Remembering a Counterculture
Visuality, Orality, and Imagination in Toni Morrison’s
The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Tar Baby
Roos Maier
Amsterdam, 07/01/15
6156770
Master Thesis
History: American Studies
University of Amsterdam
Dhr. dr. G.H. (George) Blaustein
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction 1
1. Visuality vs. Orality 9
2. Imagining Beauty and the Past 21 3. Prosthetic Memory and the Novel 32
Conclusion 42
Acknowledgements
I would like to begin by acknowledging the opportunity I had to use the (online) libraries of both the University of Amsterdam and the University of Illinois at Chicago for my research. But even more importantly, I would like to express my acknowledgement to the professors who contributed the most to this thesis, in various ways. To begin with, George Blaustein: my thesis supervisor and the program coordinator of the master’s program in "History: American Studies" at the UvA. George has often incited my curiosity by always finding a way to link differing topics within American studies and by introducing me to interesting, funny or challenging sources. Primarily by asking (sometimes difficult) questions, George has encouraged me to search for counterarguments and our conversations have offered me the most important guidance in the process of writing and revising this thesis.
Additionally, I would like to thank Madhu Dubey for introducing me to Toni Morrison's novels and to critical scholarship, including Dubey's own writings, on Morrison's work. During my global exchange semester at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I took her course "Topics in African American Literature: Toni Morrison". Having only read The Bluest
Eye (1970), I did not know what to expect. However, Dubey's supervision, the seminars, the
required readings and the process of writing an essay for the course have inspired me greatly and eventually resulted in this thesis. Jennifer Brier has also fulfilled an important role for me at UIC; she gave me a chance to study with PhD students who have offered me new perspectives on the academic field of history during our colloquiums. Finally, I would of course like to thank my family, friends, fellow students and colleagues for their support and understanding; they have either managed to foster my enthusiasm and interest or to reduce my worries.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Lorna Simpson / “Waterbearer”, 1986
Introduction
You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be.
- Toni Morrison / "The Site of Memory" (1987) In Les Lieux de Mémoire (1984-92), Pierre Nora has offered an explanation for the want to create and maintain memory: "we speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left".1 Nora claimed that memory used to be all around us, as there used to be milieux de
mémoire: environments or settings, within peasant culture for example, wherein memory was
a part of public, everyday life. However, only history has remained – the representations and reconstructions, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer – together with
lieux de mémoire: sites of memory, including historical novels for example. An important
function of milieux de mémoire was to bind social groups. And due to the loss of milieux de mémoire, every social group now redefines its identity through the recovery of its own history in the form of lieux de mémoire.2 Such a site of memory, Nora explains, "only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic – responsive [...] to every censorship or projection".3 According to Nora, lieux de mémoire therefore particularly function as binding
for those groups who have long been marginalized in traditional history; they are the locus for everything that is missing in this history. It has become the responsibility of individuals, such as fictional writers, to create lieux de mémoire, to recapture the memory and thereby contribute to the formation of (often marginalized) group identities. Morrison has felt and taken up this responsibility by recalling and creating cultural memory in her novels, her lieux de mémoire.
What many African American novelists have shown is that although memories can be painful, memory can heal from the past, like Leon Forrest described: "memory, which freezes time, [...] creates a rupture and destroys as it heals".4 Tied to this healing force of memory is
Morrison's premise that memory contains knowledge, a kind of cultural wisdom, and it is 1"P."Nora,"M."Roudebush,"transl.,‘Between"Memory"and"History."Les"Lieux"de"Memoire’,"Representations+26+(1989)"7." 2"Ibidem,"8G9." 3"Ibidem,"8G9." 4"L."Forrest,"The+Bloodworth+Orphans.+A+Novel"(1987)"41."" For"a"more"extensive"analysis"of"the"function"of"memory"to"heal"from"the"past"in"African"American"literature,"see:"A.H.A."Rushdy,"“The" NeoGslave"Narrative”."In:"M."Graham,"ed.,"The+African+American+Novel+(2004)"103."
necessary to maintain this wisdom on a collective level.5 To use her words: "nice things don't always happen [...] if there is no conscious historical connection".6 By recalling cultural
memory, this connection can be both maintained and created and have a healing effect. Meanwhile, recalling cultural memory also functions as a form of cultural recuperation: because the memories of African Americans have been discredited in the West, as they were held by discredited people Morrison argues, she is engaged in the effort to contribute to maintaining this memory and thus to recapture and re-appropriate the wisdom it contains. Writing novels is an important way of doing this, she states in "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation" (1984); the most important function of the novel can even be ascribed to its ability to recall cultural memory.
According to Morrison, music had been the healing art form for blacks, lower class blacks in particular, as it was used to transmit stories and recall memories. However, Morrison claims, music is now no longer exclusively for African Americans as it has become a part of contemporary music everywhere. On top of that, lower class African Americans have confronted the middle and upper classes by moving to the North and becoming geographically as well as culturally distanced from their heritage.7 She explains: "we don’t
live in places where we can hear those stories anymore; parents don’t sit around and tell their children those classical, mythological archetypal stories that we heard years ago".8 In order to
maintain these stories, which were originally created and transmitted orally, and thereby to maintain a cultural memory that contains historical information, novels that include the African American oral tradition are necessary. But, what does cultural memory mean for Morrison, how does it function in her novels and what wisdom can it contain, explaining why it is necessary to recall cultural memory by writing novels? In this thesis I will explore how Morrison deals with memory and more specifically with African American cultural memory in three of her novels: The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977) and Tar Baby (1981). In 1925, Maurice Halbwachs introduced the idea of collective memory. Halbwachs claimed that every individual memory is constructed within social structures, such as families or nation-states or institutions, and can therefore only be understood through this group context.9
Drawing on Halbwachs, the German Egyptologist Jan Assman introduced the term cultural
memory in 1950. Like collective memories – again drawing on the idea that no memory is
5"T."Morrison,"“Memory,"Creation,"and"Writing”,"Thought+59"(December"1984)"385." 6"T."Morison,"“Rootedness."The"Ancestor"as"Foundation”.+In:"M."Evans,"ed.,"Black+Women+Writers"(1984)"344." 7"Ibidem,"340." 8"Ibidem,"340." 9"M."Halbwachs,"L.A."Coser,"transl.,"On+Collective+Memory"(1992)."""
