Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Gabriel García Márquez’s Del amor y otros demonios (Of Love and Other Demons, 1994) are two novels that explore the dangers and potentialities of what I call “black love.” My focus is on forms of wounded embodiment and the unexpected expressions of love that spring forth from these wounds. By exposing the pathologization of black love, these texts also engage in the ongoing debate between the rational and the irrational. As such, Beloved and Del amor y otros demonios offer rich terrain for the exploration of questions of identity and subjectivity through a phenomenological lens. Ultimately, Morrison and García Márquez rewrite histories of oppression by emphasizing perspectives from the underside of modernity and explore new definitions of love that have the power to heal the wounds of coloniality.
Event Details
Of Beloved and Other Demons: (De)Pathologizing Black Love in Morrison and Garcia Marquez
- Speaker: Carolyn Ureña
- Event Type: Graduate Student Colloquia
- Speaker University: Rutgers University
- Event Date: 2014-10-14