Toward “Surviving Whole”: Toni Morrison’s Revisions of the “Culture of Poverty,” 1970-1993

• In Event: The Culture of Poverty: Pity and Self-Critique in Confrontations With Poverty and School Failure, 1959-2013

Abstract

Objectives:

This paper demonstrates how language can help reject analytic categories that perpetuate inequity and challenge structures that threaten innovation. Through a textual analysis of Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), we examine representations of how people “survive whole” in the midst of helpless victimization. Morrison remakes and comments on a world of collective oppression, where even those who pity the vulnerable contribute to distorted images. Her writing forces readers to face the emotional and uncomfortable, dimensions of human experience and highlights the role of language in understanding damaging structures of poverty. We analyze narratives of survival in The Bluest Eye, explore Morrison’s concept of “revision” as it relates to educational innovation, and direct findings to an inclusive theory of culture.

Framework:

Morrison’s concepts of “revision” and “wholeness” illustrate the importance of an inclusive theory of culture that moves away from the comfort of pitying victims to “interrogating ourselves for the smashing”. Morrison offers a literary mirror for readers to reflect on how they are both participants and victims in the unbalanced distribution of status, beauty, and capital. The ongoing literary process of “revision” (as opposed to the illusion of permanent change) introduces the idea that it is impossible to inspire educational innovation before revising cultural narratives.

Data and Method:

This paper uses textual analysis to examine character identity narratives that push us to consider what it means to be another person. Data sources include interviews and critical interpretations of Morrison’s work, specifically focusing on the text of The Bluest Eye for the purposes of furthering current conceptions of the culture of poverty. Our analysis considers issues that arise when people advise others without understanding how to make themselves “whole.” We parallel their intentions with paternalistic educational narratives and methods that claim to make students whole, but build on unrevised colonial paradigms.

Findings:

Morrison implies that revision and change are not interchangeable. She defines revision as change that does not insist we see ourselves as wrong, but as capable of improvement. Her characters exemplify the problematic nature of “changing” others when we do not understand how to revise the stories we live by. Her fictional narratives are analogous to narratives of educational change. Current policies rely on a narrative of what “all” children need, but lack capacity to grasp complex stories of individual students. Student “wholeness” gets defined through a myopic, rationalized process, driving vulnerable students away from education. The narrative complexities of Morrison’s characters provide a valuable angle into educational policies that would benefit from her approach to revision.

Significance:

Analyses of fiction are deeply connected to social science research because they explore tensions between how people imagine their worlds and how they survive conditions that create realities of cultural deprivation. Morrison’s depiction of how people attempt to remain whole as they survive victimization highlights the damaging effects of pity and blame and shows how pervasive regressive attitudes towards poverty can be. It inspires inclusive conversation amongst educators and youth about challenging assumptions about the relationship between culture and poverty.

Authors

• AnnMarie Darrow Baines, The George Lucas Education Foundation

• Bronwyn Clare LaMay, Stanford University