Transgenerational Trauma and Fetishism in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

This thesis sets out to analyze transgenerational trauma in the African American context and fetishistic attachments developed as a coping mechanism to control and overcome transgenerational traumas. It is a fact that the history of people of African origin in the United States is marked by a centuries-long suffering from slavery, violent oppression, discrimination, and racism, which meant that generations after generations were born into this inhumane system in which they have been heavily traumatized. The gravity and the longitude of the situation created a cycle of trauma where current generations, without having suffered from these conditions firsthand, show signs of a traumatic legacy that can be explained by the transmission of trauma within groups of people with the same identity markers. As a result of inherited traumas, a pattern of psychosocial and behavioral effects can be observed, such as a lack of self-esteem, racist socialization, or a pervasive feeling of anger among the individuals in the community. As with any trauma, transgenerational traumas call for coping mechanisms. In certain works of African American literature, a pattern of fetishistic attachments can be observed as an effect and a coping mechanism for inherited traumas. By developing fetishistic attachments to mostly arbitrary objects and using them as props, characters try to overcome the otherwise destructive outcomes of their traumatic legacies. Two very important works of African American literature where this transgenerational trauma and the resulting fetishism can be observed are Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. The thesis presents a detailed research on transgenerational trauma and fetishism and examines how the characters in the two works display fetishistic attachments as a result of their inherited traumas within an African American context.