“Living the Dying Inside”: Writing Violence in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy
Defining the writing of violence in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) means conceiving of a poetics of abandonment in a text where the act of reading must supplement the failings of language. “Buried,” violence is the repressed at the heart of trauma; it is part and parcel of memory. The text mimics th...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2017-03-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/5053 |
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| Summary: | Defining the writing of violence in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) means conceiving of a poetics of abandonment in a text where the act of reading must supplement the failings of language. “Buried,” violence is the repressed at the heart of trauma; it is part and parcel of memory. The text mimics the resurgence of traumatic images, their compulsive repetition to signify the splitting of the subject, between gift and debt against the background of enslavement. The scene of violence with the foundling Malaik replays the insufferable of loss and expulsion, a veritable erasure from language. Florens’s dream “dreams back”: the awakening at the heart of her dream is the very site of trauma (Caruth). Symbolically, like the Native American ritual corn-husk dolls, a faceless daughter faces an inaudible mother. Reading becomes the site of the missed encounter with the Real to “tell” the trauma and performs the mother-daughter link. |
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| ISSN: | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |