Beloved Spatial Dialectics

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The ingestive deportment is equally exhibited at the spatial level. In this respect,

Morrison‟s mapping of her characters‟ past and present experiences onto their physical

environment corresponds with Michel De Certeau‟s definition of the concept of place. In de

Certeau‟s terms:

Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others

are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but

like stories are held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state,

symbolisations encysted in the pain or pleasure of the body.i

De Certeau‟s conception of places as „inward-turning histories‟ evidently substantiates

Morrison‟s choice of the house on Bluestone Road as a setting for her novel. This idea is best

articulated in the novel‟s opening sentences:

124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby‟s venom. The women in the

house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the

spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were

its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the

sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen

years old -- as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was

the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in

the cake (that was it for Howard). (Morrison, p. 1)

Indeed, the personification employed in the opening sentence „124 WAS SPITEFUL‟

configures the house as a space that enigmatically absorbs and holds „in reserve‟ the black

family‟s traumatic past. In this context, comparing the house‟s spite to venom reveals the

extent to which this past is distasteful and indigestible to its dwellers. As such, the spectral

appearance of Beloved‟s „tiny hand prints […] in the cake‟, as well as the family‟s

internalisation of her haunting gaze represent clear „symbolisations‟ of the family‟s „inward-



turning histories‟, which are „encysted‟ not only in the perimeters of the setting but also in the

pain of its inhabitants‟ bodies and psyches.

The spatial encystment of time is corroborated by Morrison‟s description of the house

and its exact geographical location:

Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother,

Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by

themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn‟t

have a number then, because Cincinnati didn‟t stretch that far. In fact,

Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one

brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched

up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for

them. (Morrison, p. 1)

Naming the house after the street where it is situated calls attention to Morrison‟s curious

manipulations of space. „Linking acts and footsteps‟, namely the act of walking towards the

house, and the footsteps that will cross the itinerary to „Bluestone Road‟, and thus enclosing

„meanings and directions‟, the expression „124 Bluestone Road‟ functions through „emptying

out and wearing away‟ its „primary role‟ (De Certeau, p. 105). Not only does the house

become a „liberated space that can be occupied‟, but it also summons up and appropriates

presences other than the ones supposed to inhabit it (p. 105). Through this semantic play on

its signifier , the house maps „a second‟, fluid „poetic geography‟ onto the space set up by its

„literal‟ meaning (p. 105). Furthermore, it creates a sense of constant movement that mocks

the idea of stability it is expected to convey, thereby reflecting its inhabitants‟ restlessness due

to the harrowing presence of their traumatic past.

In this context, Morrison‟s juxtaposition of the naming of Ohio with Sethe‟s sons‟

desertion of the house clearly illustrates De Certeau‟s contention that „proper names‟ are no



more than „the impetus of movements […] that turn and divert an itinerary by giving it a

meaning (or a direction) (sens) that was previously unforeseen. These names create a nowhere

in places; they change them into passages‟ (p. 105). Indeed, this act of naming underlines the

instability of both its signifier and its signified(s). While apparently consolidating the

geographical location of the house, the designation „Ohio‟ arbitrarily signifies the sons‟

movement outside the boundaries of the familial and the local, thereby ironically

appropriating the house‟s spatial habitus and b(e)aring its hunger -nausea symptoms. In line

with the „emptying out‟ of its original significance and its substitution with a „direction‟ (p.

105), the house establishes, in De Certeau‟s terms, „two sorts of apparently contrary

movements, one extrovert (to walk is to go outside), the other introvert (a mobility under the

stability of the signifier)‟(p. 103). Accordingly, it refuses to digest the bodies that reject its

„spatial and signifying practices‟ (De Certeau, p. 105), while holding in its grip those who

accept them; hence the two sons‟ decision to „cre[ep] away‟ from its „lively spite‟ and

„venom‟ (Morrison, p. 1), and the secluded life to which Sethe and Denver are condemned

after their departure.

Through being entrenched in definite spatial and semantic arrangements, the house

assumes three distinct but interconnected symbolic functions: „the believable, the memorable,

and the primitive‟ (De Certeau, p. 105). According to De Certeau, these functions „designate

what authorises (or makes possible or credible) spatial appropriations‟, what is reiterated or

conjured up in them „from a silent or withdrawn memory, and what is structured in them and

continues to be signed by an infantile […] origin‟ (p. 105). Significantly, „124 Bluestone

Road‟ „authorises‟ Sethe‟s acquisition of a habitable space after escaping slavery and

servitude. For „it was in front of that 124 that Sethe climbed off a wagon, her newborn tied to

her chest, and felt for the first time the wide arms of her mother-in-law, who had made it to

Cincinnati‟ (Morrison, p. 102). Furthermore, in being witness to Sethe‟s murder of her



daughter Beloved, the house inexorably makes this silenced and „withdrawn‟ past resonate in

her mind. Finally, this locus of intimacy is „structured‟ and marked by the „primitive‟

presence of the slain daughter whose rage encapsulates black suffering since ancient times. In

fact, 124 „shut down and put up with the venom of its ghost‟ (Morrison, p. 105) long before

Sethe has digested its presence and significance. In the process, the house has curiously

supplanted the traditional practices ascribed to it with its own spatial patterns. Indeed, „no

more lamp all night long, or neighbours dropping by‟, and „no watched barefoot children

playing in the shoes of strangers‟ have been witnessed within its perimeters after Beloved‟s

death (Morrison, p. 105).

In Toni Morrison‟s Beloved , the ever expanding dialectics of historiography and fiction is

evinced by the multiplicity of narratives and the contest of voices over authority and

authorship of the novel. The different characters‟ relationships with their individual/collective

past are questioned and re-visioned through the activity of storytelling. In Anita Durkin‟s

terms, storytelling allows Morrison‟s characters to “grapple with the past that denied them

selfhood and search for a means by which to express their dehumanizing, self-less past,”

thereby acting as a useful strategy in the self-actualisation process they undergo throughout

the novel. This idea is most discernible in Beloved‟s intimation of the past through Sethe‟s

(re)memories:

„Tell me‟, said Beloved, smiling a wide happy smile. „Tell me your

diamonds‟.

It became a way to feed her. […] Sethe learned the profound

satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe (as much

as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt.

Everything in it was painful or lost. She and Baby Suggs had agreed

without saying so that it was unspeakable; to Denver‟s inquiries Sethe

gave short replies or rambling incomplete reveries.



Even with Paul D, who had shared some of it and to whom she could

talk with at least a measure of calm, the hurt was always there -- like a

tender place in the corner of her mouth that the bit left. But, as she

began telling about the earrings, she found herself wanting to, liking

it. Perhaps it was Beloved‟s distance from the events itself, or her

thirst for hearing it -- in any case it was an unexpected pleasure.

(Morrison, p. 66)

I AM BELOVED and she is mine. I see her take flowers away from

leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she

fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are

in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate

from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want

to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a

hot thing

All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am

not crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always

crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine his mouth

smells sweet but his eyes are locked (Morrison, p. 248)

Beloved‟s ingestion of the narrative appears in the numerous disadjustments (Derrida, p. 20)

that permeate her account. The absence of punctuation, as well as the frequent silences and

gaps between past and present clearly reveal the narrator‟s dislocation from the present reality

of the characters. However, her repetitive assertion that „all of it is now‟ and that „it is always

now‟ denotes her attempt to grapple with a fragmented experience and a disjunctive collective

subjectivity that can never be recovered. In De Certeau‟s terms, the „dispersion‟ of Beloved‟s

„stories‟ reflects the „dispersion of the memorable as well‟ (p. 108). As such, her narrative

tries to assimilate and „maintain together that which does not hold together‟ (Derrida, p. 20),



i.e. the black community‟s diasporic self. Indeed, the fusion of Sethe‟s and Beloved‟s

disjointed past with fragmented episodes of the Middle Passage in the latter‟s consciousness

reveals the extent to which the history of the black community and their struggle against

slavery has been distorted and disfigured by the master narrative of American history.

Another form of narrative ingestion is discernible in Beloved‟s intake of words

throughout her narrative, as in the following passage:

I cannot lose her again my dead man was in the way like the noisy

clouds when he dies on my face I can see hers she is going to smile at

me she is going to her sharp earrings are gone the men without skin

are making loud noises they push my own man through they do not

push the woman with my face through she goes in they do not push

her she goes in the little hill is gone she was going to smile at me she

was going to a hot thing

They are not crouching now we are they are floating on the water they

break up the little hill and push it through I cannot find my pretty teeth

I see the dark face that is going to smile at me it is my dark face that is

going to smile at me the iron circle is around our neck she does not

have sharp earrings in her ears or a round basket she goes in the water

with my face (Morrison, p. 250)

Aesthetically, the use of asyndeton reasserts the discontinuity of Beloved‟s narrative since it

allows her to „open gaps‟ in the temporal „continuum‟ of black history (De Certeau, p. 101).

Yet, this trope also enables her to retain „parts‟ of this mut(e)lated narrative „that amount

almost to relics‟ (p. 101). Through „eliminating the conjunctive‟ and „the consecutive‟, and

replacing „totalities by fragments‟, Beloved challenges the totalitarian vision of American

history with a mini-narrative of black history that helps excavate blacks‟ traumatic history and

reconstruct their fractured identity (p. 101). In the process, her mini-narrative disconnects the



totality of the white imperial narrative, „undoes‟ its „continuity‟ and undermines its

„plausibility‟ (p. 101).

Thematically, this elliptical style marks Beloved‟s literal and figural ingestion of the

other characters‟ narratives. Indeed, throughout the whole chapter, the events of Sethe‟s story

are reiterated from Beloved‟s perspective. Moreover, several episodes of the Middle Passage

find their echoes in the above-quoted extract mainly in Beloved‟s reference to „the men

without skin‟, „the little hill‟ and the bodies „floating on the water‟. These reminiscences

undoubtedly conjure up the persecution of black slaves aboard the slave ships that carried

them to the New World to be sold to and exploited by European investors. However, the

fragmentation of the narrative as well as the blurring of boundaries between self and other

certainly complicate the reading process, thereby equally absorbing and implicating the reader

in the narrative situation. As a witness and listener to Beloved‟s testimony for a collective

traumatic past, the reader must, in Laub‟s words, „listen to and hear the silence, speaking

mutely both in silence and in speech‟, both „from behind‟ and „from within‟ the characters‟

inner beings (p. 58). The reader has to „recognise‟ and „address‟ the silence of the narrative in

order to become the „enabler of the testimony, the one who triggers its initiation‟ (p. 58).

Aesthetically, the asyndetic elliptical style of Beloved‟s narrative thus represents a

parody of the scriptural enterprise, since it mimics the processes involved in narrating

historical events. In De Certeau‟s words, narration is “an art of suspense, of quotations, of

ellipsis, of metonymy; an art of conjuncture (current events, the audience) and occasions

(epistemological, political)” (79). Just as narration is a political art that operates through

selection, erasure, and elision, storytelling is thoroughly political and ideological, since it

bares the conjuring tricks and devices of narrative by reduplicating them. Rather than

effecting a distortion of truths and events, oral discourse distorts and disfigures the form and

style exploited in this epistemological deformation.



Rather intrinsic to oral discourse, the narrative discontinuities of Beloved‟s account

highlight the importance of orality in African culture and its effectiveness as a form of

resistance and survival. In Liz Gunner‟s terms, „orality was the means by which Africa made

its existence, its history long before the colonial and imperial presence of the west manifested

itself.‟1 As such, orality becomes a crucial component of the black heritage and a necessary

step in the self-actualisation process undergone by the black characters in the novel.

Moreover, it represents an effective tool in unmasking the ideological aberrations and

distortions of the master narrative of American history. In this respect, orality clearly

underlines the political proclivity of Morrison‟s narrative, a tendency inherent in the dynamics

of resistance as a nonviolent strategy for changing a status quo and a belief system that

condones hegemonic race relations. In reversing the temporal order of narrative and evading

canonisation, the narrative conspicuously articulates its indigestion of imperial discursive and

literary patterns. Morrison thus signals her rejection of the conventions of slave narratives,

which tend to present black subjugation and humiliation as predetermined and immutable, and

thereby validate blacks‟ sub-alterity. As such, she totally eschews the representational

framework instituted by a racist society that made itself „comfortable with injustice, in this

case the theory that there are genetically inferior races with lower needs than others‟.2

The past‟s inscription of its presence beyond its spatio-temporal limits is more

particularly asserted in the last paragraph of the novel:

Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come

and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in

them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though

nobody ever walked there.

1 Liz Gunner, „Africa and Orality‟, in The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature , vol 1, ed. by

F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandip (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 1-18 (p. 1).

2Nadine Gordimer, Writing and Being: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (London and Massachusetts: Harvard

University Press, 1996), p. 115.



By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the

footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is

weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for,

but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather.

Certainly no clamor for a kiss.

Beloved. (Morrison, p. 324)

In this passage, the reference to Beloved’s footprints strongly recalls the description of the

ghost’s ‘tiny handprints in the cake’ in the opening chapter, a detail that evinces the circular

structure of the narrative and reaffirms the omnipresence of the past. The description of

Beloved’s footsteps, with their ‘tactile apprehension and kinaesthetic appropriation’ (De

Certeau, p. 97), reveals how this spectral infantile experience floods both time and space. Yet,

Morrison‟s assertion of the footprints‟ elusiveness insinuates that they are non localisable.

