On the Possibilities of the Black Signifier

(1)

On the Possibilities of

Black Subjectivity

A research on the novels Song of Solomon and

Americanah

Tugba Oztemir 6238181

University of Amsterdam Master: English Literature Supervisor: Jochem Riesthuis

(2)

Dedicated to

This thesis is dedicated to the Dutch Diversity and Decoloniality activist, to UvA’s student diversity platform ‘Amsterdam United’, to my social justice and social rights warriors Tasniem Anwar, Marieke Brandt, Sherilyn Deen, Berna Keskindemir and Chaniz Biervliet and to my dearest professors Sarah Bracke, Fadie Hanna, Rudolf Glitz and Jochem Riesthuis, who believed in me. Enormous thanks to my parents, Suleyman and Zeliha Oztemir, who, like so many more immigrants, are the very definition of sacrifice and endurance.

(3)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes how Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison display and scrutinize Black subjectivities. Both novels place the Black subject in historical, geopolitical and national perspective. However, due to the ongoing and rather intensified debates in the United States about the Black identity, these novels play into a broader socio-political discourse. Both novels share an overlap in their acknowledgement of the social position of Black folks in the United States. However, the two novels also differ on the account of universalized Black subjectivities and on the account of Black subjectivity that takes intersectionality into account. This thesis treats Americanah and Song of Solomon as narratives that expand historical times and places when crafting socio-political identities within a literary world. The interaction between, social activism, politics, and literary studies seems to affect every day identitarian discourses. The two novels serve as data and shed light on the fluidity of Black identities and Black subjectivities throughout time. Throughout the gaze of three methodologies: Intersectionality Theory by Kimberlé Crenshaw; the theory of concept, discourse and power by Michel Foucault, and the theory of constructed knowledge by Edward Said, the novels bring their views on the Black subject to light. Americanah and Song of Solomon and their depiction of the Black subject (through the use of their protagonists) seem to differ most in the case of ‘becoming someone’ and ‘belonging somewhere’. Where the former one puts its emphasize on the flexible and continuation of (Black) identity developments the later draws its attention to the feelings of belonging to a nation and grounding oneself in there. In sum, it seems that where Song of Solomon tries to create awareness about a shared Black history and a shared feeling of belonging, Americanah tries to refute universalism in Blackness by diving into the various intersections of one’s identity.

(4)

Introduction

Contemporary Relevance

“I have never lived, not have any of us, in a world in which race did not matter. Such a world, free of racial hierarchy, is usually imagined or described as dreamscape- Edenesque, utopian, so remote are the possibilities of its achievement. How to be both free and situated: how to convert a racist house into a race-specific yet non-racist home. How to enunciate race while depriving it of its lethal cling?” (Toni Morrison, Home (2012))

According to Morrison, as quoted above, race has and always will play a role in this world. Departing from this point where race, according to Morrison, is an omnipresent actor, I will dive into the world of literature where the representation of race and Black subjectivity is provided. For example, Aretha Phiri claims, in her “Expanding Black Subjectivities”, the novels Americanah (2014) written by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, and Song of Solomon (1998) by Toni Morrison, to be the most divergent novels in their analysis of Black historical and

identitarian discourses. Therefore, these two novels will be used to serve as data in this analysis of the ideas on Black subjectivities in the literary field.

Both novels place the Black subject in historical perspective, in a geopolitical and/or national perspective. However, due to the ongoing and rather intensified debates in the United States about Black identity, these novels play into a broader socio-political discourse that

encapsulates their protagonists’ coming of age in a world where their Black identity is at stake. Despite some overlapping, the two novels also differ, in my opinion, on account of how Black identities and Black history can or cannot be seen as universal for all Black folks. Universalized identities versus the importance of the intersections of identities are both at stake in these novels. Therefore, this thesis aims to delineate the differences between these two novels that embark on Black identity crafting and identity negotiations. In addition, this thesis will also show how Intersectionality Theory can pave a new way of understanding these various forms of crafted (Black) identities in different time and place bound settings.

The three methodologies used for the analysis are Intersectionality Theory by Kimberlé Crenshaw; the theory of concept, discourse and power by Michel Foucault, and the theory of

(7)

constructed knowledge by Edward Said. All of them will be discussed within the framework of the two novels. The utilization of these three methodologies are of paramount importance when analyzing Black history, Black subjectivity and identity discourses throughout time. The importance of these methodologies is based on the everyday mechanisms that exclude and dehumanize the Black body and Black history. Interlocking systems such as institutionalized racism, institutionalized derogatory concepts and other forms of exclusion affect everyday ideas and views about social and/or racial identities. Foucault, Crenshaw and Said touch upon all of the above and clarify the intensifying mechanism and the interplay of concept, discourse and power relations within societies. Their methodologies will be used to answer the main research question: How do the novels Song of Solomon and Americanah delineate Black identities and Black historical recognition? What, if any, differences can be detected? This thesis is to treat Americanah and Song of Solomon as narratives that expand historical times and places when crafting socio-political identities outside of politics. The interaction between identitarian discourses, politics and intersectionality within the scale of race and ethnicity based fiction deserves more attention. Despite the various decolonized readings and anti-racist readings of assorted fictions and poetry written by Black authors, the interplay of a generational, demographic and ideological difference in the understanding of the Black

identity is often lacking. Despite disciplines, issues and national boundaries, the understanding of an intersectional approach within the analysis of the Black identity has received little effort to reflect upon. Therefore, this thesis aims to analyze how Black identities and Black identity negotiations are constituted in Song of Solomon and Americanah. And analyze if and how Black identities stem from the ideology of universalism and essentialism.

The thesis will be divided into four chapters. The first chapter is theoretical and rather long, because the purpose of this thesis is not only to explore Americanah and Song of Solomon, but also to investigate how new literary works can be employed in the field of ongoing identitarian discourses. The first chapter justifies the choice of the interdisciplinary approach for this thesis by explaining the connection between historical (racial) concepts and Black subjectivity. Apart from that it explains the ways in which concepts, documentation, and discourse can influence one another. The second chapter foregrounds an analysis on Song of Solomon and how this novel portrays and stresses Black identities.

