Master Thesis Comparative Literature (MA Literary Studies):
A Paradox Of Loss&Longing: Trauma as Literary Device in T. Morrison's Trilogy.
A Critical Reading and Application of C. Caruth's Trauma Theory.
Lotte van Eenennaam (BA)
6297730/ 10003669
Assigned to:
dr H.H. Stuit (supervisor) & drs M.L. Stelder
Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
Faculty of Humanities (FGW)
Departement of Language and Literature (tlk)
MA Literary Studies: Literature and Culture.
Submitted:
TABLE OF CONTENT:
Introduction:
p. 3.
Chapter 1:
“Ghosts and Shackles: Trauma Claiming Agency”.
p. 11.
Chapter 2:
“Violent Remeniscence: Trauma and the Paradox of Loss&Longing”.
p. 24.
Chapter 3:
“Give Us Back Our Paradise: Trauma as Identity”.
p. 37.
Conclusion:
p. 50.
INTRODUCTION:
Toni Morrison (*Lorain (Ohio, U.S.A.), 18/2/1931.) was awarded the Noble Prize of Literature in 1992 for her published literary work. On their website, the contemporary committee is quoted to have written in their final report: “[(ed.) Morrison,] who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality” (Stockholm: Noble Prize
Committee Official WebPage. http://nobleprize.org. 2016 (1993).). What this quote actually refers to, is Morrison's addition to a perception of a reality presented by the contemporary, dominant historical narrative of the USA. And not just as much an American dominant historical narrative, but the historical narrative dominating the entire Western world, as well in large parts of its globalized periphery. This reality, would concern the traumatic (Freud, S.: 1955 (1920).) and consequently sub-altered (Spivak,G: 1988.) narrative of the Afro-American population, most particularly their slavery past and struggle for freedom, agency and (social, racial and sexual) equality (Smith, V.:2012.). While doing so, Morrison often uses tropes and literary devices that support this strategy through their representation of immensely painful, complex and “multi-vocal” (Akhtar, J.: 2014, 1.) experiences that together compose a narrative of traumas (Caruth,C.: 1995. ; 1995. ; 1996.). These traumas are often displayed initially as acts of homicide, which occur in Morrison's works in various forms and circumstances .
These literary tropes or motives always appear to bear some notion of paradox within them. This particular use of paradox triggers the reader to think of another possible cause that has lead the character to kill, rather than taking the obvious interpretation common narrative structures (such as chronology, pathos and the climax1) would supply to comprehend such a violent/violating act2. And through this paradox, the fictional act of killing is connected to the historical trauma experienced by the African-American people: the struggle for (historical) survival (Smith: 2012) and the (in)capability to access history through memory (Schappell, E.: 1993.). Yet, these memories, are exactly what trouble the narrative and cause the revival of repressed, violent and damaging experiences of that traumatic past. The problems arising when trying to represent such traumas according to the common and dominant narrative structures known to white, Western society, are elaborated as theoretical literary criticism in Morrison's renowned essay Playing in the Dark (London, Vintage: 1999 (1998).).
This form of representation of trauma can be exemplified by a peculiar scene from the novel
Sula (Morrison, T.: 1987 (1973).), my first encounter with Morrison's fictional work. Though not as
explicit as in her literary debut The Bluest Eye (2016 (1970)), Sula as well engages to this historical
1 Literary Devices (WebPage)*
2 The Oxford Dictionaries (Online): “Paradox”.
*all literary notes refer to: “Bibliography” p. 53-8.
theme of an alternative Afro-American narrative as remedy to overcome their historical trauma: the trauma of being deprived of their freedom to create such a narrative themselves, meaning they have been deprived of autonomous participation or agency over their own historical experience as formerly enslaved, black population in a dominant white society. There is no possibility to write one's own historical narrative when this history is too painful to remember, yet too dominantly present in the experience of everyday life and the construction ánd repression of other contemporary, dominant narratives, to ignore.
In Sula the narrative is set in a fictional, all-black town in a deserted landscape of what is described accurately as the middle of nowhere, and develops over the course of life of two of its female residents: Nell and Sula. Sula's grandmother, Eva, is quite a personality known by all townspeople to be the woman with one leg whom has opened her house for everyone and would always take in the weak, the dependent and the needy. Though, her own daughter Hanna and grandchild Sula are not as convinced of Eva's saintlike personality as are most other people: Hanna, grown up as the oldest of three, has spent most of her early childhood in severe poverty and in absence of her mother, questions Eva's affinity and accuses her of not truly loving her children. Hanna says this, as she knows for sure her mother has killed her only brother by setting him on fire (1987, 70.).
'One night it wouldn't be no dream. It'd be true and I would have done it, would have let him if Id've had the room but a big man can't be a baby all wrapped up inside his mamma no more; he suffocate. I done everything I could to make him leave and go and live and be a man but he wouldn't and I had to keep him out so I just sought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man'
(72).
Eva confesses, but what is revealed in her confession surpasses the act of killing as an act of mere violence, rather does it demonstrate the (re)presentation of trauma and its function in
Morrison's general literary strategy: homicide is acted out not as a traumatic experience an sich, but as the result of experienced traumas of the past. These experiences were so terrible, so painful, one can not stand the repetition of events without causing another trauma to reformulate and repress the damage of the first. This repetition occurs as a disruption of the expected narrative structures, as its true nature and function can not be fully grasped at first encounter, nor can it expose its referentiality to the past it is ought to represent. The response Eva offers to Hanna, does not refer as much to the actual act of killing her son, but the more to giving birth to him. Being left behind by her husband BoyBoy, Eva had to struggle for the survival of her three toddlers. Plum, being just a baby, had severe
digestive problems, and one freezing night in winter Eva had to stick her fingers inside his tiny, fragile body and push out the lumps that were stuck up his bowls. The baby lived, and Eva had to struggle on during his entire life to keep it so.
“Trauma”3
, is most commonly defined as a mental disease or psychological disorder,
caused by experience of a excessively distressing and/or violent event. The patient(or:
'subject') suffering trauma experiences disruptions in the construction of their personal
narrative and everyday experience by
repetition of this violation, for example in the form ofnightmares and flashbacks (Caruth: 1996, 12; 27-9; 58.).
In Unclaimed Experience, Cathy Caruth, maintains the following definition of the term: “[(ed.): Trauma forms] “the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares and other repetitive phenomena” (Caruth: 1996, 91.). Stating the response to an experience of traumatic nature, is simultaneously considered to be represented by as to actively present the nature of the violent experience which it is originally ought to react to (58; 91-2.).
As Caruth does in Unclaimed Experience, I will relate this particular notion of trauma, adding the earlier discussed narrative strategy/plotstructure maintained by Morrison in her works of fiction, to a quite explicit quote on traumatic experience by dr Sigmund Freud (Caruth: 1996, 59.):
Dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repea-tedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situa-tion from which he wakes up in another fright.
