A New-Historicist Reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved

A Review Article by Marwan M. Abdi

Course; Literary Criticism

Instructor; Dr. Azad Hamad Sharif

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Introduction

During the recent decades a great deal of research has been dedicated to the cases of the
marginalized nations such as the African Americans. This renewed interest in the lives of
the Blacks which has been mainly due to the Postmodern and Postcolonial trends; has
brought many black writers, into the forefront of the literary and historical representation.
The history of this interest in in the blacks' identity and their cultural heritage could be
traced back in the writings of the Harlem Renaissance artists, who challenged the
Eurocentric and white centered discourse of the earlier literary traditions. Some
predecessors like, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston inspired postmodern
writers such as, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to work on establishing, a black
literary tradition that found its place in the literary canon postmodern era. Morrison’s
works which aimed at raising the awareness among the black people, were not only
concerned with reclaiming the history, the forgotten rituals and the heritage of the
African Americans but also worked on representing history form the marginalized black
perspective. Beloved which is her most famous novel deals with very significant issues
such as the history of slavery and it's hunting presents in the minds of the traumatized
African Americans. Revising the history of the millions of slaves who were treated
brutally by the seemingly civilized whites, is one of the central issues in this novel which
basically centers on the lives of community of female slaves.

Rationale

Due to the ever-increasing recent concerns for the marginalized ethnicities among the
writers and social activists, new approaches in literary studies have emerged which are
primarily concerned with the history and the culture of the subdued Nations. Three major
types of cultural studies which Dobie categorizes as; new historicism postcolonialism and
American multiculturalism, are some of the postmodern approaches which basically aim
at revising and rewriting the culture and the history of the marginalized Nations (Dobie,
2015, p.178).

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Research Approach

For studying and evaluating the following articles, postmodern approaches are applied,
since this work is a meta-narrative that breaks down the traditional conceptions of
History, historiography and narration. Theories of critics such as Linda Hutcheon in the
field of historical metafiction and other psychoanalytical theories are going to be
employed for the analytical evaluation of the following papers. The major critical
approach that is going to be employed in the following works, is basically a New-
Historical approach, (cultural studies) and psychoanalytical approaches of the French
psycho-feminist critics.

Review of the Articles

The articles that are going be discussed in this review article, basically are concerned
with a new-historicist reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. A postmodern and
poststructuralist study of the novel which sometimes includes a feminist and
psychoanalytical analysis are some approaches employed by the writers to shed light on
the history of slavery of the African Americans. The articles are discussed according to
the order of their publication; Linda Krumholz's "The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical
Recovery in Toni Morrison's Beloved" (1992) describes how history-making from the
perspective of the Blacks has a therapeutic effect. Kimberly Chabot Davis’s artilcle;
"Postmodern blackness: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and the end of history"(1998) through
a multidisciplinary approach highlights the way Morrison, blurs the boundaries between
history and fiction in order to reconstruct the history of the slavey. Emma Parker's “A
New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's Beloved” (2001) similar to the
aforementioned articles, studies the traumas of the African Americans from New-
historicist, Freudian, Feminist perspectives.

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Linda Krumholz's "The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison's
Beloved" (1992)

Krumholz’s “The Ghosts of Slavery ” raises the argument that the act of reconstructing of
the history of the African Americans, in Beloved has a therapeutic effect on characters,
the writer and the reader. After supporting this argument by statements form Du Bois and
Rampersad , the author adopts the Cultural Poetics and Psychoanalytical approach to
highlight the way Morrison’s Beloved focuses on the history of slavery as a national and
personal trauma and the rituals’ therapeutic effect on the fragmented individuals. Various
techniques such as, repetition, multiple voices and narrative perspectives and the oral
tradition , which makes the story a ritual of healing are discussed. This healing process
is argued to be framed in three major phases, i.e., the traumatized person’s stage of
confronting the past, then her atonement and the final ritual of clearing and rebirth.
Considering these stages as the general framework , the article goes on to analyze the
major female characters including; Baby Suggs, Beloved, Sethe and Denver as the prime
examples of characters who are haunted by their past.

