"The Future was Sunset": Trauma, Intention, and Empathy in Toni Morrison's Trilogy

Presenter

Amanda MacDonald

Campus

UMass Dartmouth

Sponsor

Shari Evans, Department of English and Communications, UMass Dartmouth

Schedule

Session 3, 1:30 PM - 2:15 PM [Schedule by Time][Poster Grid for Time/Location]

Location

Poster Board C28, Poster Showcase Room (163), Row 3 (C21-C30) [Poster Location Map]

Abstract

   In Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise, Toni Morrison presents community as both an influence and contribution to psychic healing through the recollection of the fractured Self in the post-traumatic moment. The characters in each of the three novels come together to empathize with one another and create spaces that facilitate healing, growth, and forward movement. Trauma theories such as Sandor Ferenczi's center listening and the empathic response as a healing, interpersonal exercise, a bearing witness to trauma. Such psychoanalytical theories support the community-based, collectivistic examples of psychic healing Morrison imagines. This essay proposes that intention, empathy, and imagination are foundational components to the communal facilitation of the return to the Self necessary after trauma. It explores the concept of bearing witness to trauma in such a manner that remains centered on the survivor – particularly their speaking and believing the truth of their own narrative. Finally, it asserts the possibility of empathetically bearing witness and simultaneously providing space for the survivor to be able to recreate and rewrite their narrative in a comprehensible way. In the Trilogy, this is evidenced in the community created and healing found in the relationships of Sethe and Paul D of 124 Bluestone Road, Violet Trace and Alice Manfred in the apartments on Lenox Avenue, and Consolata and the other women staying at the Convent. The intentional engagement of Morrison's novels and their therapeutic effects offer a model for the psychic healing that can be found within human relationships.

Keywords

American Literature, Empathic Listening, Mental Health, Psychological Trauma and Healing

Research Area

Literature

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