(8)

First of all, it defines the object of study, thus, it describes the protagonist, a Black man called Milkman, and his coming of age in Southern America. Next, it offers an analysis of the life changes that the protagonist encounters, based on his cultural and historical awareness. The third chapter analyzes Americanah as a narrative on the feelings of belonging where the protagonist describes herself as a non-American Black in America and how this connects to and/or deviates from Song of Solomon. The fourth chapter provides a discussion and

conclusion on the two novels, their concepts on Black subjectivity, their overlapping and their differences. In addition, the concluding chapter also explains how negotiating and performing (Black) identities in novels can be applied to a broader understanding of the socio-political changes in the United States. And how this mechanism further develops into discourses on institutional racism, diversity and inclusion. In order to fully address the research question, this thesis includes scholarships from across the disciplines and from outside of the United States. The respective contributions and their references will help us to comprehend how racial identities and intersectionality has moved from field to field and is still in progress of penetrating various theoretical approaches. This thesis will therefore scrutinize, analyze, question and clarify the numerous mechanisms and interplays that reflects the formations of (Black) identities.

As a researcher, student and as a teacher, my identity has always, and will always play a role in every maneuver I try to undertake. As a non-black student of color who had to

craft new identities in the Netherlands in which being gay and Muslim, Turkish and Dutch could and would be merged, I am intrigued by, and interested in, the mechanism that go beyond the crafting of Black identities and its intersections with geographical, political, economic and social capitals. As a student in the humanities and in the social sciences I have come to understand the importance of conducting research (in which the position of the researching should be taken into account) and where no objectivity claims should be made. Objectivity lingers around as a false claim within all forms of science and should therefore be avoided. Science is subjective and the quest for social and political identities within literary studies should be seen as subjective, yet valuable.

(9)

Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework

“It goes without saying then, that language is also a political instrument, means and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity, and

connects one with, or divorces one with from, the larger, public, or communal identity. (James Baldwin: “If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” (1979))

This chapter will analyze how various theories considering discourse analysis, racial and

ethnical identity formations relate to the novel Song of Solomon by Morrison and Americanah by Adichie. The various sociological and literary theories about identity formations will also shine a light on how identities are affected by various discourses. Not only the affects will be analyzed but also the expressions of identity, and the interpretations of racial, gender and ethnic identities within the two different novels will be clarified. Identity, according to Foucault (1972), van Dijk (2013) and Wekker (2016), is seen as an element of personal coherence and intelligibility which has always been exposed to discursive threats, especially the identities that encounter the burden of being ‘Othered’ in multiple ways. This chapter, therefore, will analyze the birth of (racial) concepts, the emergence of hegemonic knowledge about identities, the power of discourse, and discourse analysis in defining identity and its relation to the

character's identity quest. I will also explore identity as it is investigated in Intersectionality Theory. This chapter gives an overview of the theories that address the processes surrounding the crafting of cultural, gender and ethnical identities where the feelings of belonging are expressed as well. This part of the thesis will, therefore, display how the aforementioned items (historical concepts, discourse and intersectionality) are evaluated in the two novels.

Furthermore, this section will also explain how these items can merge, reproduce and challenge Identity Politics, Black subjectivity and socio-political exclusion.

Said and Foucault: Knowledge Construction

Although the Archeology of Knowledge was published more than 40 years ago, Michel Foucault’s analysis of knowledge construction is still disturbingly accurate. In fact, with the development of new racial discourses and the ever evolving everyday identitarian discourses,

(10)

Foucault’s examination of knowledge construction in relation to race is possibly even more accurate than he could have foreseen.

Before embarking on the literary and political concepts that will constitute the body of my theoretical argument, I will commence with a historical approach. This historical approach will consist of; documentation, understanding, and perpetuations of cultural, ethical and

sociological knowledge in which ‘knowing thyself and the other’ lies at its core. In this section I will use Edward Said and Michel Foucault in order to present and clarify the reproduction and the comprehension of various Black subjectivities. Before diving into the concept of Black subjectivities I will present an overview in which I explain racial and social connotations within social discourses. These connotations play a role in the creation of social groups and in the senses of belonging somewhere. When racial or social groups are crafted, mechanisms of including the familiar and excluding the alien take place. Racial identities, for example are crafted and often stressed when socio-political inclusion and exclusion occurs. For example, Said uses the "Other" concept, as conceived by Hegel, in order to describe the process of ‘Othering’ social groups whether in intra- or inner groups. In his famous work Orientalism, he has outlined the mechanisms that go beyond the Othering process. Said emphasized the power of knowledge and knowledge production within the academic, literary and cultural world. According to Said, knowledge systems are seen as metaphoric. And these systems create their own rationality which in turn are used to utilize subjective and purpose serving interpretations for certain social and political goals. Aligned with Said’s ideology of power structures within everyday promoted knowledge, Michael Foucault also argues that social, political and historical interpretations are not sovereign or immune to (hegemonic) ideology. Instead of being free from dominant ideologies, these promoted interpretations that presents one’s social world and one’s social existence are redirected. This redirection affects

connotations. Social, racial and political ideologies are thus not immune to dominant

discourses nor to hegemonic identitarian knowledge construction. According to Foucault these social and political interpretations that constitute knowledge are means to exercise power. Both Said and Foucault stress the notion of power structures within the conventional knowledge and social discourses. These in turn, leave their marks behind in our everyday identity politics and contemporary literary works.

Another means of exercising power and constructing knowledge, according to Foucault, is language itself. The meta-connection between knowledge, representation, and identity can

(11)

first be derived from our usage of language. Language paves the way for images and images, in turn, pave the way for comprehension and categorization. Therefore, when new light is shed on everyday representations, we are recalling back the process behind the birth of a

representation. According to Foucault, representations are "embedded first in language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer" (p.272.).

Furthermore, Foucault (1972) described and outlined the establishment of power relations that connect with social systems that we, according to him, known as: ‘hierarchy, dominance, stratification, univocal determination, and circular causality (4:1972)’. These systems of

relations can result in systems of power when invading the history of literature and the history of ideas. Foucault derives his understanding of knowledge construction from the establishment of history as an academic field. He allows the reader to re-question the histories we know and are familiar with. What does it mean when periodization, the centuries of rupture, is perceived and digested as history in itself? Whereas we could also recognize the disciple of history as a means where the methods and the position of the historian should be questioned and thus not be concealed. What would the discipline of history look like nowadays if positionality was practiced at the time of e.g. Aristotle and Popper? What scale and what variety would have been produced if cultural and social concepts, derived from our history, were produced within the understanding of reflexivity? These questions could not deliver uncomplicated or effortless answers. Therefore, I will try and clarify the complexities that go beyond the craftsmanship of historical, cultural and identitarian knowledge.

The understanding of race, for example, is an epistemological act where content accumulation about this concept is bound to its trade and re-trade mechanism. With the trade and re-trade mechanisms a certain items is being passed through various 'hands' and thus exposed to change. Racial knowledge is understood and negotiated in its very essence of travelling orally and textually. How are concepts such as race claimed and reclaimed then? According to

Foucault (1972), concepts cannot solely be clarified and cleansed in simplified ways, but rather, concepts mature in various contexts and touch upon many theoretical fields due to their broad entanglements:

(12)

“There are the displacements and transformations of concepts: the analysis of G. Canguilhem may serve as models; they show that the history of a concept is not wholly and entirely that of its progressive refinement, its continuously increasing rationality, its abstraction gradient, but that of its various fields of

constitution and validity, that of its successive rules of use, that of the many theoretical context in which it developed and matured (4:1972)”.

