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Tragic Mercies and Other Journeys to Redemption

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Tragic Mercies and Other Journeys to Redemption TRAGIC MERCIES AND OTHER JOURNEYS TO REDEMPTION: DEFINING THE MORRISONIAN TRAGEDY by ASHLEY NICOLE BURGE TRUDIER HARRIS, COMMITTEE CHAIR CASSANDER SMITH CAJETAN IHEKA YOLANDA MANORA PEARL MCHANEY A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2019 Copyright Ashley Nicole Burge 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Tragic Mercies and Other Journeys to Redemption: Defining the Morrisonian Tragedy problematizes current portrayals of tragedy and tragic acts in African American literature. Using Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a foundational text, I argue that Morrison executes a literary aesthetic that disrupts traditional constructs of the tragedy that elevate Eurocentric ideologies at the expense of Black identity and subjectivity. This aesthetic challenges the portrayal of the “tragic figure,” positioning it as an inadequate trope that nullifies the complexities associated with the lived reality of Africans/African Americans under repressive systems such as American slavery. Morrison reconfigures tragedy to illuminate a space that she calls the “tragic mode” in which her characters achieve a form of catharsis and revelation. I use Morrison’s signification of tragedy to build a theoretical paradigm that I call the Tragic Mercy which interprets tragedy and tragic acts, such as infanticide in her neo-slave narrative Beloved (1987), as events that symbolize activism against oppressive systems connected to racist capitalist patriarchal ideologies. The Tragic Mercy is the lens through which I define the Morrisonian tragedy, and I articulate it as an act that generates a physical and psychological journey that leads to redemption, catharsis, and reclamation. I connect this journey to several tenets of African American culture and history, which resist one-dimensional constructs of African American identity and subjectivity. For instance, I use several constructs associated with Black Feminism to demonstrate how the act/action/activism of the Tragic Mercy equips characters with agency ii under oppressive systems that would normally handicap their resolve. I also configure thjourney in ways that parallel other cultural expressions that are ingrained in the African American psyche. For example, I liken certain themes to the reclamation of the vernacular tradition. In each instance, I demonstrate how Morrison’s literary aesthetic forces the reader to reassess the signification of tragedy as a means to validate the complexities associated with the African American experience. Further, I use the lens of the Tragic Mercy as a viable construct to interpret other works of African American literature, including Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Suzan- Lori Parks’s Venus (1996) and Fucking A (2001), and Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner (2006). Using these themes, I position Morrison’s literary aesthetic as a narrative strategy that builds on African American literary and cultural traditions while simultaneously subverting detrimental Eurocentric ideologies iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to all the wonderful people who devoted themselves to helping me through this process and imparting wisdom and knowledge that will carry me to the next phase in my academic career. I want to especially thank my family for fully supporting me in all my academic endeavors. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am privileged to have this opportunity to thank my colleagues, faculty members, friends, and the University of Alabama community for helping me bring this dissertation to fruition. I am indebted to my dissertation chair, Professor Trudier Harris, for the wisdom, insight, and wealth of information that she has provided me during this process and during my time in graduate school at the University of Alabama. It has been a privilege to study with such an esteemed scholar in African American literature who has challenged me to make a mark in the field. I am forever grateful for all the opportunities that she has made possible and all the help that she has given me during my journey in the academy. I also want to thank Professor Cassander Smith for the invaluable insight that she has given me as a scholar and professor during my time in the program. Her devotion to the profession and to her students has inspired me to be a better teacher and scholar as I progress in my career. I am also indebted to my committee members, Professors Cajetan Iheka, Yolanda Manora, and Pearl McHaney for challenging me to ask better questions, think beyond standard paradigms, and trust my knowledge during the trials and tribulations of the dissertation. Their encouragement has been immensely helpful during every phase of the dissertation process. I would also like to thank The University of Alabama Department of English community for giving me the opportunity to make a contribution to the field of African American literature. This project would not have been possible without the support of the University of Alabama academic community, my devoted professors and mentors, and my family and friends. v CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………ii DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………….....v LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………...vii 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………...1 2. THE TRAGIC MERCY: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK DEFINED…………………..26 3. TRAGIC MERCY AS AN ICONOCLASTIC TOOL OF REDEMPTION IN SUZAN-LORI PARKS’S FUCKING A AND KYLE BARKER’S NAT TURNER……………………………..63 4. [TRAGIC] BLACK SEX AND [FLAWED] BLACK BODIES: TRAGIC (SEX) ACTS AS PATHWAYS TO RECLAMATION AND REDEMPTION IN HARRIET JACOBS’S INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL AND SUZAN-LORI PARKS’S VENUS……100 5. ANSWERING ZORA’S AMBIGUOUS QUESTIONS: SUBVERSIVE MERCY IN HURSTON’S THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD………………………………………..132 6. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………152 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………156 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1. Kyle Baker, “Home,” 2006………………………………………………………………96 2. Kyle Baker, “Home,” 2006………………………………………………………………97 3. Kyle Baker, “Home,” 2006………………………………………………………………98 4. Kyle Baker, “Home,” 2006………………………………………………………………98 5. Kyle Baker, “Education,” 2006………………………………………………………….99 vii 1. INTRODUCTION Toni Morrison’s oeuvre symbolizes a cornerstone in the African American literary canon because it so viscerally captures the essence of Black people in turmoil, in joy, in struggle, and in triumph. In essence, Morrison’s work illuminates Black identity and cultural expression in ways that validate the multifaceted complexities of Black people and their sometimes-tragic realities in American society. There is no work that does this more resonantly than Morrison’s 1987 neo- slave narrative Beloved. Morrison has described Beloved as a type of memoriam to the lost souls whose tragic voices were silenced by the inhumanities of American slavery. In interviews she has said, “There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presence of, or recollect the absence of slaves…And because such a place doesn’t exist (that I know of), the book had to” (“A Bench”). In that interview, Morrison talks of transforming the very landscape of Southern towns such as Charleston or Savannah with a “three-hundred-foot tower” or a “bench by the road” to commemorate the tragedies that Africans/African Americans had to survive to become whole despite the trauma of enslavement. But even as Morrison laments the collective indifference toward the shame of American slavery her seminal work, Beloved (1987), transforms and reconfigures the landscape of American and African American literature by forcing her readers to confront the past and acknowledge its interconnectivity to the contemporary realities of Black experience in America. Morrison does this by positioning Beloved as a work of narrative revisionist history that challenges the historically Eurocentric confines of the tragic mode in order to reclaim Black identity and subjectivity and garner 1 redemption and catharsis. I position these maneuvers as fundamental constructs that imbue a literary aesthetic that is rich for interpreting African American works in the canon. In Beloved, Morrison executes a literary aesthetic that is applicable to other works of African American literature that interrogate tragedy as an inevitable consequence of black oppression and disenfranchisement. Beloved resonates with the works of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus (1996) in which women in repressive societies must gain agency through unique, alternative forms of power. This agency may be gained through their sexuality, through their role as women or mothers, or through the tragic acts that liberate them. Several of Morrison’s predecessors and contemporaries also interrogate tragic circumstances in order to reveal the inhumanities that African Americans have overcome to gain their freedom. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) does this by showing the intersections of gender, race, class and ecology, while Suzan-Lori Parks does so by illustrating tragic hope in a dystopian society in Fucking A (2001). The bounds of African American literature are still further expanded by Kyle Baker’s graphic novel Nat Turner (2006), which reimagines the Nat Turner rebellion through visceral images that transcribe the
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