… Anyone who accepts it as something self-evident that their dreams should put them back into the situation that caused him to fall ill has misunderstood the nature of dreams
(Freud, S. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: 1955 (1920), 13.).
Having read this upper statement, one could argue trauma and/or traumatic experience, when produced by or as narrative, do nót refer to the actual infliction of trauma experienced directly at occurrence of a violent event. Such a fictional experience is apparantly capable of producing a self-constructed yet consistant (re)presentation of a entirely different, autonomous experience]:, a representation that becomes symptomatic for the extremely distressing experience it refers to.
“Traumatic experience” (Caruth: 1996, 91-2.) reveals to be a simulation4 of referentiality and
3 The Oxford Dictionaries (Online): “Trauma”.
therefore produces a narrative which constitutes its own “other fright” (Freud: 1950, 13.). This other
fright, or, “trauma” (1996, 91.), originates entirely from the sub-conscious of the patient/subject, and is
hence considered to be imaginary or fictional. Thus, are the disturbing symptoms experienced by the patient not caused by the original traumatic experience, but by a representation of that experience, capable of altering the patient's memory and contemporary experience of the (original) trauma. Or, as Caruth states: “traumatic experience” is to be understood “as a paradoxical relation between destructiveness and survival” (1996, 59.)
In Sula, Eva declares the murder of Plum to be an act of pure love: she could no longer take care of him, she didn’t have the energy nor the time to do so. It is when she realizes he shall die anyhow, anyway, if she would stop keeping him alive, when she decides to kill him: “He opened his eyes and saw what he imagined was the great wing of an eagle pouring a wet lightness over him. Some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing, he thought. Everything is going to be all right, it said" (47). The act of killing turns out an act of redemption, of caring mother love. But, as well does it repress and alter the interpretation of memories preceding this act: it changes the narrative and the
interpretation of these memories, as their painful, damaging nature is now completely encompassed by the act of infanticide Eva committed. Plum's death has become an image created to cover up the traumatic memory of his survival.
The author's chosen, often historically engaged, subjects cause the narratives she creates to address past experiences and memories so painful and violating, their traumatic nature is incapable of functioning according to, and hence denies, the narrative structures which are considered “normal” to our perception of everyday life experience, memory and consciousness (Caruth: 1995, 152-3.). These memories have been resisted by and are simultaneously resistant to these dominant narratives and their historical representations of 'truth'. It is in her achievement to fill out exactly this gap or void between narrative and history by developing a literary strategy that answers to these dominant, 'normal' structures while still capable of presenting the traumatized nature of that narrative, which creates and grants Morrison's fictional oeuvre its (acknowledged) symbolic and historical value. To phrase it in terms corresponding to Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience (Baltimore: JHU Press, 1996.) Morrison has appeared able, by use of literary fiction, to complement historical narrative by offering a critical, additional interpretation of that narrative's supposed truths, offering a more “faithful” comprehension history and past experience (Caruth: 1996, 29.; 1995, 155-7.).
This theme, the historical; often silen(t)/(ced); violent as equally violated; bolt and painful; but most of all, traumatic narratives of black people in modern (and contemporary) American history, remains a main subject in Morrison's work. Her entire bibliography, of which most recently was published God Help The Child (New York: Knopf.) on January 1st 2015, engages with thematics, motives and tropes referring to the struggle of African American characters against their
(slave-)history and struggle for liberation of and agency over their own narratives. This engagement is displayed in various manners and through particular, literary style and voice(s), causing them to become typical for Morrison's personal style and her ideas on literature and its possible historicity5. These devices, methods and effects are displayed most vividly through her application of acts of homicide as a repetitive, representational literary motive referring to an indirect and/or inaccessible traumatic experience or memory. Homicide in Morrison's fiction, so it seems, appears to be a motive or image created to (re)present trauma itself, causing trauma to function as a literary device deployed by a certain narrative-strategy.
These ideas tie up almost perfectly with the trauma theory offered to us by Cathy Caruth, and reveal some peculiar similarities to the notions of narrative,(historical) experience and trauma
displayed in her work Unclaimed Experience. I therefore think it useful to analyze Morrison's fictional narratives along the theory supplied by Caruth, in order to determine whether or not my suspicion is correct that Toni Morrison has constituted a literary strategy that employs the idea of trauma as generic narrative feature and uses it to offer an alternative voice which can testify, validate and ultimately (re)produce a different comprehension of history by altering its common narrative structures (1996, 37.). Hence, she is capable of presenting an image of historical trauma through fictional narrative.
Which brings me to my other main focus of research in this thesis: namely the concepts of history, narrative and paradox as Caruth defines and applies them in her trauma theory. These notions appear to be compared over their different validations of reality, which consists of their capability to constitute discourse and produce knowledge, while these notions also mutually affect the
comprehension of one another's conceptual and discursive constitutions, definitions and applications. The subtitle to Unclaimed Experience spells: “History, Narrative and Memory"6, three concepts of which two can imminently be understood as matters of either conceptual discourse7 or narrative. The latter of the three is where the first notion of paradox lingers: for memory, or rather, the latent description of experience through narrated memory, is considered an unreliable yet major dominant element of the constitution of (collective) historical narrative. And trauma, as Caruth often repeats throughout her works, is a memory incapable to directly refer to any experience, as what has been experienced is not (yet) available to our consciousness 'to fully comprehend its understanding of our conceptual reality' ([paraphrased]1995, 153.; 1996,69.). In other words, the subject of the memory core to the creation and reproduction of that narrative and its constitution of historical discourse, is in fact historically irretrievable due to its catastrophic, violent nature. This kind of memory, thus, turns out
5 Morrison, T. & D. Taylor-Guthrie (ed.). Conversations With Toni Morrison. 6 The Oxford Dictionaries (Online): “History”.;“Narrative”.; and “Trauma”. 7 Hall: 1996.; Foucault1970).
to appear impossible to capture in reference, resisting all forms of description and hence becomes an image of the unimaginable imagined.
This paradoxical nature of the relation between the experience of trauma and its struggle against its own memory, is crucial to understand Caruth's theory. This struggle functions as the core argument supporting her statement that trauma bears inherent historicity which can alter, adapt and complement (thus: replace) the absence pf reference to the original experience that caused the trauma (1996, 27; 58.).
As well does this relation suggest the possibility of trauma being a certain strategy, feature or element exclusively applicable to the realm of narratology, creating and stimulating narrativity rather than a theory or methodology of discursive criticism (1996, 9-10.; 27-9.): an idea that I will develop and elaborate over the course of this thesis, through analysis of Morrison's works consisting of fictional, traumatic narrative combined with three core theorists that will help to explain my reading of Caruth's theory based on the three concepts I mentioned earlier in this introduction(history; narrative and paradox).
