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Topic

The Affective Phenomenology of Beyond-ment and The Narrative Voice of Toni Morrison's Jazz

Department of English

Date & location

• Friday, April 25, 2025
• 9:00 A.M.
• Clearihue Building, Room B007

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Corinne Bancroft, Department of English, University of Victoria (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Department of English, UVic (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr. Peyman Vahabzadeh, Department of Sociology, UVic (Outside Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Emile Fromet de Rosnay, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Billie Allan, School of Social Work, UVic

Abstract

This project outlines a new method for understanding the affective phenomenology of narrators in literary fiction and I demonstrate its application through Toni Morrison's novel Jazz (1992). When this method is applied to literary fiction, it assumes that there is a spatial-temporality to the narrator's emotions, which produces their sense of embodiment and the narrative's trajectory as well. Furthermore, this method demonstrates how the sense of embodiment of Jazz's narrator is the Jazz Age itself. Affective phenomenology is a theory that originates from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (2012), Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology (2006), Teresa Brennan's Transmission of Affect (2004), and Eve Sedgwick's Touching Feeling (2003). Additionally, this project demonstrates the affective phenomenology of Jazz's narrator by referencing Toni Morrison's own reflections on the novel too. This project approaches a pivotal moment in Jazz when the narrator admits that their emotions have affected their "imagining" the characters disingenuously. Here, I demonstrate how the feelings of loss, hostility, and bereavement make the narrator see the characters inauthentically. It is here that I demonstrate how their realization ignites their imagination. It is in this moment that the narrator senses the beyond-ment of their emotions and situates themselves in their own authenticity. This realization then causes the narrator to move towards a future that originates from the past, the site of their authenticity. This method invites scholars to be curious about how the emotions of a narrator's voice produce the spatial-temporality of the narrative and the futurity of the fictional world.