SEEING AND BEING SEEN: WHITE VISUAL REGIMES AND BLACK MEMORY IN THE BLUEST EYE
Pallavi Chauhan
Research Scholar Career Point University (CPU), Kota; Pallavi4908@gmail.com
Dr. Neeta Audhichya
Associate Professor, Career Point university , Kota; neetaaudichya@gmail.com
Dr. Subhash Verma*
Assistant Professor, Govt. Degree College, Himachal Pradesh; Subhash.hpu@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This study examines the destructive metanarrative of Western beauty standards and the “white gaze” as portrayed in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. By analyzing mid-20th-century American aesthetic norms, the research explores how black memory is fractured and reconstituted through the tragic trajectory of Pecola Breedlove. Rather than viewing beauty as mere aesthetic taste, this paper positions it as a form of dogmatized colonization designed to marginalize the racial “Other.”
Using a postmodern theoretical framework, the analysis challenges monolithic physical ideals and interrogates the validity of absolute cultural “truths.” The investigation focuses on Pecola’s internalized desire for blue eyes and her obsession with white iconographic culture—specifically Shirley Temple and Mary Jane candies—as embodiments of “grand narratives” that precipitate her psychological collapse. Furthermore, the study highlights Morrison’s use of “mini-narratives” to dismantle colonial beauty parameters. By contrasting the lived experiences of the Breedlove and MacTeer families with the unattainable perfection of white domesticity, the research demonstrates how postmodern fragmentation offers a site of resistance against totalizing cultural standards. Ultimately, the paper argues that Pecola’s descent into madness is a rational consequence of epistemic violence. It concludes that reclaiming black memory necessitates the destruction of inherited colonial aesthetics in favor of a pluralistic comprehension of identity.
Keywords: white gaze, colonial identity, beauty standards, blue Eye, black memory, Shirley Temple, meta-narrative, mini-narrative
Citation of this paper:
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