To investigate the subjectivity formation in Sula, the approaches of subject positioning, Fairclough’s analytical categories, appraisal system, and SFL analysis have been deployed. The discourse approach has offered a way out of the longstanding controversy whether the novel favors binary oppositions or subverts them. Critical Discourse Analysis assumes that Sula maps the social field of 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when and where there was a continuum of discursive positions to be ‘filledʼ by the subjects in their locations in different discourses in the relations of power. Sula takes on several positions within different discourses at a time or at the same time to fashion an identity for her self. The subjects in the Bottom define their identities in relation with Sula. They align their subjectivities with the situations and context. All in all, they are sometimes black, sometimes white and sometimes both white and black. Women in Bottom perform differently with the absence or presence of Sula. Circles and circles of subjectivities not top and or bottom are the negation of binary oppositions and hierarchical structures. Identity cannot be defined outside the current discourses in the African American community in the 1907s. The politics of Sula finds its own traces in the poetics of the novel. A significant example is the use of the pronoun “Me” in the poetics of the novel, which is a resonance of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
