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"Shuttles in the rocking loom of history": Dislocation in Toni Morrison's Fiction by Jennifer Ann Terry A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English University of Warwick, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies April 2003 Contents Introduction: "Slavery broke the world in half" 1 Chapter One - Song of Solomon 16 I "I do believe my whole life's geography": Re-Mapping the 17 American Landscape Chapter Two - Beloved 59 I "Not a normal woman in a normal house": True Black 60 Womanhood and True Black Manhood? II "Shuttles in the rocking loom of history": Figuring the Middle 93 Passage III "Will the parts hold?": Dismemberment and Remembering 107 Chapter Three - Jazz 128 I The Tracks and Cracks of Urban Modernity 129 II "A phantom ... to behold": Orphanhood, Estrangement and Bodily 160 Disruption III The Trope of the Talking Book 175 Chapter Four - Paradise 191 I "When all the wars are over": The Dynamics of Utopianism and 192 Militarism II A New World Religion?: Creolisation and Candomble 212 Conclusion 236 Bibliography 239 To my island home I would like to offer my thanks to Neil Lazarus for his unfailingly acute criticism and, especially during the last year, his optimism and patience, and to Helen Dennis for the encouragement that started me on this journey in the first place. Although she never saw this project come to fruition, I am also indebted to Lorna Sage whose vigour and wit were, and remain, inspirational. I am grateful as well to Nellie Y. McKay and Craig Werner for their advice and assistance. To my Mum, Dad and Sister whose strength, care and humour keep me going, I offer my heartfelt appreciation. My thanks also to all of my friends from Warwick, both the first and the second time around. Your support and the times we have shared mean the world to me. Lastly I would like to express my gratitude to the University of Warwick English Department for awarding me a Graduate Teaching Assistantship, and to the Departments of Afro-American Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for a Graduate Exchange Fellowship. Declaration This thesis is my own work. It has not been submitted for a degree at another university and does not contain previously published material. Abstract This thesis examines the trope of 'dislocation' within the later novels of Toni Morrison, identifying it as central to her representation ot African American history and experience. Organising my project around the theme and figure of dislocation allows me to bring together diverse considerations such as those of the geographical, communal, familial, cultural, corporeal and narrative displacements that preoccupy Morrison's fiction. Developing a line of enquiry neglected within the field of scholarship addressing Morrison's work, most importantly my thesis finds this term useful for negotiating the author's engagement with the diaspora engendered by racial slavery. In particular, it explores her evocation of the black diaspora as a configuration encompassing sites of remembering, affirmation and potentiality as well as processes of displacement, disruption, deracination and loss. My research is informed by a broad range of critical resources but especially Edouard Glissant's and Paul Gilroy's theories of diasporic interaction. Tracing symbolic spatial trajectories and enabling and disabling relationships to the past, I investigate Morrison's imaginary in terms of a black Atlantic of roots and routes, patterns of traversal, connection and exchange. Rejecting a narrowly defined notion of African American Studies, this thesis seeks to extend the ways in which Morrison's novels are approached, locating in them a truly diasporic vision. 1 Introduction: "Slavery broke the world in half' The African American novelist and critic Toni Morrison is one of the most widely known and respected writers working today. The author of seven novels and one book of essays as well as the editor of several other critical collections, Morrison's career as a published writer began with the first edition of The Bluest Eye in 1970 and continues to the present. 1 Her fiction addresses issues of African American history, experience and identity, often also engaging with questions of sex and gender, and, to a lesser degree, class. Once writing in an environment where all but a few black authors struggled for recognition, now the subject of much acclaim, 2 Morrison's work has prompted numerous and diverse critical responses. This is the case especially since the publication of Beloved in 1987. During the last fifteen or so years scholarship treating the Morrison oeuvre has burgeoned, making her surely one of the most discussed authors of the contemporary period. The industry surrounding, in particular, Toni Morrison's fiction, means that in researching this topic I enter an already densely inhabited arena. 3 Criticism has Her novels are The Bluest Eye (1970) (London: Picador, 1990), Sula (1973) (London: Vintage, 1998), Song of Solomon (1977) (London: Vintage, 1998), Tar Baby (1981) (London: Vintage, 1997), Beloved (1987) (London: Picador, 1988), Jazz (1992) (London: Picador, 1993) and Paradise (1998) (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998). All future references to the above will appear in the text. Other major publications include Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas and the Construction of Social Reality, ed. by Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (London: Picador, 1993), Birth of a Nation' hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the 0. J. Simpson Case, ed. by Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky Lacour (London: Vintage, 1997), The House that Race Built: Original Essays by Toni Morrison, Angela Y Davis, Cornel West and Others on Black Americans and Politics in America Today, ed. by Wahneema Lubiano and Toni Morrison (New York: Vintage 1998). 2 Morrison was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, this award being an indicator of the respect that her work has garnered. 3 Indeed, as Carl Plasa notes, "[t]he productivity of Morrison's activities as writer, critic and cultural commentator is matched by the extent of the critical interest that her work has generated, especially following the appearance of Beloved". Carl Plasa, ed., Toni Morrison Beloved (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p.6. Morrison's fiction is the focus of many essay collections, one of the earliest being Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, ed. by Nellie Y. McKay (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall & Co, 1988). This was followed by Modern Critical Views Toni Morrison, ed. by Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990), and then Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, ed. by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah (New York: Amistad, 1993). More recent collections include Toni Morrison's Fiction: Contemporary Criticism, ed. by David Middleton (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), New Casebooks Toni Morrison, ed. by Linden Peach (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998) and The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable, ed. by Marc Conner (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2000). Monographs have also been forthcoming, three of the 2 tended to situate Morrison's novels within a black U.S. literary tradition and / or feminist fields of enquiry. Some scholarship reads her work in terms of the concerns of a broader tradition of North American literature. Whilst several critics have chosen psychoanalytic approaches,4 few have so far employed theories of class or of postcolonialism.5 Indeed, despite tile plurality of critical most insightful being Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison's Novels by Philip Page (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle: The Novels of Toni Morrison by Gurleen Grewal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998) and Toni Morrison Contemporary World Writers by Jill Matus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). By the late 1990s publications focused on individual Morrison novels were appearing. These included New Essays on Song of Solomon, ed. by Valerie Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Modern Critical Interpretations Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, ed. by Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999), Critical Essays on Toni Morrison's Beloved, ed. by Barbara Solomon (New York: G. K. Hall & Co, 1998), Toni Morrison Beloved, ed. by Carl Plasa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Casebook, ed. by William L. Andrews and Nellie Y. McKay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), Understanding Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sula: Selected Essays and Criticisms, ed. by Solomon and Marla Iyasere (New York: Whitson Publishing Company, 2000) and Paradise Reconsidered: Toni Morrison's (Hi)stories and Truths by Justine Tally (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1999). In addition there have been special issues of periodical publications devoted to Morrison's work. A double issue of Modern Fiction Studies published in 1993 was then developed into the essay collection, Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches, ed. by Nancy Peterson (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997). And in 1998 Studies in the Literary Imagination published an issue about the relation of Morrison's writings to the American South. Surprisingly few studies have approached her fiction through comparative reference to that of other authors. Perhaps the most intertextual analysis has been completed on Morrison and William Faulkner, a notable example of this work being Unflinching Gaze: Morrison and Faulkner Re-Envisioned, ed.