BASIM HARWSH ABBAS

T.C. İSTANBUL YENİ YÜZYIL UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE PROGRAMME POSTMODERN FEMINISM: TONI MORRISON'S BELOVED, ALICE WALKER'S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR MA THESIS BASIM HRWSH ABBAS AL KHAZRAJI 19131306918 İSTANBUL, MAY 2022 T.C. İSTANBUL YENİ YÜZYIL UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE PROGRAMME POSTMODERN FEMINISM: TONI MORRISON'S BELOVED, ALICE WALKER'S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR MA THESIS BASIM HRWSH ABBAS AL KHAZRAJI SUPERVISOR Dr. Öğr. Üyesi OLGAHAN BAKŞİ YALÇIN İSTANBUL, APRIL 2022  T.C. İSTANBUL YENİ YÜZYIL ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ TEZ ONAY BELGESİ İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı, 19131306918 numaralı yüksek lisans öğrencisi Basim Hrwsh Abbas Al Khazraji ın “Postmodern Feminism: Toni Morrison's Beloved, Alice Walker's The Temple Of My Familiar” adlı tez çalışması, Enstitümüz Yönetim Kurulunun ……... tarih ve ……….. sayılı kararıyla oluşturulan jüri tarafından oy birliği / oy çokluğu ile Yüksek Lisans Tezi olarak kabul edilmiştir. Tez Savunma Tarihi: Öğretim Üyesi Adı ve Soyadı İmzası Tez Danışmanı Jüri Üyesi Jüri Üyesi  T.C. İSTANBUL YENİ YÜZYIL UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE PROGRAMME MA PROGRAMME --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ETHICAL STATEMENT In this project, I prepared my manuscript in accordance with the thesis writing rules of the Institute of Social Sciences at Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University and I hereby declare that; I have obtained the data, information and documents provided within the thesis within the framework of academic and ethical rules, I have submitted all information, documents, evaluations and results in accordance with the requirements of scientific ethics and moral rules, I have cited all works that I have used in the project by appropriately referring to my sources, I have not made any changes to the data used, The work I present here is original, and if found otherwise, I declare that I accept all loss of rights that may occur. 00/04/2022 Basim Hrwsh Abbas Al Khazraji ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CONTENTS THESIS APPROVAL PAGE i ETHICAL STATEMENT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ÖZET vi ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE 1. POST-MODERN FEMINISM 7 1.1 Post-Modernism Breaking from Modernism 7 1.2 Continuity of Modernism to Post-Modernism 10 1.3 Continuity and Break of Modernism to Post-Modernism 13 1.4 Postmodernist Critics 16 1.5 Contemporary Feminist Critics 18 CHAPTER TWO 2. TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED: INDISCERNIBLE MEMORIES 26 2.1 Toni Morrison’s Evolution Towards Post-Modernism 27 2.2 Beloved (1987) 37 CHAPTER THREE 3. ALICE WALKER’S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR 57 3.1 Early Work of Alice Walker in the Context of Postmodernism and Feminism 59 3.2 The Temple of My Familiar (1989) 66 CONCLUSION 84 BIBLIOGRAPHY 94  ÖZET POSTMODERN FEMİNİZM: TONI MORRISON'UN BELOVED, ALICE WALKER’S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR Bu çalışma, Toni Morrison'ın Beloved ve Alice Walker'ın The Temple of My Familiar adlı iki romanda postmodernizm ile çağdaş Amerikan feminizminin kesişimini incelemektedir. Morrison ve Walker'ın, birbirine bağlı doğrusal olay örgüsünü terk ederek ve anlatı sesini merkezden uzaklaştırarak Afrikalı-Amerikalı ve Avrupa- Amerikalı edebi gelenekleri yeniden incelediklerini savunuyor. Çalışma, çeşitli "postmodernizm" kavramına yüklenen edebi anlamlar ve incelenen romanlardaki uygulamaları. Tartışma için bir çerçeve çizmek amacıyla postmodernist ve çağdaş feminist eleştirel teoriler arasındaki ilgili temas noktalarını sunar. Ana hatlarıyla belirtilen postmodern feminist çerçeve daha sonra Morrison ve Walker'ın ilk romanlarını incelemek için kullanılır ve Morrison'ın Beloved ve Walker'ın The Temple of My Familiar'ının bir analizinde doruğa ulaşır. Çalışma, Morrison ve Walker'ın biçimsel yöntemler ve kültürel çeşitlilik hakkında postmodern feminist varsayımlarla yaptığı deneylerin, son yirmi yılda hem Avrupa-Amerika hem de Afrika-Amerika edebi geleneklerinin ve kanon oluşumunun revizyonuna ve genişlemesine nasıl yol açtığına dair bir tartışma ile sona ermektedir.  