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Remembering a Counterculture Visuality, Orality, and Imagination in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Tar Baby Roos Maier Amsterdam, 07/01/15 6156770 Master Thesis History: American Studies University of Amsterdam Dhr. dr. G.H. (George) Blaustein Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 1. Visuality vs. Orality 9 2. Imagining Beauty and the Past 21 3. Prosthetic Memory and the Novel 32 Conclusion 42 Bibliography 45 Acknowledgements I would like to begin by acknowledging the opportunity I had to use the (online) libraries of both the University of Amsterdam and the University of Illinois at Chicago for my research. But even more importantly, I would like to express my acknowledgement to the professors who contributed the most to this thesis, in various ways. To begin with, George Blaustein: my thesis supervisor and the program coordinator of the master’s program in "History: American Studies" at the UvA. George has often incited my curiosity by always finding a way to link differing topics within American studies and by introducing me to interesting, funny or challenging sources. Primarily by asking (sometimes difficult) questions, George has encouraged me to search for counterarguments and our conversations have offered me the most important guidance in the process of writing and revising this thesis. Additionally, I would like to thank Madhu Dubey for introducing me to Toni Morrison's novels and to critical scholarship, including Dubey's own writings, on Morrison's work. During my global exchange semester at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I took her course "Topics in African American Literature: Toni Morrison". Having only read The Bluest Eye (1970), I did not know what to expect. However, Dubey's supervision, the seminars, the required readings and the process of writing an essay for the course have inspired me greatly and eventually resulted in this thesis. Jennifer Brier has also fulfilled an important role for me at UIC; she gave me a chance to study with PhD students who have offered me new perspectives on the academic field of history during our colloquiums. Finally, I would of course like to thank my family, friends, fellow students and colleagues for their support and understanding; they have either managed to foster my enthusiasm and interest or to reduce my worries. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Lorna Simpson / “Waterbearer”, 1986 www.lsimpsonstudio.com Introduction You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. - Toni Morrison / "The Site of Memory" (1987) In Les Lieux de Mémoire (1984-92), Pierre Nora has offered an explanation for the want to create and maintain memory: "we speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left".1 Nora claimed that memory used to be all around us, as there used to be milieux de mémoire: environments or settings, within peasant culture for example, wherein memory was a part of public, everyday life. However, only history has remained – the representations and reconstructions, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer – together with lieux de mémoire: sites of memory, including historical novels for example. An important function of milieux de mémoire was to bind social groups. And due to the loss of milieux de mémoire, every social group now redefines its identity through the recovery of its own history in the form of lieux de mémoire.2 Such a site of memory, Nora explains, "only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic – responsive [...] to every censorship or projection".3 According to Nora, lieux de mémoire therefore particularly function as binding for those groups who have long been marginalized in traditional history; they are the locus for everything that is missing in this history. It has become the responsibility of individuals, such as fictional writers, to create lieux de mémoire, to recapture the memory and thereby contribute to the formation of (often marginalized) group identities. Morrison has felt and taken up this responsibility by recalling and creating cultural memory in her novels, her lieux de mémoire. What many African American novelists have shown is that although memories can be painful, memory can heal from the past, like Leon Forrest described: "memory, which freezes time, [...] creates a rupture and destroys as it heals".4 Tied to this healing force of memory is Morrison's premise that memory contains knowledge, a kind of cultural wisdom, and it is 1"P."Nora,"M."Roudebush,"transl.,‘Between"Memory"and"History."Les"Lieux"de"Memoire’,"Representations+26+(1989)"7." 2"Ibidem,"8G9." 3"Ibidem,"8G9." 4"L."Forrest,"The+Bloodworth+Orphans.+A+Novel"(1987)"41."" For"a"more"extensive"analysis"of"the"function"of"memory"to"heal"from"the"past"in"African"American"literature,"see:"A.H.A."Rushdy,"“The" NeoGslave"Narrative”."In:"M."Graham,"ed.,"The+African+American+Novel+(2004)"103." 