Memory, Trauma, and Hauntology in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Abstract

This research focuses on the application of the concept ‘hauntology’ by Jacques Derrida from a critical perspective, suggesting that in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the past itself is called back, not as something that can ever be made historical, something that can ever belong to the past, but by existing instead in a spectral form that disrupts the present. The narrative technique used by Morrison, revolving around the figure of Beloved and the haunted house at 124 Bluestone Road, also illustrates how the past, through its memories, has refused any closure, how trauma has remained in its corporeal form, and how communities bear the restless legacy of past injustices. The application of the concept, hauntology, also allows the researcher to decipher how, through the narrative technique, the linear notion of time has been disrupted, how the line separating the dead from the alive has also been blurred, and how, thereby, it requires its audience to subscribe to it. The study progresses in revealing how, through trauma studies, discussions on memories, and spectral theory, the researcher identifies how Morrison’s narrative form, through its fragmentation, repetition, silence, and use of the ghost figure, also signifies the inevitability of past wounds. Thus, it also signifies how, through its narrative technique, it has turned literature into a ‘space for mourning.’