ABSTRACT POSTMODERN FEMINISM: TONI MORRISON'S BELOVED, ALICE WALKER'S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR This study explores the intersection of postmodernism and contemporary American feminism in two novels: Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. Morrison and Walker are argued to reexamine African American and Euro American literary conventions by abandoning the cohesive linear plot and decentralizing the narrative voice. The study analyses the various literary meanings attributed to the term "postmodernism" and their application to the novels studied. It presents important points of contact between postmodern and contemporary feminist critical theories to outline a framework for discussion. The outlined postmodern feminist framework is then used to examine Morrison and Walker's early novels, culminating in an analysis of Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. The study concludes with a discussion of how Morrison and Walker's experiments with postmodern feminist hypotheses on formal methods and cultural diversity led to the revision and expansion of both Euro-American and African- American literary traditions and canon formation over the past two decades. Keywords: Masculine, Racim, Fundamental, Diversity, Narrative, Strategies.    INTRODUCTION This study examines the African American women writers. The integrated tenets of post-modernism feminist aesthetic contextualise Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989). This study emphasizes the strong shared points between feminism and post-modernism because they emerged as the most important historical and cultural streams in the past decades. These doctrines have challenged typical boundaries between popular and high culture (modernist)—with prevailing non-dominant culture. Historically and currently, the male patriarchy has been influencing resource distribution, identities, and distinctions at the societal level. The modern literary narrative, the traditions of post-modernism, and feminism have been questioning male dominance. Although, there has always been a distance between these two doctrines. Still, there has been a tremendous literary discussion on relations between postmodernism and feminism— such as in the contemporary writings of African America women. For example, The Other Side of the Story (2018) by Molly Hite and Feminine Fictions: Revisiting The Post Modern (1989) by Patricia Waugh discussed the similarities and differences between postmodernism and feminism in the work of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. This study discusses the intersection and assumptions of post-modernism and feminism in the context of Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989). The philosophies of both authors address post-modernism and contemporary feminists for cultural diversity. Toni Morrison and Alice Walker focus on the heterogeneous African American community and question Western supremacy, patriarchy, and bourgeois culture. Further, they experiment with the modes of narration that are fragmented, discontinuous, and mixed the narratives. Examples of experimentation with narration are found in the work of post-modernist writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, and John Barth. This study also contends that Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have eliminated the theoretical limitations of post-modernism and feminism. Further, this study also discusses how Morrison and Alice overwhelmed the traditional masculine point of view that remained understood in the post-modernism literature, e.g., the repeated moralisation of women based on gender, race, and class. It is to note that the tradition of practices to use masculinity was solely to control the author’s narratives. However, Morrison and Walker challenged the fundamental decentred self of post-modernism fiction that asserts possible connections among individuals and communities. Moreover, the work of these authors also rejects the universal notion of classical feminism—which only considers gender as a feminine identity. The results of Morrison and Walker define women's subjectivity based on race, class, sexual preferences, and gender. Therefore, Morrison and Walker significantly explore how African American women diversified based on their experiences instead of conservative reinforcement of the hierarchy of white and black. Chapter One chronologically presents the definitions of post-modernism literature in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s. The three primary schools of post-modern thought are distinguished as (1) post-modernism breaking from modernism, (2) post-modernism with continuity of modernism, and (3) post-modernism that break and continue with modernism. The disentanglement of the post-modernism concept allows the demonstration of the complex and variable nature. Chapter One specifies that The Waste Land (1922) by T.S. Eliot and Ulysses (1920) by James Joyce were the first users of post-modernism—either in the defense or the attack on the models of high-modernism. Later, the Mass Society and Post- Modern Fiction (1960) by Irving Howe and What Was Modernism? (1960) Harry Levin criticised the convictions of post-modernist writers as “an uncompromising intellectuality” and “an awareness of chronology” (Levin, 285, p. 292). On the contrary, Leslie Fiedler rejected the term modernism based on “seriousness” and “elitism” but at the same time praised the post-modernists who attempted to close the gap between popular culture and modernist art. However, a gradual turn away from the ideas of Leslie Fiedler started in the 1970s—the primary reason was the expansion of post-modernism to various fields such as music, politics, and literature. Moreover, critics started finding the historical links and continuity between post-modernism and previous literary accounts. For example, Gerald Graff (1979) stated that “post- modernism should not be seen as a break with romantic and modernist assumptions but rather as a logical culmination of the premises of these earlier movements” (. 