Seminari "The Cultural Politics of In/difference"

Toni Morrison's World of Difference 
Dr. Tanja Cvetkovic. University of Niš, Serbia

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The fictional world of Toni Morrison’s characters is diverse, multiple, fluid. The characters who people the African-American scene in Morrison’s novels are usually involved in their search for identity which leads in two directions: towards their African-American heritage and away from it. In their fight for survival they are usually depicted through a combination of diverse projection devices. There are at least four types of projections that are most recurrent in the novels: names, bodily marks, objects and grotesque behaviors. Morrison’s play with the double or the Other and the possibility of finding identity in otherness enriches her fictional world and is a necessary stage in the redefinition of the self. The presentation will focus mainly on the character’s projections onto names as symbols and the meaning they reflect. Thus we’ll explore the ambiguity of Pilate’s name or the contradiction the name Eva Peace carries with itself as well as the way characters are engaged in the process of character’s diffusion and dispersion in the novels: The Bluest Eye, Tar Baby, Beloved, Sula, Song of Solomon. Regarding the process of identity reconstruction, we’ll focus on the black man’s search for an African American integrity through folklore and forgotten African heritage, the repressed traumas, or the process of the decolonization of the black psyche.

Dr. Tanja Cvetković is Associate Professor of English language at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. 

 

Fecha del evento: 28/05/2021

Fecha de publicación: 27/05/2021