ever purely individual, but always inherently shaped by collective, socio-cultural contexts –, cultural memories are collectively shared as well (although they also can exist on an individual level, because they shape individual memories). But, the term cultural memory of course also differs from collective memory. First, cultural memory always has a long-term durability. Second, cultural memory is ritualized in texts, monuments and other forms of lieux de mémoire (using Nora's term). Through these manifestations of culture the cultural memories can thus be passed from one generation to the other. Assman explains this in his definition of cultural memory: a "collective concept for all knowledge that directs behavior and experience in the interactive framework of a society and one that obtains through generations in repeated societal practice and initiation".10
Memory is of course used metaphorically within the concept of cultural memory – groups of people cannot remember literally. Also, cultural memories are not necessarily constructs supported by experience: as they are passed from one generation to the other, not every generation has actually lived through what is being remembered. Sometimes cultural memories do not even point to actual experiences of past generations, because knowledge or wisdom can be remembered as well in the form of cultural memories. I therefore use Alison Landsberg's term to point out another aspect of cultural memories: cultural memories are a form of prosthetic memories. These are memories of things people have not actually lived through.11 But how can these cultural memories, of things people have not lived through, be created?
To begin with, lieux de mémoire establish and shape cultural memories: cultural memories are constructed in the form of novels or museums for example. As Landsberg explains, prosthetic memories, including cultural memories, can emerge at the interface between a person and such a site. In this moment of contact, a person sutures himself or herself into a larger history and can create a cultural memory of a past through which he or she did not even live.12 Because these lieux de mémoire circulate publicly, the memories are created on a collective level. Also, drawing from Morrison's contribution to the popular debate about memory that arose in the 1980s, cultural memories can be shaped by internal leavings of history that have shaped individuals, generations, their culture and perhaps world-views even. Quoting Zora Neale Hurston, "I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me", Morrison names this her "memories within", which can give
10"J."Assman,"J."Czaplicka,"transl.,"“Collective"Memory"and"Cultural"Identity”,"New+German+Critique"65"(SpringGSummer"1995)"126." 11"A."Landsberg,"Prosthetic+Memory.+The+Transformation+of+American+Remembrance+in+the+Age+of+Mass+Culture"(2004)." 12"Landsberg,"Prosthetic+Memory,"2.""
her access to the histories that have shaped her.13 This perspective on the creation of cultural memories points to an African American cultural specific memory; this memory can even without the existence of lieux de mémoire never be completely ignored as it continues to exist “within” African Americans (both on an individual level and on a collective level) Morrison argues.
Both Landsberg's and Morrison's explanation of the creation of cultural memories remain somewhat vague and scholars still lack a clear definition of the term as it is used in various ways in psychology, history, sociology and literary studies. Rather, the concept continues to include different media, practices, monuments, rituals as well as historiography and knowledge and it can refer to both milieux and lieux de mémoire of different groups. Because of its broad and complicated meanings, the term remains controversial. I choose to use the term however, exactly because it cannot be narrowly defined and has an umbrella quality. As the editors of Media and Cultural Memory (Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung) argue, it "helps us see the [...] relationships between such phenomena as ancient myths and the personal recollection of recent experience" and thereby enables us to engage in a dialogue on the various interplays between present and past in socio-cultural contexts.14
In my analysis of African American cultural memory in Morrison's novels, I deal with cultural memory as a collectively shared set of values, norms, traditions, forms of expression or of knowledge and wisdom that have been passed between generations of African Americans. This can include lieux de mémoire, like songs, but it can also include wisdom that has been passed through these songs. When I refer to the cultural memory that exists within Morrison's narratives, I thus use the term to refer to an African American specific cultural memory; a memory that has been discredited in America's dominant discourse and that, as I will discuss in the following two chapters, needs to be recalled according to Morrison. Within her novels, cultural memory exists on an individual level (in a character's subjectivity although these individual memories are always collectively shaped) as well as on a collective level (within a community). And as we will see, when a character recalls an individual memory of an event he/she has personally lived through, this memory resonates with larger cultural memories in Morrison's narratives. In this thesis I will explore how Morrison has described the act of remembering and dealt with memory as a theme in her novels, thereby specifically focusing on two different forms of recalling memories: through
13"T."Morrison,"“The"Site"of"Memory”."In:"R."Ferguson"et"al.,"ed.,"Out+There.+Marginalization+and+Contemporary+Cultures"(1990)"302." 14"A."Erll,"“Cultural"Memory"Studies."An"Introduction”."In:"A."Erll,"A."Nunning,"ed.,"Media+and+Cultural+Memory+/+Medien+und+kulturelle+
the sense of hearing and through the sense of sight. How does memory appear in both oral and visual ways in her novels and how can oral and visual forms of communication function to recall memories?
The importance of oral forms of communication for the act of remembering has often been emphasized, in philosophy for example, thereby raising suspicion towards writing. As Hannes Berghtaller states in his first sentence of "Dis(re)membering History's revenants", "the suspicion that writing might be an ally not of memory, but of forgetfulness, is perhaps as old as writing itself".15 In Phaedrus Plato for example already argued that those who use writing will become forgetful, because they will rely on an external resource rather than on their own internal resources.16 Instead, Plato preferred oral forms of communication, such as dialogue, for remembering. Particularly in African American literary studies, the importance of orality is still often emphasized. Orality has been a major component of the cultural capital of African societies, as explained in The Cambridge History of African American Literature (2011), although many of these societies developed elaborate writings systems as well. And, considering that many enslaved Africans were not allowed to learn to read and write, orality consequently also formed the foundation for the black imagination in the New World.17
Given its importance, it is unsurprising that the oral tradition later influenced the African American literary tradition. African American writers incorporated African oral forms, while using models from European and European American traditions to shape their literature as well.18 Particularly at the turn-of-the-century and during the Harlem Renaissance, the
narrating forms of the oral tradition gained attention, through the works of Paul L. Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Zola Neale Hurston for example, and increasingly became to be considered as the ore for complex literary influence.19
In the 1980s, orality and black music also began to gain scholarly recognition within African American literary studies and the oral tradition was increasingly acknowledged as a major part of black literature – or even as the form that distinguishes African American literature from the greater assemblage of American literature – and as a tradition that needed to be maintained.20 Morrison has contributed to this popularization of African American oral literature: by presenting her novels as something other than print literature, by using sources 15"H."Bergthaller,"“Dis(re)membering"History’s"Revenants."Trauma,"Writing,"and"Simulated"Orality"in"Toni"Morrison’s"Beloved”," Connotations"16"(2006G2007)"116." 16"Plato,"B."Jowett,"transl,"Phaedrus"(2005)."" Also,"see:"W.J."Ong,"Orality+and+Literacy"(2013)"78." 17"F.A."Irele,"“Sounds"of"a"Tradition."The"Souls"of"Black"Folk”."In:"M.Graham,"et"al.,"ed.,"The+Cambridge+History+of+African+American+ Literature+(2011)"21." 18"G."Jones,"Liberating+Voices.+Oral+Tradition+in+African+American+Literature"(1991)"1." 19"Ibidem,"9."" 20"S."Mleszkowski,"et"al.,"“Sonic"Interventions:"An"Introduction”."In:"Ibidem,"et"al.,"ed.,"Sonic+Interventions"(2007)"12."
from the oral tradition as her recollections, by dealing with orality as a theme in her novels and by using the tradition as a model for writing. Indeed, we have to just "glance at any anthology of recent Morrison criticism" to find that literary critics have argued that Morrison privileged orality over literacy as themes, also specifically relating orality to the act of remembering, particularly in Song of Solomon, Jazz and Beloved.21 Bergthaller stated for
example that Morrison’s work shows an anxiety about the loss of presence and communal intimacy, which the oral tradition implied.22 Presenting a similar argument, Joyce Middleton
explained that Morrison particularly demonstrates how the oral tradition can lead African Americans back to historical and racial wisdom.23
Within the body of scholarly work on Morrison's novels, next to the emphasis on the importance of orality for the act of remembering on the one hand, a focus on the problematics of visual forms of communication can be found on the other hand – which is one of the reasons why I have become interested in dealing with these two, presumably contrasting, themes. The main question of visuality, which Morrison has often explored is: "what happens when people look, and what emerges from that act?".24 More specifically, what happens
when whites look at blacks, how are African Americans represented in a dominant white society, and what emerges from these looking relations – how do blacks consequently look at themselves and others? Michelle Wallace explains in her influential text "Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problem of the Visual in Afro-American Culture" that visuality has been a "negative scene of instruction" for African Americans.25 She argues: "how one is seen
(as black) and, therefore, what one sees (in a white world) is always already crucial to one’s existence as an Afro-American. The very markers that reveal you to the rest of the world, your dark skin and your kinky/curly hair, are visual".26 In a racist society visual markers can lead to the objectification of black bodies: a denial of subjectivity famously named "invisibility" by Ralph Ellison.27 This invisibility was an important topic in black literary
modernism, particularly focusing on the power in direct looking relations, but postmodern black literature has also been preoccupied with the problem of "hypervisibility", whereby issues of representation in an image-based contemporary cultural landscape – including the 21"R.P."Mcdermott,"“Silence,"Visuality,"and"the"Staying"Image."The"‘Unspeakable"Scene"of"Toni"Morrison’s"Beloved”,"Angelaki"8"(April"2003)" 76.+ 22"Bergthaller,"“Dis(re)membering”,"125." 23"J.I."Middleton,"“From"Orality"to"Literacy."Oral"Memory"in"Toni"Morrison’s"Song"of"Solomon”."In:"V."Smith,"ed.,"New+Essays+on+Song+of+ Solomon"(1995)"19G39." 24"M."Bal,"“Visual"Essentialism"and"the"Object"of"Visual"Culture”,"Journal+of+Visual+Culture"2"(2003)"9." 25"M."Wallace,"“Modernism,"Postmodernism"and"the"Problem"of"the"Visual"in"AfroGAmerican"Culture”."In:"Ferguson,"Out+There,"45." 26"Ibidem,"40." 27"R."Ellison,"Invisible+Man"(1952)"7."
"heightened visibility of racial difference" – gained more attention.28 It is assumed that through visual popular culture, African Americans learn their devaluation. So, both visuality and (in)visibility have often been considered problematic within African American literature. As scholarship on her work – especially from the early 1990s – has acknowledged, Morrison has dealt with both the problem of power in direct looking relations and the problems of representation and racial (in)visibility in the United States. In "Tracking 'The Look'" for example, published in 1990, Edward Guerrero describes how Morrison has explored the "controlling gaze of a dominant, racially oppressive society which constructs whiteness as the norm while viewing African-Americans as 'Other'".29 That same year, Malin
LaVon Walther published an essay arguing that Morrison has criticized the visual system within popular American culture in her novels and has rejected the white-defined female beauty norms created within and distributed by this culture.30 In other words, particular
attention has been paid to how Morrison has dealt with visuality as problematic for African Americans. Consequently, combining scholarship on orality and visuality in Morrison's novels suggests a hierarchical relationship between the sense of hearing and the sense of sight. However, I will recall Ryan P. Mcdermott’s argument that "it would be a rather ironic case of selective hearing" to exclusively focus on this contrast and thereby merely present visuality as subordinate to orality in Morrison’s novels.31
Just recently, the academic interest in the problems of visuality and in cultural memories of the 1980s and the early 1990s came together in the growing scholarship on remembering slavery. For example, Lisa Woolfork has studied how contemporaries make rituals of slavery, by examining literary texts and films as well as by describing ritual reenactments in black churches and museums.32 Following this trend in the scholarship on slavery, only on Beloved (1987) there has been literary analysis that offers a more complicated approach to visuality and the function of visuality for the act of remembering. Morrison herself has stirred this interest by explaining in "The Site of Memory" (published in the same year as the novel) that she tried to create visual images of slavery in order to 28"Wallace,"“Modernism”,"39G48.""" Since"Laura"Mulvey"introduced"the"concept"of"the"“male"gaze”"in"1975,"feminist"theorists"have"also"elaborated"more"on"gendered"and" sexualized"forms"of"objectification."Additionally,"inquiries"of"race"and"gender"have"become"more"intertwined"in"studies"on"looking" relations"and"representation,"as"called"for"by"black"feminist"critics"like"bell"hooks"and"Morrison,"and"for"example"after"Jane"Gaines" suggested"in"‘White"Privilege"and"Looking"Relations’"that"the"feminist"model"‘based"on"the"male/female"division"under"patriarchy’"had" ‘obscured"the"function"of"race’." M."Dubey,"Signs+and+Cities.+Black+Literary+Postmodernism"(2003)"Kindle"edition,"1513"of"4407." 29"E."Guerrero,"“Tracking"‘The"Look’"in"the"Novels"of"Toni"Morrison”,"Black+American+Literature+Forum+24"(Winter"1990)"761G773." 30"M.L."Walther,"“Out"of"Sight."Toni"Morrison’s"Revision"of"Beauty”,"Black+American+Literature+Forum"24"(Winter"1990)"775G789." 31"Mcdermott,"“Silence”,"76." 32"L."Woolfork,"Embodying+American+Slavery+in+Contemporary+Culture"(2009)." For"an"interesting"essay"on"recent"historiography"of"remembering"slavery,"see:"A.H.A."Rushdy,"“Slavery"Represented”,"American+Literary+ History"23+(2011)"423G434."
