Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Decentering the Western Privileged Centers

Derrida states that all Western culture is constructed upon binary opposites in which one component of the pair is privileged, arresting the play of the system and marginalizing the other component. Employing a tactic of decentering, Derrida tries to destabilize the primary term so that the secondary term temporarily overthrows the hierarchy. In Song of Solomon (1979), Toni Morrison makes use of some binary opposites and tries to favor the previously unprivileged ones. Therefore, concepts like fantasy, myth, and rural are preferred to the previously privileged concepts of fact, history, and urban. The first part of the story is set in the real setting of Michigan with several references to real historical events. But in the second part which is set in the rural south, fantasy and supernatural elements are introduced. Interesting to note, it is in the rural south and with the help of two supernatural characters that Milkman discovers his true roots and reaches a sense of identity. This study attempts to explore how the traditionally privileged concepts in the Western culture are destabilized in Morrison’s Song of Solomon in favor of fantasy, mythology and rural, and how these concepts contribute to the main character’s quest for identity.

کلیدواژه ها:

fact and fantasy ، history and mythology ، binary opposition ، decentering ، privileged centers