It seems that the concept of race can develop, mature, and change throughout the years not solely because of centuries going by, but also because of social and political influences. 'The successive rules of use' in which time bound discourses can claim and reclaim terms and terminologies are affected by hegemonic ideologies of that time. Where the discipline of history might give a stabilized structure, the history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, and of literature seems to be pursuing and revealing more and more discontinuities. These discontinuities are fields where new generations tackle the new and old identitarian

terminologies, which they consider as problematic or precarious. Irruptions and discontinuities within discourses are means for opening up new ways for new concepts. Therefore, the birth of a new concept lies at the core of this thesis.

Another field in which hegemonic knowledge can exercise power and perpetuate an ideology, according to Foucault and Said, is written (historical) texts. The emergence of historical concepts may be documented in archives, but those documents itself should, however, not solely be considered as the fortunate tool of history. The multiplicity of stories, concepts and knowledge cannot only be stored in documents when history fundamentally relies on memory. According to Foucault history is what is remembered by society and what is seen as valuable to document:

“History is one way in which a society recognizes and develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably linked. To be brief, then, let us say that history, in its traditional form, undertook to memorize the monuments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in silence something than what they actually say; in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments (7:1972)”.

These monuments that are derived from documents seem to be the ones who did receive recognition in a specific time. The question to ask is, what happened with societal or conceptual knowledge that did not or could not reach out to mainstream documentation? Again, here we can see that not only within concept and knowledge production but also in the documentation and remembrance of knowledge itself, a certain power structure plays its pivotal role.

(13)

Another field where concepts can present ideologies is the field of tradition. Concepts, for example, constitute tradition, tradition then constitutes a myth about the origin of a belief or practice. This tradition is then used to hinder context and time bound realities of social change or cultural understanding. Foucault embarks on tradition and the endless quest for ‘origin’ in the following:

“Take the notion of tradition: it is intended to give a special temporal status to a group of phenomena that are both successive and identical; it makes it possible to rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the same; it allows a reduction of the difference proper to every beginning, in order to pursue without discontinuity the endless search for the origin; tradition enables us to isolate the new against a background of permanence, and to transfer its merit to originality, to genius, to the decisions proper to individuals (21:1972).”

Foucault is criticizing how tradition, even if it opens a way for comparison between the old and the new, it is also preventing the birth of new social concepts such as identity or the feeling of belonging. The endless quest to one’s origin or the status that is given to a certain ‘origin’ can intercept or discredit new forms of social crafting. In the following sections this process will be taken further into the intersections of knowledge construction.

Epistemic Discourse Analysis

“We cannot and should not underestimate or neglect the importance of the act of imaginative rediscovery” (Hall,1992a, p.26)

According to van Dijk (2013) the macro and micro constructions behind the history of knowledge and the history of ideas can be elucidated by analyzing discourses. What is the entanglement between discourse and knowledge and what does this entanglement mean for the formation of old and new (historical)social concepts? The analysis of van Dijk gives an insight into various discourses. According to him, Epistemic Discourse Analysis(EDA) can be used as a tool in order to define a systematic study of the various ways in which knowledge, and thus concepts, are constructed, expressed, conveyed and managed. Through the analysis of text and talk, one can detect not only the expressed meanings and concepts but also the activations of new concepts that enter the discourse on any given subject. In addition, EDA is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary tool and thus suits the comparative analysis of novels in a literary and sociological way:

(14)

“EDA focuses on the epistemics of text and talk in linguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and cognitive psychology, EDA obviously suits a multidisciplinary field. Yet the field is even broader if we consider other relevant disciplines of the humanities and social sciences – as well as their limitations (van Dijk,2013)”

The main idea seems to be that discourse is a powerful tool that can be detected when

analyzed and compared in certain theoretical manners. Overall, discourse is understood as the overarching dominant and often the ruling ideology that lingers around in public, private, political, economic and social environments. You can ‘hear’ discourses in public spaces, you can ‘read’ discourses in newspapers, or maybe you can even ‘see’ discourses on the images surrounding you. The discourse operates, therefore, according to a kind of uniform anonymity, on various groups and individuals who initiate manoeuvring in the discursive field. Moreover, discourses from distinct fields or distinct historical times will not bear one universally valid idea for all domains. Ideas are time and place bound and that is why ideas will emerge and be described in particular discursive fields. Throughout the use of EDA I will give an overview of the different ideologies, concepts and connotations that are to be presented in this thesis. EDA thus provides a tool from which texts, novels, and many more sources can be analyzed and stratified.

Intersectionality

The Intersectional Theory is rooted in Black feminism and Critical Race Theory and is often used by literary and sociological critics. This theory has emerged from the vanguards of social activism and academic criticism. The social activist, de-colonialist and feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in order to address the ‘marginalization of Black women within not only anti-discrimination law but also in feminist and antiracist theory and politics’(Carbado,2013). Crenshaw’s publication of “Demarginalizing” and “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Colour” employed and highlighted how intersectional theory revealed not only the socially and politically

emerged power structures that constitute social identities and prototypical representatives of marginalized groups, but also the importance of scrutinizing micro revolutions within their broader, often interdisciplinary, frameworks. By conducting research into race and gender, Crenshaw found the subtle ways in which the law has ‘historically defined the contours of sex and race discrimination through prototypical representatives, i.e. white women and African

(15)

American men, respectively’(Carbado,2013). It seems that intersectionality theory travels throughout the identitarian disciplines and pays attention to the movements that are always in progress and fluid, i.e. sex, gender, race, class, discourse, power, and society. In addition, Crenshaw herself refuses to use intersectionality as a contained entity, by doing so, she paves a new way for intersectionality for it to be and stay as a work-in-progress. The second addition to this is that the intersectionality theme does not inhabit an a priori place, not in any academic field or in any social movement. Intersectionality stretches out and encapsulates all time frames and all interdisciplinary fields in political, economical, discursive or judicial systems. Within the topic of this thesis, where Black subjectivities and Black identity formations are analyzed throughout two different novels, one might claim and think that intersectionality is thus created to focus on Black women’s experiences solely.