Concepts related to rituals and the spirituality of the African Americans’ cultural heritage
and their curing impact on the characters are represented through Baby Suggs, while
Beloved basically symbolizes the traumatic history or the ghost of slavery which is
haunting the characters and even the readers. The article employs Freudian
psychoanalytical approach to discuss the repression of the traumatic memories of slavery
in Baby Suggs and the way she goes through the process of reconciliation with those
memories. This character’s role as an unchurched preacher who helps people to face their
painful memories is compared to Frued’s method of allowing the patients to narrativize
their traumas and in order to liberate their diverted energy. In this part the writer
interestingly argues that the rituals of the African Americans are deemed to be
antecedent for the scientific theories of Freud and even they transcend the scientific
mode of reasoning in American educational system. The reintroducing and revisioning of
the cultural heritage of the ‘blacks’ is Morrison’s postmodern method to show the
possibility of reconstructing of the past and reconceptualization of the future. This part
ends with the manner which characters in the novel have tried their best to lock away

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these memories and emotions for the sake of survival and a call for letting their hearts
free from those painful histories .

The writer then acknowledges that recalling and restaging the traumatic past is always
painful but the only way to get relieved from the psychological burden. Beloved as a
character who symbolizes the past brings to the light the writer’s philosophy that there is
a need for realizing history in order to forge your future. This new historicist attitude also
draws attention to some critics' viewpoint regarding the way that the rhetorical traditions
of the African Americans has always rejected the White-Centered and the monolithic
voice of the dominant cultures. The character of the Beloved as the paper argues, fulfils
the task of bringing the history of slavery into life and makes both the characters and the
reader to revisit their history in order to get psychologically released. Beloved is a
character that haunts the present, a strategy used by Morrison to recreate and give life to
the forgotten history of the black slaves.

Sethe’s healing process, as a pivotal stage in the healing process provided by the work, is
a stage which highlights the power of the spirituality and communal ties of the women
slaves. Having all their voices rejoined and going through a ritual of purgation provides
Sethe (who symbolizes the traumatized characters ) with an opportunity to get cleansed
and free from the psychological burden of the painful history. The final restaging of the
suppressed past and letting the suppressed negative energies , an outlet as the article
argues, in a sense recovers the characters from the dark history. Sethe’s daughter,
Denver is the last character who symbolizes both the past and the future. She is the
voice of the writer and the a generation who is concerned with carrying the forgotten
history of the African Americans. Denver's relationship with the past conveys the main
idea of the writer who considers history as a "ritual engagement with a past", in other
words without having a full knowledge of her family's past Denver must remain isolated
and traumatized. As a character she stars to gain knowledge about her past through
beloved and her mother, and after acknowledging those painful histories she's able to find
her way to the Future. The end of the work highlights the writer’s argument which is
stated at the very beginning, i.e., the time that Denver goes beyond her role as a character
and takes on the role of the teacher and the historian and the author. In other words she

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becomes an authorial voice and takes history in her hands in order to rewrite it from the
perspective of the marginalized black people, a version, quite a different from the white
discourse.

Finally, the pepper’s conclusion highlights Morrison's critiques of the old historicism
and the fact-based system of thought predominant in the united States, a trend that has
always ignored the subjectiveness , spirituality and the cultural heritage of the African
Americans. Although all characters suffer from fragmentation, and the task of rememory
and recollecting history sounds to be baffling and difficult but it is essential to African
Americans’ recovery.

