Author Archives: Aleksandra Kus

Annotated Bib

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Gillan, Jennifer. “Focusing on the wrong front: historical displacement, the Maginot Line, and The Bluest Eye.” African American Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2002, p. 283+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A89872243/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=82c9b322. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

    • This piece discusses how the Breedloves are initially and repeatedly dehumanized through interactions with their surrounding society, and the reinforcement of the idea that they are something less than the ideal American citizen. Gillan outlines this by examining the social trends surrounding the settings Morrison chooses and how they map onto the characters and their relationships.

Hovet, Grace Ann, and Barbara Lounsberry. “Flying as Symbol and Legend in Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye,’ ‘Sula,’ and ‘Song of Solomon.’” CLA Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 1983, pp. 119–140. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44321768. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

    • Hovet and Lounsberry’s focus on flying and birds speaks directly to my topic, positioning the concepts on a timeline of Black literature. The association between flying and falling is also heavily explored, circling back into the link between animality and societal othering.

McWeeny, Jennifer. “Topographies of Flesh: Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Embodiment of Connection and Difference.” Hypatia, vol. 29, no. 2, 2014, pp. 269–286. www.jstor.org/stable/24542034. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

    • “Topographies of Flesh” as a topic is one that speaks directly to the flesh-twisting nature of the animal association. Despite this piece focusing on Beloved, it still speaks to Morrison’s greater project on race and feminism, as well as her examinations of how larger groups of people (do/n’t) relate to each other. McWeeny’s feminist approach explores this intersectionality and uses a human woman/nonhuman paradigm to explore a new kind of ontological connection that can account for the complexity of social space and what it means to take up space.

Pergadia, Samantha. “Like an Animal: Genres of the Nonhuman in the Neo-Slave Novel.” African American Review, vol. 51, no. 4, Winter 2018, pp. 288–304. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/afa.2018.0054.

    • This article looks at Morrison’s greater ideology through another of her works, using the link between slavery and animals built into the phrase “chattel slavery.” The reproduction of ideas that link physical characteristics to humanity and morality will be of particular interest, being common across racism in any era.

Vasquez, Sam. “In Her Own Image: Literary and Visual Representations of Girlhood in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, p. 58+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365688777/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=d1f1dab9. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

    • Here is the main intersection between my topic and Morrison’s parodying of dominant culture, which serves to establish the boundaries of “humanity.” The essay simultaneously expands the somewhat Americentric concepts I plan to develop to an international level with the heavy analysis of Kincaid and the sociohistorical implications of specific (animal) imagery.

Wong, Shelley. “Transgression as Poesis in The Bluest Eye.” Callaloo, vol. 13, no. 3, 1990, pp. 471–481 .JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2931331. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

    • Again using the primer as a starting point, this piece examines Morrison’s use and deformation of language on a physical level, essentially looking at the way she reformats words on the page: typographical arrangements as symbolic representations of different kinds of family situations. Wong also draws parallels between Morrison’s writing and jazz music, examining her prose as a specifically Black formation with essential qualities akin to specifically Black music. Wong argues that in spatial terms, Morrison rhymes by distributing human and animal characteristics amongst her characters, linking both through a shared materiality.

The Myth and Situation of Zidane

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Claudia Rankine and John Lucas’ video and accompanying text describing Zinedine Zidane’s infamous World Cup headbutt explores the ways in which it may be called a “situation.” The most obvious is in the literal situation in which Zidane was placed, one where he was forced to choose between keeping up a facade of calm in the face of racist verbal abuse or to respond, which he chose to do, physically. This is in line with Rankine’s explorations of media misrepresentation of famous Black figures but, somewhat surprisingly, it also evokes the repeating theme of a Black man forced into a violent confrontation and being demonized for his choices after the fact. The immediacy of Zidane’s dilemma led to his arguably rash decision, his headbutt being borne entirely of the situation. This, however, was not reflected in greater reporting on the incident. Another meaning of “situation” appears here, especially when one looks at the still frames in Citizen from which the video is created. The way in which the white-clad Zidane is situated differently to the blue-clad racist opponent in each frame tells a non-verbal story in of itself, but Rankine’s addition of various quotes adds layers of context. The evolution of Zidane’s quotes alone as the frames progress- from discussing his national pride to asking rhetorically if one thought he “wanted to do that,” to his description of the racist phrases having “’touched the deepest part of [him]’”- shed light on how the two men were societally situated to each other, and in which direction the power flowed (Zidane qtd. in Rankine, 102, 103). This greater societal situating is backed up by Rankine’s choices of Fanon and Baldwin to provide the bulk of the other quotes accompanying the images. With the greater context, Zidane is no longer a sports trivia fact, but a victim of hate with an understandable response.