recapture the "unspeakable" former experience of slavery, including its "monstrous features".33 In an essay published in 2003, Mcdermott more specifically argues for example
that in Beloved "the bodily image becomes a material locus for the uncanny", as an image to repatriate the aspects of slavery that have been repressed.34 "For Morrison, making Beloved ‘real’ is a definitively visual tactic, an attempt to supply a living, breathing image for a history that is occluded by the limiting condition that makes all aural/oral narratives to some degree ‘abstract’ – i.e., the incompleteness of the aural mode of storytelling".35
In comparison to the research on oral memory in Morrison's writings, however, there has not been as much academic elaboration on both visual memory and visual forms of communication to recall memories in most of Morrison's other novels. A reason for this can be that the novels I will discuss were published between 1970 and 1981: before the rapid expansion of scholarship on specific social, national, religious or ethnic memories that now also dealt with the function of shaping cultural memory through popular visual media. On top of that, although Morrison has offered direct commentary on her use of the oral tradition for the function of recalling memories in these novels (particularly in Song of Solomon), she has not elaborated on visuality as she did writing about Beloved.
In this thesis I will thus explore both the tensions and interplays between the functions of orality and visuality in the act of remembering in three novels predating the publication of
Beloved: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Tar Baby. These novels do not deal with the
memory of slavery as explicitly, but rather elaborate on cultural memories in the form of knowledge, wisdom and traditions that have been passed between generations. In the first chapter, “Visuality vs. Orality”, the importance Morrison gives to orality for recalling cultural memory, as well as the tensions between orality and visuality in her novels, will become clear. I will hereby deal with orality as a theme in her novels, particularly in Song of
Solomon, which includes the use of music, songs and sounds, the sense of hearing and the act
of storytelling and I will trace how orality functions to recall cultural memory and to create historical consciousness. As a contrast, I will elaborate on the theme of visuality, discussing
The Bluest Eye as well, which includes direct looking relations, representation and the sense
of sight, as problematic for the act of remembering.
33"Morrison,"“Site"of"Memory”,"301G305." 34"Mcdermott,"“Silence,"Visuality”,"79." 35"Ibidem,"80."
In the second chapter however, “Imagining Beauty and the Past”, I will argue, particularly by discussing The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby, that both visual imagination as well as visual, bodily markers can recall cultural memories and lead to the creation of historical consciousness in Morrison's narratives. In order to describe the importance of cultural memory, and the role of visuality, I will particularly focus on Morrison's dealing with (historical) beauty – elaborating on Katherine Stern's argument that Morrison has not only demonstrated the destructive consequences of the power in looking relations and visual representations of African Americans, but has also offered an alternative account of visual beauty in opposition to the dominant one.36 I will argue that within this alternative beauty
formula, Morrison's idea of beauty is based on the body's memory, which can be recalled through visible bodily markers and visual imagination.
In the final chapter, “Prosthetic Memory and the Novel”, which can partly be considered an epilogue adding to my analysis of the functions of orality and visuality for the recalling of memory within her narratives, I will explore the function of Morrison's novels as lieux de mémoire. How does the novel function as a technology to recall, create and shape prosthetic memories on the individual level of the reader and in turn create or maintain the cultural memories of the audience on a collective level? First, I will discuss technologies by which the novel as a medium has the particular ability to shape the cultural memories of its audience. How does Morrison use these technologies? Second, I will argue that memory in the novel functions as a way for Morrison to have the reader engage in a counterculture. As Nora argued, memory "remains a permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting" and thus leaves room for the imagination – in contrast to history for example, which aims to offer a representation of the past.37 This room for the act of imagining is, I will argue, the most important feature of memory in Morrison's novels: it offers a way to escape from the static assumptions made by America's dominant culture and creates a possibility for the necessary adaptation of norms or ideas about culture and beauty standards.
1. Visuality vs. Orality
With his existential phenomenology, Jean Paul Sartre has offered an analysis of what he considers the fundamental relationship between people: the objectification of "the Self" as a result of "the look" of "the Other". In Being and Nothingness (1943) he explains that "it is as
36"K."Stern,"“Toni"Morrison’s"Beauty"Formula”."In:"M.C."Conner,"The+Aesthetics+of+Toni+Morrison.+Speaking+the+Unspeakable"(2000)"78G90."" 37"Nora,"Les+Lieux,"8."
an object that I appear to the Other" when the Other looks at me. As a result, I become conscious of being an object, put judgment on myself as on an object and establish a new type of being, a being-for-others, that "was not in me potentially before the appearance of the Other".38 In Black Faces, White Masks (1952) Frantz Fanon has famously described his own experience of objectification and of putting judgment on himself as a black man: "I subjected myself to an objective examination, I discovered my blackness".39 However, Fanon emphasizes the uniqueness of the objectification of blacks as the result of the look of whites and he responds to Sartre. He argues that Sartre had ignored that the black man suffers differently from the look of the Other than the white man, due to the significance of unequal power relations in direct looking relations. Fanon explains that "the white man is not only The Other, but also the master, whether real or imaginary".40 Consequently, "the black man
has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man".41 Blackness is “fixed” in white
eyes and because the black man is refused the opportunity to return the look of the white man, and thereby to reestablish his own subjectivity, he becomes unable to transcend the “fixedness” of his blackness.
Morrison has demonstrated this inequality in looking relations, as well as its consequences, most clearly in her first novel The Bluest Eye. In the first part of the novel, "Autumn", eleven-year-old Pecola experiences objectification by a white shop owner in a local grocery store.
She looks up at him and sees the vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. And something more. The total absence of human recognition – the glazed separateness. […] This vacuum is not new to her. It has an edge; somewhere in the bottom lid is the distaste. She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness. All things in her are flux and anticipation. But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes (TBE 46-47).
The scene demonstrates how Pecola immediately becomes aware of her blackness and of the fixedness of her blackness in white eyes, and throughout the narrative it becomes clear how
38"J.P."Sartre,"H.E."Barnes,"trans.,"Being+and+Nothingness"(1984)"222." 39"Ibidem,"85."
40"Ibidem,"106n24." 41"Ibidem,"83."
she internalizes the way whites look her at. Or, as Morrison puts it in her preface to the novel, "how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race [can] take root inside the most delicate member of society; a child; the most vulnerable member: a female" (TBE IX).