Taking into consideration that this paper has been written only 5 years after the
publication of the novel, although it lacks enough references to the critics’ viewpoints,
but it is well structured in terms of developing the article through the four major
characters' healing process. The writer strongly grounds his argument from the very
beginning and uses quotes from Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk, and the historical
concerns for the black nation that could be culturally united and the “veil behind which
black remained nearly invisible " (Reilly, J.M. 1994). This draws the reader's attention to
a concern for the recovery of the history of the African Americans which is the central
focus of the paper. Although the paper starts with supporting it's arguments with critics
and historians views such as Du Bois, but from the second page the writer depends on her
own analysis rather than finding other critics and historians' attitude towards the history
of slavery. For example a brief reference to Michel Foucault’s conception of History as
being subjective “non-linear and non-teleological ”would have made the introductory part
stronger (Bressler, 2011, p.189).

Since the article is concerned with four major female characters of the novel, the ideas of
the feminist critics and those who focus on concepts such as trauma and psychology of
the woman would have made the article stronger. Feminists such as Julia Kristeva and
Helene Cixous, who have endeavored to explain the fragmented nature of the woman's
psychology through a Lacanian perspective would have made the character analysis
deeper and more comprehensive. Although the paper, frames out a well-structured
discussion through clear-cut ritual stages of healing but referring briefly to the theories

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of Sigmund Freud, for the character analysis gives the reader that impression the article is
an essay rather than at research. Claire Kahani's the Feminist critic’s Passions of the
Voice which highlights the techniques that are used texts that deal with hysteric
discourses also I believe would be a valuable source for tackling the traumatic case of
the characters in this novel (Finzi, 2018, p. ).

Although the writer of this article never mentions, her new historical approach but
comparing and contrasting the African Americans’ history and the monolithic version
that has been dominant throughout centuries is the central concern of the writer .
Reminding the reader of the therapeutic effect of the practice of restaging and
provisioning of the past traumas of any nation is a recurring element that makes the
article so useful and applicable to other researches in the field of new-historicism and
trauma.

Although the work does not follow a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach, but
its simplicity in terms of a structure and arguments and the way the writer develops her
ideas in accordance with the developments of the events of the novel, are some qualities
that make the article a trustworthy source for researchers. Having a separate concluding
section which wraps up the whole paper and leaves the reader with open discussions is
another strong aspect of the article as a new historical analysis of a work that has
endeavored to pass on the true history of the slavery.

Kimberly Chabot Davis’s "Postmodern blackness: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and

This article basically highlights Morrison’s usage of historical fiction as a medium for
revisioning the history of his nation and her aim to cure the injuries inflicted upon the
black people throughout history. From the very beginning of the article the writer
introduces Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographic metafiction and the post modern
narrative strategies used in Morrison’s Beloved to mix fiction and history. As a meta-
narrative as the writer argues; this work questions the authenticity of history and acts as a

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work to keep the forgotten history alive, in order to build a better future for the African
Americans. This kind of relating the novel to the postmodern novelistic tradition that is
used for national awareness and even healing the traumas of the victimized nations is a
quality that stands out from the very beginning.

Morrison as a postmodern novelist considered history as fictional and tried her best to
record the history of the African Americans from a new perspective and to manipulate
this revisioning for therapeutic concerns. This revolutionary attitude as Davis argues was
a subversion of the monolithic attitude of the postmodern academic theories that was
dominated by established hierarchies such as white vs black and man vs woman. This
poststructuralist attitude and Morrison’s attempt to Challenge such hierarchies is a
distinguishing quality in this new-historicist study, since it basically draws attention on
how an oppressed nation’s history has been falsified by a “white authority” and the
oppressed nation’s attempt to rewrite their own vision of History.

Although the previous article by Krumholz dealt with the history of the African
Americans but I believe this article which is written doing the same decade is better
grounded on postmodern theories concerning, history and narrative and thematic
presentations in novels. This article very interestingly employs Michel Foucault's view of
history in order to highlights Toni Morrison’s Counter-Historical attitude which rejected
the objective and totalizing view of history In order to clarify on this new-historical
strategy, Davis brings example from Margaret Garner's true story which inspired
Morrison to reframe it and to represent it from the vantage point of the Victim. Drawing
attention to Morrison’s attempt to blur the boundaries between fiction and history which
is a very effective strategy in postmodern meta-narratives is an aspect that is noticed in
this paper but overlooked in Krumholz’s article .

