African American Studies Commons^™

An Unblinking Gaze: Readerly Response-Ability And Racial Reconstructions In Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye' And 'Beloved', Lara Mary Fulton

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines Toni Morrison's reconstruction of racial representations in The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Morrison stresses the need for a transformation of current representations of black and white culture in her critical study, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, in which Morrison examines how black culture has been (mis)represented and (mis)perceived by white Western culture and discourse. She argues that idealized and valorized notions of "whiteness," white identity, and white culture have been constructed from denigrating, binary oppositional (mis)perceptions of "blackness," black identity, and black culture. These stereotypical (mis)perceptions maintain white cultural dominance over …