Cho (2014) contests this idea that Intersectionality Theory solely focuses on the Black

experience. In her article “Post-Intersectionality” she theoretically argues that there is no logic that this theory cannot captivate other branches of power and experience, such as class and sexuality. These broad frameworks will also give insight in complex socio-political

contemporary situations. Not only the negotiations for an ethnic identity are disclosed and divulged with the use of intersectionality, but also the negotiations about the gendered self and the classified self. In sum, intellectual, academic, activist and political projects have long sought to map and clarify the interface between systematic oppressions and their affected and accompanying (Black) subjects. Intersectionality theory believes that single-axis frameworks limit their reach in analysis and therefore claims the precise, yet not solid, frames of

intersecting, merging and mixing the methods for analyzing societal power structures. It seems that intersectionality theory has thus been called into existence within European and Western contexts as a fruitful tool for articulating these power and subject interactions. In sum,

according to Crenshaw (2013) and Carbado (2013) the goal of intersectionality was and is never aimed at simply understanding social relations and its power on its subjects, but to reveal the regularly hidden power dynamics in order to reconstruct them, making intersectionality a tool and a method at the same time. Therefore, the intersectional theory will be utilized as a tool in order to compare and contrast the various gazes on the Black identity.

(16)

This section will explain how all aforementioned theories play out in the two postcolonial novels Americanah and Song of Solomon. Within post-colonial societies the importance of Black writers such as Adichie and Morrison, who reproduce and put emphasis on images, representations and identity formations, is presented in the daylight of Foucault's knowledge construction, Said's Othering, van Dijk's discourse analysis and Crenshaw's Intersectionality Theory. Since discourses are mainly analyzed by language use itself, the theories of this thesis start by claiming the importance of language and concepts. Language has been described as not only forming concepts about the real world, but also constituting and perpetuating the dominant understanding of social concepts and social groups. Post-colonial writers such as Morrison, Adichie and Said, allow us to dive into the deconstruction of hegemonic dominance. For example, the strategy by Said is based on his scrutinization of how positionality works and on how scholars write about the ‘other’, the individuals and the groups that are positioned far away and outside the reality of the scholars’ themselves. Said has thus shed light on a number of notions that illuminate the process behind knowledge and

identity production. The mechanism of knowledge construction can be found in the two novels regarding the new concepts on race and Black subjectivities. Adichie and Morrison are Black writers however, a different ideology on the Black identity is expressed within the two novels. Song of Solomon is written in the 1970s whereas Americanah is written in 2013. The difference in time is not the only addition of a changed discourse on and about Black subjectivities. The social and ethnic background of the authors seep inside the new discourses that they

themselves provide. Morrison, being a descendant of enslaved ancestor and now an Afro-American, and Adichie being Nigerian and therefore a non-American Black, provide interesting and contrasting interpretations and ideologies about Black subjectivity.

Being Black and belonging to a diaspora or not, is the key issue that both authors address in their novels. By addressing this issue, both are affected by the ongoing discourse about (Black) history and Black identity that they in turn remodel and renovate in their novels. Both authors dive into the construction of racial and social knowledge construction when remodelling their interpretation of Black subjectivities. This scrutinization is aligned with the analyses of

knowledge construction as is explained earlier by Foucault and Said.

Ethnological thought is another topic that is being addressed in Song of Solomon and Americanah. Adichie for example, addresses the micro aggressions that her main character

(17)

Ifemelu encounters in the States. By doing so, Adichie questions the dominant biases and connotations that people have about any person of colour coming from 'Africa'. By giving the examples of microaggressions, ethnological thought and the dominant frames of references are challenged by Adichie. Connotations seem to be interlinked ethnological thought and this in turn affects social relations. In addition, the aforementioned concepts by Foucault and Said such as documentation, perpetuated discourses, and history writing, are the elements that build up the social and political systems where decisions are made. The steps, where

anthropologists, philosophers, and historians with interests in the foundations of ethnological thought, are taken further into the next steps where policies and social discourses are

established. These language and memory based social ideologies often have the tendency to remain hooked in our perception, hence the strong connotations or microaggressions. And these perceptions are in turn, utilized for not only describing but also comprehending the social world with its various social groups. This process, is the very essence of a construction of a social power system, and from this system, various racial and ethnical identities are

constructed. These racial identities such as the Black identity, can confront, conflict and challenge one another as it appears in Song of Solomon and Americanah.

Furthermore, Black subjectivity, identity politics, and identitarian discourses that are read in political novels, mainly depart from institutionally intensified concepts that are reproduced by various micro encounters. Political changes as is written in literary works, or as can be seen in institutions, will therefore also craft new pathways. In these pathways, new concepts of

identity and discourse can develop. The configuration of the proclaimed field of discourse also involves structures of coexistence. The delineated and constituted concepts about racial, ethnical and political identities are linked to a field of presence, a field where statements and discourses are formulated and have gained ground in institutions. This field can be seen as the field of everyday political utterances.

In order to understand how literary novels and activist authors such as Morrison and Adichie operate in the field of discourse, we ought to understand the power relations that played a role when documenting racial, social and ethical data. The emergence of historical concepts may be documented in archives, but those documents itself should, however, not solely be considered as the fortunate tool of history. For example, in Morrison’s Song of Solomon, the importance of the unwritten enslavement history, before knowing thy true self, is stressed for

(18)

the main character Milkman. Milkman is challenged and triggered to research his roots in order to understand his own 'self' in his specific 1930s and 1960s America. The alienating effects of racism on Milkman are provided by Morrison in the light of a personal self- discovery where racial awareness plays a pivotal role. This self-discovery of Milkman can be read as Morrison's call for historical (Black) awareness of the self when your history is not the

dominant history being taught or provided. Moreover, historical dominance in documentation prospers in dominance of the known epistemology (Foucault,1972). Not only epistemology and concepts, as is explained by Foucault, play a role in crafting Black subjectivities but also the idea of finding one's origin plays a role. This idea on origin, original culture, and original Black identity will be used to analyze and to display the contrasting interpretations of the Black identity within the novels of Morrison and Adichie.

The two novels offer different ideologies about the interpretation of Black identities and different explanations for ‘the coming of age’ of their characters that live in a racial and (post)colonial world. These racial and (post)colonial worlds in which the two different novels occur and play out, also bear different, self-proclaimed, Black writers with conflicting Black identities. In here, the role of the author is not dead at all, the reality of these authors’ socio- political world percolates in their formations of the Black subjectivity and the Black Identity and thus, in the discourse of Identity Politics. Not only do these authors mirror the socio- political worlds in different (historical) times, they set into motion the re-construction and re- memories of meanings and identities within various Black communities.

