Chapter 7 “They weren’t even there yet and already the City was speaking to them” – The Translocal Experience as Fascination with the City in Toni Morrison’s Jazz
In: Geographies of Affect in Contemporary Literature and Visual CultureSearch for other papers by Imola Bülgözdi in
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Abstract
This chapter discusses the Southern African American migrant’s relationship with the city in Toni Morrison’s novel, and demonstrates that the main affect that structures this relationship and the protagonists’ response to the change of environment is fascination. Clearly a translocal journey, as the characters’ unresolved past is inscribed in their ability to emotionally navigate the city, the novel emphasises their simultaneous situatedness in both locations by their problematic spatial adjustment. Fascination, postulated by Schmid, Sahr and Urry’s as a significant element in the construction of new urban subjectivities, is more than aptly highlighted by the affects evoked by various forms of black music, likewise transplanted from a rural environment. The translocal experience and fascination become thus not only building blocks of the new black urban subject, but also that of the black metropolis.