In addition, Morrison illustrates the problems of power relations within visual representation, as scholars of cultural studies have dealt with extensively, in The Bluest Eye. At the movies, a visual representative medium, Pecola’s mother Pauline looks for a sense of relief, trying to cope with her loneliness. She finds her education on romantic love and physical beauty there – "probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought”, the third person narrating voice claims (TBE 120). The movies showed Pauline “white men taking such good care of they women” and how “they all dressed up in big clean houses" (TBE 121). This form of "education" proves to be destructive for Pauline in the same paragraph, because the families and households in the pictures are nothing like her own and because she internalizes a standard of physical beauty she is unable to live up to. "There I was, five months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then. […] I let my hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly. […] Cholly poked fun at me, and we started fighting again" (TBE 121). Morrison hereby shows how visual representation can have destructive consequences in a racist society: unrealistic, yet powerful images provide a form of instruction and can lead to the idea, for example, that something as small and realistic as missing a front tooth can be equated with ugliness.
By elaborating on the consequences of experiencing unequal looking relations, objectification and of dealing with visual representation in an oppressive culture that makes static assumptions about ways of living and beauty, I will now discuss the problems of visuality for the act of remembering and for the creation of historical consciousness as illustrated in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. In Song of Solomon, which tells the story of Milkman Dead’s journey of self-discovery by exploring his family’s history with the help of his aunt Pilate, Morrison has explored the possible effects of visuality on recalling cultural memories and the creation of historical consciousness. Her main point thereby, as she explains in “Rootedness”, published seven years later, was "to show that nice things don’t always happen to the totally self-reliant if there is no conscious historical connection".42 As I will explain, the development of historical consciousness, which is equated with success for the characters I will discuss, largely depends on their (voluntary or involuntary) embracement
or denial of visual forms of instruction. At the same time, it depends on their embracement or denial of both the oral tradition and forms of instruction through hearing.
Firstly, I deal with orality as a theme in this chapter, which includes oral storytelling, songs, the sense of hearing and sounds in Morrison’s novels. Oral storytelling and music can directly relate to the oral tradition that Morrison tries to include in her writings: through oral storytelling and the oral aspects of songs, cultural traditions and values are transmitted orally from one generation to the other. Although sounds (including sounds in music) are not always orally transmitted and do not have to consist of language (which the oral tradition does), I will also include sounds as a form of instruction in my dealing with orality. The oral tradition relies heavily on sound based forms of expression and instruction and within Morrison’s narratives, sounds can contain information, wisdom and stories. So, in the novels, sounds can be considered a part of the oral tradition as they tell stories. Secondly, I will deal with visuality as a theme, which includes looking relations as well as visual representation: forms of instruction that rely on the sense of sight, rather than on the sense of hearing. How does Morrison contrast the themes of orality and visuality in her novels for the act of remembering?
In The Bluest Eye, the catastrophic consequences of the internalization of beauty standards and bourgeois norms, which are demonstrated by Pecola’s downfall, are contrasted against the importance of the oral tradition for the act of remembering. Directly after Pecola has experienced her objectification by the white shop owner, the narrative continues by presenting the household of the three whores: China, Poland, and Miss Marie. These women represent a refusal to meet the expectations of a bourgeois society; their household is characterized by a lack of materialism and respectability and thereby functions as a contrast to Pecola’s oppressive environment. Additionally, all three of them offer a way of coping with painful experiences and memories by relying on the oral tradition, rather than by relying on forms of visual representation, such as the movies. The forms of communication the three whores use are important characteristics of the oral tradition: storytelling through signifying, engaging in call-and-response and singing songs.
Marie functions as the teller of adventurous stories and memories and China continuously responds to these stories with the act of signifying.
“Every Saturday we’d get a case of beer and fry up some fish. We’d fry it in meal and egg batter, you know, and when it was all brown and crisp –
not hard, though – we’d break open that cold beer….” Marie’s eyes went soft as the memory of just such a meal sometime, somewhere transfixed her […].
“But what about the money?” she asked.
China hooted. “She’s makin’ like she’s the Lady in Red that old on Dillinger. Dillinger wouldn’t have come near you lessen he was going hunting in Africa and shoot you a hippo.”
“Well, this hippo had a ball back in Chicago. Whoa Jesus, ninety-nine!” (TBE 52).
China and Marie engage in a form of signifying from the black vernacular tradition; this can be explained as a verbal strategy of showing affection through humorous insult. Signifying is hereby put in a narrative form of call-and-response. In “Rootedness” Morrison offers an example of call-and-response: the interaction between a black preacher and his congregation. She explains how black preachers require their congregations to speak, to respond to the sermon and thereby to join in the sermon. It is a characteristic of the generations-old oral tradition that has existed in black churches, in literature and in daily life of course.43 In The
Bluest Eye the two women perform a signifying call-and-response in the form of a “verbal
battle” throughout the passage: they contest each other by calling and responding to each other in a humorous way. This battle, initiated by China, functions as a way to draw Marie "back from the edge of sentimentality with sarcasm".44 Poland also engages in the oral tradition: she is always singing blues songs, which again functions to offer relief.
The oral tradition offers relief for the three women, because it makes them a part of larger cultural memories. It puts their individual memories and sorrows into perspective; with the help of humor and culturally shared memories of sorrow, private misery and doom can be transcended.45 However, Pecola does not contain the wisdom and the humor of the oral tradition. Excluded from cultural memories in her childhood, and damaged by the norms of a bourgeois society instead, the oral tradition that the whores engage in, while talking over and around her, is presented as an inaccessible alternative to Pecola. In the narrative, the oral tradition here thus functions to challenge bourgeois norms, juxtaposed with visual forms of
43"Morrison,"“Rootedness”,"341."
44"K."Byerman,"Fingering+the+Jagged+Grain.+Tradition+and+Form+in+Recent+Black+Fiction"(1985)"190." 45"Ibidem,"190."
communication: these norms and forms of communication do not include the wisdom people need to cope with their miseries.
