The novel as a metaphorical depiction of the return of the repressed:

1. Lecture Three“Comes back whether we want it or not”: Beloved and the return of the repressed • The novel as a metaphorical depiction of the return of the repressed: “It wasn’t sweet and it sure wasn’t home” “But it’s where we were” said Sethe “All together. Comes back whether we want it or not.” (p. 16) [14] • Freudian psychoanalysis: Action of conscious remembering vs unconscious repetition • Complex function of the character Beloved in the novel • Character of Beloved is crucial to the narrative strategy of Beloved : Link between individual and collective memory

2. Repression • Repression is the burial of traumatic experiences in the unconscious • “The action, process or result of suppressing into the unconscious or keeping out of the conscious mind unacceptable memories or desires” – Sigmund Freud • The novel is a metaphorical depiction of the return of the repressed, through the character of Beloved.

3. Freud “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through (SL) • Repression is the burial of traumatic and painful memory in the unconscious • Remembering is conscious • Repeating is the unconscious acting out of repressed memory • Freud: whatever we do not consciously remember we are doomed to repeat - “acting out”

4. Freud “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through” (SL) Repeating implies conjuring up a piece of real life; and for that reason it cannot always be harmless & unobjectionable. This consideration opens up the whole problem of what is so often called deterioration during treatment – Sigmund Freud

5. The character of Beloved • Invitation to the baby ghost: p. 5 [4] “If only she’d come I could make it clear to her” • Walks “out of the water” – on the day of the carnival p. 59-60 [49-50] Shadows holding hands • pp. 60-67 [50-56] new skin, scratches, scar, brand new shoes • p 67 [56] “Something funny ‘bout that gal,” Paul D said, mostly to himself • p. 115 [98] Breath like new milk, strangling hands • p. 75 [63] “How did she know?” • p. 207 [175] “Nobody knows that song but me and my children”

6. Beloved as repressed memory made flesh  “Foreword”: “Life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead” (p. xiii) p. 42 [35] “It’s gonna hurt now,” said Amy, “Anything coming back to life hurts”. A truth for all times, thought Denver Beloved’s return is “gonna hurt” p. 55 [44-45] Sethe: “I don’t go inside” Paul D. p. 134-138 [114- 117] “She moved him … red heart” pp. 148 [126] “rag doll” Sethe pp. 281-286 [239-243] “sat around like a rag doll” “Unspeakable thoughts unspoken” pp. 237-256 [200-217] sixty million and more p. 323 [274] “disremembered and unaccounted for” : communal remembering and communal forgetting

7. Beloved’s function Repeating implies conjuring up a piece of real life; and for that reason it cannot always be harmless & unobjectionable. This consideration opens up the whole problem of what is so often called deterioration during treatment – Sigmund Freud • “everybody’s ghost” -- Linden Peach (SL) • A catalyst for re-memory • real and unreal • Return of the repressed • Sethe’s “crawling already? baby” • A sex slave who escaped • An ancestor of the middle passage • African traditions & psychoanalytic ideas • renders both Sethe and Paul D powerless

8. What is a ghost? • Susan Spear’s essay in Body Matters: Feminism, Textuality and Corporeality includes this quotation from Jacques Derrida from Spectres of Marx: Ghosts … casualties of history in danger of being forgotten … our duty is to enjoin them, to speak to, with and of them and to mourn them, so as to eventually release ourselves from a history impelled by a cycle of vengeance and retribution • Process of healing in 124: Spiteful  Loud  Quiet

9. Fusion of forms/genres • Historical accounts of slavery • First-person slave narratives __________________________________ • Psycho-analysis: the theoretical understandings of the processes of mourning, repression, repetition, remembering and working through ___________________________________ • African-American orature – folktale, song, the blues, the language of the pulpit, dialect • The Bible