Geburtstag: 18. Februar 1931
Todesdatum: 5. August 2019
Toni Morrison ist eine amerikanische Schriftstellerin. Sie zählt zu den bedeutendsten Vertretern der afroamerikanischen Literatur und erhielt 1993 den Literaturnobelpreis.
— Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
— Toni Morrison, buch Song of Solomon
Quelle: Song of Solomon
— Toni Morrison, buch Beloved
Quelle: Beloved (1987)
Kontext: Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. <!-- ~ Ch. 9
— Toni Morrison, buch Tar Baby
Tar Baby (1981)
— Toni Morrison, buch Sula
Quelle: Sula (1973)
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Kontext: A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Kontext: Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek — it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language — all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
