Dissensus and the Sensible: Reading Toni Morrison's Beloved through Rancierean Aesthetics and Politics

This paper examines Beloved by Toni Morrison in the context of Rancierean aesthetics and politics by analysing how the novel enacts dissensus in the realm of what Ranciere calls the distribution of the sensible. Ranciere’s ‘aesthetic regime’ opens up a terrain on which issues of visibility, voice and historical memory are put to the test and reallocated (18). By introducing the subjectivity of Black people, trauma, and silence and emphasizing them as a force that needs to be heard, Morrison challenges dominant systems of representation. Beloved resists belonging to the canon of classic literature due to its disjointed narration, voices of the ghosts, poetic interruptions, and the lack of intelligibility. My paper uses the Rancierean theories of dissensus, aesthetics, and politics as a critical lens to suggest how Morrison’s aesthetic choices dismantle the stereotypes of literature, questioning who can speak, making silent pain talk, and bringing forgotten past legible. As such, this paper aims to engage the reader in reconsidering literary criticism as a realm of struggle, justice, and aesthetic dissent.