BREAKING THE PHALLOGOCENTRIC MIRROR: EPISTEMIC AGENCY AND QUEER RESISTANCE IN ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOUR PURPLE

Abstract

This research paper discusses The Colour Purple by Alice Walker in terms of gender studies, more precisely, the intersection of Black feminism and queer theory. The paper explores the way in which the protagonist of Walker, Celie, manages to find herself in a two-fold world of oppression in the form of white supremacy and domestic sexism. The paper will take the epistemic shift between early letters by Celie addressed to a distant, patriarchal God and her subsequent communal interactions to argue that, in a way, Celie deconstructs the so-called phallogocentric mirror, which is a social construct that can only mirror the identity through the male gaze. The paper emphasizes that the role of Shug Avery as a catalyst to the gendered awakening of Celie enables the shift between the object and the subject by the reclaimed possession of her body and sexuality.

In addition, the paper examines how gender roles in the rural Southern environment of the novel are fluid, thus indicating that gender ideals of masculinity (as practiced by Harpo) are undermined by the portrayal of masculinity by Walker. The womanist ethics standard is utilized to comprehend the way the female relationship forms a socio-political safe haven of the exclusion of the conventional gender binaries. The study explores the mini-narratives of female friendship and artisan work (sewing and quilting) as subversive means of destroying the grand narrative of male authority through the use of a postmodern gender lens. The abstract is concluded by the fact that The Colour Purple is not a story of survival but a radical re-visioning of the Black female subject existing outside the terms of patriarchal definition and finally, that both spiritual and sexual agency is co-implicated with the liberation of the gendered subject