For some reason I’m feeling extra nitpicky about this article.
First of all, if one were looking for a book that broke the pattern of what we’ve read so far, I’d have to say Beloved would be it. The narrative isn’t particularly fragmented (at least in the sense of point of view) and it doesn’t have any of the aesthetic experimentation of other postmodern works. There’s also a conspicuous lack of disaffected youth, sex, encounterrs with technology, deliberate attempt to shock, and navel-gazing. But then I’ll admit that I’ve never really thought of Morrison as a postmodern writer.
Of course, this goes back to our discussion at the beginning of class about what, exactly, defines postmodernism-aesthetics? or era? Aside from what she has to say about Morrison’s writing, Davis has some interesting arguments to make about postmodernism’s interaction with history. Davis starts out with Jameson, Baudrillard, and Fukuyama’s argument about postmodernism’s disbelief in teleological narratives (but I think if you’re going to be disagreeing with the above, you’d better pack your lunch and plan to stay awhile).
Davis argues that the basis for excluding Morrison from the postmodernist canon is the interaction with history in her work, but that this exclusion isn’t defensible. I would agree that postmodernism has a queasy relationship with history-I think this is perhaps what gives postmodernism it’s “depthlessness”-but at the same time, escaping history is nearly impossible (and the tendency for literature to become “dated,” as we mentioned in connection with The Female Man, is perhaps the basis for postmodernism’s failure to untangle itself from history). So is it possible for a writer to engage with history and still be postmodern? Well, maybe not-after all, Davis herself writes: “postmodern theories need to be modified to accomodate texts like Beloved with an overt agenda of political protest” (Davis 257).
But I’m not sure I agree with her. After all, Morrison calls herself an “antipostmodernist” and it seems disingenuous to argue that she is in fact a postmodernist, especially if doing so would require stretching postmodernist theory (not to say that the argument couldn’t be made). BUT STILL.
Aside from that, Davis makes a few other arguments that kind of bother me. Davis writes: “A rigid demarcation between postmodern texts and African American texts merely perpetuates a false dichotomy of academic theory and social protest, ignoring that they emerged in response to a similar set of lived conditions” (Davis 244). First of all, I think it’s harder to define “African American texts” as a category than merely declaring it texts written by African-American authors. But that aside, earlier Davis claimed to share Barbara Christian’s reservations about “the increasingly popular move to read Morrison’s fiction through the lens of postmodernism, poststructuralism, or “white” academic theory” (Davis 243). I don’t think that looking at Morrison as a postmodernist author “underestimates the crucial importance of Toni Morrison’s black cultural heritage,” to use Davis’ own words, but at the same time, I don’t find a mutual exclusivity between feminist and African American texts and postmodernism. Davis goes on to write: “feminist and African American critics have often dismissed postmodernism’s philosophical questioning of foundationalism and essentialism as being incompatible with their sociopolitical criticism,” but I would argue that Russ’ work fits elegantly into both categories (Davis 244). Rather, I feel that squashing a writer like Morrison into so narrow a box is a greater loss.
So finally-is Beloved a postmodern work or not?