Toni Morrison as a postmodern writer was basically critical of the shallow

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change the readers perception of what is real and what is fictional. This process which
Victor Shklovsly calls “defamiliarization” puts the old into a new “light” gets the reader
to a “field of new perception” and provokes the audience to reexamine any established
presumptions (Shklovsly cited by Bressler, p. 50). In various stages of the story as the
article argues, Morrison uses such metafictional strategies as inserting para-textual
material, (a mix of factual and fictional documents ) and tries to distort the borderline
between fact and fiction. Morrison attempts to convey a message that African Americans,
should not dwell in their own past because it can strangle their present. In order to get
free from the Horrors and traumas of the past, restaging and reenacting those traumas, is
a necessity and as Davis argues, but it has a limited potential for recovery since the
ending of the work suggests that the ghost of the past remains and waiting to all be
"resurrected". The limited potential of revisioning of history and healing the traumas of
a nation is an argument that is well established and supported by critics’ views and
textual analysis, while it was briefly hinted at the end of the former paper. This argument
is supported by quoting Linda Hutcheon, who considers the unavoidable nature of the
past, as in essential quality of the postmodern historiographic novels. This partial
recovery and open-endedness, is another postmodern feature which leaves the reader with
an option to get engaged in in rethinking and imagining history.

This article's various argumentations and the conflicting perspectives of various critics is
a feature that makes it a very trustful source for any future references to a new-historical
analysis of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The writer's multidisciplinary approach and using
Linguistic, Psycho-Feminist, Marxist and even the Oral African-American Tradition, to
analyze this work is a quality that grabs any reader’s attention throughout the reading
process. Quoting Morrison’s interview to supports his argument, the writer goes on to say
that; Morrison confessed that her work was intended to imitate the " jazz" which always
keeps the listener on the edge and with no close or ending. Such qualities added up to
Morrison’s usage of the circular plot which reminds the critics of the ancestral worldview
of the African Americans, and at the same time, recalling Julia Kristeva conception of the
"woman's time" as non-phallic, is what I believe to be a turning point of the work, where
Morrison’s rejection of all White-Centered traditions surfaces up and we can notice a
fully post-modern Black style of narration comes to exist somewhere close to the paper’s

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closure. This quality with the fragmented and elusive narration which the article regards
as distinguishing qualities of Beloved, is the best medium for portraying the" the
unspeakable thoughts" and the psychic traumas of the African-American slaves.

In this ‘Morrisonian’ conception of time is different from that of the Marxist critic
Fredrick Jameson. In other words, her work blends the modern and postmodern elements
and raises the significance of the 'deep memory',i.e., the connection between past and the
present, and at the same time it rejects the teleological nature of the postmodern
narratives. Although Morrison favored, a synchronic conception of time (merging
between the past, present and the future), at the same time she could not reject the
timelessness of the world of beloved. In other words although, she rejected the linear
view of history, nevertheless she believed in respecting time (differentiation between past
and the present) and this view is represented through characters who realized that 'life'
means, " caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back"(Morrison,2004 ,
p.109). In my perspective, this interplay of the modern and postmodern conception of
time is another overarching aspect of the research that Davis has framed out to make
readers revise their former simplistic views of Morrison as a postmodern writer who
passively accepted all postmodern novelistic trends. Instead, she was quite conscious
that, for recreating her nation’s history she had to not only subvert the deeply-rooted
white traditions but also to invent a fusion of the African-American, modern and
postmodern traditions.

Davis’s ending argument is that, ignoring Morrison’s concept of temporality and reading
the work, in the complete synchronic sense would undermine the text's attempt to
maintain some of the "temporal boundaries". That's to say Morrison’s strategies in
writing exemplifies the notion that learning from history and past and not to get paralyzed
in it, and creating a synthesis out of scattered segments of history and taking advantage
from both the diachronic and synchronic sense of time is the representational method of
her historiographic novel.

