Reclaiming the Self: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Trauma of Identity in The Color Purple

Abstract

The paper makes a Lacanian psychoanalytical exploration of Alice Walker’s Color Purple in the context of trauma and construction of self and identity. The ways in which early trauma interferes with development of ego and forms subjectivity, and how experiences of violence, silences and symbolic exclusion experienced by Celie influence her transition into mirror stage and her relationship with the Other leading to the fractured sense of self which is characterized by lack and dispossessed desire are the focus of the research. Qualitative and interpretative textual approach is carried out to the application of Lacanian lens of misrecognition, desire, and symbolic order. Identity in the novel is not created through wholeness or resolution but as a negotiation carried on with trauma and deficit. Thus Lacanian psychoanalysis gives a fruitful basis of explaining literary representation of traumatized subjectivity, suggestive of more psychoanalytic exploration of literature on trauma and identity formation narratives.