Ethnic post-modernism

•  Neo-Slave Narrative: Toni Morrison’s 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 theSouth killed her daughter with a handsaw rather than leave her with hermaster):

•  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 anddocumentary evidence *letters, newspaper clippings etc.)

▪  white person favorably presenting the ex-slave. ▪  E.g. Frederick Douglass’s 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 UniversityPress, 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 Morrison’s Beloved  &

Alice Walker’s Color Purple, a.o.

Slave naratives

•  Abolitionists - a potent weapon in first-hand accounts of slavery by blacks whoescaped from bondage or managed to buy their freedom. 

•  White activists recommended the slave narratives as unaltered testimonies.•  In fact they f requently re-wrote passages and fabricated events to excite the reader’s

interest and sympathy.• 

TEXTUAL PATTERNS 

•  Ex-slaves cannot  talk about imagination, as other autobiographers / memoirists sincethey cannot afford to shade doubts on their account (151)  

 –  Descriptive language rather than metaphorical / poetical when slaveholder’shabits are described;

•  With a view to authenticating the story, certain patterns mold the actual events in thelife of the narrator into a form that could be easily recognized by the readership ofthe 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 wellcome 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 ofescaped slaves, certificates of marriage, of manumission, of birthand death, wills, extracts from legal codes *that appear everywherein 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 asfollows:

 –  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 Madeby 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 introductionswritten either by a white abolitionist friend of the narrator ( William LloydGarrison, Wendell Phillips) or by a white amanuensis/ editor/author actuallyresponsible for the text ( John Greenleaf Whittier, David Wilson, Louis AlexisChamerovzow), in the course of which preface the reader is told that thenarrative is a "plain, unvarnished tale" and that naught "has been set down inmalice, 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 frequentlythe victims

 –  account of one extraordinarily strong, hardworking slave often "pureAfrican"—who, because there is no reason for it, refuses to be whipped 

 –  record of the barriers raised against slave literacy and the overwhelmingdifficulties encountered in learning to read and write

 –  description of a "Christian" slaveholder (often of one such dying in terror) andthe accompanying claim that "Christian" slave -holders are invariably worsethan those professing no religion

 –  description of the amounts and kinds of food and clothing given to slaves, thework required of them, the pattern of a day, a week, a year

 –  account of a slave auction, of families being separated and destroyed, ofdistraught mothers clinging to their children as they are torn from them, ofslave coffles being driven South 

 –  description of patrols, of failed attempt(s) to escape, of pursuit by men anddogs

 –  description of successful attempt(s) to escape, lying by during theday, travelling by night guided by the North Star, reception in a freestate by Quakers who offer a lavish breakfast and much genialthee/thou conversation

 –  taking of a new last name (frequently one suggested by a whiteabolitionist) to accord with new social identity as a free man, butretention 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 theinstitution of slavery, almost never the intellectual, emotional, moral growth of thenarrator [Douglass is an exception] 

•  The lives in the narratives are never, or almost never, there for themselves and fortheir own intrinsic, unique interest but nearly always in their capacity as illustrationsof what slavery is really like. 

 –   in one sense the narrative lives of the ex-slaves were as much possessedand 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 representativethere is the one same persistent and dominant motivation, which is determinedby the interplay of narrator, sponsors, and audience and which itself determinesthe 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 ofAfrican-American experience;

•  return to the roots of mythic culture as opposed to the West’s rejection of it as“magic” associated with magical realism;

 –  However, T. Morrison’s novel is not to be understood only within theframework of South American magical realism, but to be approached fromthe perspective of African (and African-American for that matter) definitionof 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; goodcreates evil; sins redeem the doer.

•  Timeless motifs fused with African American myths and fantasy – e.g. the parable ofthe 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 whitesociety. 

•  Preservation of the Self – to survive her protagonists must violate the rule of theoppressive system, reject the values it venerates and recover the human potentialdenied to blacks 

 –  The fortunate fall – the necessary and potentially redemptive passage from agarden state of debilitating innocence to painful self -knowledge and itsconsequences – as a return to the true community and “village” consciousness – the victorious end – the discovery of the black consciousnessmuted 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.