32). Linda Hutcheon and John Barth, in the 1980s, questioned the post-modernism conceptualisation as merely a continuity of modernism. This era of scholars critically discussed the differences between modernism and post-modernism—the notion of modernism and post-modernism represented as the contradictory both in the case of break or continuity. In A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988), Linda Hutcheon claims that “literary post-modernism paradoxically incorporates and challenges the conventions of both realism and modernism” (p. 53). Therefore, some modernism characteristics continue to influence the post-modernists, such as the representation of formal innovation. However, Hutcheon (1988) post-modernists also undermine several aspects of modernist doctrine, i.e., the authority of the artist or art. Post-modernism is not isolated from the earlier literary movements. This study argues that the conceptions about the subjectivity and formal method that belong to the realist, modernist, feminist, and particularly post-modernists are challenged by Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar. The study investigates how the novels Beloved and The Temple of My Familiar confer the style innovativeness of modernism and post-modernism. Moreover, how these novels address the assumptions of cultural heterogeneity in contemporary feminism and post- modernism. The mentioned novels of Morrison and Walker have eliminated the conceptualisation of the linear narration, the concept of autonomy in modernism, hierarchy, and the feminine identity’s universal notions. Chapter One also discusses the contradictory notions in post-modernism. Linda Hutcheon’s A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988) stated that post-modernism is perceived as it is always aware of “the multiple, the heterogeneous, the different” (p. 66). However, the practices of post-modernism suggest that the predominantly white male phenomenon is still continuous. Post-modernist critics avoid labelling contemporary women writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walkers as post-modernists. This study attempts to derive a framework from discussing Toni Morrison and Alice Walker in the integrated models of post-modernism and feminism. In addition, Chapter One discusses the critics of post-modernism, such as Craig Owens, Linda Hutcheon, and Andreas Huyssen. The central point of the argument revolves around the differences between the needs and experiments of women historically and culturally, representing post-modernist thought. Moreover, contemporary feminist writers Linda J. Nicholson and Nancy Fraser become the focus since they have frequently used the concept of post-modern feminism. The prime focus of Chapter Two is on Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). Chapter Two also investigates the early fiction of Morrison, such as The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), and Tar baby (1981). These novels establish the aesthetics of post-modern feminism in Morrison, leading to the entire blossom in the Beloved (1987). The presence of realism and modernism in the work of Morrison exists, though there is a distinguishing assumption of post-modernism specifying that absolute knowledge of reality is inaccessible. Catherine Rainwater (1991) argues that “in all Morrison’s novels, narrative regressions betoken incomplete and unverifiable knowledge” (p. 109). The examination of Morrison’s Beloved in the context of the assumption of Catherine Rainwater—such as the experiment with post- modernism, fragmented narration, representation of multiple voices, and participation. Beloved portrays various narrators, and fragmentation of storytelling mediates the truth. Moreover, the narrators in the storytelling demand the readers’ participation to establish the connections in the story fragmentations. Thus, it depends on the readers to interpret the uncertain meaning because the narration does not provide any definitive sense. The work of Morrison reflects the African American specific culture that pays close attention to the subjective and diverse experiences of black women. This practice challenges the dominant theory and practice of white dominance in literary discourses. Chapter Two presents a textual analysis of the Beloved. It demonstrates