As noticed throughout the paper the writer stars to develop her argument through various
critics from different schools of literary criticism. Although this paper was not structured
in a simplistic manner, but a gradual development of the ideas from new-historical and

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psychological analysis to more complicated metafictional aspects of the text and a
philosophical view of history by Fredrick Jameson gets the reader prepared for
analyzing the traumas of the characters from a brother prospective. While the article gets
engaged in various discussions from various perspectives, but the core element that I
found running through the whole paper was the traumas of the African American nation.
Davis’s analysis of the therapeutic effect of art is represented through stages such as;
suppressing the past (trauma); remembering and forgetting the past(hysteria) and
reenacting the past (curing the trauma). This pattern which was found also in the former
article, I believe could be analyzed through Carl Jung's and Northrop Frye's
mythological criticism which discovers universal patterns in the lives of people
throughout human’s history. This article's postmodern approach to the textual analysis
was an overarching future. In some occasions, for instance, Davis even criticizes seminal
critics as Linda Hutcheon for being biased against blackness. The article’s supremacy of
the African American tradition and their ancestral worldviews at the end of the paper is
so inspiring that gets the modern reader think of comparing works of the Harlem
Renaissance Writers with more the more contemporary ones and doing more on African
American criticism and the cultural studies.

Emma Parker's “A New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's

This article which stars with the famous French feminist Helene Cixous, and her
conception of the new history, from the very beginning establishes itself as a research
mainly concerned with a feminist study of history of the traumas of the women in
Morrison’s Beloved. After introducing the concept of the hysteria, Emma Parker clearly
states her approach, that is, drawing insights from psychoanalytical theories and
employing the ideas of the French Feminists about hysteria. Beloved which is primarily
centered on the disempowered, as Emma Parker argues, examines the relationship
between the repression of the pain and the repression past, to propose that Morrison’s
work highlights the significance of confronting and transforming history, which has a
healing impact on the traumatized. The writer also argues that Beloved challenges Freud

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and French feminist theories in the field of hysteria. From the very outset, we can notice
that this work similar to the former article tries to deal with the traumas of the characters
in Beloved, but its approach is different, since strictly tries to ground it argumentation on
the theories of the French psycho-feminist criticism.

After this introduction, the paper provides an introduction to Studies on Hysteria, written
by Freud and Breuer, and notes their findings that the reason behind the sufferings of the
Hysterics was the reminiscences and links it to the way these concepts are reflected in
Morrison’s Beloved through characters’ rememory. Parker goes on to quote Luce
Irigaray, the leading French Feminist, who has defined hysteria as a kind of protest
against the patriarchal law, something different from Lacan’s symbolic order(the time
that child acquires language and accepts the authority of the law of the Father). This
focus on the psychoanalytical theories of Freud , Lacan and French feminists, as a basis
to analyze the characters of the Beloved, makes this article a comprehensive
psychological study, that was not represented in the former papers. Although the former
articles to some extent used psychological criticism, but parker’s analysis is totally
grounded on the mentioned theories in a broader sense.

By introducing this new perspective the writer draws attention to a new interpretation for
hysteria, that is the hysterics who suffer from psychological burden try to mimic the
modes of behavior that the male-dominated society has imposed on her and through
overdoing it and exaggerating it, she tries to challenge the dominant order, and to undo
the male dominated discourse. Irigaray’s conception of hysteria, which similar to Lacan
and different from Freud, views hysteria from a broader sense, i.e., a result of public and
personal repression (social-historical trauma) is later on challenged by the article since
she is mainly obsessed with the feminist perspective and ignores the racial differences.
The article argues that beloved challenges several aspects of the French feminism and the
Freudian analysis concerning hysteria. In this section the writer sounds to be changing
her focus from merely psychoanalysis and feminist theories to a broader field of research
that is the Cultural poetics the American Multiculturalism (Dobie, 2015, p. 178).
Although a good background discussion is offered through the ideas of Freud and French

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feminist, but the writer seems to be concerned with broader perspective that includes, a
racial differences as well.

