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Silvia Chirila (HU Berlin): "Between the Double and the Shadow:
Paradox and Tension in the Novels of Toni Morrison" [title of thesis]
Abstract
My thesis is entitled Between the Double and the Shadow. Paradox and Tension in the Novels of Toni Morrison and focuses on the significance of the figure of the double, underlining the function of this “organizing principle” in the dismantling of traditionally supported dichotomies, suggesting the interplay of merging boundaries rather than mere division. Intertwined with the double, the figure of the shadow, usually associated with the marginal, the subdued, the obscured, the secondary becomes engaged in a play of twisting or transcending stereotypical binaries and hierarchies, able to polarize forces that undo central or dominant representations, discourses and myths or just unsettle their logic.
In my PhD project I argue that Toni Morrison simultaneously employs and defamiliarizes the tradition of the double, affirming paradox over mere sameness or polarity, signaling the differences that can lie within similarity or the affinity concealed behind opposites. At the same time, the conventional double as a discrete and often threatening other (the doppelgänger) is somewhat deemphasized in favor of doubling as a process or game of construction, an underlying principle supporting plurality and heterogeneity instead of unity and predictable uniformity, since conventional binarism and linear progression are substituted by networks of doubles or by doubling as a play/tension of perspectives and contradictions that questions fixed categories and proposes plurivalent notions of the self. One can also discover a connection between Toni Morrison’s treatment of the double and W. E. B. Dubois’s notion of “double-consciousness” as well as the framework shaped by theories of Henry Louis Gates Jr. who considers that inherent and essential to African American tradition are the principles of revision and linkage, generally interwoven with the practice of signifying. The prominence on several level of the figure of the double in Toni Morrison’s works is not accidental, but can be read as a pervasive psychological and sociological phenomenon that has to do with the constant relation to external definitions of the self ruled by a dominant culture whose main purpose in regard to African Americans was the promotion of racialized othering. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it, race has become a trope of ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistic groups, or practitioners of specific belief systems, who more often than not have fundamentally opposed economic interest. Toni Morrison’s novels thus aim at dismantling the process of transforming history into nature or cultural arbitrariness into the natural, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms.
In my PhD project I argue that Toni Morrison simultaneously employs and defamiliarizes the tradition of the double, affirming paradox over mere sameness or polarity, signaling the differences that can lie within similarity or the affinity concealed behind opposites. At the same time, the conventional double as a discrete and often threatening other (the doppelgänger) is somewhat deemphasized in favor of doubling as a process or game of construction, an underlying principle supporting plurality and heterogeneity instead of unity and predictable uniformity, since conventional binarism and linear progression are substituted by networks of doubles or by doubling as a play/tension of perspectives and contradictions that questions fixed categories and proposes plurivalent notions of the self. One can also discover a connection between Toni Morrison’s treatment of the double and W. E. B. Dubois’s notion of “double-consciousness” as well as the framework shaped by theories of Henry Louis Gates Jr. who considers that inherent and essential to African American tradition are the principles of revision and linkage, generally interwoven with the practice of signifying. The prominence on several level of the figure of the double in Toni Morrison’s works is not accidental, but can be read as a pervasive psychological and sociological phenomenon that has to do with the constant relation to external definitions of the self ruled by a dominant culture whose main purpose in regard to African Americans was the promotion of racialized othering. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it, race has become a trope of ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistic groups, or practitioners of specific belief systems, who more often than not have fundamentally opposed economic interest. Toni Morrison’s novels thus aim at dismantling the process of transforming history into nature or cultural arbitrariness into the natural, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms.
Bio
Since 2009 I have been a PhD student in the Department for English and American Studies of Humboldt University in Berlin, working on my thesis under the supervision of Professor Martin Klepper – I have covered more than half of the project, approaching the work on the last chapters. I graduated from Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi (English major) in 2004 and I completed a MA degree in American Cultural Studies in the same institution in 2007. My academic background also includes teaching in the Faculty of Communication Sciences of Petre Andrei University, Iasi in the interval 2005-2008 (subjects taught: English, Theory of Communication, Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric). My major research interest are African American Literature, Cultural Studies, identity theory, Narratology, gender issues, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Sciences, etc.