the importance of post-modern feminist characteristics in the novel Beloved by signifying the multiple stories and voices in a diverse language. Such as applying these features in Beloved's complex themes and narrations. On the other hand, critics labelled it a ghost story. At the same time, the various distinctive interpretations may have valid arguments. Though, the critics read Beloved from the traditional perspective of the known plot. Morrison, however, discards the conventional sense of the plot, which makes it difficult to label her novel. Morrison attempted to provide a new perspective using the well-known plot of the slave narrative—it allows contemporary readers access to the genre. The innovation reflects the protocols of post-modern feminism as (1) multiplicative narrative and (2) the exploration and unveiling of experiences of enslaved black women. Chapter Two evaluate the novel Beloved based on its characters. It will present the construction and deconstruction of characters in the context of a plurality of distinct memories. Moreover, it also opens up the characters’ responses toward life in bondage and freedom. Morrison has disrupted the boundaries of past and present, the deceased and alive, and the reality and surrealist. Morrison’s Beloved is distinct in presenting the slave narrative compared to other fiction because it unveils the life of the enslaved mother. She killed her children to save them from slavery and degradation. Chapter Three investigates Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Chapter Three explains the evolution of Walker’s fiction from naturalist into a post- modernist feminist storyteller. Chapter three will briefly discuss the other works by Walker, such as Meridian (1976) and The Color Purple (1982) since these novels incorporate the new formal methods that resonated with the post-modern feminist novel The Temple of My Familiar (1989). The examination of Walker’s work suggests the transformation of a writer from the traditional dichotomy of male and female, white and black—to a replacement of new conceptions such as subjectivity on differences and similarities based on the diversity of race and gender. Chapter Three primarily focuses on The Temple of My Familiar (1989), which explores how Alice Walker experimented with the post-modernist narrative compared to her earlier work. Moreover, Chapter Three demonstrates How Morrison adopted the fragmentation of narration, multiple stories, and narrative instances, displacing the cohesive linear plot. The Temple of My Familiar (1989) reflects the diversity of the characters’ cultures because she used the multiplication of narration and consciousness. This Chapter also investigates how Alice Walker has challenged the prevailing practices of post-modernism by exploring heterogeneous and communal existence in Africa, African America, and South American women. The work of Walker is the voice and action of those women—therefore, it revised the historical misrepresentation or no representation in the literary tradition of modernism and post- modernism. The conclusion of this study discusses how Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have revised and expanded the African American and Euro-American literary traditions. Significantly, the experimentation by Morrison and Walker to replace the novelistic conventions of linear narrative, influential and closure voice that has dominated those literary traditions. Moreover, how Morrison and Walker have challenged the male dominance that controls the representation of women in the literature. For example, Morrison’s Beloved modifies the male-centred slave narrative by allowing an enslaved woman (Sethe) to narrate her story. Similarly, Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar provided a voice and action to the women characters in the novel. Purpose of the Study The purpose of the study is following: To analyse the assumptions of post-modernism and feminism about cultural diversity and formal models in the context of Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989). To analyse how Toni Morrison and Alice Walker tackled the internal contradictions of post-modernism and feminism.  