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Sahar Jamshideyan

Academic rank: Assistant Professor
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Education: MSc.
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Faculty: Literature and Human Sciences
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Research

Title
Becoming Corporeality in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Jazz
Type
Thesis
Keywords
Volatile Bodies; Schizoanalysis; Corporeality; Rhizome; Becoming Woman
Year
2018
Researchers Sahar Jamshideyan(PrimaryAdvisor)

Abstract

The significance of body in postcolonial feminism is undeniable and the third world feminists are well aware of it. Defying against the commanding discourses, they attempt to mold influence by representing the notion of female body as an element independent from male-centered conceptions. Postcolonial female body has been investigated widely; however, Deleuzian concepts of "desiring machine", "becoming-woman", masochism and schizoanalysis (A Thousand Plateaus (1980) and Anti- Oedipus (1972)), and Grosz's ideas of corporeality and volatile bodies (Volatile Bodies (1994) and Space, Time and Perversion (1995)), still require further research. To this end, the current study analyzed Toni Morrison's two novels, Sula (1973) and Jazz (1992) in terms of women body and its function according to Gilles Deleuze and Elizabeth Grosz's theories. Schizoid body is an iconoclast body which paralyzes phallus as a united totem. It is a volatile body folded in on itself rejecting sexual dichotomies, reaching rhizomatic circulation. It moves from "being" to "becoming" which is not an imitation or resemblance, but a production without any dependence on biology. The results of the study indicated that the target characters of the selected novels possess this potentiality to rebel against the social structures which are considered as the ultimate truth. They are masochist individuals who strive to gain their subjectivity, or go beyond subjectivity and identity, through their corporeality.