Spatial Politics In The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is the first published book of Afro-American female writer Toni Morrison in 1970.Based on the delicate political tension between the black and the white,it tells a tragedy of a black girl named Pecola,who has lost her identity in pursuing “blue eyes” in the mainstream spatial system.Different from traditional novels which focus on time and history,The Bluest Eye gives a decisive role to space.From this perspective,various physical spaces in the novel are not only living spaces for different races,but also proving grounds of power within which racial relationships interact: from the dirty black community to the “loveliest” waterfront houses by the lake,from the heavily polluted “Zick’ s Coal Company” in the peripheral reservations to the tidy city parks in the downtown which are open only to the whites.The black characters in the novel are always confined to certain spaces.Their disciplinary practice is also predetermined by the existing unjust spatial system.However,some of them try to construct a new political possibility by deconstructing the mainstream spatial discourse.Therefore,the thesis takes the theory of Henri Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad as its approach.By exploring the spatial injustice in the so-called harmonious racial relationship in Lorain,it aims to analyze how thewhite controls the black by manipulating space and creating the White-oriented Utopia.Remarkably,when the black people face with the hegemonic power in an unjust space,their spatial practice,discipline or resistance,is the core to decide whether the Utopia will work.So,different spatial practice leads the black to different fate in the novel.On the one hand,Pecola’s pursuing of blue eyes,symbolic of a black’s pursuing white value,is a disciplinary practice of the white spatial discourse.On the other hand,the resistant spatial practice of the Claudias provides a firm basis for the black to fight for equality and freedom.It is the black consciousness present in such practices that preserves the cultural root of the black race and the basic right of the black as American citizens.Distinguished for her strong black consciousness,Morrison expresses her political and spatial vision for social renewal based on spatial justice.Therefore,the novel not only stresses the importance for the blacks to reconstruct their black identity and culture,but also expresses the universal value for equality and harmony between different races in the age of globalization.