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Ayush Tripathi

2020ENG1073

Professor Shweta Khilnani

ENC-301 (Beloved by Toni Morrison)

Q. Discuss the significance of the term "rememory" with respect to remembering and

forgetting in Morrison's Beloved.

The concept of ‘rememory’ holds a unique position in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Its

etymological association with concepts like ‘remembrance’ and ‘memory’ are quite apparent, but

in the novel, it represents a completely new and greatly subjective synthesis of those familiar

concepts. To better understand the significance of ‘rememory’ in Beloved, it is perhaps important

to dissect and analyse the said concepts from which it derives its meaning.

Remembrance, or the act of remembering, can best be defined not on its own terms but as

the negative of dismemberment – the disintegration of a whole into fragments. Remembrance

refers, then, not to an intact whole but the assemblage of the abovementioned fragments into a

form that resembles the whole. I say ‘resembled’ because memories are inherently fragmented

and subject to change over time. Remembrance does not refer to the recollection of events or

experiences as they were initially perceived but an individual’s conscious reconstitution of

memories into a cohesive whole through the process of narrativization.

‘Rememory’ in Beloved does not, however, refer to the mere recollection (or the lack

thereof) of memories stored in the human conscious. It problematizes this simple synthesis by

also working with the repressed memories of former slaves in the broader historical context of

the 19th century. In this essay, I hope to demonstrate how ‘rememory’ in Beloved is not a rigid
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concept but one dependent on the pedagogical framework within which it is being defined - here,

the schoolteacher’s pseudoscientific framework of dismembering slaves and Morrison’s spiritual

and historiographic framework of remembering slaves and the institution of slavery.

Sethe’s conception of rememory is peculiar, not because of its novelty, but because we

are introduced to the term while she is revising its definition: “… I used to believe it was my

rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not [my

rememory].” (36, emphasis mine). This has the effect of positioning us at a crucial juncture

between the personal and the general. Like every former slave, Sethe has lived an immensely

difficult life. Her past experiences leave her so traumatized that her future is reduced to “keeping

the past at bay.” (42) - to surviving and protecting her daughter from the horrors she has had to

endure. However, it isn’t her repressed personal memories that Sethe defines to Denver as her

rememory, but an abstraction external to her mind and body - “a picture floating around out

there” outside her head (36). She believes her disembodied rememory to exist as a spectre

independent of her existence and the passage of time. In its revisionary movement from the

personal to the general, Sethe’s rememory undergoes evident transformations in its fundamental

nature.

Memories are inherently fragmented and Sethe’s traumatic memories of her slavery past

are no different. Even though she has no control over the recollection of these memories which

are present at the level of her unconscious, they appear to her in the form of snippets, often

breaching into her present life. Where Sethe’s former definition refers to the random assortment

of snippets from her past, her latter definition refers to the externalization of those snippets. This

external projection of memories, whether normal or traumatic, requires narrativization - the

reconstitution of disparate fragments into a coherent sequence using the glue of one’s
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imagination - if they are to make sense. Narrativization or storytelling, in turn, requires an active

confrontation with said memories. Sethe is unable to confront and, consequently, articulate her

traumatic past because of its horrifying and inherently unspeakable nature (58). I say ‘unable’

and not ‘unwilling’ because Sethe’s inability to reconcile with and verbalize her traumatic past

must be viewed in the larger context of the prevalent pedagogical discourse of the time which is

embodied by the character of the schoolteacher.

The schoolteacher’s pseudoscientific methodology entails the figurative dismemberment

of the Sweet Home slaves into their respective human and animal characteristics (193). The

anxiety of being the subject of the prevalent pedagogical discourse while having no recourse to

access it, let alone refute it, is reflected by both Sixo (37) and Sethe (193-195) at different points

in the novel. This dehumanization only serves to exacerbate the slaves’ inability to look inwards

because the only point of reference they have belongs to their oppressors. This is once again

demonstrated when the schoolteacher arrives at 124, Bluestone Road, to take Sethe and her kids

back into slavery. Sethe’s killing of her infant daughter, who she posthumously names Beloved,

seems understandable within the larger framework of the atrocities of slavery. However, she is

immediately alienated from any such reflection by the dehumanizing comments made by the

schoolteacher, who reduces her maternal instincts to the act of an abused creature gone wild

(149). Sethe is even distanced from the trauma her body bears in the form of scars because they

are on her back and, hence, invisible to her. She has to rely on the interpretations provided by

others to try and reclaim it from her white oppressors. Sethe is rendered entirely incapable of

reconciling with and articulating her traumatic past because it cannot be articulated within the

pedagogical framework of the white masters.

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If the framework provided by the white oppressors actively represses Sethe’s traumatic

memories and dismembers her, the one provided by Morrison in Beloved compels her to confront

and reconcile with her past. The character of Beloved, who appears the moment Sethe starts

fantasizing about a life with Paul D and Denver, embodies the darkest phase of Sethe’s past. By

placing Beloved in Sethe’s close proximity, Morrison enables the latter to reconcile with not just

her private trauma of infanticide but also the larger trauma of slavery that put her in that position.

In isolating Sethe and Denver with Beloved in 124, shut off from the white man’s world outside,

Morrison provides Sethe with the space she needs to remember and reconstruct her traumatic

past. However, the past’s reach and overwhelming totality prove to be too much for Sethe as she

lets herself be consumed by guilt over her infant’s death. Morrison uses this opportunity to

highlight the importance of the community in reconciling with trauma and healing the injuries

sustained in the confrontation. The women who had once shunned Sethe for infanticide all come

together to liberate her from her all-consuming past. In the face of the complete social, physical,

and pedagogical dismemberment of former slaves, Morrison enables them to confront,

remember. reclaim, and reconstruct their traumatic pasts, and consequently, themselves.

Much like Denver in the novel, Morrison did not witness the horrors of slavery firsthand.

Much like Denver, she inherited the disparate, traumatic rememories of slavery through slave

narratives and historical documents like the newspaper clipping which serves as the basis for the

novel. There is another respect in which Morrison parallels Denver. Not being a firsthand witness

of slavery, Denver is able to put some distance between herself and her mother’s experiences.

She brings the fractured community together to break Sethe free of the past’s shackles and

decides to become a part of and contribute to the prevalent counterdiscourse about slavery by

going to college. Likewise, in the very construction of the novel as a concrete externalization of
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fragmented “unspeakable, unspoken” rememories through fiction, Morrison far transcends her

role as a mere storyteller to also become a historiographer and a representative of the newer

generation. She becomes an embodiment of their responsibility to engage with rememories of the

past with great care for the generations to come as well as to make sure they are immortalized in

the collective consciousness of the masses, both black and white. Beloved is indeed not a story to

pass on.

Works Cited

1. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage, 2007.