Zur Hauptnavigation springen Zum Inhalt springen Zur Fußzeile springen

Vol. 6 No. 1 Envisioning Queer Racialized Self-Representations in the Americas

Bd. 6 Nr. 1 (2026): Envisioning Queer Racialized Self-Representations in the Americas

Queer Black Feminist Self-Poetics in Toni Morrison’s Sula

DOI
https://doi.org/10.25364/27.6:2026.1.3
Eingereicht
Juli 1, 2024
Veröffentlicht
2026-04-01

Abstract

This paper integrates Black and queer feminist theories to investigate the poetics of self and subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s Sula that, until now, has not been explored due to the absence of a theoretical approach that allows for the eponymous protagonist’s liberatory self-fashioning to be accessed. Drawing on critical scholarship such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Sara Ahmed, Jack Halberstam, and Lee Edelman, I critique white supremacist, cis-heteronormative, and phallogocentric influences on identity, desire, pleasure, kinship, motherhood, and community and spotlight how Morrison uses the protagonist, Sula, as a queer Black feminist technology to rupture these influences. I highlight the relevance of integrating Black feminist and queer scholarship to imagine and actualize radical notions of subjectivity, sexuality, and erotic and intellectual pleasure beyond white and masculinist affective norms and obligations.