mechanism of the ideological fantasy,this thesis intends to explore the ideological fantasy’s construction of Black people’s primal desire and the destructive potential of Black women as the symptom.On the basis of that,the possible ways of reconstructing Black community will be explored as well.The Black people in Morrison’s works are traumatized and rootless,having their primal desire distorted by the ideological fantasy into an alienated identification with the constructed sublime objects.Being deeply concerned about the alienated reality of Black people,Morrison tries to deconstruct the dominant ideology in her works.Focusing on the symptomatic characteristics of Black women as well as their revelations of the illusory nature of the ideological fantasy,Morrison deconstructs the dominant ideology and appeals for a reconstruction of an inclusive and loving Black community where Black people could identify with their own history and culture so as to reconstruct a positive self-awareness.Specifically speaking,the three early novels of Toni Morrison can be regarded as the paradigm that successively reflects Morrison writing consciousness.The Bluest Eye depicts the alienated reality of Black people whose primal desire is distorted by the dominant ideological fantasy,Sula then deconstructs the dominant ideology in American society by analyzing the destructive potential of symptomatic Black women.On the basis of the previous two novels,Song of Solomon explores the possible ways of reconstructing an inclusive Black community in which Morrison emphasizes the significance of re-memorizing the traumatic past,reconnecting to the ancestral heritage and the communal love shared between Black men and women in reconstructing an inclusive Black community.