The, as well three, novels by Morrison chosen to be object of analyses form together the Beloved-trilogy, and will each stand at the focus of a literary analysis, individually divided over three chapters. These will be dealt with in order of publication and function to support the above made statements on Morrison's creation of a literary strategy, which I will call traumatic narrative.. The theoretical terms and concepts will be introduced, elaborated and explained mainly through critical analysis of Unclaimed Experience, set against a background of three other main theorists that will appear individually per chapter.
The choice for the trilogy is based on their commonly shared structure of narrative and emphasis on an act of homicide. This homicide, considered as trope, generates meaning over a paradoxical, complex comprehension of the (historical) narrative(s) to which they engage.
Alike Sula, Beloved's plot (London: Vintage, 2007 (1987)) deals with an act of infanticide that is an outcome of a traumatic past experienced by the mother; in Jazz (London: Vintage, 2004 (1992).), the homicide concerns a true crime passionnel8, but relates explicitly to the paradoxical nature of the struggle for agency and freedom described to stand at the base of Morrison's general literary
thematics; in Paradise (London: Vintage, 1999 (1998).) the paradoxical notion within the motive of homicide is expanded to constitute an act of racial murder, an inversive reverse of the trauma suffered by the characters committing the crime. Generating not just the meaning of the motive itself, but altering the conception of the entire narrative to a more meta-textual level, ultimately revealing, most methodologically, the literary enterprise started from Beloved: the deployment of trauma as a literary device, generating symbolism and historicity (hence, meaning) over notions of paradox.
An argument in favor of specifically the choice for homicide as dominant literary motive and prime method to represent traumatic experience, can be found in the essay on the philosophy of murder by Dutch writer Connie Palmen (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2004.)9 in which she researches the relation between the agency the author grants him/herself when constituting fictional or experience, compared to the agency the killer grants him/herself over the experience of his/her victims (who are not fictional). The agency to end one's life closely resembles the agency to take control over that life's past and future narrative: destroy the victim's autonomy and agency to adapt and (re)construct this (lack of) representation. The literary murder thus, functions to illustrate a struggle which will be revealed to interact with and connect the thematics core to Morrison's choice for literary theme and genre as well as to plot-structure.
The first chapter shall engage in analysis of Beloved, and concern itself mostly on the concept of history/historical narrative and how this concept is defined and applied in Caruth's Unclaimed
Experience. Being the first chapter, this chapter shall elaborate a bit more on the theoretical
framework and emphasize and elaborate my already roughly sketched criticism on Caruth's trauma theory and its claim on history. To do so, I shall turn to the works of historian Hayden White, especially his work on the historical narrative and the effects and affects of literary devices within a historical text.
“Chapter 2: The Paradox of Loss&Longing.”, will concern itself over the notion of narrative and how Caruth herself seems to relate this concept to her theory. This research will be illustrated by the analysis of Jazz and the theoretical work On Longing (Stewart, S. Durham: Duke University Press, 1984.), as the latter will be used to clarify my definitions of narrative, narrativity, and trauma engaging in the generation of the symbolic through paradoxical relations of loss and longing, taking the
example of the souvenir as literary device comparable to trauma (as used by Morrisson).
And finally, the third chapter “Give Us Back Our Paradise” will continue the thread of “Chapter 2” by ultimately defining the paradox as (1) the structure (re)producing all plot-generated symbolism, interpretation and, hence, meaning, at the core of the traumatic narrative and (2) as main function and most important feature of trauma as literary device/narrative strategy structurally generating the development of plot and genre. This will be done with the help of Lauren Berlant's theory Cruel
Optimism , a concept that shall elaborate the ideas set out by Stewart in On Longing, and which shall
be illustrated by an analysis of Paradise as conclusive work of a series in which this literary strategy of the traumatic narrative and use of trauma as literary device has been developed.
All literary analyses, chapters and structured argumentation will depart from a given act of fictional homicide, and will develop over the course of literary and theoretical analysis to reveal the individual paradoxical elements and narrative functions as complete and comprehensive as possible.
As the motive of homicide can, but does not have to, (re)present a traumatic experience, I will provide a more methodological approach of the terms trauma, traumatic narrative and traumatic experience over the course of chapter 110. The theoretical concept “trauma” will be divided into more specific terminology, each term indicating a certain aspect of the construction, reproduction and/or constitution of trauma and traumatic experience through narrative.
Eventually, this approach will help clarify and confirm my main hypotheses, being: 1) the use of trauma as literary device by Morrison has resulted in the development of an individual mode of narrative structure, namely the traumatic narrative, and; 2) the trauma theory as published by Caruth in Unclaimed Experience supplies us not with a discursive criticism of history or an alternative
historical narrative, but forms a method to constitute a representation of trauma and a concept of traumatic narrative, which is not operational outside of the literary field.
10 Be aware that my definitions of these terms might differ from those initially supplied by Caruth's theory, and therefore some caution is necessary when reading these chapters individually.
CHAPTER 1:
“
GHOSTS AND SHACKLES: TRAUMA CLAIMING AGENCY
”.
On History, Narrative and the Referentiality of Traumatic Experience.
In the foreword to Beloved (2007 (1987).), Toni Morrison describes the circumstances that brought her to write this novel and specifies a personal, strangering experience of liberation (x), which inevitably made her think of what it exactly meant to be “free” or a black woman, and came up with a plot evolving about a mother, a freed slave. For slavery, meant the loss of not only your own freedom, but as well the liberty of taking care of and to love what most naturally belongs to a parent: their child.
As discussed in the introduction, Morrison employs a certain thematics and accompanied by a certain deployment of a particular strategy to develop plot and literary/symbolic reference and
interpretation. This strategy for generation of interpreation/symbolic value; discursive, or simply:
meaning, As well in the trilogy chosen as subject to this thesis, to which the first part Beloved forms
no exception. Inspired on an actually happened, historical event (xi), Morrison takes the true story of a traumatized mother, driven by desperation to kill her children in order to prevent them from being taken into slavery (xi-ii.). In Beloved, mother Sethe, a former slave, uses a handsaw to cut through the neck of her eldest daughter Beloved, a baby girl, hoping to save her and prevent her child from being taken in absolute captivity: to be deprived of any agency, authority, and identity. Having lost control over her paralyzing, terrorizing fear Sethe sees herself no choice but to try to prevent repetition of the painful, violent, unimaginable things she experienced during her slave-life, but most of all never again have to obediently experience them possibly taken away from her: Sethe kills her own baby , as long as her precious life is claimed by the hands of the person that gave birth to it.
