The woman was a goddess of some kind, wasn’t she?”: Performativity and Female Identity Constitution in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and NW
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2022-07-05
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en
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This thesis provides intersectional feminist analyses of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005) and her use of Voodoo iconography via the form of the Voodoo goddess Erzulie and its Rhada emanations of Erzulie Fréda and Erzulie Dantó through the painting of Maîtresse Erzulie and of Smith's NW (2012) and her use of Christian iconography in the form of the Black and White Madonna via the Black Madonna statue in order to inclusively centralise marginalised women whilst critiquing their Orientalised, racialised, and sexualised stereotypes that are socio-culturally constructed from transatlantic slavery and Christianity. The theories of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality, Judith Butler’s gender performativity, and Edward Said’s Orientalism are combined to argue that Victoria Kipps in On Beauty incites the sublime to critique her Orientalised sexualisation that stereotypically developed from transatlantic slavery via her performative embodiment of Erzulie Fréda, whereas Natalie De Angelis incites the sublime to criticise her Orientalised sexualisation that stereotypically originated from Christianity via her performative embodiment of the Black Madonna. Furthermore, Kiki Simmonds Belsey in On Beauty incites the sublime to critique her Orientalised maternalisation that stereotypically emerged from transatlantic slavery via her performative embodiment of Erzulie Dantó, whereas Leah Hanwell in NW incites the sublime to criticise her Orientalised maternalisation that stereotypically arose from Christianity via her performative embodiment of the White Madonna. The contemporary relevance of this literary research is to prompt critical reflection of modern patriarchal societies through exposing the compound sexist and racist discrimination against marginalised women by debunking their Orientalised, racialised, and sexualised stereotypes.
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