Cultural Decolonization

A spokesperson on African American affairs, Morrison has composed works that demonstrate a unique cultural self-awareness. Her novels are not only aesthetic artifacts but also expressions of her cultural poetics devised to create within the dominant cultural discourse a space for black American culture. In the critical circles, however, Morrison's cultural concern has not received due attention. Critical interrogations of her most acclaimed novel Beloved testify to such a general inadequacy on the part of literary critics to decide where Morrison's real concerns lie.This thesis consists of four parts. Part One outlines a brief history of black American literature to which Toni Morrison has made a great contribution. It is pointed out that Morrison sees writing as a cultural intervention against the cultural anonymity imposed upon African American people by the dominant culture. Believing that Beloved best embodies her thinking about the conditions of Afro-American culture, I argue that Morrison's cultural poetics can be best ascertained through her deliberations over the importance for individual black Americans to affirm their Afro-American selfhood and for the black community to rebuild cultural solidarity.In Part Two, I start with a brief look into the social circumstances as represented in Beloved that have conditioned the Afro-American cultural anonymity. Then I argue that Morrison sees it as of great importance for individual black Americans to affirm their selfhood to combat colonization and to reinstate their cultural presence. Morrison believes a self-awareness of being will enable black Americans to wake up to the oppressive social reality and reestablish their subjective status both as cultural producers and as cultural protectors.In Part Three, I examine Morrison's treatment of two black women characters (Sethe and Baby Suggs) engaged in an attempt to bring black people together. And Ibelieve Toni Morrison calls for the Afro-Americans to appropriate the instruments through which white supremacy is maintained. Baby Suggs' preaching that takes the form of communal singing and dancing in the Clearing hybridizes Western religious practices and African spirituality. Meanwhile, Sethe appropriates white language while using traditional African storytelling techniques to construct the story of Afro-American experience of slavery. To Morrison, such appropriations nurture a communal awareness that is crucial to the building of communal solidarity and the rehabilitation of black American culture.Part Four draws a conclusion of what I argue in the preceding chapters. I contend that Morrison's cultural poetics offers a suggestion to her people as to how black Americans can survive in a white supremacist society. To us, an understanding of Morrison's cultural poetics will help better appreciate works in her fictional canon. It is also indicated that an understanding of Morrison's thinking related to the decolonization of her culture will be of methodological importance for any country or minority ethnic group that is still confronted with the same cultural problems as the black Americans.