CHAPTER ONE POST-MODERN FEMINISM Post-modernism is a complex monolithic phenomenon. The term first appeared in the writing of a Spanish author Frederico De Onis in 1934—the “post-modernism” was a reaction to the modernist poetic tradition. Moreover, the term post-modernism in Arnold J. Toynbee’s A Study of History (1947)—the work suggests that post- modernism is the new age in Western civilisation. Moreover, Toynbee argued that post-modernism ends the supremacy of the West and the decline of the individualistic approach, capitalism, and religion. Later, post-modernism has been evolving on a tortuous path to the change directions of the fundamental revolution movement in the 1960s. The post-modernist doctrine integrated into various disciplines such as art, architecture, photography, dance, music, film, and literature. Finally, it was adopted in academics and professions in the 1980s—post-modernism is still a plural concept in the current era, and scholars have no consensus on its meaning and application. This chapter discusses the literary definitions of a trajectory. Moreover, how post- modernism is versatile, and what are the similarities and differences. Post-Modernism Breaking from Modernism Generally, the early adopters of post-modernism imply a fundamental distinction from modernism. However, it is difficult to segregate both concepts since modernism also has phases, e.g., early, high and late modernism. Moreover, the definitional distinction between modernism and post-modernism is also a problem because the nature of modernism is complex. According to Malcolm Bradbury (1983), there are several modernisms and post-modernisms. Thus, “the study of modernism can only be a study of modernism” (p. 327). The argument of Bradbury seems correct because of the diversity of literature such as A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway, The Sound and The Fury (1929) by William Faulkner, and Ulysses (1920) by James Joyce are representations of modernism. Though, the critics and the admirers of post-modernism simultaneously defend and attack the dogmas of “high modernism.” For instance, the practice of its notion of independence of art and confrontational status in popular culture. The critics such as Harry Levin and Leslie Fiedler consider that post- modernism is irreversible to modernism. For example, Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction (1959) by Irving Howe and What Was Modernism (1960) by Harry Levin attacked post-modernism to level the tradition of modernism. The arguments are based on the logic that post-modernist writers lack in the aesthetics of modernist writers. Howe (1959) suggested that modernism holds the capitalist sense and the industrialised society—it is also significantly related to the community and the evolving moral values (p. 424). Further, Howe (1959) noted that the work of post- modernist writers is only a reflection of the lost assumptions in the context of moral values and society: In which the population grows passive, indifferent, and atomised; in which traditional loyalties, ties, and associations become lax or dissolve entirely; in which coherent publics based on definite interests and opinions gradually fall apart; and in which man becomes a consumer, himself mass-produced like the products, diversions, and values that he absorbs (p. 425) The lack of moral authority and traditional systems are absent from contemporary society. Therefore, post-modernism characterises and becomes a victim of imaginative transformation and recreation of reality. Similarly, Harry Levin’s (1960) sympathies are with the modernist movement as it “comprises the most remarkable constellations of genius in the history of the west” (p. 284). Further, Levin (1960) notes that “the post-modernists lack only a strong sense of moral and social values, but other determining characteristics of the modern artist or writer, such as an awareness of chronology, the cult of intransigent artistry and uncompromising intellectuality” (p. 291). Therefore, Levin (1960) and Howe (1959) observe the absence of fundamental characteristics in post-modernist writings makes them nonserious, anti-intellectual, and unartistic. It is, however, essential to note that criticism of Howe and Levin and the definitional differences between modernism and post-modernism are arbitrary. For example, the authors' references such as Bellow, Mailer, and Malamud as post- modernist writers for the analysis of modernism and post-modernism were a mistake since post-modernists do not accept them as post-modernists. These writers have emphasised and utilised the modernist theme's fundamental characteristics, i.e., victimisation and alienation. On the other hand, the works of Alice Walker and John Barth are more fragmentary and reflective. Levin’s criticism and opposition to modernism and post-modernism make these concepts oversimplified. For example, the interpretation of the “ism” in modernism limited features such as “artiness, seriousness, and intellectuality.” However, these characteristics may define modernism, but the absence of the significant aspects, i.e., the promise of formal innovation and traditional realist representation. Therefore, the common features of modernism and post-modernism establish a continuous relationship among these. The reinforcement of the simplified dichotomy of modernism and post- modernism in the observations of post-modernists is equally essential for the critics of modernism. Leslie Fiedler (1982) noted that “postmodernist literature, especially as exemplified by the work of William Burroughs, was one manifestation of the coming of the