Nobody’s as Powerful as We Make Them Out to Be: A Psychopolitical Reading of The Third Life of Grange Copeland

Abstract

<p>Alice Walker’s most prestigious novel <em>The Third Life of Grange Copeland </em>captures the critical aspects of colonial period. It depicts deconstruction of identity and interrogates the economic, political, and cultural basis of colonial period. The aim of this study is to use psychoanalytic concepts and ideas of Frantz Fanon to scrutinize the workings of power. How Walker investigates the pernicious workings of power, oppression, and class? To illustrate this, the paper relies upon Fanonian understanding of colonial racism. Fanon’s investigation of the psychic life of the colonial power is a helpful vehicle for unraveling varied ways that characters use to form subjectivity and individuation. How does the society form Grange’s struggle for individuation? The identity of Grange is under scrutiny in the light of key concepts of psychoanalytic criticism. He captures the strategies of resistance, negotiation, and return to the south to reach the individuation. The dialectic of the society and the citizens are an integral part of this study to see how Grange’s consciousness is shaped within a racist structure of power. Arguably, confronting with a racist ideology can drives the slaves to madness by persistent inculcation of considering black psyche as inferior.</p>