The Formation Of Self Through The Other-a Lacanian Reading Of Beloved

Toni Morrison, the only black American Nobel Prize winner in the contemporaryAmerican literature, enjoys a world-famous reputation in the latter part of20thcentury andher works have become the focus of the critical world ever since. The criticism about herworks is mostly from the perspectives of culture, narrative strategy, motherhood, andreligion, etc.., but seldom is the novel Beloved approached with Lacan’s theory which triesto uncover the nature of the development of individual identity. According to Lacan, theself-identity is mainly formed during the mirror stage, a very important stage for therecognition of self, with the subject constantly comparing the images of others with theconsciousness of the self. This thesis intends to explore the reasons of the troubles that theblack people suffer from with the help of the mirror stage theory and tries to show that theblack people are the victims whose self-consciousness is oppressed by different socialgroups and individuals. This research attempts to demonstrate how the images of othersdefine the self of the black characters in Beloved with the illustration of the processes ofthe forming of self-identity and explain how they eventually reconstruct themselves inhope of embracing a better future.