o:2255 The Subversion of Black Aesthetic Toni Morrison's "Recitatif" en Jezik, književnost, alternative / Language, Literature, Alternatives : književna istraživanja : zbornik radova, 2022, str. 269-281 The main aim of this paper is to present Toni Morrison’s short story, “Recitatif” (1983), as a literary text that resists or subverts the established practices of understanding, analyzing and canonizing texts written by African Americans. The starting point of this paper is the thesis proposed in African American Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader (2006), edited by Gene Andrew Jarrett, that there is an ideological consistency in the exclusion of what Jarrett terms “anomalous” texts from African American literary anthologies. In other words, the overall preoccupation with racial representations has influenced the way of reading and organizing African American literature and defining the “Black” or African American Aesthetic. Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” represents such an “anomalous,” alternative, or unconventional text that challenges these practices. Furthermore, for its analysis, the paper relies on the methods proposed by New Formalism. This critical approach aims to interrogate the relationship between form and social, historical, and cultural contexts. Thus, one of the central aims of this paper is to show how Morrison uses and manipulates form and structure in her story to subvert notions of race and difference and to ultimately challenge the African American literature, New Formalism, short story studies, Black Aesthetic, subversive texts, Toni Morrison 1552099 10.46630/jkal.2022.18 91552100 110114313 1552100 978-86-7379-590-4 2024-02-08T12:25:13.538Z 44 yes 46 Marko Mitić Filozofski fakultet u Nišu 59531785 0000-0002-9297-9599 2022 application/pdf str. 269-281 399903 https://phaidrani.ni.ac.rs/o:2255 no yes 18 70 11 1066537 1066595 1556237 18A13 18A1308 269 281 Filozofski fakultet u Nišu 2022