'Rescuing” her daughter from the violent, dangerous and absolute authoritative domination that had already several times proven ready and able to take and destroy Sethe's life, but were not allowed to harm any of her children. Instead, Sethe took the most absolute claim on the life she had herself helped create: for, “[(ed.) [par.]:]she is Beloved. She my daughter. She mine” (237).
To Sethe, the experience of having committed infanticide appeared not a choice but a necessity, as result to the excessive terrors and extremely disturbing things she had experienced during her, now former-, life of slavery. Just as she obtained her freedom and was finally ready to return to her children to reclaim her life. Hardly did she arrive to set foot on ground finally as a free, liberated woman, or the reunion with her children results in an unexpected, violent outburst11, leading to an act of excessively destructive violent nature, which still nobody seems able to really comprehend. Sethe brutally tried to kill her children and succeeded once, and now she is haunted by the ghost of her own beloved.
Beloved is not a real person, but a spectral entity or personification t of a traumatic experience. The traumatic experiences she represents are not her own, but belongs to Sethe. Therefore she forms a representation of traumatic experience instead of the direct embodiment of such experience. Alike the act of infanticide in Sula12 functions as the trope the traumatic narrative is ought to reproduce in order to simulate reality/or real experience.
This is what happens to Beloved, who returns to the realm of the living, as a bodiless entity taking shape as a specter: a ghostly presence that can be read as a trope representing trauma (Peeren, E. The Spectral Metaphor. London: 2014, 2.), which Beloved's presence obviously does to the
inhabitants of no. 124. Constantly reminding her sister and mother of her death and absence: ' “For a baby she throws a powerful spell,” said Denver. “No more powerful than the way I loved her,” Sethe answered' (Morrison: 2007, 5.).
The infanticide, as performed traumatic experience, is the reference that grants Beloved her entire claim on identity and constitutes her agency, as much as it defines her as the trope crucial to the development of the traumatic narrative she is subjected to: through the act of infanticide, Beloved becomes the representation of traumatic experience itself, not able to represent or present anything of her own, she does not induce traumatic experience, but is the personification of trauma's
incapability to consistent claim on reference.
Beloved, thus, forms the personification representation of “traumatic experience” in the sense she constantly, repeatedly, wares the women in her environment of the fact that she should not be
there, of the impossibility of her existence caused by the lack of (historical) reference to authorize and
allow her claims.
Though, some problems remain to occur when reading Caruth's statements on trauma, traumatic experience and history: as mentioned, she defines “trauma” as the manifestation of “repetitive phenomena” caused by “an unexpected or overwhelming violent event” (91), and “traumatic experience” as the way these 'repetitive phenomena' (92) manifest themselves as
symptoms of 'other frights'. Because of this latent yet 'immediate13, hence, inversive referentiality, the two terms refer to each other (and thus to the same, inaccessible experience) and bear synonymous meanings: “trauma” is manifested only through “traumatic experience”, and “traumatic experience” manifests the form, structure and presence, and thus meaning, of “trauma”. This means the only moment of historical referentiality, the experience of the violent event itself, is encompassed14 by the way a latent and imaginary memory of that traumatic event is interpreted.
First thing to do is to split “traumatic experience” from the overall meaning of “trauma” as
12 “Introduction”, p.3-10. ; Morrison: 1973. 13 Cartuth: 1996, 18.
general concept. As the trauma concerns the experience of the disturbances of everyday routine, traumatic experience is in my opinion not referring to this experience of eventual traumatic
symptoms, but the experience of the initial violent, catastrophic event that caused these symptoms. Traumatic experience, from this point, will thus refer to the historical event that caused the infliction
(thus: trauma) to the subject in the first place, which is henceforth the experience that is lost within the traumatic narrative. The incapability of the traumatic narrative to represent this experience
directly, thus the latency between experience and its description, is what has caused and still thrives
the traumatic narrative to exist in the first place: “[i]f a life-threat to the body and the survival of this threat are experienced as the direct infliction and healing of a wound, trauma is suffered in the psyche precisely, it would seem, because it is not directly available to experience” (Caruth: 1996,1.).
When understanding the concept of narrative as opposed to (lived) experience, one could state that the traumatic narrative's object, being the initial, experienced trauma, is reconstructed entirely based on elements of fiction: it simulates experience where experience is inaccessible. The original traumatic experience is represented, rather reconstructed from within the tropes produced by the traumatic narrative, which now change the chronology of the original historical narrative of the subject (or patient).
The traumatic narrative's original traumatic experience providing the historical referent; the traumatic narrative encompasses and divides the entire, personal history of the subject into a
pre-traumatic narrative (the narrative which existed before the original pre-traumatic event) and the post-traumatic narrative (the narrative from and after the original post-traumatic event).
However, since the original trauma experienced is essentially inaccessible to the traumatic narrative, it constructs a representation of experience that will define the very subject of either the
pre-traumatic narrative as the post-pre-traumatic narrative: the complete personal history of the patient has
been restructured and put to service the traumatic narrative and its core trope generating its
paradoxical, simulative meaning structures. These structures are vouching for, while simultaneously relying on its chronological evidence to have actually happened and in this sense can easily be defined as “simulations” (Baurdrillard, J. “Simulation and Simulacra”. Stanford: 1988 (1974), 266-84.; Robinson, A. “Theory from A-Z: Baudrillard- Symbolic Exchange”. London: 2012.): incapable to construct any referential connection or discursive relation to everyday-life reality. And hence bares all possibility for constitutive and/or discursive “symbolic exchange”( Baurdrillard, J. “Symbolic Exchange and Death”. Stanford: 1988 (1981). 119-20).
“Traumatic experience” ( Caruth: 1996, 56.), thus, does not refer to the moment of infliction of trauma (as historical and chronological reference) (92-3.), but to the way the trauma subconsciously manifests itself afterwards ([(ed.): [paraphrased]: 92). Caruth emphasizes this notion of latency multiple times, and claims that exactly in this friction of experience and belated representation,
history is being formed:
For history to be a history of trauma means that it is referential precisely to the extent that it is not fully perceived as it occurs; or, to put it somewhat differently, that a history can be grasped only in the very inaccessibility of its occurrence
(1996, 18.).
This feature of latency is not unique or exclusively characteristic to this, or any, concept of trauma, nor is it an exclusive feature of historicity or historical narratives: all narratives bear this intrinsic essence of latency, whether traumatic, historic, philosophic or fictional15. And as trauma takes place mostly in the mental and psychological realm of the subconscious16, its core object of interest resides in the realm of the imaginary, or, the fictional: “trauma seems to be much more than a pathology, [...]: it is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell
us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available”([(ed.:) italics added.] 1996, 4.).
While relying her theory mostly on literary, fictional examples, and despite having chosen the term as one out of three to compose the subtitle17 to Unclaimed Experience, Caruth does not explicitly address, define or explain the functioning of “narrative”, narrativity and/or literacy within her
theoretical conceptualization of history and trauma.