Creating a New Black

The differences in comprehending and signifying Black identities do not only occur in Post colonial literary works but also in everyday, race specific, discourses. Ongoing discourses about race and ethnicity thus takes place on various platforms. The new discourses on race give an insight in the new comprehensions and interpretations of racial identities. In 2014, Pharrell Williams, a Black singer in the States, expressed his own ideology on racial identity. His ideology was displayed as a reaction to an actress who insisted on being called an American instead of an African-American. Williams commenced as follow:

“New black doesn’t blame other races for our issues. The new black dreams and realizes that it’s not a pigmentation, it’s a mentality. And it’s either going to work for you, or it’s going to work against you. And you’ve got to pick the side you’re gonna be on”

(19)

Williams suggest that his Black identity is considered as ‘New Black’ in which an a-historical relativism is taking place. The ‘New Black’ apparently will and cannot focus on its pigmentation and appearance, because the new Black in here relies on mentality, a mentality that can be realized in a colourless or color blind zone. What do colourless concepts of the New Black say about America’s intricate racialized and racist legacy? What reactions did it encounter and what did the birth of such a new discourse do with other discourses? For example, Martha

Nussbaum (1996) describes the New Black ideology as an item that is attached to the ‘progressive’ black American quarters, of a cosmopolitan ‘allegiance to the worldwide

community of human beings’ in her article called “Patriotism and cosmopolitanism” (Nussbaum 1996, p. 4). It seems that the normalization of a cosmopolitan identity where all intersections of identity crafting is avoided, is also eschewing racial prejudice and prescriptiveness. In the twentieth century, there was a Renaissance based and energized notion of the ‘new negro’. This concept was coined by Alain Locke, as is written in his book called The New Negro (1925). This was in the 1920s, their new discourse on racial conceptualization and racial identity. Phiri (2017), for example, expresses the view on the New Black identity, without its historical understanding, as problematic and brings the micro-structure of identity crafting back into the macro field of history and power relations. She described the movements towards and the realization of this new concept as a way in which individuals unburden and detach themselves from the overarching problems that consider the politics around being Black. Phiri expresses her concern as follow:

“The twenty-first century ‘new black’ differently champions the idea of racial rehabilitation and esteem in the face of historical black oppression. With the inauguration of America’s first African-American president in 2008 and the intimation thereof of a ‘post-racial’, ‘post-Black’ society, the ‘new black’ actively aspires from within (the strictures of) his/ her own community, to unburden himself/herself of his/her blackness – conventionally interpreted and politically imbued – and assume his/her rightful place in an ideologically ordained existential order in which existence precedes essence, in which s/he is able to a priori ‘begin from the subjective’ (Sartre 1973, p. 26, Phiri:122:2017)

Notwithstanding all the aspirations for the ‘new Black’ which is detaching its racial identity from historical and political changes, the continuing institutionalized racism, oppression, exclusion, and deprivation is according to Phiri the evidence that the universal idea of the new Black that is imposed on Black subjectivities is incommensurable. Subjectivities create racial

(20)

identities due to lived realities and specificities that explain the context bound surrounding of Black life.

Let us turn to the discourses that call for new or different conceptualizations of being Black. What constitutes the diffraction and emission of an already known, dominant discourse that has to make room for a current one? First, we can determine the possibilities for change. Change can find its derivations from the points where incompatibilities occur. During the rise of incompatibilities, two concepts or two objects can occur in the same discursive field or

formation. They might be perceived as a substitution for one another, or they might be seen as a radical change in perspective. However, both discursive formations are formed within the changing surroundings of a specific time. It seems that time and place bound factors affect the language of discourse when ongoing changes iterate. If the new concept is being portrayed as a better solution and thus a better substitution, the mechanism of for change is then averted. We can detect that conflicting elements derive from conflicting perspectives on social

constructions such as race and racial identity. In other words, the change in discourse does not constitute a gap where non-identities can be found. Instead, it constitutes a continuous series where sub-groups form and reform the dominant conceptions. Raw materials, new materials, and new discourses thus enter the realm where the importance of voice is being stressed before perpetuating a newly formed discourse. However, new materials will not always enter the field where discursive decisions are made. The discursive formation will always be essentially incomplete. A discursive formation does not absorb therefore all the available volume that is unlocked to it. Therefore, a given discursive formation may announce and expose new possibilities and new interpretations of socially constructed objects. This new interpretation of socially constructed objects can be seen in the aforementioned arguments between the African-Americans singers and actors when some of them call for the birth of a New Black identity that does not solely focus on skin colour. This reaction and call for a New Black identity seem to emerge from the ongoing discourse that did not accord a voice to the diverse interpretations of a certain concept.

Hence the recent forms of racial identifications. Moreover, when taking into account the Black identity and the New Black identity, there seems to be a new form of the Black identity in which the universality of Blackness is dismissed. This universality that appears to overarch

(21)

various racial identities is now being surpassed by the call for intersectionality. This call for a broader understanding of one’s Black identity will further be analyzed in the two novels that clearly contradict one another in the belief of universality. Furthermore, as Harold Bloom argues, Morrison herself depicts that “discourse, definitions, and historical methods are neither arbitrary nor objective; they are tools in the system of power relations (Bloom 2007, p,84-86). Therefore, when analyzing definitions of the Black identity one has to consider that “definitions belonged to the definers…...not the defined” (Morrison 1998, p.190).

Conclusion

This chapter has delineated the various frameworks that reflect the field of politicized racial identities within Americanah and Song of Solomon and in its discourse analysis. This chapter has shown that universality claims that appears to overarch various racial identities is now being surpassed by the call for intersectionality. A call for a broader understanding of the Black identity will further be analyzed in the following chapters where the two novels will show their overlap and contradiction in the belief of universality. The novels by Morrison and Adichie thus show the ruptures that relate to the constitution of (new) Black identities deriving from (new) socially constructed and/or interpreted knowledge. These politicized novels by Morrison and Adichie are the playground in which (Black) identities maneuver and re-emerge. In sum, the interplay of all these frameworks will provide a more nuanced and a more fluid interpretation of the formations and negotiations of political, cultural and historical identities. Identitarian definitions within literary works lays at the core of new discourses.

(22)

“No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.” (Toni Morrison, “ Conversations” (2008))

In this chapter, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison will be analyzed through the frameworks of discourse analysis, historical knowledge, and intersectionality. With these frameworks, we can detect the emergence of new (Black) identities and subjectivities that are constituted and negotiated by the protagonists and characters in this narrative. These social constructs, e.g. identities, are created by the authors. Hence, the conveyed ideologies about the Black identity will thus be analyzed. The allegedly unchangeable roads for (re)discovering (Black) identities are now conveyed in reused, re-established and re-negotiated identitarian concepts. These concepts delineate the fluid and flexible interpretations of the Black subject. This chapter will explore how the novels were created and why they adopted and adapted some ideologies about the Black identity. In sum, this chapter will explore how a (new) Black subject is conceptualized and reclaimed in Song of Solomon.

