Integration in “Recitatif”: Merging Binaries to Reveal Social Meaning

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When critics analyze “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison, they often highlight the racial ambiguity and binaries that the short story exhibits. However, most critics ignore Morrison’s tendency to explore a middle-ground between the binary and why she creates this seemingly “unnatural” space. Examples of this middle ground can be seen when Morrison questions what is between “black” and “white” or what is between Helane Androne’s “absence of mother” and “presence of mother” binary. She even questions topics that are not binaries but essential to the text like what is between Kelly Reames’ “sexual mother” and “religious mother” semi-binary. Morrison seeks to take things that are essentially separate by design, or society’s establishment, and merge them to create and reveal the little difference between the supposed opposites. This allows society to remove the labels and confront the supposedly taboo subjects like race, parenting, and sexuality. Even though Shanna Benjamin has researched the farthest in this topic by identifying the space that exists between the binaries as “interstitial space”, I aim to delve into this location to discover really what process is occurring, what results this process creates, and how and why Morrison does this. By using the term “integration”, which is not the space between the signifiers but the process and the place where things merge and lose their distinctions, I seek to prove that Morrison explores this space of in-betweeness to reveal social meaning through emphasizing the integrated Maggie who often becomes the merging point and offers the needed integration.
Integration takes seemingly unlike themes, which normally serve in separate arenas, and merges them to create something that speaks on cultural assumptions and society’s restricted issues. Integration is not simply ambiguity, or the multiple meanings that a text can take on, but

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