Though, she is obviously relating her instrumentation and argumentation structure to narrative's influence and functioning by 1) having various fictional/literary examples serve as valid, historical representations and truthful testimonies of traumatic experiences, and 2) stating literature to be a (re-)generative and (re-)generating “Enactment of Memory18”(1996 (1), 11; 16; 21; 28-56; 57; 73; 82; 86; 91-7 and 110-12. & (2), 26-55.)19. On page 4, introducing her main focus of research and presenting its academic interest and theoretical relevance, Caruth writes the following lines on justification of her use of literary sources to claim theoretical validity of trauma to be an
interdisciplinary, but most of all, critical practice, constituting not just an alternative reading, but an adaptation of (dominant) historical discourse and its generic comprehension of truth.
[(ed.)[italics added.]:] What the parable of the wound and the voice thus tells us, […], is that trauma seems to be much more than a pathology,
15 This inherent, paradoxical nature of narrative shall be discussed and elaborated further in “Chapter 2” (p.c.u.).
16 “Introduction”, p.3-11.; Freud: 1950.; 2003.
17 Caruth: 1996, subtitle.: “On History, Narrative and Memory.”
18 Sub-title of Caruth's Second chapter in Unclaimed Experience (1996).
[...]: it is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in
the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available.
[…].This truth, in its delayed appearance and its belated address, cannot be linked only to what is known, but also to what remains unknown in
our very actions and our language
(1996, 4.).
It is in this functionality of “trauma” as presented on pages 4 and 18, its inherent paradoxical, inversive referentiality is considered a characteristic feature of “trauma”, which supposedly enables establishment of a discursive critique on, and ultimately the alteration of history (7.; 18.; 27-8.).This approach toward the concepts of “trauma”, “traumatic experience” and hence, traumatic narrative, appears to be of a political nature. Not in the sense it addresses, confronts and/or opposes
(culturally/historically) dominant perceptions of truth, but how it claims agency over other narratives and discourses.
Allow me to clarify: the image produced by the traumatic narrative as proposed by Caruth in her theory, can dominate and alter the nature of the original traumatic event it is essentially incapable to refer to: by encompassing20 the chronological structure and inherent (re)production of symbolic meaning, the image produced can ultimately replace to the original happening for a representation. This representation, manifested as (a) simulated memory/-ies manifested in the subjects
(sub)consciousness as symptomatic disruptions of everyday reality and causes the subject to suffer distress and anxiety. These constructed images of memory claim to bear reference to an absent experience, an experience which absence the created image is meant to substitute, but is in fact replacing with another experience violating the subconscious. This replacement of the original traumatic event for the simulative image created by traumatic narrative21, forms an important feature in the plot-structure of Beloved.
It concerns the use of what Caruth defined as “traumatic experience” as image representing an absence through its presence22: the paradoxical structure that allows “trauma” to be captured in narrative. Exactly in this paradoxical regenerative symbolism/meaning structure core to
(re)production of the narrative's plot and genre, Caruth states historical claims made by a traumatic narrative to be plausible. Analyzing Beloved as the personification of what she called “traumatic experience”, reveals how the structure that is supposed to establish historicity, is in fact a replacement
20 LiPuma: 2001, 2-3.
21 This function of “trauma” (1996) as representation of experience evoking another, replacing “trauma” has already been demonstrated/introduced in the analysis of Sula (“Introduction”:,. 3-11..).
of an absence with a presence, meaning not a replacement at all, but an (undesirable) addition that claims space where it does not belong.
Beloved needs to - has to, must!- know why Sethe did what she did at the time, but can't ever know due to the inaccessibility of this original traumatic experience resulting in this terribly
distressing act of infanticide. It is not just the trauma of another person, developing a traumatic narrative around a different subject-identity, it is literally another trauma than the one Beloved knows of and experienced herself: the totality and absolution of that experience is not for anyone at number 124 completely available to capture or comprehend but scattered over personal experiences, individual memories and autonomously produced representations of other experience.
In order to find out and actually stick reference/referentiality to the traumatic experience of infanticide, Beloved must consume Sethe's complete and completely traumatized past, present and future:
But it was Beloved who made demands. Anything she wanted she got, and when Sethe ran out of things to give her, Beloved invented desire. She wan-Ted Sethe's company for hours to watch the layer of brown leaves waving at them from the bottom of the creek, in the same place where, as a little girl, Denver played in the silence with her. Now the players were altered.
She imitated Sethe, talked the way she did, laughed her laugh and used her body the same way down to the walk, the way Sethe moved her hands, sighed through nose, held her head. Sometimes coming upon them making men and women cookies or tacking craps of cloth on Baby Suggest' old quilt, it was Tiffi-cult for Denver to tell who was who
(Morrison: 2007, 283.).
These citations reveal Beloved's need for simulation in order to reproduce herself: representing the desire to be real and know real experience, Beloved must manifest her presence and keep on inventing reasons why she has to be loved, nursed and listened to. The true reason of her existence: that Sethe murdered her out of love, can't be accepted as an answer, as it would force Beloved to accept the fact that she is dead and beloved still, causing her to realize she can't actually be there. By becoming Sethe, or simulating to be Sethe, Beloved reproduces Sethe's post-traumatic narrative over and over again, confronting her with the absence of her true baby girl. By doing so, Beloved takes over,
encompasses, Sethe's entire narrative, causing it to completely, entirely evolve around her in past, present and future.
In the foreword, Morrison mentions features of her plot resembling exactly the manner which Caruth describes trauma employs to manifest itself historically through its produced narrative (1996, 4.; 11.; 17.):
In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persua-sive throughout; that the order and quietude of everyday life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive
([(ed.): [italics added.]:] Morrison: 2007, xiii.).
Sethe's desire to have Beloved know how much she loves her, becomes not an act of caring mother-love, but places an immense claim on Beloved's existence(s), experience(s) and personal perception(s): stating and uttering the wish to love, and demanding Beloved to be 'her own'', this desire is experienced simultaneously as both the active object as passive subject (and reversed) which together constitute (re-/)presentation of literary (re-/)generated experience.
Which reveals a crucial problematic, paradox core to the narrative's plot: Sethe is as much the one who acted out an experience of traumatic nature when committing infanticide, as the subject of her own traumatic narrative constituted by another traumatic experience. This latter trauma is not experienced directly nor is it directly presented, connected or described in the novel to bear any inherent causality, or even correlation, to this act of infanticide. It is this other experience, which seems for a consistent part of the novel's plot either inaccessible/unavailable, and/or absent/lost (to (trauma(tic)) narrative. In the realization of having persevered the homicide of her youngest child inherently resides the ability to accept the fact that she is not longer with her and no longer needs to claim agency ( “[(ed.), [paraphrased/adapted; italics added.]: ] for she, she is Beloved. She my daughter, Beloved. My daughter. She mine [/Sethe's]” (2007: 237.).)
