The Herstory Of The Black Phoenix:A Study On The Vision Of Sexuality In Walker's Novels

Any discussion on Black women's sexuality engages a very complex and controversial,hence,challenging task.It excavates a deadening component of world history in the arenas of art,literature,cultural discourse,and academia.Historically speaking,the integrated mechanism of race,sex,and class has cast an ample impact on Black female sexuality moulding its patterns of oppression,suppression,objectification,and commodification.The sexuality of Black women has,therefore,fallen victim to an intricate web of the systems of power worsening and differentiating their experience from that of all other communities marginalised in terms of the axes of identity construction.Focusing on the subject requires giving voice to a silenced yet growing concern of literary studies.In order to de-politicise the purposive systems of power,which have always been pro-active in exploiting and harnessing women's sexuality,the issue needs to go discursive propagating the de-centralisation of a racist and sexist discourse and challenging the entire binary system of knowledge.A kind of consciousness to re/animate the African American literature by centralising the tripartite experience of Black women they experience at the jeopardy of race,sex,and class emerged during the late sixties and early seventies of the last century.Some African American women intellectual writers engage in this re-centralising mission by exploring the traumatic experience repressed in the collective psyche of Black women.Though releasing the trauma in literature serves as a precise tool to call for a protest to the physio-psychic assault on the women,raising consciousness for body and self,self-embodiment,self-empowerment,and collective activism to undo the entire trauma generating situation is still required.And it is Alice Walker(1944-),the African American writer winning National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize,who comes to the forefront to fill the gap through her groundbreaking creative and critical works.She envisages how the historical location of Black women's body,which has been the most vulnerable object to racial and hetero/patriarchal systems of oppression,could be an indispensable instrument to function as a powerful antidote to wound.Though Walker made her debut as a novelist in 1970 attaining remarkable scholarly attention for her relentless attack on racism and sexism,it is from the 1980s,especially after the publication of her most revolutionary piece--The Color Purple(1982)that she appeared with single-minded determination to equip Black women's body in fiction to resist its abuse.With her fiction,exhuming submerged experience of Black female sexuality becomes instrumental to counter the racist-sexist hegemonic ideology and discourse.Though Walker continues to craft a vision of sexuality,envisioning and re/envisioning for several decades,most of the critics seem to render invisible or ignore the vision.Some prominent critics have recognised the theme of lesbianism evident in Walker's novels but they appear to lead to conceptions which do not match while approaching her presentation of a wide variety of sexual praxis.The commonest accusation the critics make against Walker is that she remains less political when representing lesbianism.This study holds that the allegation is primarily caused by a propensity of the critics to single out and investigate into a particular theme,i.e.,lesbianism or a particular novel,i.e.s The Color Purple,instead of pursuing a complete study on divergent expressions of sexual relationship apparent in many of Walker's works.Those critics also criticise that in Walker's,stories the theme of self-discovery appears more prominent than that of lesbianism.Those critics dissociate women's self-journeys from their discoveries of body and retain from investigating how the stories of self-attainment and lesbian love are mingled to enrich the theme of lesbianism.Drawing on the above stated lack in the existing body of criticism,this research sets for fulfilling the necessity of a richer and fuller systematic study of Walker by probing into her novels which deal with Black women's sexuality.Therefore,amongst her seven novels,the study examines The Color Purple,The Temple of My Familiar,Possessing the Secret of Joy,By the Light of My Father's Smile,and Now Is the Time to Open Your Hear--works that immensely help to conceptualise Walker's sexual philosophy.It finds that Walker is far beyond the activism of counter-sexual politics.Instead of hetero/normativity or homonormativity,she seems to believe in sexual autonomy which does not suppress the sexual variants.She develops a concept of sexuality where love depends on mutuality and respect and gets free expressions which eventually turn to be life-affirming,transformative,and