Reconnecting with Roots

A quest for cultural and historical identity is displayed in Morrison’s Song of Solomon. The novel is based on an African-American folktale about eluding slavery by opting to fly back to Africa. The novel's’ protagonist is Milkman Dead, a young man who is estranged from his family, never accumulated cultural knowledge, and thus is alienated from himself and his ethnic heritage. Even though he is aware of his social role as a son to his father or of his social role as a heterosexual man, he seems to be lost in his cultural heritage. His identity as a Black man is unclear and limited to him. Milkman’s estrangement from family, the Black community, and his cultural roots renders him in void spaces where only a ‘dead’ and lifeless soul could be nurtured. It seems that Milkman is mentally enslaved and spiritually dead, but with the help of his eccentric aunt, Pilate, and his best friend, Guitar Bains, he is encouraged to embark on a journey where his physical and spiritual endurance levels will be tested. The journey that Milkman is undertaking enables him to reconnect with his family's past and through that the history of African American as a people.

(23)

New Blackness

Starting in the 1930s and manoeuvering mostly in the 1950s in Michigan, Song of Solomon presents Milkman Dead as the New Negro of the twentieth century. Milkman and his habits convey the New Negro as a heartless landlord who adheres to the principles of materialism and individualism in which capitalist values are redeemed. This new concept of the New Negro derives as an antithetical manoeuver from being enslaved and owning nothing. The legacy brought to Milkman by his own father bred the ideology of owning, accumulating and gaining materials. According to Milkman’s father, one could not be a free man and have meaning in this world if one did not own something. The legacy of owning, materialism and capitalism have created the Milkman as he is now today; ruthless and empty, married to a capitalist value system. Milkman’s is perceived as a spiritually ‘dead’ individual due to this detachment of cultural and historical roots. His detachment from historical and cultural identity eventually hounds him in a state of restlessness. His sense of self-indulgence and selfishness influences Milkman’s decision to start his travel down South, pursuing an inheritance - a fortune of gold that exists in the ‘rumours’ of his family in which the alleged fortune of gold was once hidden by grandfather Jake. However, Milkman’s commenting on this material ‘hidden fortune of gold’ quest turns its tide; the quest transforms into an esoteric journey of coming of age and self-discovery in which Milkman’s new input and new insights are accumulated from the African-American mythologies and folklores he is surrounded with. Spiritually ‘dead’ is being

transformed into spiritually elevated and activated. Morrison introduces Milkman into and embeds him into an “Africanist cosmology and sensibility” as Phiri (2017) argues in her article Expanding Black Subjectivity in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. These new insights that Milkman encounters is significant according to Phiri, who clarifies Morrison's infusion of characters with supernatural figures, “pointedly advocates black mythology and folklore as necessary ‘cultural information’ and education” (Phiri,2017). The new insights into a cultural and historical identity have a collective, uniformity, validity and legitimacy effect on the protagonist due to the functions of folklore that is used as a reference to cultural identity as is argued by Bascom (1965) and Dorson(1972) in Four Functions of Folklore. Milkman, throughout his journey and on the lands of his ancestors, is informed of the myth of Solomon. This myth is known in their community as the ‘flying African,’ he (Solomon) who defied slavery and who defied his slave master by refusing everything and elevating above the land and flying back to Africa, to his roots.

(24)

Milkman who just has stepped into the realms where the notions; ancestors, myths, and historical awareness, is celebrated is ultimately persuaded to constitute a new political and new cultural ancestry for himself. His journey brought him the tools to establish a new lineage and a New Black Identity in which the Black identity proclamations of other Black folks also played a role for Milkman. For example, ‘his people’ and the children he meets sing,

remember, honour and ritualize the song of Solomon:

“Solomon and Ryna Belali Shalut Yaruba Medina Muhammet too. Nestor Kalina Saraka cake. Twenty-one children, the last one Jake! O Solomon don’t leave me here

Cotton balls to choke me

O Solomon don’t leave me here Buckra’s arms to yoke me Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone

Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home” (p. 303)

It seems that Milkman’s spiritual and metaphysical pilgrimage is meant to instil rituals, as is argued by Slotkin (1986) in Myth and the Production of History, the songs by these children can be interpreted as ‘the ritualized emotions, habitual association, memory, nostalgia’ (Slotkin 1986, p. 83) that re-voice the identitarian discourses of the Black identity, stretching from the past into the present. This re-voicing encapsulates a new freedom, a new celebration of the Black self, and this process of cultural discovery was all that Milkman needed. Even though the utterances by these local children might seem as unfathomable, the vernacular children' "Song of Solomon" here operates as a ‘signifier’ of the ‘signified’ difference that “blackness makes within the larger political culture and its historical unconscious” that Henry Louis Gates argues in his work The Signifying Monkey. (1988, p. 45). The expressions of the Black self, the self as an individual and the self as part of a community, as part of an oppressed identity, Song of Solomon seems to act out as a self- reflexive form deriving from oral cultural legacy and storytelling. Morrison seems to portray the importance of cultural storytelling and the importance of historical awareness as the proper pavements that lead to the achievement of an ‘imaginative rediscovery…[of] the history of all enforced [black] diasporas’ (Hall 1990, p.

(25)

224). In here, Morrison is utilizing the Song of Solomon as a trigger and as a prompt that will help Milkman to reconsider his Black identity and thus ‘meditate on the power of [his

enslaved] ancestors’ as is argued by Molefi Kete Asante (1988) in his article called

“Afrocentricity”. Morrison and Asante both use the Afrocentric paradigm when analyzing ideas, concepts, and personalities that bring a revolutionary shift in thinking and conveying information, in which Black agency and Black orientation has been stressed. Morrison seems to use the identity-based pilgrimage of Milkman also as a form in which he responsibly can piece together his place of existence, his place of belonging, and his place of self-proclamation. Milkman thus belongs to the deeper layers of history of the United States, and specifically to an Africanist cultural history ‘within the context of the African continuum’ as is argued by Gay Wilentz in “Binding Cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora” (1992, p. 91). The pilgrimage, the journey, and the awareness of crafting a Black identity that Milkman is going through can allegedly best be experienced in the wilderness of the rural South, where his old baggage can be disposed of, and new equipment can be gained. Milkman’s old, empty, materialist and ‘detached from the world’ sense of self has been stripped away physically and mentally while diving deeper in his quest in the South. This sense of stripping old things off and equipping oneself with new comprehensions of the self is referred to as a male peacock, by his best friend Guitar Bains who described the animal as a symbol of narcissism which ‘can’t fly no better than a chicken.’ Guitar Bains then continues with: ‘Can’t nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down’ (p. 179).