Being at once panoptic and invisible, „familiar‟ and „forgotten‟, they are able to „manipulate

spatial organisations‟ through „creating shadows and ambiguities between them‟ (De Certeau,

p. 101).

The vision is further complicated for the reader with the metafictional comments ‘it

was not a story to pass on’ (repeated twice), and ‘this is not a story to pass on’ (Morrison, p.

323-324), which reveal, in De Certeau‟s terms, that Beloved‟s “story (récit ) does not express a

practice” or “limit itself to telling about a movement,” but rather “makes it” (81). Through this

metafictional comment, Morrison warns her readers that Beloved is to be construed as a

narcissistic narrative,3 a text that flaunts its historical as well as its artistic value. Just like

3

A „narcissistic narrative‟ is a text which is „narcissistically self -reflexive and yet focussed outward, orientedtowards the reader‟. Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative: the Metafictional Paradox (Waterloo: Wilfrid

Laurier University Press, 1980), p. 6. Further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text.



Narcissus’ obsession with his reflection,4 Beloved’s presence ‘down by the stream in back of

124’ reinforces the narcissism of a text that endlessly reiterates its echoes and silences. In

Linda Hutcheon‟s terms, this self-reflexivity „works to prevent the reader‟s identification with

any character, and to force a new, more active, thinking relationship upon him‟ ( Narcissistic

Narrative, p. 49). Morrison’s text hence draws its narratee in the fictive world of the text and

confers upon him/her the privilege of participating in its creation. By multiplying the levels of

narration and creating a contest of voices over the narrative, Morrison‟s novel

„reterritorialises‟5

her authority in the reader who is allowed to „scrutinise his concepts of art

as well as his life values‟ (Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative, p. 138). Morrison thus engages

the reader „intellectually, imaginatively, and affectively‟ in the co-creation of the text, and

incites him/her to be active both in the writing process and in her enterprise which becomes

his/hers as well (Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative, p. 7).

Baby Suggs in the clearing: songs, preaching

She did not tell them to clean up their lives or go and sin no more. She

did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek

or its glorybound pure.

She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they

could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.

“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps,

laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard...” (103)

4The myth of Narcissus is the Greek myth of a handsome young man who falls in love with his reflection in a

stream. Thinking that the beautiful face belonged to a person living under the water surface, Narcissus spends his

days at the river bank waiting for his „love‟ to respond to his lamentations. Worn out by unrequited feelings, he

„dies by the water‟s edge, trying to embrace his mysterious lover‟. Michelle M. Houle, Gods and Goddesses in

Greek Mythology (Berkely: Enslow Publishers, 2001), pp. 102-106.

5Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1986), p. 20.



Here Morrison gives voice to the body, the alternative discourse of the flesh. In this scene,

religious preaching is supplanted by storytelling, singing, and dancing. This non-scriptural

discourse is like a bridge between speech and writing; it is “ambiguous everywhere: it

alternately welds together and opposes insularities. It distinguishes them and threatens

them. It liberates from enclosure and destroys autonomy… As a transgression of the

limit, a disobedience of the law of the place, it represents a departure… the “betrayal” of

an order (128).

The Four Narratives Last Chapters

This process is also delineated in the second, third, fourth, and fifth chapters of part II, where

the continuity of the black experience is conveyed through the continuity of self which the

different narrative voices strongly assert. The openings of the four chapters corroborate this

idea:

BELOVED. She is my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own will. (236)

BELOVED is my sister. I swallowed her blood right along with my mother‟s milk. The first thing I

heard after not hearing anything was the sound of her crawling up the stairs. (242)

I am BELOVED and she is mine. I see her take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round

basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the

clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place

where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking

at it too a hot thing (249)

Spaces between words are multiplied: absence of punctuation; linkers attests to the diaspora of

souls which is mapped onto language. But the opening sentence of the 2nd

paragraph “All of it is

now it is always now” (249) paradoxically condenses all these spaces into one single moment, that

of the here and now.

I am BELOVED and she is mine. (253) The use of a song: poetic style.



In these statements, the repetition of the auxiliary “be” is a clear affirmation of the characters‟

sense of identity. From a cursory reading, the characters‟ contest over Beloved seems to attest

to their separate identities as well as their control over the narrative process. Whereas the first

narrative is Sethe‟s and the second is attributed to Denver, the third and fourth scripts are

appropriated by Beloved who asserts her claim not only over the story, but also over her

mother Sethe. However, at a deeper level of understanding, the characters‟ claim over their

stories symbolizes their respective claims over one another and their intersubjectivity. The last

lines of the fifth chapter illustrate this convergence of the characters into one personality and

the merger of their voices.

