Incestuous rape, abjection, and the colonization of psychic space in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night

Abstract

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970) and Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night (1996) both apply a strategy of connecting rape to other forms of oppression, suggesting that incest is at least partly the result of the dynamics of being colonized and “othered”. This article brings out the problematics of closely associating colonization and (incestuous) rape by exploring the associations made in these two novels. It uses Kelly Oliver's concept of “the colonization of psychic space” to argue that the novels demonstrate that without a positive space of meaning, victims of racial oppression and of sexual violence find themselves among the abjected. The close association made between colonization and incest is criticized for ignoring the specificity of the processes by which incest and rape function to make one feel abjected.

Keywords:

• Shani Mootoo
• Toni Morrison
• rape
• incest
• abjection
• colonization

Notes

1. While the term “postcolonial” may suggest that colonialism is over, the term “paracolonial” clearly designates that the forces of oppression are ongoing (see Vizenor). The situation of African Americans (especially during the period of racial segregation) would qualify as “paracolonial”. While the situation of having been brought by colonizers to a land that is not your own is different from having colonizers appropriate your land, in both cases we find the processes of racism and othering, as well as the colonized subject’s internalization of the values of the colonizer (as poignantly described by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks).

2. This does not imply that either Morrison or Mootoo is consciously applying Kristeva’s theory or her specific discourse (which would be an anachronism in the case of Morrison). I am merely using the theoretical framework to suggest some possible mechanisms at work in these texts.

3. The cultural relevance of Morrison’s references to the Dick and Jane stories, as well as to Shirley Temple, has been emphasized by many scholars; see, for example, Matus and Werrlein.

4. This biographic information has mainly been derived from Candice Dias’s profile on Mootoo at emory.edu: <http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Motoo.html>, accessed 23 Apr. 2011.

5. For a more detailed account of how identity confusion and dislocated desire are connected to colonialism in Cereus Blooms, as well a discussion of homophobia in this novel, see May.

6. I would like to thank Professor Marlene Goldman of the University of Toronto for this specific comment, and for her general commentary on this article. Also, I would like to thank the anonymous Journal of Postcolonial Writing reviewers of this article for their suggestion that for further research on father/daughter rape in the context of the post-slavery Americas, the following novels might prove useful: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; Octavia Butler’s Kindred; and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Ti-Jean L’horizon.