| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學系 === 85 ===
Toni Morrison has created in Sula a narrative which is untraditional in terms of Black female portraiture, subjectification, and self-identification. This study, focusing on the two heroines--Sula and Nel, attempts to provide a trinary interpretation of the self-Other relationship between them in order to present the inner contradictions and complexities among the Black female community.
Bakhtinian Dialogism is adopted to examine Sula and Nel's adolescent intimacy. Language as an ideal media provides both of them opportunities to know themselves and the Other better in their numerous dialogues. By making good use of their situational differences, inherently or ideologically, they achieve a complementary inter-subjectivities. However, at the end of this section the study challenges the effectiveness of Bakhtinian dialogism because of the fragile dialogic premises.
Sula's return to Medallion inaugurates a different stage of their relationship. Sartrean Subject-Other paradigm is used to scrutinize this stage of their mutual objectification. After normal communicative language is abandoned, they appeal to means of invalidating, mystificating, and isolating the Other while they desperately try to protect their own subjectivity.
Pretending to ignore each other does not prevent them from facing the paradox of their self-Other contradictions. Lacanian psychoanalytic approach is taken to explain Nel's epiphany after Sula'd death.Their identifications can be traced back to the linguistic context they are placed in; and the issues of language and female subjectivity are re-defined.
Applying theories concerning self-Other relations from Bakhtin, Sartre, and Lacan to study a text focusing on the Black female community, this thesis manifests how unlikely the blance between self and the Other is to be achieved. However, at the same time the study presents the richness of a marginal group's existence and advocates an open and pluralized society by visualizing a space for "the Other."
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