In here, Guitar is emphasizing the weakness of being weighed down by the empty narcissism that will and cannot feed the soul and the self in the process of development. Being weighed down, whether by a narcissistic or devalued past, is seen as a ‘deformity’ of the mind (p. 62) by the narrator. Curing the mindset of being weighed down seems to be lying in the stripping off mechanisms. Milkman is in need of stripping off and letting go, he is in need of “the

manifestation of [a] historical] psychosocial disability that prevents him from ‘standing straight’, an apparently negated Milkman is here seemingly internally re-formed for being relieved of his superfluous, external ‘baggage’ (Phiri,2017). In all of these mental and physical challenges that he encounters, lays the core value 4of his Black identity, who is he and what does he have and what does his history mean to him? A coming of age and an agitation of his reflexivity is encapsulated in a description of Milkman, where he is sunken in the deep thoughts about the new self, as is presented in the scene were Milkman walks in a deserted place, after having

(26)

processed all of his new experiences, with the children and their song and with the Black folks Down South. His awareness of his new self is displayed in the following:

“He could barely see his own hand, and couldn’t see his feet. He was only his breath, coming slower now, and his thoughts. The rest of him had disappeared

…There was nothing here to help him – not his money, his car, his father’s reputation, his suit, or his shoes. In fact they hampered him. Except for his broken

watch, and his wallet with about two hundred dollars, all he had started out with on his journey was gone: his suitcase with the Scotch, the shirts, and the space for bags of gold; his snap-brim hat, his tie, his shirt, his three-piece suit, his socks, and his shoes. His watch and his two hundred dollars would be of no help out here, where all a man had was what he was born with, or had learned to use. And endurance.” (Morrison p. 277)

One may ask, what ideology of the Black identity is displayed here. According to Phiri (2017), this passage of Milkman demonstrates the limitations of an identity to an a priori “existential basics predicated on a black (literary) survivalist trope, Milkman is relieved of his psychosocial disability” (p.17). This means that Milkman has transformed or is transforming his New Black identity. Within this process, he is casting away his father’s injunction of owning items and money, the idea of materialism that once seemed enough to become someone. The ideology that money and materialism could convey freedom is now an idea that Milkman has to detach himself from. Morrison’s advocacy for self-reflection, responsible freedom and valued Black history prevails in her works and especially in Song of Solomon, where the protagonist

Milkman has to undergo a transformation from non-valued, non- recognized Black identity into a new form of Black identity which recognizes and values the history of enslavement. According to Morrison, in Rootedness: The Ancestor and Foundation, a group identity that has its roots in a certain history is of paramount importance and when deviating from this, one aims to occupy a ‘spiritually dangerous position of being self- sufficient, having no group that you’re

dependent on’ (1984, p. 238). Milkman is maturing and changing his concepts of the Black self. At first, he is mesmerized by the folklore storytelling that honour the work and the resilience of the enslaved ancestors. Later, he starts to value his aunt Pilate’s gained ‘deep concern for and about human relationships’ (p.149) by acknowledging not the empty capitals, but the

‘intersubjective, communal and communitarian principles that traditionally inform black life’(Phiri,2017). And this seems to echo ideologically and thematically in all of Morrison’s novels. Morrison has characterized black lives as ‘living history’ (Jones and Vinson 1994, p.171), a belief that is enacted in her novels where she consistently puts her emphasis on the

(27)

based, identities. Morrison weights the historical, social and cultural past as a core value. In her novels, such as in the Song of Solomon one can detect the symbolically emphasized

pilgrimages to the past, e.g. Milkman’s pilgrimage, where the history of one’s ancestor is perceived as ‘the reservoir of culture that has been uprooted’ as is described by Susan Willis in “Eruptions of Funk” in which she also stresses the ‘intrusion of the past into the present’ that offers a ‘vision of an alternative social world’ (1982, pp. 37, 41).

Milkman's cultural and historical roots are infiltrating his new self-consciousness. Milkman’s material and metaphysical experiences in this journey convolutes what Guitar highlights as the ‘condition that our condition is in’ (p. 222) – a pre- and overdetermined, static state of

blackness’. With this statement, Guitar seems to acknowledge African-American history as a means for enabling Milkman to destroy his former dead soul and dead identity. Using this awakening as a means for change, Milkman is supported to navigate his black subjectivity with a living, embodied a sense of existential Black agency (Phiri,2017). Herein, Milkman seems to have reconstructed a new Black identity, a woke identity as is utilized by the 2014 Black Lives Matter movements. Milkman seems to have a new identity that is in touch with its roots and knows its history and position in the world. This new knowledge might have brought Milkman down, however, Milkman himself feels ‘free, but on the ground’ (Phiri, p. 220)

Keeping the Past Alive

Milkman has found liberation and self-proclamation by culturally grounding himself. The act of culturally grounding oneself will further be analyzed through Morrison's ways of conveying Black liberation. It seems that Morrison emphasizes the importance of remembering the enslavement of Black people in the past and crafting a woke and socially aware Black identity can only stem from this. Morrison also seems to portray her awareness of Black subjectivities and Black identifications to be fluid and ever moving. However, her socio- political advocacy can still be read in her descriptions of the (main) characters that undergo journey and changes for the better. There seems to be a reiteration going on in Morrison’s novels where ancestral knowledge is stressed and valued. According to Kimberly Chabot- Davis, Morrison spreads her ideology on the Black identity as a ‘political commitment to the crucial importance of deep

(28)

cultural memory, of keeping the past alive to construct a better future’ (1998, p. 242). In addition, Morrison affirms that ‘the reclamation of the history of black people in this country is paramount in its importance …and the job of recovery is ours’ (1993, p. 413) during one of her interviews with Christina Davis. The self-proclaimed Black feminist author Morrison seems to portray Milkman as a man who needed reconnection with his ancestral past and ancestral knowledge in order to find oneself and give oneself sense of belonging.

Song of Solomon ties back to the racial turbulence and racial injustice that imbued the 1950s and 1960s America, however, the Song of Solomon also neatly ties back to the recent 21st- century racial turmoil of Black Lives Matters movements. This novel cannot be outdated or be perceived as obsolete when Morrison provides her core message as the importance of self-proclamation, self-discovery and self-crafting within a society that already has labelled the marginalized groups and thus violate their right to agency. The Song of Solomon is essentially a novel about African-American cultural self-discovery, Black self-subjectivity, self-awareness and self-restoration in the face of ‘hegemonic and oppressive whiteness’ (Phiri,2017). The violation in the agency for self-proclaimed identities in a socio- political context can be seen in the awareness of Guitar when he says that ‘Niggers get their names the way they get everything else – the best way they can’ (Morrison, p. 88). Guitar, as well as Milkman, are looking for re-establishments for their own identities that are not tainted by (white) power structures, and renaming oneself is one way of re-establishing a new Black identity.