In Song of Solomon the character of Hagar additionally functions as a way for Morrison to illustrate the consequences of a lack of cultural memories. This lack is on the one hand demonstrated by a disregard towards orality and by an obsession with visuality on the other hand. Hagar, Pilate’s granddaughter, falls obsessively in love with Milkman, but his final rejection leads to a series of Hagar’s attempts to kill him and she becomes deranged. Pilate and Reba, Hagar’s mother, try to "break the spell" by presenting Hagar a mirror, but this mirror proves to be a negative scene of instruction: looking at herself in the mirror makes her put judgment on herself as on an object and she rekindles what she believes to be the reason Milkman rejected her (SoS 308). As Guerrero explains, Hagar then "rushes off to obtain a mad list of commodities and beauty treatments in order to transform herself into the objectified spectacle worthy of male attention and romance".46 Morrison illustrates how a
materialistic culture presents Hagar the white beauty standards:
The cosmetics department enfolded her in perfume, and she read hungrily the labels and the promise. […] Lipsticks in soft white hands darted out of their sheaths like the shiny red penises of puppies. Peachy powders and milky lotions were grouped in front of poster after cardboard poster of gorgeous grinning faces (SoS 311).
Hagar strives for what Susan Willis names reification; she wants to reinvent herself through the consumption of objects.47 However, Hagar’s consumerism increases her insanity, because she cannot attain this reification. Again a visual encounter, an exchange of looks with Pilate and Reba, makes her look at herself through the eyes of others, through the revelation of the other world, and put judgement on herself: in their eyes she now sees "the wet ripped hose, the soiled white dress, the sticky, lumpy face powder, the streaked rouge, and the wild wet shoals of hair" (SoS 314). She concludes Milkman would never love her because she does not have silky, penny-colored hair, a lemon-colored skin, gray-blue eyes and a thin nose (SoS 315-316). As Walther claims in "Out of Sight", Morrison uses Hagar’s insanity to enact the insanity of America’s society: a society that overvalues visual appearance based on white
46"Guerrero,"“Tracking"‘The"Look’”,"761G773."
47"S."Willis,"“Eruptions"of"Funk."Historicizing"Toni"Morrison”."In:"H.L."Gates,"K.A."Appiah,"Toni+Morrison.+Critical+Perspectives+Past+and+
consumer criteria and standards of female beauty and that encourages striving for reification through consumption.48
Hagar needed "what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her – and the humor with which to live it" (SoS 307). By using the musical term chorus, Morrison refers to the oral tradition: like in a church, the chorus functions to offer strength and wisdom in the oral tradition, sometimes with the help of humor as demonstrated by the three whores.49 But Hagar’s family and community fail to function as a chorus and to offer this strength. Her aunt Pilate tries to present Hagar an alternative way of looking at her hair: "how can he not love your hair? It’s the same hair that grows out of his own armpits. The same hair that crawls up out his crotch on up his stomach. All over his chest. The very same. […] It’s all over his head, Hagar. It’s his hair too. He got to love it" (SoS 315). Pilate points to a more realistic form of female beauty, which I will elaborate on in the next chapter. However, Hagar is not saved from her obsession with white beauty standards as particularly Reba continues to feed Hagar’s desire for beauty and fashion products. Hagar’s way of looking at herself, formed by a materialistic culture, makes her physically sick and leads to her death.
Milkman’s successful journey of self-discovery runs parallel with Hagar’s story in
Song of Solomon: "while he dreamt of flying, Hagar was dying" (SoS 332). Again, a direct
contrast in the narrative emphasizes the importance of the oral tradition. Pilate’s role as an
ancestor figure hereby becomes important. Morrison has defined ancestor figures as "sort of
timeless people whose relationship to the characters are benevolent, instructive, and protective [as] they provide a certain kind of wisdom”.50 Also, Morrison identifies the ancestor figure with the oral storyteller and with the bearer of cultural memories and she hereby builds on a trope within African American literature, drawn from the oral tradition. In her novels, the ancestor figure can determine “the success of the protagonists”, which illustrates the importance of cultural memory for this success.51 Hagar was too far removed
from the experience of her ancestor Pilate.52 However, Pilate’s presence does, to a large extent, determine Milkman’s success: she offers Milkman the wisdom to connect with his heritage and to create historical consciousness. Meanwhile, Pilate leads a life resenting the 48"Walther,"“Out"of"Sight”,"780." 49"Morrison,"“Rootedness”,"341." 50"Ibidem,"344." 51"T."Morrison,"“City"Limits,"Village"Values."Concepts"of"the"Neighborhood"in"Black"Fiction”."In:"M.C."Jaye,"A.U."Watts,"ed.,"Literature+and+ the+Urban+Experience"(1981)"43." 52"Morrison,"“Rootedness”,"344."
expectations of the dominant society and shows an alternative way of living to the bourgeois life Milkman is used to. By discussing Pilate’s household as a contrast to the household Milkman grew up in, the importance of orality as a contrast to visuality becomes clearer. While visual themes represent white norms and values in a Northern community where African Americans like Macon Dead, Jr., Milkman’s father, lack historical consciousness, orality plays an important role in Pilate’s life and in Milkman’s reconnection with his cultural heritage.
Macon Dead Jr. has conformed to a white, bourgeois, capitalist society and its norms. The black community fears him, because his life evolves around collecting the payments of black tenants, and he teaches his son that owning things is most important in life. In addition, respectability plays a very important role for Macon as he considers himself a "propertied Negro who handled his business so well and who lived in the big house", and takes his family on a ride every Sunday afternoon to satisfy himself with being viewed as a successful man (SoS 20,31,55). As a result, he has not only become estranged from his community, but his family as well; particularly from his sister Pilate. At the beginning of the novel, Macon escapes from his respectable life as he longs for music and goes to his sister’s house once, in a part of town where there are no streetlights. He experiences a moment of happiness as he hears the women sing. Sound dominates his senses and he feels "himself softening under the weight of memory and music" (SoS 30). He peeks through a window and watches the women in their home lit by candlelight: "he wanted no conversations, no witness, only to listen and perhaps to see the three of them, the source of that music that made him think of fields and wild turkey and calico" (SoS 29). Sounds, or the sense of hearing, hereby thus functions as a form of instruction to recall memory; they contain information on the past.
The music disappears when Macon moves away from Pilate’s house and his experiences again become more visual as well as negative: "he saw, like a scene on the back of a postcard, a picture of where he was headed – his own home; his wife’s narrow unyielding back; his daughters, boiled dry from years of yearning; his son, to whom he could speak only if his words held some command or criticism" (SoS 28). The household that Milkman grew up in is illustrated as lacking love and Morrison presents it in the form of a picture, pointing to the problems of the static assumptions that are made in visual media and at the same time emphasizing the static assumptions prevailing in the household. And in contrast to Pilate’s household, it is silent: "there was no music there" (SoS 28). Rather, Macon’s wife is also more concerned with visuality rather than orality, specifically in her creation of memories. For example, several times a day Ruth Foster Dead looked at a
watermark on the table: "some stable visual object" (SoS 11). That visual object shapes her idea of a respectable household, always having fresh flowers on the mahogany dining table, as well as of her memory of her father’s death, as she left the flowers rot until they left a permanent watermark on the table. However, relying on visuality again proves unsatisfactory as distressing and shameful memories continue to haunt Ruth throughout her adult life.
