"Postmodern blackness": Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and the end of history - novel by Black female author

When they asserted that our postmodern society hasproject of recording African American history in order
reached the "end of history," theorists Fredricto heal her readers. Instead of a playful exercise in
Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Francis Fukuyamadeconstructing history, Morrison's Beloved attempts to
launched a compelling debate that has persisted foraffect the contemporary world of the "real." While the
over a decade. They argue that we no longer believenovel should not simply be assimilated into the canon
in teleological metanarratives, that our concept ofof postmodernism, Morrison's work should be
history has become spatial or flattened out, and thatrecognized as contributing a fresh voice to the
we inhabit a perpetual present in which images of thedebates about postmodern history, a voice that
past are merely recycled with no understanding ofchallenges the centrism and elitism of much of
their original context. In short, they think thatpostmodern theory. Beloved reminds us that history is
postmodern culture has lost a sense of historicalnot "over" for African Americans, who are still
consciousness, of cause and effect. Jameson, instruggling to write the genealogies of their people and
particular, sees literary postmodernism as a by-productto keep a historical consciousness alive.
of this new worldview. Such a controversial stanceThe relationship of African American writers and their
has, of course, provoked numerous antagonists towork to the discourse of postmodernism has been
speak out. Linda Hutcheon, for example, has writtenhotly contested, and there has unfortunately emerged
two studies of "historiographic metafiction," suggestinga dichotomy that I would like to question. This
that much of postmodern fiction is still strongly investedrelationship has become even more vexed since the
in history, but more importantly in revising our sense ofNobel Prize committee bypassed postmodern guru
what history means and can accomplish. My project isThomas Pynchon to select Toni Morrison as their 1993
to examine how Toni Morrison's acclaimed historicalliterature winner. Morrison claimed her prize as a
novel Beloved (1987) enacts a hybrid vision of historyvictory particularly for African Americans.(1) Black
and time that sheds new light on issues addressed bycritics such as Barbara Christian continue to argue that
Jameson and Hutcheon in their theories of theMorrison's work must be understood as an expression
postmodern - topics such as the "fictionality" of history,of African American forms and traditions, and are
the blurring of past and present, and the questioning ofconcerned that "the power of this novel as a
grand historical metanarratives. I argue that while thespecifically African American text is being blunted" as it
novel exhibits a postmodern skepticism of sweepingis being appropriated by white academic discourse
historical narratives, of "Truth," and of Marxist(Christian 6). I too share her suspicion of the
teleological notions of time as diachronic, it also retainsincreasingly popular move to read Morrison's fiction
an African American and modernist politicalthrough the lens of postmodernism, poststructuralism,
commitment to the crucial importance of deep culturalor "white" academic theory, a tactic that
memory, of keeping the past alive in order to constructunderestimates the crucial importance of Toni
a better future. Morrison's mediations between theseMorrison's black cultural heritage to any interpretation
two theoretical and political camps - betweenof her works. While we must question the tactics of
postmodernism and African American social protest -critics like Elliott Butler-Evans, who simply and
enable her to draw the best from both and make ussomewhat blindly plot poststructuralist and
question the more extremist voices asserting that ourpostmodernist theory onto Morrison's "black-topic
postmodern world is bereft of history.texts," we should be equally wary of concluding that
Since the term postmodern has been at the center ofpostmodernism is a "white" phenomenon. Any claim
many highly charged cultural debates, I am aware thatthat the lives of black people have nothing to do with
describing Beloved as such, even as a "hybrid"postmodernism ignores the complex historical
postmodern novel, is a gesture that might drawinterrelationship of black protest and liberal academic
criticism. Clearly, the novel's status as part of thediscourse. As Andreas Huyssen, Kobena Mercer, and
African American tradition of social protest, andLinda Hutcheon have noted, racial liberation
Morrison's investments in agency, presence, and themovements of the 1960s and 70s (as well as the
resurrection of authentic history, seem to make thefeminist movement) contributed to the loosening of
novel incompatible with poststructuralist ideas at thecultural boundaries that is seen as characteristically
root of postmodernism. Morrison herself has spokenpostmodern.(2) White liberal theorists of
out against a postmodernism that she associates withpostmodernism and African American critics often
Jameson's terms. In my view, however, Morrison'sshare an oppositional relationship to the bourgeois state
treatment of history bears some similarity toor to the universalizing "objectivity" of some humanist
Hutcheon's postmodern "historiographic metafiction,"intellectuals. A rigid demarcation between postmodern
but her relationship to this discourse is affected by hertexts and African American texts merely perpetuates
aim to write "black-topic" texts. Morrisona false dichotomy of academic theory and social
acknowledges that history is always fictional, always aprotest, ignoring that they emerged in response to a
representation, yet she is also committed to thesimilar set of lived conditions.