Intersectionality

Morrison has been criticized for displaying a one sided, patriarchal view of the awareness process of a Black main character who has to undergo a journey in the past in order to re- establish the Black self. According to Michelle Wright in “Can I Call You Black: The Limits of Authentic Heteronormativity”, Morrison uses the male voice in order to explain the Black historical importance for identitarian discourses (2012). The protagonists (Milkman's) 'Black self' is one sided due to its lack of the intersections of oppression such as the oppression that Black women or Black queers. The intersections play a role when it comes down to explaining or describing Black experiences and Black subjectivities since they are not only bound to men

(29)

only. Hence, Morrison has been accused of using the heteronormative and male dominated framework while describing the importance for Black subjectivity. However, Morrison herself denies this idea; she is refuting the mainstream feminist gaze by positioning herself in the realm of the African-American womanism, a term coined by Alice Walker. By positioning herself as a womanist instead of a feminist, Morrison puts the emphasis on the female and male allegiance within ethnic groups, that might experience different encounters. And those encounters do have a higher goal of being racially, socially and politically aware of the self within the ethnic group. Notwithstanding this claim for joined forces of the sexes, the Song of Solomon bears an androcentric reading. The novel sings about the elevation of the Black identity for Milkman. However, there seems to be a tendency that the roles of the women, according to Phiri (2017) are not highlighted stressed. It is in fact, says Phiri, the women within Black communities that are left behind with the weight of raising children and translating to their children the ‘complex, gender-inflected story of Blackness’ (2017). One may ask how cultural and racial legacies can be transmitted to new offspring when the main focus is pointed to the experience of a Black man struggling to find an identity. Phiri's concerns seem to be relating to her distrust in universalism about the Black identity. She stresses the notion that one’s experience and the search for Black identity does not have to surpass the others.

However, the main message in Song of Solomon seems to display a discovery of a Black identity through the male gaze.

The women in Song of Solomon do play a role in the crafting of new identities even though they might not be highlighted as such. For example, Pilate lives a life in which she distributes integrity and generosity as well as self-respect. With this, her place of belonging somewhere, to the community, is written out. In addition, reading the role of Ruth, who is nursing and raising a son that she has brought to the world in her pre-adolescent years and who is still bound to a man that denies giving any form of love or respect back to her, portrays her as a resilient woman ready to resist all defeats. These women highlight resilient but vulnerable lives in an often unseen (African-American) patriarchal society. Hence, intersectionality, the different realities of different Black subjects can be read in the various characters in Song of Solomon even though the light is mainly shed on Milkman. Female vulnerability plays a role in the striving for and quests for a new Black (decolonized) identity as well, and in order to shed light on this, one might start from an intersectional framework. It seems that the articulations of the

(30)

Womanist authors, such as Morrison in her novel Song of Solomon, may portray an inclusive environment in which Black subjectivities can be crafted. However, the narrative as a whole might not display all the sub layers of identities that are considered important within the intersectionality theory.

Conclusion

This chapter has analyzed the identitarian constitution, emergence, and negotiations of

Milkman’s awareness of the Black subject. Song of Solomon and its protagonist Milkman seem to have found the sense of truly belonging somewhere after having visited and journeyed back into Black ancestral history. The cultural awareness has been stressed by Morrison as the main ground on which self-subjectivity can be claimed and without which one might render into emptiness such as the dead soul of Milkman before his journey.

Morrison advocates historical and cultural awareness for her Black characters in order to fulfil any Black utterance. In here, we can read Morrison’s emphasis on the importance of the subjective Black being and the importance of belonging. We have also seen that Morrison, in the Song of Solomon, did not display any attention to the intersectional Black self.

Intersectionality theory showed that the women in Song of Solomon did portray stories

relating to their way of dealing, crafting and accepting a Black patriarchal society even though the main Black identity quest was being disposed of through the protagonist Milkman. The Black identity in Morrison’s novel is highlighted as only applicable to oneself once you have dived into the ancestral cultural Black history. In sum, the building of a nation, a culture and the folks themselves have to refer back to an ancestral past in order to belong.

Chapter 3: On the Possibilities of Black

“Fiction can focus on the interiority of the individual, while rejecting the unified status of subjectivity, acknowledging that the illusion of a pre given, natural quality is structured through the source of determination, language.” (“Necessary Narratives” MT Madden (1995))

(31)

This chapter will analyze how the Black identity and its negotiations are portrayed and described in Americanah. How are conceptualization about Black identities expressed by the characters and how does the voice of a non-American Black (Ifemelu) play a role in the discourse about the Black subject? How is the Black subject perceived and portrayed within and outside of the United States? The frameworks of intersectionality, discourse analysis, and historical knowledge will be used to dive into the realities of the characters in Americanah. In sum, this chapter will demonstrate how the conceptualization of the Black identity differs from the conceptualization about the Black subject that we found in Song of Solomon.

The Voyage

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has not only created an intercontinental love story but has also combined social comedy with modern attitudes to race and racism in the experiences of the main character, Ifemelu. Ifemelu starts her journey to the States as a student, not knowing she would dive into the politics of the Black identity formations that are still heatedly debated topics in the United States, and do not gain ground in such form in her home country Nigeria. Her journey starts as a teenager, looking for colleges, love, and friendship but meanwhile being fully exposed to micro aggressions and mechanisms of exclusion. It strikes Ifemelu that her roommates in America expected her to be “a real African who did not listen to

Mariah Carey and could not speak English” (41). This first encounter of the many, yet to be uttered, micro aggression about Black and African identities pave a new consciousness for Ifemelu in her new journey. Her journey resembles the one Milkman has undertaken, his quest for gold and money altered into a quest for (Black) self-awareness, Ifemelu steps into a 'double consciousness' as is coined by W.E.B. de Bois (1903) about her identity, both Black and other than just Black. The journey for Ifemelu encapsulates a broader view and a broader vantage point when stratifying the various aspects during her new Black awareness process. The repertoires of Blackness, as opposed to Song of Solomon, are extended in the novel

Americanah. The novel endeavours to display an Afro-diasporic revisionism that tries to tackle the universalism on racial and ethnical identities as is uttered by the main character herself. The breaking away from universalized notions about one’s identity is a manner “which takes into account and makes allowances for culturally specific and context- responsive

On the Possibilities of the Black Signifier