Ethnic post-modernism

Neo-Slave Narrative: Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987)

See previous lectures on African-American writing to identify main topics
approached by African-American authors, beginning with the Harlem Renaissance.
Briefly: slave experience had not been a topic in itself, although the effects of
slavery had been approached by other writers indirectly (R. Ellison, R. Wright,
a.o.)
The factual story of Beloved (1987) was true ( a mother escaped from the
South killed her daughter with a handsaw rather than leave her with her
master):
Morrison discovered it as a newspaper clipping.
She decided to write it as a typical slave narrative, but in the process she
noted that the traditional literary tools had become inadequate.
Slave narrative: hybrid
1st person narrative with features of sentimental fiction and
documentary evidence *letters, newspaper clippings etc.)
white person favorably presenting the ex-slave.
E.g. Frederick Douglasss narrative.
Neo-slave narrative
theorized and explained by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy in Neo-Slave Narratives.
Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999
Bloomed in the 1960s on the background of the Civil Rights movement &
Black Nationalism:
Main aim: to foreground black subjectivity.
Practical purpose: rewrite black history / literature & attempt to discover and
forge a separate literary / aesthetic tradition.
Female neo-slave narrative writers examples: Toni Morrisons Beloved &
Alice Walkers Color Purple, a.o.
Slave naratives

Abolitionists - a potent weapon in first-hand accounts of slavery by blacks who

escaped from bondage or managed to buy their freedom.
White activists recommended the slave narratives as unaltered testimonies.
In fact they frequently re-wrote passages and fabricated events to excite the readers
interest and sympathy.
TEXTUAL PATTERNS
Ex-slaves cannot talk about imagination, as other autobiographers / memoirists since
they cannot afford to shade doubts on their account (151)
Descriptive language rather than metaphorical / poetical when slaveholders
habits are described;
With a view to authenticating the story, certain patterns mold the actual events in the
life of the narrator into a form that could be easily recognized by the readership of
the time (1840s 1860s) common elements, such as:
an engraved portrait or photograph of the subject of the narrative
authenticating testimonials, prefixed or postfixed
poetic epigraphs, snatches of poetry in the text, poems appended
illustrations before, in the middle of, or after the narrative itself
interruptions of the narrative proper by way of declamatory
addresses to the reader and passages that as to style might well
come from an adventure story, a romance, or a novel of sentiment

 bewildering variety of documents: letters to and from the narrator,

bills of sale, newspaper clippings, notices of slave auctions and of
escaped slaves, certificates of marriage, of manumission, of birth
and death, wills, extracts from legal codes *that appear everywhere
in the text, incl. footnotes & appendices+
sermons and anti-slavery speeches and essays tacked on at the end to demonstrate postnarrative activities of the narrator

In terms of narrative progression, generally the slave narrative would proceed as

follows:
An engraved portrait, signed by the narrator.
A title page that includes the claim, as an integral part of the title, "Written
by Himself" (or some close variant: "Written from a statement of Facts Made
by Himself"; or "Written by a Friend, as Related to Him by Brother Jones";
etc. ).
A handful of testimonials and/or one or more prefaces or introductions
written either by a white abolitionist friend of the narrator ( William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips) or by a white amanuensis/ editor/author actually
responsible for the text ( John Greenleaf Whittier, David Wilson, Louis Alexis
Chamerovzow), in the course of which preface the reader is told that the
narrative is a "plain, unvarnished tale" and that naught "has been set down in
malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination"indeed,
the tale, it is claimed, understates the horrors of slavery.
The actual narrative:
first sentence beginning, "I was born . . . ," then specifying a place but not a
date of birth sketchy account of parentage, often involving a white father
description of a cruel master, mistress, or overseer, details of first observed
whipping and numerous subsequent whippings, with women very frequently
the victims
account of one extraordinarily strong, hardworking slave often "pure
African"who, because there is no reason for it, refuses to be whipped
record of the barriers raised against slave literacy and the overwhelming
difficulties encountered in learning to read and write
description of a "Christian" slaveholder (often of one such dying in terror) and
the accompanying claim that "Christian" slave-holders are invariably worse
than those professing no religion
description of the amounts and kinds of food and clothing given to slaves, the
work required of them, the pattern of a day, a week, a year
account of a slave auction, of families being separated and destroyed, of
distraught mothers clinging to their children as they are torn from them, of
slave coffles being driven South
description of patrols, of failed attempt(s) to escape, of pursuit by men and
dogs
description of successful attempt(s) to escape, lying by during the
day, travelling by night guided by the North Star, reception in a free
state by Quakers who offer a lavish breakfast and much genial
thee/thou conversation
taking of a new last name (frequently one suggested by a white
abolitionist) to accord with new social identity as a free man, but
retention of first name as a mark of continuity of individual identity
.

An appendix or appendices composed of documentary material: bills of sale, details of

purchase from slavery, newspaper items, further reflections on slavery, sermons, antislavery speeches, poems, appeals to the reader for funds and moral support in the battle
against slavery.

what is being recounted in the narratives is nearly always the realities of the
institution of slavery, almost never the intellectual, emotional, moral growth of the
narrator [Douglass is an exception]
The lives in the narratives are never, or almost never, there for themselves and for
their own intrinsic, unique interest but nearly always in their capacity as illustrations
of what slavery is really like.
in one sense the narrative lives of the ex-slaves were as much possessed
and used by the abolitionists as their actual lives had been by slaveholders
(Olney 154).
behind every slave narrative that is in any way characteristic or representative
there is the one same persistent and dominant motivation, which is determined
by the interplay of narrator, sponsors, and audience and which itself determines
the narrative in theme, content, and form.
The theme is the reality of slavery and the necessity of abolishing it
the content is a series of events and descriptions that will make the
reader see and feel the realities of slavery
the form is a chronological, episodic narrative beginning with an assertion of existence and
surrounded by various testimonial evidences for that assertion

BELOVED

combination of existential concerns compatible with a mythic presentation of

African-American experience;
return to the roots of mythic culture as opposed to the Wests rejection of it as
magic associated with magical realism;
However, T. Morrisons novel is not to be understood only within the
framework of South American magical realism, but to be approached from
the perspective of African (and African-American for that matter) definition
of the real and the magical;
Totally opposed to Western dichotomy.
A source of the mythical substructure of her fiction:
the Bible in a problematic, existential setting;
the essential truth of myth is preserved but there are reversals of the
orthodox assumptions of meaning: rebels become heroes; good
creates evil; sins redeem the doer.
Timeless motifs fused with African American myths and fantasy e.g. the parable of
the fall and its related themes:
The quest for identity
Initiation (the passage from innocence to experience)
The nature of good and evil
The ambiguity of the garden and the serpent

adapted to describe the emerging selfhood in black characters trapped in a white

society.
Preservation of the Self to survive her protagonists must violate the rule of the
oppressive system, reject the values it venerates and recover the human potential
denied to blacks
The fortunate fall the necessary and potentially redemptive passage from a
garden state of debilitating innocence to painful self-knowledge and its
consequences as a return to the true community and village
consciousness the victorious end the discovery of the black consciousness
muted in a white society
In a society operated by an oppressive order, not to win in the conventional
(Christian) sense perpetuates an immoral justice
in such a world, innocence is itself a sign of guilt
it signals a degenerate acquiescence
not to fall becomes more destructive than to fall.