embedded with spiritual thoughts.Therefore,the study clearly falls into the category of sexuality study which engages feminist and postmodernist gender theories.A comprehensive study on Walker's vision of sexuality requires focusing both on the sexual abuse of women and the resistance they eventually form to stop the abuse.Necessarily,the study takes a "U" turn in the middle of its discussion.Besides an introduction and a conclusion,it consists of five chapters.The first two chapters approach the oppression on Black women by two different approaches namely intersectionality and(hetero)sexism.Then,it draws on the transformative turn of the women who raise a kind of critical consciousness and recognise the erotic power of the female body.And the last two chapters examine what changes are brought about by the recognition.First and foremost,the study probes into a long cherished patriarchal silence regarding Black women's sexual oppression artistically documented in the novels of Walker.Propagating gender-specific "norms" and ideology,patriarchy constructs a phallocentric "mind-set" to bring women into thinking that women's bodies are the properties of men.All the nameless mothers of Walker's fiction are found to keep silent when encountering men's sexual aggression.Besides the hegemonic control,patriarchy enforces silence by ignoring women's right to speech and propagating taboos.Celie,in The Color Purple,is prohibited from expressing her sexual harassment while Tashi,in Possessing the Secret of Joy,finds nobody to discuss the mutilation of the female body.Devoid of education,women neither dismantle the dominant discourse nor make their own one to give voice to themselves.The long history of silence in their everyday lives and mainstream academia helps the oppression on women go uninterruptedly.Walker appears to advance with a compelling argument that Black women's oppression is caused not by any particular system of power.The sexual violence on Lissie,Zede and other enslaved women of The Temple of My Familiar not just demonstrates the sexism prevalent in the society.Enforcing their children into slavery also implies the extreme form of capitalism.Moreover,the violence of rape and its aftermath help the western discourse construct race-specific stereotypes which present Black women as sexually promiscuous.Thus,Walker explicates how the Black female body forms a historical location where racism,sexism,and classism converge to strengthen one another.Additionally,hetero/sexism has been approached in the study as an enforced system of control.While enforcing normalcy,patriarchy negates sexual engagements that do not conform to the institution of hetero/sexuality.As a result,lesbian and bisexual women of Walker's novels first experience an experience of self-stigmatisation.Initially,Pauline fails to understand why she feels sexually indifferent towards men.Then,Shug and Celie remain ignorant of their homoerotic desires quite for a long time that makes inevitable delay in the conceptualisation of their own sexual identities.Hetero/Sexism is examined in this study through two interconnected dimensions.The symbolic or ideological dimension constructs "norms" and ideology according to which women,who do not conform to hetero/sexuality,are deemed "deviant." And,the structural dimension implements those "norms" through social and legal institutions which make the "deviant" even more vulnerable to sexual oppression.Due to the gender-specific standards,the free-spirit Shug,Pauline,Susannah,Kate,Lilika,and Gloria in different novels of Walker,encounter shame and abuse whereas the submissive mothers are glorified as "special women." While controlling women's sexuality,ideological and structural dimensions of hetero/sexism,therefore,complement each other.The study argues that the hetero/patriarchal "mind-set" is very systematically entrenched in culture and collective consciousness to keep women's sexuality under control.Then,the study captures an epiphanic moment of Walker's women who,after a long period of suppression,oppression,and subjugation,raise a sort of critical consciousness.Walker has shown how the sexually sacked women transform their lives by recognising the particular vantage point of their deprivation and subservience.Through shared experience and assistance to one another,women discover the resource inherent in the female body,honour it,and reclaim.It is only after Shug's attempt to bring Celie onto her own body that Celie becomes aware of its magical power to heal its wound by itself.It marks the pivotal moment when Celie learns to appreciate her body and sets it free from imposed hetero/sexuality by embracing her same-sex desire.Instead of exercising the discriminating sexist principles,Walker's women cultivate the values of equality,mutual love,and respect in sexual relationship.They usher autonomy where