Benjaminian Dialectics of Fashion in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child

Abstract

Critics, like Alice Hall, have identified beauty—the destructive impact of the beauty industry—as one of the central themes in Morrison’s fiction. This essay looks at the interplay between fashion and commodification, consumerism,
eroticism, sexuality and spectacle through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s theory of fashion. Morrison establishes a dialectic relationship between her new black protagonist, Bride, and her forerunners like iconic black celebrities Grace Jones, Josephine Baker, and Iman, bringing them into conversation with each other through the Benjaminian register of contemporary sartorial expression evocative of the fashions of the past. Like Benjamin, Morrison views fashion as a pageant or spectacle despite the history of women’s protest against the perception of them as subjects in relation to clothes. In God Help the Child, Morrison demonstrates the relationship between femininity and fashion that revolves around dresses, vestimentary choices and fashion accessories like jewellery and make-up. Cautioning against the uncritical lure of fashion, Morrison poses very serious questions, especially about the dangerous ability of clothes and fashion to distort the subject’s self-image and erase their subjectivity.

Keywords: Dialectics of fashion, commodification, consumerism, femininity