Adhikari 1

Sandhya Adhikari

Janak Poudel

ENGL 578.1

7 January 2024

Hall’s constructivist approach to racial representation in Tony Morrison’s “Beloved”

Staurt Hall’s constructivist approach through semiotic and discursive aspects is the main

agenda in this paper. This article highlights the racial regime of stereotyping in Tony Morrison’s

masterpiece “Beloved”. Wood’s Paper on “Stuart Hall’s cultural studies and the problem of

hegemony” questions the theoretical orientations of cultural studies as to be postmodern and

discursive by examining Stuart Hall, focusing in particular on the problem of hegemony.

According to Wood, “Hall’s predicament suggests that social life must be theorized as something

more than a pliant diversity of sites. The problem of the hegemony calls for an account of

cultural and group formation as distinct from their political and ideological construction.”

Groosberg in his paper, “History, politics and postmodernism Stuart Hall and cultural studies”

focus on the ideology, hegemony and the social formation. Hall’s critical dialogue and struggle

with texts re-inflecting into his own understanding of history as an active struggle is highlighted.

In the words if Grossberg, “Hall refuses the relativism: although theories and descriptions are

always ideological, their ‘truth’ is measured in the context of concrete historical struggles, their

adequacy judged by the purchase they give us for understanding the complex and contradictory

structure of any field of social practices, for seeing beyond the taken-for granted to the ongoing

struggles of domination and resistance.” Murji’s paper on “An interventionist sociologist: Stuart

Hall, public engagement and racism” illustrates the idea of Hall as an interventionist sociologist

through three examples of his public works on race and racism, exemplifying his well-known use
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of conjunctural analysis. For Murji. “The purpose is to seek to disambiguate Hall form the public

intellectual label; and in resituating him highlight his public engagements on race as

interventions in and as sociology.”

Hall’s idea of constructivist notion of racial representation is well highlighted through

semiotic trauma in the novel. The novel highlights the hegemonic oppressing racial minorities

that possess disheartening attacks. Morrison had her character Nan and Sethe’s mother who was

brutalized in different events. The brutality is vividly presented in the semiotic of sign. America,

which is often considered to be the unending dream of liberty and prosperity, happens to be the

passage of beginning the chain of misery for these women. The signifiers presented here has the

signified of brutality and misery that Nan and Sethe’s mother will endure as women enslaved on

a plantation. Morrison’s description of the Sethe’s mother’s background through Nan has got

pathetic sign. Barth’s second order semiological system is found in the text. Morrison’s narrator

calls Nan the one who “had one good arm and half of another….” Barth’s concept of second

order semiotic lies here in the underlying reality of portraying blacks. ‘One good arm’ identifies

the actual strength that black woman has. The good arm is capable of doing so many things and

blacks do possess that good arm. Hall’s constructivist theory of representation is here where the

Morrison’s narrator portrays ‘a good arm’ of the Black woman. But the ‘half of another’ is again

Barth’s second order semiological system of sign. The half another is not only the half arm in

physical sense. It has a lot to do with the trauma that black have come through. ‘Half of another’

perhaps is amputed by whites. The half arm can also be the helplessness that blacks has

encountered throughout their life. Morrison semiotic presentation of the sign is where the point

aligns with Hall’s constructivist theory. Hall at a point takes the understanding of Saussure’s

construction of language as a way for racial representation. Saussure’s langue and parole is
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representation of stereotyping for Hall. This thesis of what Hall is displaying is well-crafted in

the narratives of ‘Beloved’. Saussure langue lies in very general description of the harsh

treatment that blacks have on the whites. But the parole here is the result of that agonizing

viciousness which Sethe’s mother has faced. The langue lies in the sexual exploitation that she

has to go through by the crew in the ship. Langue here becomes something that we all have been

learning, reading, knowing about the history of Blacks’ lynching and punishing in the hand of

whites. But Morrison’s focus isn’t on the Saussure’s langue; she is more into the parole. She

audaciously narrates what that woman who had been raped was to carry the consequences in her

womb. She had no option other than throwing the child, ‘she threw them all’. Underlying

structure is of course the rape on the hand of whites but surface structure had much more

connotative meaning. The woman threw whites, she threw one from crew, she threw without

names. The outcome is grim and pathetic. ‘Beloved’ has the racial stereotyping hegemony in all

the way possible.