In order to show hysteria as communal phenomenon rather than caused by only familial
relationships, the article discusses the main character, Beloved who exemplifies the
marginalized black women who are suppressed due to the gender and skin color. The
raging power, that the feminist critics such as Helene Cixous and Claire Kahane find in
hysteria has a potential for subverting the hegemony of both the white and male. Another
aspect of the hysteria in the novel which is the characters’ desire for sweet foods, is
explained by Irigaray as a symptom of hysteria marked by excessiveness and obsession
with something to replace the vacancy of the sweet motherly love. This crave for
sweetness is explained through Freud and feminist perspective and the writer tries to add
the third dimension that is the racial history of sugar, and its association with the slavery
of the black people. Studying the trauma of the oppressed women through this femenist
perspective and considering it as a driving force for subverting any oppressing authority,
is a future that was not noticed in the previous articles and the subsequent linkage
between the trauma and the long history of colonialism, gets us to think of the imperial
policies as the main cause of the traumas of the African American nations.

Moreover The obsession with sweet foods and the cannibalistic desire of the Beloved, is
explained as a historical mimicry in which the oppressed tries to mimic and imitate the
logic of the master discourse, something that has been imposed on her in order to
deconstruct that hegemony. Through mimicking and over-acting a ravenous desire for
sugar and flesh, the work reminds the reader of the horrifying history of slavery, sugar
plantations, and the way that the Whites have devoured and consumed the black nations
throughout history. This is a very in-depth analysis that gives the psychotic disorder and
hysteria a brother national and historical dimension. Such an fusion between
psychoanalysis and the colonialists’ exploitation of the slaves as who were subjugated
and suffered from a peripheral identity could be more examined through applying
Antonio Gramsci’s theories of ‘subaltern and hegemony’ which basically deals with the
way that a superstructure such as an imperialist system hegemonized nations not only
physically but also psychologically.

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The article’s interesting shift to raising their latent power that exists in in hysteria, as a
potential for subverting the dominant Man or White Order , could be noted as a turning
Point and the research. After this Turning Point the paper shifts to a historical
dimension through discussing the way throughout history always hysteria have been
associated with women's deviance and with the insanity of the black people, but this
trend is subverted by this novel in a sense that it deconstructs and subverts the white and
man-centered biases and discourses of psychoanalysis and history . In this context no
phallocentric theory of Sigmund Freud is capable of interpretation, since and this novel
the Father is marginalized, but in the French feminist theory Beloved's hysteria is
associated with mother daughter relations, and a desire to return to the pre- oedipal state
the time that the child becomes one with the mother.

Although hysteria as Parker argues could be a driving force against the patriarchal law
but it's harmfulness is noted in Kristeva’s terms , when a hysteric retreats to the semiotic
phase and does not move to the symbolic phase. In order to elaborate on this Christevan
theory, Parker brings an example from the book where the chanting woman try to
exorcise beloved which is a symbol of their reaction to the patriarchal authority. The need
for a communal reaction against the dominant discourse is very important to notice since
beloved trauma is caused by society and her withdrawal and isolation. This call for the
communal struggle for freedom, is represented through beloved who is the ancestral
spirits and stands for millions of victimized African Americans, who have been ill treated
throughout history. The painful history of a slavery hunting the present causes hysteria ,
but the reproduction of the primary scenes that has caused that trauma, according to
Freud and Breuer, enables the hysteric to revision all those events, which has a curing
effect on their patient. This article's emphasis on the restaging of the trauma actually has
revolutionary purpose, in terms of demand for directing the inward energy to an outward
protest against exploitation and the abuser of the authority, which is manifest in Sethe's
aggressive attitude towards the white teacher. Therefore, although this work does not
explicitly state its new-historicist and postmodern approach in analyzing the text its focus
on a liberal and feminist perpective, I believe makes this article a work that is primarily

14
concerned with subverting any traditional hierarchal system, no matter if it is social
political or linguistic.

