Toni Morrison And The Limits Of A Politics Of Recognition

Is Toni Morrison's writing as politically progressive as is widely assumed? In this eye-opening study, critic William Jefferson argues that it is not. Analyzing Morrison's major texts from the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Jefferson argues that Morrison's writing has advanced problematic conceptions of racial essentialism, sexuality, and agency that would not be identified as in any way progressive if issued from the pen of a white writer. More than merely showing readers underappreciated aspects of African-American history, Morrison's fiction has actively intervened in the politics of her era--and in ways politically reactionary and disturbing. Stepping back from Morrison's fiction, Jefferson asks why scholars have not recognized these political aspects of Morrison's writing. What he finds is a purportedly left-wing academy focused predominantly on recognizing the indisputably black aspects of Morrison's work. This "politics of recognition," unfortunately, also naturalizes Morrison's representations in the same manner liberal humanist criticism naturalized the representations of the pre-1970 literary canon.

Jefferson questions whether Morrison is as politically progressive as has been widely assumed and probes why politically-minded literary critics have not noted the reactionary elements in her work. He sees scholars as following Morrison's own theory of her work--that is, that it must be analyzed according to African American "structures" and linguistic forms to uncover Afro-American "values." This approach, he argues, simply rehabilitates the tenets of pre-1970s liberal humanism: that Morrison's text is a transparent window into these apparently timeless and universal black values. Contains the introduction and first essay of the book Toni Morrison and the Limits of a Politics of Recognition. Also includes excerpts from the remainder of the book. FREE!

This book examines liberal theory's attempts to accommodate pluralism, asking two fundamental questions: 1. How and why have theorists based their defences and proposed revisions of liberal pluralism upon particular and contestable definitions of what is the relevant and significant plurality? 2. Can a revised liberal pluralism account for the political significance of sub-national identity group membership?

Real Recognition investigates the complexities of literary and social recognition with the aim of putting a fresh, cross-disciplinary spin on reader identification and social acknowledgment. Engaging with contemporary Danish and Anglophone works on racialization, disability, and gender, Marie-Elisabeth Lei Pihl argues in favor of a close relation between aesthetic appeals to recognition and the political dimensions of literary texts. Moreover, she proposes a framework bent on experience and relations, as opposed to identity and status, for articulating new fruitful understandings of how literary texts call for aesthetic and social recognition. Based on this, she argues that literary texts can make readers get what social validation is about – and thereby help us redefine a key concept in the social sciences. Marie-Elisabeth Lei Pihl earned her PhD in literature and sociology from the University of Southern Denmark in 2020. Currently, she works as a postdoctoral researcher within narrative medicine and literature-based social interventions at the University of Southern Denmark in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen. Chapter 3 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Toni Morrison’s ninth novel, A Mercy, has been received with much acclaim by both the critical and lay reading public. Hailed as her best novel after the award-winning Beloved, most critics to date have concentrated on its setting in the late seventeenth century, a time in which, according to the author herself, slavery was “pre-racial,” a time before the “Terrible Transformation” irrevocably linked slavery to skin-color or “race.” Though a slender, easy to read novel, A Mercy is in fact a richly-layered text, full of multiple meanings and possibilities, a work of art that has only just begun to be “mined” for its critical import. The present volume is the first to deal with these possibilities, presenting a variety of critical approaches that include narrative theory, the eco-critical, the geographical, the allegorical, the Miltonian, the feminist, the metaphorical, and the Lacanian. As such, not only is it conceived to enrich the work of Morrison scholars and students, but also to illuminate the use of critical theory in elucidating a complex literary text. A Mercy clamors for close reading and thoughtful interrogation and promises to reward the perceptive reader.

In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

Toni Morrison: Memory and Meaning boasts essays by well-known international scholars focusing on the author’s literary production and including her very latest works—the theatrical production Desdemona and her tenth and latest novel, Home. These original contributions are among the first scholarly analyses of these latest additions to her oeuvre and make the volume a valuable addition to potential readers and teachers eager to understand the position of Desdemona and Homewithin the wider scope of Morrison’s career. Indeed, in Home, we find a reworking of many of the tropes and themes that run throughout Morrison’s fiction, prompting the editors to organize the essays as they relate to themes prevalent in Home. In many ways, Morrison has actually initiated paradigm shifts that permeate the essays. They consistently reflect, in approach and interpretation, the revolutionary change in the study of American literature represented by Morrison’s focus on the interior lives of enslaved Africans. This collection assumes black subjectivity, rather than argues for it, in order to reread and revise the horror of slavery and its consequences into our time. The analyses presented in this volume also attest to the broad range of interdisciplinary specializations and interests in novels that have now become classics in world literature. The essays are divided into five sections, each entitled with a direct quotation from Home, and framed by two poems: Rita Dove’s “The Buckeye” and Sonia Sanchez’s “Aaayeee Babo, Aaayeee Babo, Aaayeee Babo.”