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 post-narrative 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, anti-slavery 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 AfricanAmerican 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.