What Else, What Else, What Else?: Character Tension, Textual Multiplicity, and the Development of the Post-Slavery Imaginary in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
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2017
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Thesis
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eng
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Abstract
My thesis examines the productive tensions between the theoretical work of Christina Sharpe in her book In the Wake and Toni Morrison's epic novel Song of Solomon. Both attempt to conceptualize modes of surviving and thriving within a racial paradigm that is built to ontologically exile the identity of blackness—a paradigm that Sharpe calls “the wake”. Sharpe, a student of the larger critical trend of Afro-Pessimism, conceives of “wake work”—that is, reclamation of life within this ontological death—as a Post-Humanist and historically grounded activity, whereas Morrison seems to embrace a Humanistic potential for optimism and ahistoricality. Upon closer inspection, however, Morrison's characters have built-in limitation and self-awareness that prevents any of their narratives from taking on authoritative textual status. The text as a whole is thus opened to the mosaic of their voices, conceiving of an imaginary that is neither Humanist nor Post-Humanist, pessimistic nor optimistic, but multiple. Morrison thus contributes to the heart of Sharpe’s project. By envisioning varied conceptions of post-slavery life in coexistence and mutual critique, Morrison contributes not only an additional means of surviving in the wake, but an entirely different frame for wake work as a whole.