Touching directly upon that paradoxical relation between experience and testimony, as well as that of destruction and survival Caruth emphasizes frequently throughout her book23, Morrison's novel answers perfectly to Caruth's definition of traumatic experience and its supposed possibility to claim historicity. As “[(ed.): [t]raumatic experience], “suggests a certain paradox” to which “the most direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute inability to know it: that immediacy,
paradoxically, may take the form of belatedness”(1996: 91-2.). It is in this paradox of “destructiveness and survival” (56), in which history, she states, is enabled by 'the oscillation between a crisis of death and a crisis of life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the
unbearable nature of its survival. These two stories, both incomparable and absolutely inextricable, ultimately define the complexity of what I refer to as history' (1996, 7.).
But since “trauma”/”traumatic experience” have been revealed refer almost the same,
interactive and inter-dependent interpretations: constituting a consistent referential and commonly
comprehensive (symbolic) meaning – to which, when maintaining the definitions provided in Unclaimed Experience, bares all referentiality. mm. As long as its (re)generative production of
discursive constitutional knowledge and interpretation refers to a fictionally engendered, paradoxical, hence highly symbolic/metaphorical, narrative structure. Confirmed by Caruth herself, though not admitted or explained for its relevance to narrativity and fiction:
[(ed.):] Th[is particular] departure, […], is also an arrival within a history no longer simply their own. It is therefore, I would like to suggest, pre-cisely in the very constitutive function of latency, in history, that Freud discovers the indissoluble, political bond to other histories. To put it somewhat differently, we could say that the traumatic nature of history means that events are only historical to the extent that they implicate others. And it is thus that [particular] history has also been the suffer-ing of others’ traumas
(Caruth: 1996, 18).
In the book Tropics of Discourse (1978) by historian and cultural critic, professor Hayden White, several essays on the functionality of discourse and discursive narratives are published. I use this phrasing, because White emphasizes the production and mechanisms of tropes within discourses other than the literary, which is the only discourse considered able to constitute meaning exclusively of fictional features. In the foreword, tropes are described as figurative language (1978, 2.), or mere metaphors, and in later essays, as well from other publications, White puts extra attention to the narratives produced by and producing tropes of discourse, most specifically, the mechanisms of tropes within the discourse of history.
Considering history a discourse that is both producing knowledge and which conceived reality is produced by narratives, White touches upon the paradox of referentiality Caruth repeatedly
emphasizes throughout Unclaimed Experience. As due to this paradox, historical narratives would bear lesser intrinsic validity of “truth” as its purely factual study of resources and references: a
statement White argues against. He considers not the factual structure of history to constitute the comprehension of the realities it presents (as results of performed scientific, factual research), but the
latent restructuring of these facts within a comprehensible, descriptive (thus: narrated) structure
which provides the context, symbolism (hence: interpretation), necessary to establish its
contemporary truth-value24. It is therefore that I chose to use his works as a reference to shine some light upon the terminology Caruth fails to clearly define (or presumes to be clear to the reader without further explanation), as White does provide definitions of comparable or equal terminology to
research the function of narrativity.
In the foreword to Tropics of Discourse, White emphasizes the duality of the narrativity within discourse, as discourse is assumed to function as both providing institutions and constitutions of truth and reality, while in reverse, it forms as well the critique to question and argue against its own institution:
Discourse, in word, is quintessential a mediative enterprise. As such, it is both interpretative as preinterpretative: it is always as much about the natu-re of interpnatu-retation itself as it is about the subject matter which is the mani-fest occasion of its elaboration
(White: 1978, 4.).
The manifestation of discourse happens through the production and reproduction of tropes, which are mechanisms of narrativity, or, literary devices. In the first essay published in the book On
Narrative (Mitchell, F.(ed.). Chicago: 1981.) named “The Value of Narrtivity In the Represenation of
Reality”, White looks more into the latency of narrativity in its attempt to represent reality, or rather, experience. The same latency which Caruth emphasizes to be an essential quality of her definition of trauma (thus, of traumatic experience) is to White an inherent feature of narrativity, as narratives concern themselves of solving the 'problem of how to translate knowing into telling' (1981, 1.).
Other definitions of narrative and narrativity also mention this paradoxical notions of discursive criticism and inherent latency: White continues in the same essay to paraphrase Roland Barthes, and describe narrative as an essential and necessary feature to the presence of 'meaning itself' (1981, 2.). And in the introduction by the editor to the book On Narrative, Mitchell writes: 'narrative, either as a mode of imposing order on reality or as a way of unleashing a healthy disorder' (1981, ix.), defining narrative toward the discursive correlation between interpretation and
preinterpretation White assumes core to any mode of discourse. And Susan Stewart, author of the 24 White: 1981, 1996.
book On Longing (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984.), mends a definition of narrative that as well emphasizes the paradox of reference and experience: '[narrative is] a structure that both invents and distances its object and thereby inscribes again and again the gap between signifier and signified, that is the place of the generation of the symbolic' (ix).
Narrative, in short, can be summarized as the relation between language and experience caught in the ambiguous notion of referentiality, which valuation is constituted through discourse. It appears thus safe to state that Caruth manifests some sort of mode for a discursive narrative in her trauma theory: she attempts to institute interpretation as much as she emphasizes the duality and near impossibility of the perception constituted actually representing the object it refers to. The manifestation of this referentiality happens through the construction of a narrative, to which from this point I shall refer to as the traumatic narrative. The exact functioning and mechanisms, literary strategies and devices used by this narrative will be discussed more detailedly in the upcoming chapters of this thesis.
White takes a more nuanced position when it comes to the problem of referentiality: he does not state that this 'problem' occurs in all the same forms in all the same narratives, some narratives, in particular historical ones, have to constitute a more solid claim on reality and truth than others. Though all narratives are submitted to the effects of literary mechanisms and elements of fiction such as tropes, argued most explicitly in the essay “The Historical Text as Literary Artefact” (1978, pp. 81-100.), the historical narrative is not a literary narrative (which objects are pure fiction). The historical text relies on retrievable factual events and the collection of moments in time when these events took place, not necessarily on representing these events in their first, original experience (which is
impossible).
The historical narrative functions to place all these factually determined events in a distinctive, sturdy chronological order and context to relate and compare them to our contemporary
consciousness. This process allows the valuation of progressions of time-dependant evalutations of reality and provide a comprehensive structure of analysis and perception/interpretation. These evaluations and chronologies are not factual in essence, and this is where narrativity pops up: without placing these given facts within a narrative, they can not be ordered toward an understanding within our comprehension and constitution of reality25.