Morrisons’s beloved also encompasses the discursive constructivist practice where Hall

brings forward the concept of Foucault. Foucauldian idea of power, truth and knowledge is a

way of construction of racial representation in Morrison’s novel. Powerful whites’ way of

representing blacks becomes ultimate truth of knowledge for blacks. The truth that whites poured

on blacks women in the ‘Beloved’ is that black women are means to reproduce some more slave

to work in the brutal plantation area. The power of bourgeois capitalist set the certain level of

expectation from blacks and they grab that truth. They are even not allowed to think twice but

grab the truth of powerful whites. Women are simply a ‘breeder’ in ‘Beloved’. The child was

born and taken away. They were never given chance to have motherly love on the other hand

slave women were not mothers and thus denied the right to mother to their own children. Slave
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women has well-accepted this truth and taken it as crucial knowledge of being survived. Baby

Suggs is the tragic mother of Slavery in the novel. Out of her eight children, she only saw one,

Halle, into adulthood. The discursive practice of ultimate truth is deeply rooted in Baby Suggs.

Being a mother of eight, she was never given a chance to shower her love, care and affection to

her own children. “My firstborn. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom

of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that’s all I remember” (Beloved 6). It is dingy

figure of truth represented by the author. This is the truth of knowledge for the people of race.

Mother is not supposed to remember their child. A mother is just a breeder. The construction of

truth on the hand of powerful whites shows that black mother’s situation was worse than

animals. Animals get chance to rear and care their children but black mothers don’t. Morrison in

the very beginning of the novel presents what Hall considers the constructionist theory. The

description of 124, itself highlights the representation of blacks on the hand of power and

authority. 124 is the central location for people of color post-slavery. The place is full of pain for

all characters. This pain represents the authority of the whites. The place 124 seems to be given

by the powerful whites themselves to show the actual position of blacks. Morrison portrays 124

as ‘spiteful. Full of baby’s venom’. Perhaps she wanted to show how the actual truth of

knowledge of blacks on the hand of whites. Blacks are supposed to be lived on the nasty

environment because they themselves are the one is the constructivist approach of discursive

representation here. The representation of the 124 is personified to relate it to the blacks. 124

itself is the people living over there. This is how race is represented. This is truth and this is

knowledge. Morrison takes us into 124 in order to show the entire pitiless ‘action’ taking place.

Baby is murdered, guilt worsened, haunted by the ghost, Beloved arrival, Sethe facing traumatic

past and a lot more happening on and around 124. Interesting the place is haunted as are the
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blacks for whites. Just like 124, blacks are mere a heap and ditch for the whites. Morrison gives

human characteristics to 124 to demonstrate the power discourse of representation of blacks. The

interesting thing is 124 lost its identity with the arrival of Beloved. It becomes clear that 124 and

Beloved are one identity. Morrison tries to challenge power discourse through Beloved. Beloved

represents the long lost black identity and the rebel to racial wickedness. She challenges

Foucault’s power discourse. The hint Morrison gives is that Beloved might be Sethe’s murdered

child or be Sethe’s dead mother or let’s say she represents all those which can be challenge

Hall’s constructionist. She give voice and embody the collection unconscious of all those

oppressed by slavery’s history and legacy. She represents the past (tormented blacks) returned to

haunt the present (powerful whites).Morrison unapologetic representation of Beloved is a way to

question Foucauldian discursive representation that Hall talks about in his constructivist theory.

Morrison’s “Beloved” seems to support and challenges both semiotic and discursive

approach of representation prescribed by Hall. Hall’s idea of constructionist move around the

arbitrary practice of signifier and signified that is same throughout the ages in terms of racial

representation. Along with that Hall have had brought forward Foucault power discourse on

displaying how powerful authority decides truth and that become the only knowledge. “Beloved’

has blood-thirstiness, callous, atrocity all depicted as a means to represent racial hegemony on

the hand of whites. “Beloved” obviously captures the construction of racial identity and the way

color people are represented through both semiotic and discursive approach.
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Work cited:

Grossberg, Lawerence. “History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies.”

Journal of Communication Inquiry, 1986. RESEARCHGATE,

https://doi:10.1177/019685998601000205.

Morrison, Tony. Beloved. Vintage Classics, 2007.

Murji, Karim. “An interventionist sociologist: Stuart Hall, public engagement and racism.” The

Sociological Review, vol. 70, 2022. JOURNAL HOMEPAGE,

https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221108584.

Winters, Erika. Morrison’s archeological dig: Beloved and the toxic stereotypes surrounding

black motherhood. Sate University of New York, May 2020.

Wood, Brennon. “Stuart Hall’s Cultural Studies and the Problem of Hegemony.” The British

Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 3, 1998, pp. 399–414. JSTOR,

https://doi.org/10.2307/591390.