Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T00:54:39.728Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Dislocating the Reader

Slave Motherhood and The Disrupted Temporality of Trauma in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

from Part I - In History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

Vera J. Camden
Affiliation:
Kent State University, Ohio
Get access

Summary

In “Dislocating the Reader,” I use psychoanalytic theory to think about how the language of Toni Morrison’s Beloved works on readers. Placing the text of Beloved into dialogue with Jean Laplanche’s theory of the belated time of trauma enables me to think through the ethical and emotional effects of Beloved’s delayed narrative structure on readers. Visual images from the past lives of the characters intrude into the narrative, without explanation; in confusing the reader, these intrusions convey the distortions of time, thought, and memory that disturb these survivors of slavery’s traumas. The chapter centers on the main character, Sethe. I read the mothering practices of Sethe and of her own slave mother through the lens of historical research on actual slave mothers, who were torn between the demands of the master for their labor and the needs of their babies for their time. Throughout, the chapter attends to the difficulties of writing Beloved, as Morrison herself explained them in interviews: to capture the psychic damages inflicted by slavery on her ex-slave characters Morrison had to invent a new narrative language.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Dislocating the Reader
  • Edited by Vera J. Camden, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763691.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Dislocating the Reader
  • Edited by Vera J. Camden, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763691.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Dislocating the Reader
  • Edited by Vera J. Camden, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763691.007
Available formats
×