On the Contrary: The Shared Sensory Experience of Toni Morrison's Sula

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2014
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
The aim of this essay is to identify the key components of Toni Morrison's aesthetics in Sula as well as their cultural and political implications. In the novel, Morrison establishes a new aesthetic paradigm by refocusing our attention from the visual onto the entire sensory experience. In doing so, Morrison also aestheticizes the gruesome and the mundane. In Sula, dancing often denotes death, while disfigurements are deemed desirable. Rather than riffing on "White" aesthetic tradition, Morrison creates one that is all her own. Key features of Morrison's aesthetic identified in this essay are the deconstruction of binary oppositions; the prioritization of sound, music and the non-visual senses; the oral component of the text, namely in the need for the reader to participate in the storytelling event; the use "doubling"; the nuanced portrayal of sexual experiences; the aestheticization of disfigurements; and the presence of "interest," which is the ability to derive sensory pleasure from an experience, in spite of how one might evaluate it in terms of morality. Finally, the cultural and political implications of Morrison's aesthetics are addressed vis-à-vis a comparison to W.E.B. Du Bois' iconic The Souls of Black Folk, a keystone of African-American culture. Morrison's aesthetic-–a pulsing, throbbing experience-–is presented as one with the ability to empower the masses by way of turning something painful into something beautiful and thereby reclaiming a painful cultural past as a symbol of pride.
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