In the first part of Song of Solomon Milkman tries to be like his father, despite his problematic relationship with him: "he couldn’t help sharing with Macon his love of good shoes and fine thin socks" and he becomes his father’s employee (SoS 63). But, he moves South and this journey turns out to be his journey of self-discovery; the South is hereby illustrated as a milieux de mémoire as we will see. Milkman finds it difficult to adapt in the South. Although he experiences southern hospitality, in Shalimar, Virginia – pronounced like
Shalleemone – he insults the men at Solomon’s General Store by suggesting he "could buy a
car as if it were a bottle of whiskey, because the one he had was broken" (SoS 261-266). "They looked at his skin and saw it was as black as theirs, but they knew he had the heart of the white men who came to pick them up in the trucks when they needed anonymous, faceless laborers” (SoS 266). His vanity and visual appearance, his clothes, car and ways of moving thus form a barrier in his ability to connect with the black men in Virginia. Morrison also uses the different ways of pronouncing Shalimar to present a cultural conflict. In a society that values literacy over orality, Shalimar will be pronounced differently (like the reader would probably pronounce it as well). In Virginia however, where there are no street signs for example, the community has maintained the town’s name based on the sound and pronunciation of the word – on the oral use of the word rather than on the literate use of the word. By referring to the town’s name both as Shalimar and Shalleemone, Morrison emphasizes the importance of orality for maintaining the original meaning of a word within African American culture. Additionally, she emphasizes the cultural memories a word can contain, as Shalleemone turns out to refer to the story of Solomon. The reader now becomes engaged in a dialogue on the cultural meanings of words that can be lost or maintained, as I will further explore in the third chapter.
Milkman’s mentality changes when the men leave him behind, alone in the dark woods where there was nothing “to help him – not his money, his car, his father’s reputation, his suit, or his shoes" (SoS 277). He now has to focus on the sounds of the hunters, the dogs and of nature: these sounds instruct him on what the earth has to say.
All those shrieks, those rapid tumbling barks, the long sustained yells, the tuba sounds, the drumbeat sounds, the low liquid howm howm, the reedy whistels, the thin eeeee’s of a cornet, the unh unh unh bass chords. It was all language. An extension of the click people made in their cheeks back home when they wanted a dog to follow them. No, it was not language; it was what there was before language. Before things were written down (SoS 278).
Morrison has constructed this paragraph particularly to emphasize the importance of orality for historical consciousness, as I will explain by exploring her use of the phrase “what there was before language”. Most importantly, Morrison forcefully equates language to literacy in this paragraph. Meanwhile, “what there was before language” is equated to oral forms of communication that existed before literacy existed.
First, “the people back home” are juxtaposed with “before things were written down” in the passage. By using the words “back home” Morrison refers to a past and expresses a memory of this past. And the realization that the sounds of nature are not language directly follows from this memory - from the memory of the “click” the people back home used to make. Morrison thus recalls a memory of a culture wherein information was transmitted through oral forms of communication, a culture that existed “before things were written down”. Second, the equation of language to literacy is demonstrated by the sounds that are used to describe “what there was before language”. Tuba or drumbeat sounds did of course not exist before language existed. However, they did exist when large parts of the African American population were still illiterate and music formed an important form of African American expression already, before reading and writing were (commonly) used as forms of expression. Nature, sounds, music and oral forms of expression thus function in this paragraph to shape a memory of an African American culture wherein literacy did not exist or was not widespread.
The importance of the wisdom that “what there was before language” contains, is demonstrated by the importance of the passage as a turning point in the narrative. Orality and sounds foster Milkman’s imagination and he develops his curiosity for the history of “his people”. What started as a materialistic journey to find gold, changes Milkman in appreciating his family’s history and the South and its oral tradition. Also, orality, along with his own imagination, is crucial to make him succeed in his search for his cultural and family history. In Shalimar, where cultural memories are a part of everyday life like in a milieux de
mémoire, Milkman hears the children of the town sing the song Pilate used to sing, "O
Sugerman don’t leave me here". And although he has the urge to write down the lyrics, like
he is used to doing, he is forced to listen and memorize them. As Middleton points out: the cultural arts "of listening and remembering are central to Milkman’s success" to unlock the secret to his family’s riddle. "If he wants the knowledge, he must commit the song to his personal, oral memory, just as his slave and African ancestors had done, not to an artificial, external memory – a written record".53 Morrison again demonstrates the importance of the
oral tradition over literacy: listening and memorizing gives Milkman knowledge and he tries to connect the missing bits and pieces of the story with the help of his imagination. “Was Ryna the black lady still crying in the gulch? Was Ryna Solomon’s daughter? Maybe she had an illegitimate child and her father – No. It’s Solomon she is crying for, not a baby. ‘Solomon don’t leave me.’ He must have been her lover" (SoS 304). As the children continue to sing, his family’s history falls into place. "These children were singing a story about his own people!", about his great-grandfather Solomon, the flying African and Indian grandmother Sing among others.
Because the story, in the form of a song, is orally transmitted, it does not have – or has lost over time – a static form. Rather, it is a flexible story, infused with imagination and subjected to change and different interpretations and encourages Milkman to use his imagination in order to understand it. Meanwhile, the story also challenges the static assumptions offered to Milkman by his bourgeois family in the North: Milkman immediately starts looking at himself in a new way. In Michigan, he had looked in the mirror and concluded his face "lacked coherence, a coming together of the features into a total self"; he had looked like a man not knowing where to go (SoS 70). But, as he decisively runs back to Solomon’s store, he catches a glimpse of himself in a window and grins: "his eyes were shining. He was as eager and happy as he had ever been in his life" (SoS 304). On top of that, having been reconnected to his cultural heritage, Milkman now also looks at Hagar in a new way and takes her hair in a box after he discovers her death (SoS 334). As he learned to love his cultural and racial heritage, he learned to love her hair. He now looks at himself and at Hagar through the revelation of his own world: a world built on cultural and racial history.
