Psychoanalytical Study of the Gendered Eurocentric Sociosymbolic Dynamics in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) and Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (2019)

Abstract

Racism is the stereotypical societal belief of individuals’ categorization based on their ethnicity and colour (Kaur, 2018). Within this context, this paper is concerned with psychoanalytically probing the gendered dimensions of racial oppression and resistance to it in predominant postcolonial white America with reference to Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” (1970) and Whitehead’s “The Nickel boys” (2019). For this purpose, this paper has utilized Fanon’s (1952) canonical critical lense “Black Skin, White Mask,” incorporated with the Lacanian registers to probe the impact of Eurocentric/white sociosymbolic order on the male and female protagonists in Morrison’s and Whitehead’s narratives. Through theoretical framework, the researchers psychoanalytically investigated the impact of racism on the (de)shaping of protagonists’ desires. The analysis brought to light that racism impacts the lives of male and female protagonists differently. Whitehead’s male protagonist endures severe persecution due to his race and color from white community, but not from his own community. On the other hand, Morrison’s female protagonist endures tripartite objectification on the basis of color, race and sex from both the black and white communities. Hence, this paper highlights the gendered dimensions of racial hegemony through the psychoanalytic framework.