But there remains a severe distinction between the fictional and the historical narrative, even though influenced by literary effects. When discussing the forms of historical narratives most common to the historical discourse in the essay “The Value of Narrativity and the Representation of Reality”, White supplies a definition of what is considered by historians to resemble “pure history”, setting out the guidelines to which an historical narrative should essentially answer:
professional opinion has it, the account must manifest a proper concern for the judicious handling of evidence, and it must honor the chronolo-gical order of events, even of past events, even of past real events, display all of the features of narrativity in order for it to count as proper history.
(White: 1981, 5.) .
Though at first appearance, the historicity the traumatic narrative claims seems valid, at closer look it will reveal to have encompassed the chronology of the entire historical narrative surrounding the trauma and not just the chronology of the procession of trauma itself.
Elaboration of the latter statement mght necessary: indeed, the traumatic narrative appears to depart from a clearly distinctive historical event, namely the violent event that caused traumatic experience to occur which proves the presence of trauma. But, as stated in former paragraphs, in Caruth's definition of trauma, traumatic experience is not based upon this violent event, but forms a
representation of the event which disturbs the subject's psyche through repetitive phenomena. And, as
pointed out by Caruth herself and her most cited scholar, Freud, the essential problem with trauma is that it revolts against all direct representation due to its violative nature. This causes the “traumatic experience” (1996: 56.) not to refer to that violent experience, but the experience of “this other fright” (Freud: 1950, 13.): of the representation of this violent experience. And this, a representation of experience, is in itself not a historical fact or event and thus bares the capacity for “symbolic exchange” (hence trauma's simulative appearance)26.
When repetition of past events threatens to occur, the traumatic narrative is interrupted and confronted with its own original essence, when absence of reference is identified and reclaimed. Near the slot, Sethe is confronted with the same situation, the same circumstances, or so she thinks, that has lead her to kill her child in the first place: the threat of a white-man come to take away her, away from her, out of her life, back to slavery. And along with them he will take away the agency inherent to parenthood, the right and responsibility to take care of her own (2007: . When Sethe is finally
reunited with Beloved and closer to her than ever, she notices the white man approaching her house again and wants to react the same way she did eighteen years before. Sethe to initially loses her grip on reality, but then realizes the impossibility of killing a child already murdered. Beloved is not her baby-girl, she is merely the embodied representation of her deceased child, a specter from the past haunting her subconscious and claiming agency over her contemporary life.
This realization causes Sethe to lose her child “again”, but this time the traumatic experience is being recognized for what it is, instead of what it represents: the experience becomes accessible, and causes the trauma to reveal and relief itself. Once the traumatic narrative is confronted with own incapacity to refer to anything at all, it's traumatic nature is finally perceived as the simulative experience with no consistent symbolic interpretation, which could refer to anything.
Conclusively: When taking White's definition of pure historical narrative, Caruth's proposed trauma theory, can't answer to the notion of 'judicious handling of evidence' and the 'honoration of chronology' (White: 1981, 5): the 'evidence' of the traumatic narrative can not be retrieved through historical referentiality, but is constituted from within the narrative it mutually produces and is produced by. It does not honor the chronology of the historical discourse as it implements a chronology that is not based on any actual event or experience, and hence claims agency over elements of fiction.
Caruth's claim on historicity, is thus not as faithful as she herself assumes it to be. Her theory instead provides us with a discursive narrative that both manifests interpretation as preinterpretation (White: 1978, 4.) of its object: trauma. Yet, what the theory constitutes is a narrative which object is a reference to referentiality itself, causing it to be highly fictional and hardly historically retrieveable. Caruth did not structure her terminology and argumentation around that thought: her theory is presented as a critique on dominance of historical narratives and thus emphasizes the supposed historicity her theory opens up to,but overlooks its constructed objects lacking any factual reference.
By equaling trauma to a general conceptual interpretation of the experience it evokes and not the event it is caused by, Caruth actually complicates the chronological order necessary for narrative she proposes to claim (f)actual historical referentiality. This leads the objects, tropes/literary devices and constitution of reality to be perceived as entirely fictional, and hence can the traumatic narrative only operate to its full capacities within the discourse of literature, as only within fiction can the agency (re)claimed be acknowledged and made comprehensive to our contemporary concept of reality.
Beloved, at the end, has been confronted with her lack of referential claim and incapability to state those claims herself. She is returned to the realm of the dead with no physical body or form left to manifest her presence, not even in memory. The impossibility to tell, to claim reference, means the impossibility to become part of history:
Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disrememberred and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost be-cause no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name Although she has claim, she is not
claimed.
It was not a story to pass on
CHAPTER 2,
“VIOLENT REMENISCENCE: THE PARADOX OF LOSS AND LONGING:”
On Trauma and “the Souvenir”,Longing For Memory and simulating Inaccessible Experience .
As seen in the former analysis of Beloved, the character Beloved which is the embodied
representation of trauma, operates as the core motive, or trope, around which the traumatic narrative constitutes itself. Through Beloved, the traumatic experience(s) that define(s) the chronology and order of reality of the narrative are reproduced over and over again. This repetition and constant need for simulation shows the traumatic narrative's desire to be conceived and perceived as real.
Caruth grants special to attention the relation between trauma and memory (1995; x-xii.; 1996: , a term that occurs in multiple theorist's works this thesis will concern itself over, as much as it is related to the formerly discussed paradoxical correlation between history and its inherently latent testimony.
Memory itself is not a form of narrative, but rather a device or mechanism of narrativity27: it narrativizes the past and changes experience into a narrative of historical nature (whether it is a historical narrative, depends on the conception of the memory's factuality). Its nature is essentially historical, because memory can only focus on subjects of the past; on experience that once was but never will be directly available again.
Given this latter sentence, the link between trauma and memory appears obvious: through memory, traumatic experience is narrativized and embedded within a historical perceived chronology. Memory produces the vessels of narrativity on which the traumatic narrative has to rely on for
reproduction, yet simultaneously wishes to overcome. If it were not for the lack of the memory of the original traumatic experience, the traumatic narrative would not exist in the first place,
simultaneously does the traumatic narrative strive to simulate actual experience: it wants to produce a memory of its own, and ultimately become a memory itself.
This aimed transformation, from an unimaginable, unrepresentable, essentially lost experience to a accessible, narrativized memory of past experience, is, as concluded in the former chapter, impossible. The realization of this goal would inherently mean the self-destruction of the narrative: its inner structure contradicts to the idea of producing actual experience.
Only when the traumatic narrative succeeds in simulating memory, its reproduction of the traumatic experience is being taken as agreeable and understandable to the subject's consciousness, and can it be placed within their personal historical narrative. Simulation of experience can, under certain circumstances, possibly lead to actual experience, but this would literally realize the simulation.