The use of multiple points of view and the recourse to the characters‟ individual voices to

relate the story clearly undermine the authority of the omniscient narrator who is totally absent

at this stage of the narrative. As such, the contest of voices over the narrative chain plays a

functional role in the novel as it raises the issue of authority and authorship by divesting the

author of any form of agency over the world she creates in her novel.

Through multiperspectivist narration, Morrison insinuates that the single perspective of the

omniscient narrator, however powerful and all-encompassing it might seem, cannot provide a

complete account of the complexities of reality, nor is it capable of probing the recesses of the

human psyche and the range of human experience. Moreover, her destabilization of the

univocal vision provided by this narrator aims at undermining the authoritative discourse of

realistic novels and their distortion of reality. Through this choice, Morrison insinuates that

narration does not consist in “approaching a „reality‟” or “making the text acceptable through

the „real‟ that it exhibits. On the contrary, narrated history creates a fictional space (De

Certeau 79), or in Hutcheon‟s terms, a “heterocosm.”



Narration is “a balancing act in which the circumstances (place, time) and the speaker

himself participate, a way of knowing how to manipulate, dispose, and „place‟ a saying

by altering a set-in short, „a matter of tact‟.” (79)

Narrative “discourse is characterized more by a way of exercising itself than by the

thing it indicates. And one must grasp a sense other than what is said. It produces

effects, not objects. It is narration, not description. It is an art of saying” (79).

The art of storytelling installs the “principle of economy: obtain the maximum number

of effects from the minimum force” (82). It is simply the “the multiplication of effects

through the rarefaction of means” (82).

The scriptural enterprise transforms or retains within itself what it receives from its outside

and creates internally the instruments for an appropriation of the external space. It stocks up

what it sifts out and gives itself the means to expand. Combining the power of

accumulating the past and that of making the alterity of the universe conform to its

models, it is capitalist and conquering. (135)

The use of poems in Beloved :

Roland Barthes: Writing Degree Zero

Poetry “is a quality sui generis (i.e. unique) and without antecedents. It is no longer an

attribute but a substance, and therefore it can very well renounce signs, since it carries its own

nature within itself, and does not need to signal its identity outwardly” (43).

In modern poetry, the objective is “to eliminate the intention to establish relationships and to

produce instead an explosion of words” (46)

Beloved‟s poems “destroy the spontaneously functional nature of language, and leave

standing only its lexical basis […]. Connections are not properly speaking abolished, they are

merely reserved areas, a parody of themselves, and this void is necessary for the density of the



Word to rise out of a magic vacuum, like a sound and a sign devoid of background, like „fury

and mystery‟” (47).

The [black] oral tradition . . . is part of the cultural baggage the African brought to America.

The pre-slavery background was one in which the concept of Nommo, the magic power of the

Word, was believed necessary to actualize life and give man mastery over things. . . . Even

though blacks have embraced English as their native tongue, still the African cultural set

persists, that is the predisposition to imbue the English word with the same sense of value and

commitment . . . accorded to Nommo in African culture. Hence Afro-America‟s emphasis on

orality. (Geneva Smitherman 78-79)

By passing along cherished recipes to subsequent generations, by testifyin‟, by telling the

story of their religious conversions, or by singing the spirituals or the blues, Black women

helped to revise and extend [the] oral tradition. Denied access to literacy, these creative

foremothers nevertheless maintained an underground railway for the survival of the spirit”

(Joanne Braxton xxii).

Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testyfyin: The Language of Black America. Detroit: Wayne

State UP, 1977.

Braxton, Joanne and Andree Nicola McLaughlin, eds. Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afro-

American Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance. New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 1990.

Although stories can give voice to individuals and groups that are often marginalized by the

hegemony, they can also lose their political power by being interpreted as “merely stories”

(Rimmon Kenan, “Concepts of Narrative” 15). Yet, if Kennan conceives of stor ies as mere

information that “does not survive the moment in which it was new” and “surrender to it

completely and explain itself to it without losing any time,” Walter Benjamin argues that a



story “does not expend itself” It rather “preserves and concentr ates its strength and is capable

of releasing it even after a long time,” hence its superiority and preferability to narrative.

iMichel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 108.

Further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text.

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Beloved Spatial Dialectics