1 necessary to maintain this wisdom on a collective level.5 To use her words: "nice things don't always happen [...] if there is no conscious historical connection".6 By recalling cultural memory, this connection can be both maintained and created and have a healing effect. Meanwhile, recalling cultural memory also functions as a form of cultural recuperation: because the memories of African Americans have been discredited in the West, as they were held by discredited people Morrison argues, she is engaged in the effort to contribute to maintaining this memory and thus to recapture and re-appropriate the wisdom it contains. Writing novels is an important way of doing this, she states in "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation" (1984); the most important function of the novel can even be ascribed to its ability to recall cultural memory. According to Morrison, music had been the healing art form for blacks, lower class blacks in particular, as it was used to transmit stories and recall memories. However, Morrison claims, music is now no longer exclusively for African Americans as it has become a part of contemporary music everywhere. On top of that, lower class African Americans have confronted the middle and upper classes by moving to the North and becoming geographically as well as culturally distanced from their heritage.7 She explains: "we don’t live in places where we can hear those stories anymore; parents don’t sit around and tell their children those classical, mythological archetypal stories that we heard years ago".8 In order to maintain these stories, which were originally created and transmitted orally, and thereby to maintain a cultural memory that contains historical information, novels that include the African American oral tradition are necessary. But, what does cultural memory mean for Morrison, how does it function in her novels and what wisdom can it contain, explaining why it is necessary to recall cultural memory by writing novels? In this thesis I will explore how Morrison deals with memory and more specifically with African American cultural memory in three of her novels: The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977) and Tar Baby (1981). In 1925, Maurice Halbwachs introduced the idea of collective memory. Halbwachs claimed that every individual memory is constructed within social structures, such as families or nation-states or institutions, and can therefore only be understood through this group context.9 Drawing on Halbwachs, the German Egyptologist Jan Assman introduced the term cultural memory in 1950. Like collective memories – again drawing on the idea that no memory is 5"T."Morrison,"“Memory,"Creation,"and"Writing”,"Thought+59"(December"1984)"385." 6"T."Morison,"“Rootedness."The"Ancestor"as"Foundation”.+In:"M."Evans,"ed.,"Black+Women+Writers"(1984)"344." 7"Ibidem,"340." 8"Ibidem,"340." 9"M."Halbwachs,"L.A."Coser,"transl.,"On+Collective+Memory"(1992).""" 2 ever purely individual, but always inherently shaped by collective, socio-cultural contexts –, cultural memories are collectively shared as well (although they also can exist on an individual level, because they shape individual memories). But, the term cultural memory of course also differs from collective memory. First, cultural memory always has a long-term durability. Second, cultural memory is ritualized in texts, monuments and other forms of lieux de mémoire (using Nora's term). Through these manifestations of culture the cultural memories can thus be passed from one generation to the other. Assman explains this in his definition of cultural memory: a "collective concept for all knowledge that directs behavior and experience in the interactive framework of a society and one that obtains through generations in repeated societal practice and initiation".10 Memory is of course used metaphorically within the concept of cultural memory – groups of people cannot remember literally. Also, cultural memories are not necessarily constructs supported by experience: as they are passed from one generation to the other, not every generation has actually lived through what is being remembered. Sometimes cultural memories do not even point to actual experiences of past generations, because knowledge or wisdom can be remembered as well in the form of cultural memories. I therefore use Alison Landsberg's term to point out another aspect of cultural memories: cultural memories are a form of prosthetic memories. These are memories of things people have not actually lived through.11 But how can these cultural memories, of things people have not lived through, be created? To begin with, lieux de mémoire establish and shape cultural memories: cultural memories are constructed in the form of novels or museums for example. As Landsberg explains, prosthetic memories, including cultural memories, can emerge at the interface between a person and such a site.

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