INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NOVEL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT International Peer Reviewed & Refereed Journals, Open Access Journal ISSN Approved Journal No: 2456-4184 | Impact factor: 8.76 | ESTD Year: 2016
Scholarly open access journals, Peer-reviewed, and Refereed Journals, Impact factor 8.76 (Calculate by google scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool) , Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Indexing in all major database & Metadata, Citation Generator, Digital Object Identifier(DOI)
The paper is supposed to make a comprehensive analysis of different facets of violence portrayed in the select piece of literature by Toni Morrison from Zizekian perspective. In this work, the author presents the theme of discrimination and marginalisation of women in American society on the basis of colour and race as well. The protagonist of the novel Pecola Breedlove, a teenage black girl comes across a series of torturous experiences both inside her home and outside it whether in school or at market just because of her black colour as a result of which she begins to hate herself and suffers from the inferiority complex and low self-esteem as well. Consequently, in order to get and enjoy equal treatment, love and care, she aspires to have blue eyes which she thinks a very essential element of beauty. She wants to look herself beautiful like other girls because she thinks that by only after having blue eyes and possessing the beauty standards, she can change her fortune and can get love and respect in society. This is her belief system and though this is quite wrong and illogical, this is also true as we can see that the girls possessing fair-skin, blue eyes and other related attributes are given more love and care, pampering, respect as well as preferences than those who lack these attributes. Now, from Zizekian perspective, the standards of beauty set by the West or the White people, such as having fare-skin, blue eyes, long grey hair, slim body and so on are meaningless. All these features associated with the beauty standard are nothing to do with beauty as beauty is an internal quality which is reflected by the nature and behaviour of a person and not just how a person looks. If we apply the theory of objective violence propounded by Slavoj Zizek, to this theme, we would realise that these standards of beauty discussed above are a kind of mechanism to subordinate the women of colour in white-dominated society. They have intentionally created these tools to keep them at the lower pedestal of society by not giving them equal rights and opportunities. These can be understood as the superstructures of society which function like agents of violence but indirectly as well as silently, and this is the main reason people fail to realise the fact that whatever they accept and follow by their free choice is actually being thrust upon them indirectly with some motive and which is causing harm to themselves.
"A Zizekian Analysis of Violence Portrayed in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye", International Journal of Novel Research and Development (www.ijnrd.org), ISSN:2456-4184, Vol.8, Issue 7, page no.c680-c683, July-2023, Available :http://www.ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRD2307266.pdf
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2456-4184 | IMPACT FACTOR: 8.76 Calculated By Google Scholar| ESTD YEAR: 2016
An International Scholarly Open Access Journal, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed Journal Impact Factor 8.76 Calculate by Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool, Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Multilanguage Journal Indexing in All Major Database & Metadata, Citation Generator
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