The Problematics of Race and the Eternal Quest for Freedom: A Postcolonial Reading of Toni Morrison’s Novels Within the Context of the Black Lives Matter Protests

Abdelkader Ben Rhit

doi:10.22161/ijels.66.1

Abstract

The Problematics of Race and the Eternal Quest for Freedom: A Postcolonial Reading of Toni Morrison’s Novels Within the Context of the Black Lives Matter Protests

Highlights

Morrison’s novels counter and challenge dominant ideologies and representations
This paper examines the quest for freedom in Morrison’s selected novels and draws parallels between her writings and the Black Lives Matter protests (BLM)’s narrative
They are two different narratives, they share common goals of destabilizing racial hierarchies, laying bare the atrocities inflicted on the black people, and fighting, in words and in actions, all forms of oppression against black people in order to attain the freedom they have been denied since slavery

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Morrison’s novels counter and challenge dominant ideologies and representations. From a postcolonial perspective, her writings fit into Helen Tiffin’s (1988) definition of the postcolonial literatures and their decolonizing endeavours: “dis/mantling, de/mystification and unmasking of European authority” as well as defining “a denied or outlawed self” (p. 171). Her fiction shaped a new literary aesthetics that opposes racial ideologies. This paper critically reads Morrison’s selected novels from a postcolonial perspective It examines how Morrison’s female protagonists’ quest for freedom and for a sense of self emerges from agonising experiences of marginalisation and denial. It explores parallels between the BLM movement and Morrison’s narratives and demonstrates the extent to which they can contribute to a social change regarding the inherent issues of racism and injustice in America. The third section shows the parallels and the shared goals between Morrison’s fictional writings and the Black Lives Matter narrative and it argues that both narratives disarticulate the post-racial discourse in America

AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE AND POSTCOLONIALISM

STORIES OF PAIN AND THE ETERNAL QUEST FOR FREEDOM

DISARTICULATING POST-RACIAL DISCOURSE

CONCLUSION