Reader, text, and subjectivity: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' as Lacan's gaze qua object

Style, Fall, 1996 by Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber

transference is the means by which the communication of the unconscious is interrupted, by which the unconscious closes up again. Far from being the handing over of powers to the unconscious, the transference is, on the contrary, its closing up. . . . [T]he discourse of the Other that is to be realized, that of the unconscious, is not beyond the closure, it is outside . . . [and] calls for the reopening of the shutter. . . . If the transference is only repetition, it will always be repetition of the same missed encounter. . . . [T]he unconscious . . . which is inside the subject . . . can be realized only outside, that is to say, in that locus of the Other.

(Four Fundamental 130; 131; 143; 147)

In these terms, the gaze in Morrison's text functions as the discourse of the Other, functioning outside the unconscious and facilitating a momentary "reopening of the shutter" to provide glimpses of what is repressed. These moments produce the pieces of the real that unsettle the reader.

Within this framework, I suggest that readers' responses to texts such as Morrison's Beloved and Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust differ as a result of the presentation of the gaze qua object. Both authors write about the African-American experience so as to delineate the lingering psychological and social effects of slavery. Yet, while Faulkner's work paints a moving and sorrowful picture of the South, Morrison's work - haunting, unsettling, brutal - hits one on a more visceral level. For example, at the close of Intruder in the Dust, I am appeased by the triumph of innocence and the bright outlook for the future. But the ending of Beloved only disturbs and burdens me and disrupts my peace of mind. While reader response differs depending upon "multiple constituencies," I suggest that my varying responses stem from a different engagement with the gaze of the other. Faulkner's nostalgic treatment masks the antinomy between eye and gaze, while Morrison's montage strategy produces the "surplus of the real" that is the "threatening gaze of the other." Faulkner's text reveals the evils that white society would like to repress (reminiscent of "minstrel" show stereotypes), but not the gaze of the other (for example, the African-American perspective). In other words, the reader of Faulkner, to borrow Zizek's term, fails to "look awry," missing the anamorphic spot.

To illustrate the distinction between masking the anxiety produced by glimpses of the real and unmasking this anxiety, the phenomenon of minstrel/blackface proves useful. As early as the sixteenth century, as part of the Commedia dell'Arte and performances of Shakespeare, white actors blackened their faces (often with burnt cork) to portray black characters (Leonard 3).(3) This practice of whites performing in blackface serves to mask identity anxiety on the part of whites. By "acting out" in blackface the identity of the Other, the actors (and, vicariously, the audience) ensure their subject positions; "the blackface minstrel could assert his superiority by making blacks the butt of his comedy" (Ostendorf 68). White anxiety becomes masked as blackness; therefore, blackface reconstitutes white identity (Tate). Through this vehicle, the white subjects "see themselves seeing" and avoid confrontation with the gaze or the real. In a similar way, the nostalgic presentation in Faulkner's text enables white readers to "see themselves seeing."