Rankine’s choice to create a film-based version of her “situation,” as well as to place it in her book, demands that closer attention be paid to what could be thought of as one small passage in a large text. The film version of Rankine’s analysis of Zidane is almost painfully slow, his body moving alongside his racist opponent in slow, sudden jerks that feel almost painful with the accompanying words. What can be read somewhat quickly in text form, the film strip of images on the page easy to stop and take in, is turned into a challenging experience. The text’s repetition of BLACK-BLANC-BEUR, between long lines, add an almost official atmosphere to the text. The video, by contrast, is accompanied by an unsettling droning noise. Another highly significant difference is the stripping away of quote attribution in the video. What is, in Citizen, a textual analysis that almost rises to an annotation of a misunderstood moment, becomes a collage of incisive and inherently personal statements that may all be either attributed to or discussing the blurry Zidane. With this forced frame-by-frame perspective and the sound choices that direct one’s attention and emotion, Rankine makes more prominent than at any point in the text the theme of experiencing. This is as close as we can come to being inside Zidane’s head in that pivotal moment, with Rankine’s curated words helping us to more fully empathize and understand.

(Not so Simple) Bibliography

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Gillan, Jennifer. “Focusing on the wrong front: historical displacement, the Maginot Line, and The Bluest Eye.” African American Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2002, p. 283+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A89872243/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=82c9b322. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

Hovet, Grace Ann, and Barbara Lounsberry. “Flying as Symbol and Legend in Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye,’ ‘Sula,’ and ‘Song of Solomon.’” CLA Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 1983, pp. 119–140. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44321768. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

McWeeny, Jennifer. “Topographies of Flesh: Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Embodiment of Connection and Difference.” Hypatia, vol. 29, no. 2, 2014, pp. 269–286. www.jstor.org/stable/24542034. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

Vasquez, Sam. “In Her Own Image: Literary and Visual Representations of Girlhood in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, p. 58+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365688777/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=d1f1dab9. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

Wong, Shelley. “Transgression as Poesis in The Bluest Eye.” Callaloo, vol. 13, no. 3, 1990, pp. 471–481 .JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2931331. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

In beginning my research for this project, I knew I would mainly be relying on the resources provided by databases accessed through the Hunter Library. However, I also planned to utilize the New York Public Library databases, as demonstrated to me by a NYPL staff member during a trip with my translation theory class last year, which I’ve come to see as invaluable, especially for more niche research topics. In searching through these two portals, I realized that my main citations would come from JSTOR and Academic Search Premiere. Combining my search terms of “Toni Morrison” and/or “The Bluest Eye” with “animal,” “nature,” and “bird” produced an acceptable amount of success, supplying a fair number of articles that I could choose from, but honestly not as many as I hoped for. Between the two portals, I think I browsed every peer-reviewed journal related to animal imagery in the novel, and was surprised with how few examine the book in this context, especially in comparison to some other critical lenses. This may not be a bad thing!

Citizen and Normalized Dehumanization

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The second image in Rankine’s Citizen is fascinating as much for its layered meaning as its viscerally disturbing nature. The best way to describe it, superficially, is a human face mapped onto a deer or other small animal. The deer is in a vulnerable position, matching the face’s confused, troubled expression. The image is contextualized directly by the text that precedes it; Rankine discusses an ironically traumatic experience at the office of a therapist who “specializes in trauma counseling” (22). A reference to “deer grass,” specifically in her description of the moments before the screaming begins, implies a connection between the narrator and animal. This is furthered by the description of the startled therapist as “a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd,” which creates a predator-prey relationship where there should be one of openness and vulnerability; the mention of “rosemary” alongside deer grass becomes sinister, bringing to mind its food connotations (22). These elements are all combined into the form of the image on the next page, the uncanny animal becoming the image of a human victimized. The humanity of the animal is, of course, accentuated by its human face. The face is not a normal skin color, but the features seem to suggest that this is an African-American face mapped onto the animal. The racial implications of the interaction between the narrator and the therapist, if they were at all unclear before, become fully textual. The combination of animal and human can now be understood as an expression of the inhumanity to which African-Americans are often subjected. The narrator’s final words in the preceding passage, “I’m so sorry, so, so sorry,” feed into both this societal subservience and the nearly-wounded positioning of the deer (22).

The unsettling nature of the deer’s face is another site rich with multiple meanings. The unsettling nature of the artificial, Photoshopped face brings to mind the concept of the uncanny valley, the capacity for computer-generated images which look close to humans without fully achieving the effect look much more upsetting than more perfect or less precise representations. The dots on the face, the weird cropping, and the unnatural color make the face on the animal seem wrong, almost damaged or disfigured. Given the preceding text, it seems that Rankine is making a strong statement on the capacity for white people to perceive the humanity of Black people. The human-faced deer is unquestionably similar to the average human, but with enough visible alterations that a feeling of wrongness is created. It is as if someone made a clumsy attempt at hybridizing a deer and a human in Photoshop, which again stands as a good metaphor for the manner in which people such as the trauma therapist make attempts at helping others without unraveling their own fear and prejudice. A strange line, that “the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly,” is finally recontextualized from an odd description to an alien experience on the narrator’s end (22). She is so far removed from her environment that she can not even recognize a doorbell button, both herself and the therapist experiencing distressing strangeness, but with one of them able to retreat into the comfort of whiteness while the other must be constantly seen as an animal.