The Memory and the Reconstruction of Postcolonial Identities: Toni Morrison`s Novel Beloved

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to develop the idea of possible dissymmetry between the individual memory and the official history, by focusing on the novel Beloved of the Afro-American writer Toni Morrison. If the historical discourse of the black slavery is built upon the experiences narrated from the perspective of the dominant subject, and often passes under silence to the violence of these experiences, then the truth about the past cannot be simply reduced to the history. In fact, there is a memory preserved in the conscience of the people, fulfilled with the painful events from the past. The novel is about the necessity of memory in which the author sees a possibility for a slave to develop a re-appropriation of his own subjectivity. The memory has also the function to reconnect because it develops a new form of social organization in the novel: a civil society built upon sharing in opposition of the society of domination.