The Framework of Racism in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: A Psychosocial Interpretation

Abstract

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison presents a community in which a racist ideology is internalized. The sufferers of racial abuse in this community both endure and resist in a complex inverse interrelationship between the two actions. This contradiction of the internalization and the insurrection of racial abuse is one of the crucial characteristics of this community which is best comprehended if looked at from both a Marxist and a psychoanalytic point of view. The objective of the paper is to have a look at the politics of postmodern consumer culture of capitalism in a racist community. At the same time, the paper aims at tracing the sadomasochist attitude of the characters in this framework of internalized racism in the African-American community of The Bluest Eye.