In the case of trauma, this would mean the trauma would overcome its nature, and the traumatic narrative would have to dissolve within non-traumatic narrative and direct experience. This is exactly what happened to Beloved (Morrison: 2004, 321-3.), who simulated physical presence to claim experience that wasn't hers, only she deeply desired for it above anything else. As soon as physicality confronted her impossibility, her imaginary nature, she resolves into her pre-existing nature outside of the core narrative: an absence presented through a silent voice, telling the story will never be passed on (announcing the end of narrative, and hence: herself, for traumatic expierence was encountered confronted, and accepted.
This desire for experience and the inherent latency residing in remembering experience, or in the case of trauma, the simulated/tive representation of a memory, confronts us with the paradoxical nature of the traumatic narrative: it longs exactly for that which it consumes and dominates through reproduction and simulation of, bluntly said, false memories. The moment the traumatic narrative produces and presents experienced memories produced by its main object, it is essentially no longer traumatic but accepted as 'normal' or 'real' to the consciousness.
Still, the traumatic narrative remains to alter the perception of the subject's personal past and its narrative. Focused from the present, determining the future, but most of all producing and produced by a representation of the past. The functioning of the traumatic narrative and its mechanisms occurred thus far, all relate to notions and concepts of historicity, chronology, temporality accompanied by memory, fictionality/narrativity and imagination. As well does the narrative's simulative reproduction of the past, suggest a desire for a past (and inherently a present) that could have been, but simply isn't.
When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church:she ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from teir cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the hparrot that said 'I love you.'
(Morrison: 2004, 3.).
Violet is one of the main characters presented in the sequel to Beloved in the trilogy: Jazz. Her husband, Joe Trace, has shot the girl he had a secret liaison with, a girl barely out of puberty and hardly arrived into adulthood, a girl that could have been their daughter. This given of events,
preceding the above cited phrases on Violet's reaction to her husbands affairs, is the starting point of which Jazz's narrative departs, taking the reader along on an seemingly, arithmetically ordered and
multi-voiced and -visioned series of testimonies of events and memories of past experiences, resulting in a transcendental prism embodying an exciting narrative that is as musical and diverse as its title suggests.
Jazz cannot be analyzed thoroughly through differentiated focus or visions, separating the
voices and instruments the narrative offers. Such an approach would denigrate and ignore the full extend of all capacities he narrative can offer, to a somewhat downward and straightforward text of singular, flat vocals telling individual stories of egocentric desire and cruel fantasies. Whereas Jazz is in fact composed of a plurality of voices, motives, features and ideologies to constitute one, diverse and transcendental narrative that could be perceived as a at the core of the novel. A narrative that constantly changes its rhythm, tone and lyric(ism)s ultimately revealing a musical, kaleidoscopic image of one and the same- again essentially an experience: the murder of young girl Dorcas by her middle-aged and married lover Joe.
As Jazz's composition is this multidimensional, its analysis should spend attention to how the narrative is enabled to constitute one solid, consequent idea out of a concept of such variemultiple, differently told and perceived testimonies of various memories and emotions of one singular
traumatic experience: homicide within the intimate sphere of both killer and victim(s), the murder of a loved one by a loved one.
It is therefore that I choose Violet as my focalisor at the start of analysis, the departure from presented homicide. I wont be limiting myself to include narratives and memories of other characters accompanying Violet's, and as Violet is as much perceived a culprit as a victim. Her relation and memories are not just there to illustrate the acts and experiences of Joe and Dorcas: they are what connects them, defines, criticizes and ultimately, constitutes them. Violet forms, in my opinion, the feature, trope and/or mechanism that allows the kaleidoscope to contemplate its rotative projection: to move and revolve within its infinite correlations of color, light and image, constituting and
constituted of an endless variation of seemingly mosaic fragments, both perceiving and representing a reality.
The traumatic experience, as original point of departure for the narrative to start developing its strategies of reproduction, in Jazz remains, from all points of view and to any character, Dorcas' death. More precisely: the way her death has been perceived by either of any of the persons speaking within the narrative provides an account of testimony of autonomous experience each This
comprehension of what the homicide symbolizes is more important to the narrative than the act of killing. Even if Dorcas' death can't be seen or thought of without this act of killing, what this act of killing means, how it is perceived and memorized, is only constituted through its result(s): whether this be Dorcas being dead, Violet trying to cut a corpse's face at a funeral, the release of the birds, the reminiscence of either Joe's, Violet's or Alice's traumatic (ex-slave-)past, the testimonies described by
the mysterious, auctorial first-person narrator present throughout the novel, or the relational developments between Alice and Violet, Felice and the Trace-family, and Joe and Violet themselves (Morrison: 2004).
It is through Violet the narrative can reveal its inner structure bearing an inherent traumatic feature: it revolves completely around the presented absence homicide constitutes when executed. This constitution being the paradox that, as seen in the former chapter and explained by Cathy Caruth and Hayden White, forms the main motivation and stimulation of a (traumatic) narrative to
reproduce itself and through which it generates its meaning: its relation to our consciousness and perceptions of reality.
Once this reproduction is operational, the narrative can start to (re)generate claims on historicity and reality by maintaining and persevering these mechanisms of reproduction which simulate lived experience. The paradoxical core of the narrative allows it to repeat this chain of reproduction infinitely, as long as the boarders of the paradox remain solid. As soon as the narrative reaches closure, or, in other words, solves the conflict between its seemingly contradictory core elements that are essential to its initial existence (in the case of traumatic narrative: the
representation of an experience far too horrific to allow representation and/or access memory), the narrative's mechanisms of reproduction can no longer function and hence the narrative will
ultimately dissolve within or, destroy itself (as it can no longer make contact to our constant/dominant perception of reality, or, consciousness).
This paradox exemplified in the cases of the correlation between experience and latency, death and survival, history and narrative, etc., and embodied in Toni Morrison's Beloved, can be seen as core element to the mechanisms of reproduction to all narratives, and is thus not exclusive to the
traumatic narrative, as Caruth suggests (1996). Hence is it useful to compare the functions, effects and mechanisms of the traumatic narrative to that of another mode of narrative that resembles its
structure and aimed results of reproduction, in order to reveal the methodology presented in
Unclaimed Experience to be one of narrativity, and to elaborate and specify the features of narrativity
inherent to the traumatic narrative, as much as its mechanisms of reproduction and its motivations, stimulations and products.
As seen in Caruth's work and the former chapter of this thesis, the traumatic narrative constitutes itself over a concept of loss and mostly the experience to long for this absence to be
(re)present(ed). The paradox of survival/testimony and death/silence&absence emphasized by Caruth
in chapter 2 of Unclaimed Experience illustrates this idea, which is explained by Toni Morrison (referring to Beloved) in an interview with Elina Schappell in The Paris Review as follows: “and the absence of a baby- or should I say the presence of an absence of a baby?- forms the undertow in this