sexual instincts get free expressions in lesbianism,bisexuality,autosexuality,pansexuality,and celibacy.Loving one another emotionally and sexually,her women debunk the patriarchal claim that only the hetero/sexuality is instinctual.It does not necessarily mean Walker propagates lesbianism to counter hetero/normativity.Though Celie,Shug,and Pauline embrace homoerotic love,Fanny and Kate harbour to hetero/sexuality.Walker seems to hold that altering the "hetero/homo" binary by inverting the power dynamics between male and female is likely to end up in re-structuring the society failing to abnegate the oppressive power relations altogether.The only solution is,therefore,to denounce the concept of normativity and acknowledge all types of sexual identity.The study also examines how the recognition of body grows in women a sense of ownership that turns out to integrate their previously dissociated body and self.Once Celie discovers the erotic power of her body,she claims it as her own.Exerting the desire for her body,she becomes herself.Almost all women of Walker undergo this initiatory experience of self-embodiment.It is crucial in the sense that it awakens them about the autonomy of themselves.Celie and Susannah start re-writing their own stories while Pauline,Magdalena,Tashi,Kate and others give words to their experience and realisation.Re-evaluating themselves from their own perspective,responding to their own choices,and securing a space to discuss individual experience and achievement,Walker's women break through the racist-sexist image of them and assert that construction of identity is both performative and discursive.Through the re-construction of their own sexual and gender identities,the women challenge the patriarchal institutions of hetero/sexuality,marriage,and family,and the"norms" that come along.Like the mythical bird,Phoenix,they resurrect into a new life by re-constructing the self.Finally,the study examines the spiritual aspects inherent in the sexuality of Walker's women.Her women rise from their cultural pathologies and existential dead-ends through the consummation of profound love they bear inside.Pointing out the existence of God inside everybody,Shug introduces a spiritual model that fuses the ever-contradictory "matter"(body)and "spirit"(soul)and physical(sexual)and metaphysical(spiritual).While making love with Arveyda,Fanny shivers in joy that she merges with the holy Trinity.The consummation of love signifies for her the unification with God.The discovery of God within self cleanses the earthly prejudices that previously lodged in women.It pulls Celie to forgive her husband and teaches Pauline how to love the White woman called Gena.Thus,these women love in a race-and-sex-irrespective and demonstrate how the free flow of love can integrate humans across cultures.Gradually,they develop a broader view of life which engages all components of the universe.Discovering a life-force or divinity in whatever she sees around and receiving orgasmic pleasure through loving those objects,Queen Anne not only exemplifies the conversion of physical pleasure into spiritual but also implicates a unitary universe where all creations share the supreme or "Universal Soul," traditionally viewed as God.Walker's vision of love,therefore,encapsulates a mystical communion that merges the body with the self and the self with the "Universal Soul."Based on the analysis above,the study draws on its hypothesis that Walker has envisaged a visionary sexual philosophy which is life-affirming,transformative,and spiritual.To regenerate hope,she introduces to the sexually paranoid women a "herstory" which dismantles the racist-sexist version of history and teaches them how to get back to a life of full humanity and dignity.The life-affirming energy and the spiritual thought of coexistence inherent in Black women's sexuality lead the women to live fully and richly.To sum up,women's experience with body and self-embodiment,their reincarnation into a life of their own,and their realisation of the divinity of love feature out the sexual vision of Walker.She adapts the "Mother/Earth-centered" African spirituality to assert that the pan-cosmic love not merely heals the earthly wound but also uplifts the individuals with immanent perception and ontological knowledge of the universe.As Walker's sexual vision challenges the beliefs and the practices of traditional religion,the study supports its arguments through different theoretical concepts and scholarly studies.It does not follow the chronological order of its primary source--the novels of Walker.Rather,it relates the relevant details of particular works to develop its argumentation.Such an organisation also complies with its thematic concern of the wholeness of women--their rebirth from a state of sexual vulnerability to that of autonomy where they live freely and fully.