Using Cultural Criticism Lens in Understanding Literary Texts

Introduction

Cultural Criticism is a critical lens through which any text can be viewed. This form of criticism examines how different religions, ethnicities, class identifications, political beliefs, and views affect the ways in which texts are created and interpreted. For those seeking examples of cultural criticism essays, Toni Morrison's works provide an excellent foundation. Morrison's approach to literature grounds it in a larger framework that includes economic institutions of literary production, ideology, and political issues of class, race, gender, and power. In her works, Morrison delves into the psyche of African Americans to understand their unique cultural inheritance, which is heavily influenced by their folklore, myths, and traditions. Her works provide insight into the complexity of the African American experience and their rootedness in myths and cultural traditions. Morrison's approach to literature is an excellent example of cultural criticism in action.

Cultural Criticism

Cultural Criticism suggests that being a part of—or excluded from—a specific group or culture contributes to and affects our understanding of texts. The use of Cultural Criticism as a lens for understanding literature is based on some common assumptions. For example, ethnicity, religious beliefs, social class and so on, are crucial components in formulating plausible interpretations of text. In addition, since looking at a text through the perspective of those individuals (black people, females and slaves) who are in some way marginalized or not part of the dominant culture, new understandings emerge, cultural criticism also essentially focuses on the examination or exploration of the relationship between dominant cultures and the dominated ones. As L. Tyson puts it, cultural criticism focuses on what a literary work suggests about the experience of groups of people who have been ignored, underrepresented, or misrepresented by the traditional history (for example, laborers, prisoners, women, people of color, lesbians and gay men, children, the insane, and so on). 

For M. Habib, Cultural Criticism is an approach of criticism that grounds literature in a larger framework which can include the economic institutions of literary production, ideology, and broad political issues of class, race, gender, and power. Hence cultural analysis tends to stress what is specific or unique – in terms of time, place, and ideology – to a given cultural and literary moment (Habib, 2005: 276).

Thus, cultural critics invite to pay attention to political, ideological, social and historical factors while analyzing literary texts. Indeed, cultural theories claim that literature cannot transcend history and is continually shaped by social and political forces. For them literary texts are the products of the ideology of the age in which they are written. (Greenblatt (1982) That is literature does not exist in some timeless, aesthetic realm as an object to be passively contemplated. Rather, like all cultural manifestations, it is a product of the socioeconomic and hence ideological conditions of the time and place in which it was written, whether the author intended it so. Because human beings are themselves products of their socioeconomic and ideological environment, it is assumed that authors cannot help but create works that embody ideology in some form. (Tyson, 66) They cannot completely distance themselves from ideology but write within certain ideological boundaries that influence their works.

From such definitions and assumptions, I can wonder whether the body of literature developed by African Americans and particularly Toni Morrison cannot be analyzed and understood from cultural perspectives. Indeed, when Africans came to America, they brought along their rich and colorful history, culture, folklore and myths which they inherited from their ancestors. Even though they lacked written literary tradition they had already developed and spread their diverse black culture since their liberation from slavery. While writing they included their rich heritage and folklore that preserve their race, identity and culture. These large groups of literature written by Americans of African descents came to be known as African American literature. Toni Morrison is one of the main outstanding writers who let their marks on this body of literature. She ranks among the most highly regarded and widely read African American fiction writers and cultural critics who emerged in the 1970’s.

As an African American writer, Toni Morrison not only reflects the exploitation and devastation brought by slavery on the African Americans but also delves into their psyche to reach the unique cultural inheritance of African Americans by intermittently alluding to their folklores, myths, cultural traditions, ancestral legacy, magic, fable, poetry, songs, music, and superstition. Her works provide insights into the complexity of African American experience and rootedness in the myths, African cultural traditions and folklore. She develops an interest in depicting how African Americans are affected by the dominant white mainstream cultural values by concentrating on the black community’s living conditions more truthfully and accurately, often with direct or implied social messages.

Therefore, one can undoubtedly argue that the influence of African culture is a remarkable characteristic of Toni Morrison’s work. Indeed, she has developed an exuberant style of writing that constantly strives to incorporate what she considers “unorthodox novelistic characteristics [from] Black art” into her writing (“Rootedness,” 342). Morrison has always said that she wonders what makes a book “Black.” In “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature”, she envisions “the development of a theory of literature that truly accommodates African American literature: one that is based on its culture, its history, and the artistic strategies the works employ to negotiate the world it inhabits” (“Unspeakable,” 11). Likewise, In Playing in the Dark: White and the Literary Imagination, (1992) she focuses her attention on what she calls the Africanist presence in American literature, a term she uses to describe the centrality of some issues and narrative techniques to African American works. In short, in her different novels which usually focus on the Africans Americans in the mainstream American society, Toni Morrison intermittently alludes to the African cultural traditions and folklore.

Toni Morrison explores oral tradition extensively in her works. Her fiction is self-consciously concerned with myth, legend, storytelling, and other traditional forms, as well as with memory and history. The stories are conscious of African cultural heritage as well as African American history, thus demonstrating the importance of the past to the struggles of contemporary African Americans. Therefore, it becomes easy to understand why it is important to study Toni Morrison’s novel from a cultural perspective.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, Toni Morrison's works provide a prime example of cultural criticism in action, where literature is grounded in a larger framework that includes the economic institutions of literary production, ideology, and political issues of class, race, gender, and power. Her works offer insights into the complexity of the African American experience and their rootedness in myths and cultural traditions. As an African American writer, Morrison reflects on the exploitation and devastation brought by slavery on African Americans, delving into their psyche to reach their unique cultural inheritance. She consistently strives to incorporate 'unorthodox novelistic characteristics from Black art' into her writing, which provides a remarkable characteristic of her work. Cultural criticism provides a lens for understanding how cultural factors such as ethnicity, religion, social class, and political views contribute to our understanding of texts, and Morrison's works offer an excellent example of how this lens can be applied.