DECODED SIGNIFIED” AND “NEW CONSCIOUSNESS”: HISTORY, MYTH AND CULTURE IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED

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Shuvendu Ghosh, Dr. Rajiv Bhushan, Dr. Maninder Kapoor

Abstract

The main object of my paper is to co-relate the decoded signified idea of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Mestiza Consciousness of Gloria Andalzua with the referential detail from the text Beloved by Toni Morrison. The co-relating factor of both these theories is based on cause and effect issues. The decoded signified ideas of African-American history, myth, folklore, cultural values and moral codes have impacted a lot to shape an inclusive conscious idea which is close enough to the concept of “Third World Consciousness”. European history and theories alone are inadequate to express the true sense of African American culture, literature and its moral values. Toni Morrison’s basic concern “is to move beyond the systematic or structural patterns” of those theories and history ( Rigney 7). The African American ethnic community has always suffered from an identity crisis caused by the past slave tradition, racism, sexism, dehumanized moral and cultural values. In Beloved, Morrison depicted an indigenous social, cultural, moral and literal value of life which aims for developing a higher consciousness, a kind of wisdom. Morrison attempted to break the boundary of subject-object duality that caged her for a long term. Through the text Beloved, Toni Morrison made a universal appeal to restore and re-establish the indigenousness of the African American community. But the sense of restoring and revaluing one’s indigenousness will remain an incomplete guidance unless one comes across with higher consciousness. In developing a sense of higher consciousness or a “new consciousness” the role of “Mestiza Consciousness” theory of Gloria Andalzua is an interdependent important factor.  The most important legacy of an ethnic community is language. Basically racism or color line problems are the root cause behind the traumatic crisis of African American people. Undoubtedly, “there is no racism without language” (Pramod K. Nayar, 224) Morrison assumed the vibrancy of language which is a definite obstruction in reshaping a kind of higher consciousness among the African-American ethnic community. The decoded signified ideas of African American history, culture, myth and folklore develop a higher consciousness of protest literature and culture to reestablish indigenousness in an inclusive environment of lively experiences.

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