Reading historical embodiment and memory in Toni Morrison's Beloved
A literary application of anthropologist Mary Douglas's two bodies theory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12943207 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Belinda Du Plooy (0000-0001-5036-1814, Nelson Mandela University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 82-91 |
| Publication date | 2012-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Scrutiny2 (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1812-5441 • E-ISSN: 1753-5409 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/18125441.2012.747759 |
| OpenAlex | W2007978946 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In this paper I will use anthropologist Mary Douglas's theory of dualistic and symbolic embodiment to investigate historical embodiment and memory in Toni Morrison's slave narrative Beloved. I focus specifically on two aspects of Douglas's theory, namely the spirit/matter dualism and intimacy. In Beloved Morrison shows the destructive consequences, for an individual and a community, of a dysfunctional historical-temporal relationship. The imminent destruction of Sethe at the end of the novel, broken in body and spirit by her obsessive engagement with her “rememories”, embodied by the ghostly character Beloved, is symptomatic of the threat that certain kinds of obsessive and regressive engagement – or disengagement – with the past pose. On the other hand, Denver's evolving self-reliance and self-possession suggest the possibility and promise of a more balanced and constructive relationship with the past. In this novel Morrison presents her reader with a depiction of progressive engagement with trauma: not only do the three characters symbolically represent separate ways of engaging with the past, but they also show different stages of individual and communal healing from historical trauma and its transcendence
Aesthetics · Art · Character (mathematics · Close reading · Depiction · Disengagement theory · Dualism · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Possession (linguistics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Sociology · The Symbolic · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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