Othering and Internalisation of Stereotypes in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Literature University of Nottingham (School of Canadian and American Studies) course: American studies language: English abstract: Racism and sexism are endemic to the stereotypical othering enterprise that brackets black female subjectivity in a forced homogeneity. Doubly stereotyped as the racial and sexual other black women risk being forced to signify the negative counterpart in a binary system of cultural and political representation. Usually white and male the defining subject associates negatively inflected traits with the defined other - in this context a black female - while reserving positive attributes for its own definition and identification. In recasting black women's subjectivity in fiction Morrison admits the existence of racial and sexual stereotypes. From her first published novel The Bluest Eye Morrison challenges and deconstructs the double plight of black women in the U.S. by exposing first the processes involved in racial and gendered othering and second the consequent internalised effects that transmute into self-othering.