`Can't nothing heal without pain': healing in Toni Morrison's Beloved

Abstract

Toni Morrison reinterprets and reconstitutes American history by placing the lives, stories and experiences of African Americans in a position of centrality, while relegating white American history and cultural traditions to the margins of her narratives. She rewrites American history from an alternative - African American woman's - perspective, and subverts the accepted racist and patriarchally inspired `truths' about life, love and women's experiences through her sympathetic depiction of murderous mother love and complex female relationships in Beloved. She writes about oppression, pain and suffering, and of the need for the acknowledgement and alleviation of the various forms of oppression that scar human existence. Morrison's engagement with healing in Beloved forms the central focus of this short dissertation. The novel is analysed in relation to Mary Douglas's `Two Bodies' theory, John Caputo's ideas on progressive Foucaultian hermeneutics and healing gestures, and Julia Martin's thoughts on alternative healing practices based on non-dualism and interconnectedness. Within this interdisciplinary context, Beloved is read as a `small start' to `creative engagement' with alternative healing practices (Martin, 1996:104).