In the final triumphal scene of the novel, Milkman takes Pilate back to Shalimar – where she blended into the community "like a stick of butter in a churn" – to bury what he discovered to be her father’s bones she had been carrying around for most of her life. Pilate
dies while Milkman sings her the song he had learned; the same song the children had been singing in the remembrance of his great-grandfather who tried to fly, as described in the first scene of Song of Solomon: "Sugargirl don’t leave me here / Cotton ball to choke me / Sugargirl don’t leave me here” (SoS 336). On top of including a song in the final part of the novel, Morrison structures the last paragraph in a call-and-response pattern, presenting nature as the chorus.
“Guitar!” he shouted.
Tar tar tar, said the hills.
[…]
“Here I am!”
Am am am am, said the rocks (SoS 337).
In this last passage, the narrating style, which includes a song, a chorus and a call-and-response structure, functions to finally present the oral tradition as a triumph.
In The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon Morrison presents two different societies that are in conflict with each other. The first can be considered a milieux de mémoire: cultural memories are preserved and shape every day life. This society exists in the South: cultural memories are maintained in rural Southern communities that engage in the oral tradition or by an ancestor figure who has strong ties to the area. The rural South thereby functions as a counterculture in the novel, as an alternative to the second society: the forgetful Northern bourgeois society. This society only exists in the present day of the novels, not in the cultural memories of ancestor figures. Both literacy and visuality are embraced, rather than oral forms of communication and the use of the sense of hearing. And whereas orality can be used to recall cultural memories and create historical consciousness in the novels, looking relations, visual forms of representation (such as the movies), the want for reification through consumption and literacy lead to historical and even cultural alienation. The cultural memories that can offer humor and relief have been lost in the bourgeois society.
These contrasts, between the use of the senses and between different societies, raise a question. If the oral tradition can cease to exist in certain societies, as Morrison has illustrated – if “parents don’t sit around and tell their children” those stories that were preserved by the oral tradition anymore, like they have stopped doing in America’s contemporary society according to Morrison – how can cultural memories then still be passed from one generation
to the next?54 As she argued in “Rootedness”, novels can be a medium to recall and maintain cultural memories, which I will discuss in the third chapter. But first, I want to complicate the assumption of hierarchical senses in her novels – as her argument on the novel already suggests there are other ways of recalling cultural memories than by engaging in the oral tradition through the sense of hearing. Focusing on the act of imagining offers a useful inquiry for this complication. In the next chapter I will argue that Morrison has explored the function of visual imagination for recalling cultural memories, particularly in Tar Baby. This complicates the contrasts she has presented in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon.
2. Imagining Beauty and the Past
Imagining differs both from perceiving and from remembering. Most importantly, imagination does not require an existing corresponding visual or auditory object or event. Rather, the person who imagines can form a mental scene without having perceived what is being imagined. For example, you can form a picture in your mind that you did not see like that before, or a tune in your head that you did not hear before in that same way.55 Although a memory can directly correspond to something someone has perceived before, cultural memories can be prosthetic memories – memories of things people have not actually perceived or lived through and that can be passed between generations. This points to the overlap between imagination and cultural memory: a mental experience is formed without having perceived, directly or in the same form, what is imagined or remembered. We can imagine sounds, but the act of imagination is also a visual act; we create images in our mind, using our visual imagination. In the first chapter, I discussed the importance of imagination to recall cultural memories as illustrated in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. The oral tradition does not provide static stories, but rather subjective stories and songs that change over time. It requires the imagination to give meaning to these stories and to the cultural memories preserved by these stories. In this chapter, I will further explore the act of imagining to recall cultural memories, but now by focusing on visuality rather than on orality – particularly on the function of visual imagination in Morrison’s narratives.
In philosophy and science the most prominent ongoing debate about visual imagination evolves around the “picture theory” on the one hand and the “descriptive theory”
54"Morrison,"“Rootedness”,"340."
55"T."Gendler,""Imagination","The+Stanford+Encyclopedia+of+Philosophy+(Fall"2013),"06/20/15,"
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/imagination/>."
on the other hand. According to the picture theory, visual mental images are like pictures: they appear in the same way as the visual objects we can see. When we see an object we make a mental scan of this object and this visual scan appears in our mind. If we imagine an object, the picture theory states, this object also appears as a visual mental scan. The descriptive theory argues however, that mental images are not like pictures, but that the mental images we create are linguistic descriptions of these pictures. In other words, according to this theory, mental images are representations of visual scenes shaped by language.56 But, whether these mental images are shaped as pictures or shaped by language in our imagination, these mental images are visual (which the word “images” already implies). For example, when we imagine an object, like a chair, our mind might shape it through the use of language, but we do imagine what the chair looks like. When we remember we also create images in or mind; both imagining and remembering can be a visual practice.
In “Dreams, Memory and the Ancestors”, Katie Glaskin explains that neuroscientists agree that old memories can be activated in the form of dream imagery and imaginative narrative. Dreams thus draw on memories and are shaped by the imagination.57 In literature,
dreams can therefore demonstrate visual mental images that are shaped by both the
imagination and by memory. Thereby, dreams also have some initial narrative functions. In Morrison’s novels, as was important for Romantic poets and writers for example, dreams particularly offer a means of transcending the limitations of the senses. Morrison often describes the sense of sight as problematic. In dreams however, images can be created and perceived that cannot be created or accessed through the spectral system of an oppressive society. In turn, these dreams always contain important knowledge in Morrison’s novels: they consist of cultural memories and imaginative scenes that present an alternative to the narrative’s dominant culture that is perceived in daily life. The idea that dreams reveal suppressed aspects of the self is also apparent in Morrison’s dealing with dreams. As Jana Heczkova explains, suppressed memories for example “materialize in the present nonetheless; only now they manifest themselves as dreams and dreamlike sensations of flashbacks and hallucinations which are not expected by the characters”.58 Again, narrating a dream therefore functions to present knowledge that challenges the character’s present. For Morrison, dreams are thus containers of knowledge and a form of instruction: they contain 56"Ibidem."" 57"K."Glaskin,"“Dreams,"Memory,"and"the"Ancestors."Creativity,"Culture,"and"the"Science"of"Sleep”,"Journal+of+the+Royal+Anthropological+ Institute"7"(March"2011)"44G62."" 58"J."Heczkova,"“‘(Un)Dreamable"Dreams’."Temporality"and"Dream"in"Alice"Walker’s"The"Temple"of"My"Familiar"and"Toni"Morrison’s" Beloved”."In:"K."Vrankova,"C."Koy,"ed.,"Dream,+Imagination"and+Reality+in+Literature"(2007)"30."
