This dissertation aims to map the black female subject in Toni Morrison¡¦s six fictions¡XThe Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz¡Xby exploring the dialectic between space, which produces power, and the body, which receives or/and resists the power. Since subjectivity relies on the interrelationship among mentality, space, and social power, I use psycho-geopolitical viewpoints about space and the body, which combine Henri Lefebvre¡¦s psycho-spatial concept of ¡§abstract space¡¨ reigned by a logic of visualization and Nigel Thrift¡¦s theory of ¡§personality¡¨ and ¡§socialization¡¨ referring to the individual¡¦s constant negotiations with power relations within space.
The introductory chapter presents the motivation of this study, the historical context of the fictions, literature reviews on relative issues, and finally the methodology and organization of the whole thesis. Chapter Two, by explaining the sites of power, the body as the site for articulating the power, and the ensuing strategies of resistance, elaborates how the subtitle of my dissertation¡Xspace, body, and resistance¡X would work in Morrison¡¦s works. Then in each following chapter, two novels would be discussed.
In Chapter Three, ¡§Positionality and Self-Love in Beloved and Jazz,¡¨ I study how Lefebvrezian spatial abstractions, through slavery and capitalism, present black female characters a deprived or distorted mirror image and consequently deny or corrupt their positionality and self-love. They then undergo a series of Thriftian socialization by first internalizing the white discourse and the urban mores, then by unearthing and letting go the historical repressed, and finally by recovering their love for self and others in order to reconstruct their subjectivities. They thus gain a budding sense of self.
In Chapter Four, ¡§The Failure of Subjectivity in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon,¡¨ I would examine, in terms of Lefebvre¡¦s ¡§visualization¡¨ within space, how the urban discourse in the Northern setting influences the reading of the body and subordinates the female youngsters to a capitalist and patriarchal hierarchy of power.
Chapter Five, ¡§Subjectivity with-out the Community: Sula and The Tar Baby,¡¨ is an attempt to analyze the black female characters¡¦ subjectivity construction upon claiming difference from the community, which confronts spatial abstraction by the phallic power embodied in racial colonization, patriarchy, and capitalism. The heroines thus take marginality or shift locations through journeys as strategies for resistance. The final chapter is a conclusion of the whole thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0809105-131041 |
| Date | 09 August 2005 |
| Creators | Yao, Hsiu-yu |
| Contributors | Hsin-ya Huang, I-chun Wang, Yuan-jung Chen, Shu-li Chang, Kai-ling Liu |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0809105-131041 |
| Rights | withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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