THE SUBVERSION OF BLACK AESTHETIC: TONI MORRISON’S RECITATIF

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to present Toni Morrison’s short story, “Recitatif” (1983), as a literary text that resists or subverts the established practices of understanding, analyzing and canonizing texts written by African Americans. The starting point of this paper is the thesis proposed in African American Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader (2006), edited by Gene Andrew Jarrett, that there is an ideological consistency in the exclusion of what Jarrett terms “anomalous” texts from African American literary anthologies. In other words, the overall preoccupation with racial representations has influenced the way of reading and organizing African American literature and defining the “Black” or African American Aesthetic. Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” represents such an “anomalous,” alternative, or unconventional text that challenges these practices. Furthermore, for its analysis, the paper relies on the methods proposed by New Formalism. This critical approach aims to interrogate the relationship between form and social, historical, and cultural contexts. Thus, one of the central aims of this paper is to show how Morrison uses and manipulates form and structure in her story to subvert notions of race and difference and to ultimately challenge the way in which texts written by African American authors are read and understood.