The shift from causes of hysteria which is associated with the past, and the pain which is
manifest in the present, is a structure that could be noticed, when the writer tries to link
the past of the slaves to their present. It is disastrous as the paper argues if people fail to
break behaviors that are deeply rooted and accepted as norms in history. Those who are
stuck in the past will not be able to find a place in the present that's to say the symbolic
order. Although anything related to the memories of suffering is vital for surviving as it
is acknowledged by the text that anything dead when comes back to life hurts and the
fact that healing process is always painful, and this is to convey the message that
improving the present is crucially based on rebuilding the past. The therapeutic aspect of
art and revisioning history which was represented at the background of the previous
papers here becomes a governing motif and all other data and argumentations are
discussed in relation with this issue. Accordingly, parker goes on to discuss the healing
impact of storytelling, through a mixture of Freudian talking- cure and the French
communists’ narrative-cure; through which the ‘hysteric’ exercises some degree of his
control over the story rather than being controlled by it. Creating a new narrative from a
new perspective on history as the paper argues is able to create possibilities for the future,
and this concern for a counter-history in novelistic art as noticed earlier was the primary
focus of Davis’s article.

The article’s concluding page basically focuses on the danger of evasiveness and beating
back and ignoring the history and calls for an attention to Morrison’s message which is;
horrifying history of slavery must be revised and retold rather than being repeated. The
conclusion also highlights beloved's ability in speaking the unspeakable , i.e., hystery and
to challenge the racial and gender biases which have been dominant in the historical and
psychoanalysis discourses , while acknowledging that there is only a chance for a partial
recovery from hysteria, and we must learn how to confront the painful history without
being controlled by it.

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 Conclusion

The articles evaluated in this review article, all tackled history and the African American
nation’s traumas from different perspectives and employed different approaches, but their
major concern was New-Historicist approached to reevaluate the history of a nation that
has been transcribed by a dominant discourse. Krumhoz's article which started with a
quote from Du Bois, very concisely framed her study around the major characters’
analysis. Including the concept of trickster, which is found in the oral tradition of the
African American literature was an aspect that stands out in this article. I believe
integrating the oral tradition and ancestral myths of the black nations in the postmodern
narratives, enabled this article to cover very significant themes of Morrison’s novel.
Krumhoz's major focus on trauma and revisioning history, was reflected in Parker's
article that basically employed the theories of the Psycho-Feminist theorists in the textual
analysis. The very unifying aspect of these two articles as I noted, was the fact that the
trauma, and the pains of slavery that have been inflicted upon the Black Nations was the
major concern of these articles' analysis. Therefore, it is clearly noted that novels of
African American writers must be analyzed from the new-historical and the cultural-
poetics perspective, since these works are imbued with the pains and sufferings of the
victimized nation; a quality that has been overlooked by the dominant discourse of
history.

Davis's approach to the novel was more complicated, because of her adaptation of the
multidisciplinary approach which included arrange of, Postcolonial, Marxist, Feminist,
Psychoanalysis, and Cultural Poetics. I believe this kind of approach is more preferable
for analyzing the postmodern narratives because analyzing such works which have a
complicated nature in limited perspectives would not provide the critics with a through
and in-depth understanding of the themes that are inserted into the gaps of such
narratives. A mixture of all approaches in to some extent could be found in Davis's
article, since the writer employed the majority of approaches in order to evaluate Beloved
which is intended to recreate the history of the oppressed African American Nations. The
outstanding aspect of this article was that the Black Nations' victimization was traced

16
back in their history and their cause of their trauma was proved to be factors deeply
rooted in in their history. This concern for healing the traumas of a nation through
revisioning history and rewriting it on their own hands was the overarching aspect of the
aforementioned articles that I believe needs to be taken into account by the contemporary
scholars. From such studies we can learn how literature has the potential for revisioning
history of the victimized nations which is tainted by stains of imperial policies.

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 References

Krumholz, L. (1992). “The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison's

Parker, E. (2001) “A New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's

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