Racial Identity and Ecological Belonging in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Study through Social Identity Theory and Eco-Race Theory

This paper examines Toni Morrison’s Beloved in 1987 through Social Identity Theory and Eco-Race Theory to explore how race, memory, and environment intersect in the aftermath of slavery. Social Identity Theory by Tajfel & Turner, in 1979, highlights the ways African Americans rebuilt collective identity in the face of exclusion, while Eco-Race Theory by Bullard in 1990 and Chavis in 1987 underscores how landscapes, plantations, haunted houses, and clearings carry racialized trauma. While these frameworks illuminate the social and ecological dimensions of identity, the study also reflects critically on their limitations: Social Identity Theory can oversimplify complex, intersectional identities, while Eco-Race Theory has been critiqued for privileging U.S.-centric models of environmental racism. Beyond theoretical analysis, the paper situates Beloved within contemporary debates on systemic racism, environmental justice, and collective healing. Morrison’s narrative techniques of haunting, fragmentation, and shifting perspectives embody these entanglements, offering both a warning and a vision for ecological and social restoration.

Social Identity Theory, Eco-Race Theory, Race, Identity, Environment, and Slavery

1. Alaimo, S. (2016). Exposed: Environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times. University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. Bullard, R. D. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Westview Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. Chavis, B. F. (1987). Toxic wastes and race in the United States. Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. Finney, C. (2014). Black faces, white spaces: Reimagining the relationship of African Americans to the great outdoors. University of North Carolina Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. Gordon, A. (1997). Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. Horvitz, D. (1989). “Nameless ghost: Possession and dispossession in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Studies in American Fiction, 17(2), 157–167. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

9. Nixon, R. (2021). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor (new ed.). Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

10. Page, P. (1995). Dangerous freedom: Fusion and fragmentation in Toni Morrison’s novels. University Press of Mississippi. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

11. Ruffin, K. (2010). Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions. University of Georgia Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

12. Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On Blackness and being. Duke University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

13. Smith, V. (1991). “Circling the subject: History and narrative in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Critical Inquiry, 17(3), 591–601. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

14. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

15. Wenzel, J. (2020). The disruption of environmental justice: African American literature and the politics of ecology. Routledge. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

16. Whyte, K. (2018). Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises. Environment and Planning E, 2(1), 7–24. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

17. Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion Black Anthropocenes or none. University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

• Culture: The (In) Human Engagement with Nature
• Identity Crisis in Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book: A Critical Interpretation
• Metaphor in Pop-Up Swahili Sayings: Is it a New Meaning or a New Idea?