new mutants” (p. 58). As per Fiedler, the social movements of the 1960s brought a new generation of writers that utilised the new subjects for their fiction. For example, the social movements of the 1960s include the civil rights movements, black artistic, and hippie movements “these movements provided an opportunity to writers to approach fiction with subjects such as homosexuality, pornography, drugs, and civil rights (Fiedler, p. 158). These events and new issues in the fiction produced new writers that disentangled the literary tradition of reasoning and white male bourgeois values. Later in 1970, Leslie Fiedler declared that modernism was dead and praised the post-modernist writers who had “crossed the border and closed the gap.” Moreover, post-modernists are now devoted to new forms of fiction such as sci-fiction, pornography, and others. Fiedler, in Cross the Border—Close that Gap (1972), writes: The kind of literature which had arrogated to itself the name modern (with the presumption that it represented the ultimate advance insensibility and form, that beyond it newness was not possible) and whose moment of triumph lasted from a point just before the First World War until one just after the Second World War, is dead, i.e., belongs to history, not actuality (p. 329) Fiedler’s firm stance on the death of modernism also exemplifies that literature such as the work of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound is not acceptable in post-modernism— because the literature is “arty” and “serious.” The primary critique of modernismis that it is only committed to the elite audience and is authoritative. Fiedler (1972) stated that “the truly new novel must be anti-art and anti-serious” (p. 334). Therefore, the post-modernists have rejected the “serious” and “elite” characteristics of modernist literature while praising the practices of closing the gap between “high modernist art” and “popular culture.” Like Levin and Howe (the proponents of modernism), Fiedler (post- modernism protagonist) makes a similar mistake in defining modernism and post- modernism. For example, Fiedler simplified the term modernism based on the work of a few modernist writers. Moreover, the work is only reduced to characteristics of “artiness, seriousness, and elitism.” Therefore, the classifications of modernism and post-modernism are rough—the most significant aspect is the exemplification of a few writers from these two doctrines. However, several influential writers set the trend to avoid rigid lines of modernism and post-modernism. For example, Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce, Absalom! Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner, Tar Baby (1981) by Toni Morrison, and The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker represent both movements. The mentioned work represents the characteristics of modernism and post-modernism, such as fragmented narration and multiplicity of consciousness. These novels illustrate the continuity of modernism into post-modernism instead of ruptures among them. The second school of thought promotes the continuity of these movements and emphasises mutual relationships. Post-modernist literature continuously used male writings even after the social and counterculture movements in the 1960s. For instance, the social movements represented both males and females. Fiedler (1965) pointed out that to become post- modernists, “these children of the future seem to feel, they must not only become more black than white but more female than male” (p. 390). The argument suggests that emergent minority groups motivate post-modernists to work to close the gap between high modernist (elite), cultural hierarchy, and African American culture. The concept of post- the previous conceptualisations. It suggests no break between modernism and post-modernism; it is the continuity of the last literary movements. Andreas Huyssen (1986) observed, “By the mid-1970s, the sense of a futurist revolt was gone. The iconoclastic gestures of the pop, rock, and sex painters seemed exhausted since their increasingly commercialised circulation had deprived them of their avant-gardist status” (p. 196). Continuity of Modernism to Post-Modernism During the mid-1970s, Ihab Hassan emerged as one of the influential proponents of post-modernist literature. Hassan has extensively written about post- modernism in four books and several articles. However, Hassan’s view of post- modernism has plurality and contradiction. Hassan’s Dismemberment of Orpheus (1971) primarily pose antiformal, anarchic, decretive, and antinomian impulse. Interestingly, Hassan defines post-modernism as a radical break from modernism—it is pretty similar to the conceptualisation of Fiedler. However, Hassan's subsequent work indicates a continuity of modernism to post-modernism. For example, Hassan (1975), in POSTmodernISM: A Paracritical Bibliography writes that “modernism does no suddenly cease so that post-modernism may begin: they now coexist” (p. 47). He argued that the evolution of artistic practices in post-modernism is “the change in modernism, by which modernist traits ranging from Urbanism and Technologism to Antinomianism and Experimentalism could be found in different versions of post-modernism” (p. 49). However, it is not clear from Hassan’s work whether he considers post-modernism an evolution of modernism or it is entirely a new phenomenon. The later article of Hassan, The Question of Postmodernism (1980), has resolved the ambiguity of modernism and post-modernism—as he stated that modernism has transformed into post-modernism. According to Hassan's (1980) conception, “post-modernism calls upon a double view when related to previous movements, particularly with modernism: sameness and difference, unity and rupture, filiation and revolt” (p. 121). However, the same article also represents an altogether different paradigm based on dichotomies instead of the transformation between modernism and post-modernism. The article illustrated the large columns that specify the oppositions. The column on modernism presents the terms “Form (Conjunctive, Closed), Purpose, Art Object/Finished Work, Genre/Boundary, Root/Depth, and Lisible (Readerly),” On the other hand, the post-modernism column presents counterterms “Antiform (Disjunctive, Open), Play, Process/Performance/Happening, Text/Intertext, Rhizome/ Surface, and Scriptable (Writerly)” (Hassan, 1980, p. 125). The given columns of dichotomies pose considerable difficulties against the actual text. Fielder’s conceptualisation of modernism and post-modernism and the post-modernist writers, for example, Ulysses (1918) by James Joyce, The Waste Land (1922) by T. S. Eliot, and The Sound and The Furry (1929) by William Faulkner are bounded by genre. On the contrary, Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989) are “lisible or familiarly intelligible to the ordinary public” (Press, 1996, p. 6). Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989) have characteristics opposing Hassan’s conceptualisation of two columns—in terms of depth and openness. Like previous critics Irving Howe and Leslie Fiedler, Hassan also opposed post-modernism to modernism. The evolution of the events and the time significantly impact the understanding and conceptualisation of concepts. The literature published after the social and cultural movements started incorporating the new subject in fiction. The trend is evident since, after the 1970s, scholars praised the modernism movement that contributed to the post- modernism movement. It is, however, a fact that everything has its history and evolution—for instance, post-modernism is not possible with modernism—and modernism can fall apart from post-modernism. Gerald Graff (1979) has pointed out the privileges of the modernist movement and suggests that post-modernism is a continuity of previous literary movements, especially modernism. Graff further stated that: The postmodern temper has carried the scepticism and anti-realism of modern literary culture to an extreme beyond which would be difficult to go. The loss of significant external reality, its displacement by myth-making, the domestication and normalisation of alienation—these conditions constitute a common point of departure for the writing of our period (p. 62). Graff sees the postmodern as a logical culmination of the romantic and modernist assumptions about the separation of the artist from external reality. It opposes the celebratory definition of post-modernism by Leslie Fiedler as a radical break from modernism. For Graff, modernists alienated themselves from external reality and turned to artistic expression as an attempt to order the chaos of modern history. On the contrary, postmodernists find no more consolation in art and literature than in any other discredited cultural institution. Postmodernist literature builds on the contradictions and assumptions Charles Newman outlined in The Post-Modern Aura (1985). According to Newman, postmodernist literature shares the modernists' commitment to innovation and continues the modernist critique of traditional mimesis. Newman notes that the formal innovation found so frequently in postmodern texts had been established as the hallmark of modernism, where "fragmentation of language and the destruction of the genre are modernism's official cliches" (p. 113). Yet, if postmodernist writers merely "carry the skepticism and anti-realism of the modern literary culture to an extreme" (Graff, 1985, p. 132) or use the techniques of modernist writing (Newman), they would simply be a new generation of modernists. Postmodern writers paradoxically exploit and challenge assumptions about formal methods and themes in earlier literary movements such as modernism and realism. At the same time, most post-modernist critics have primarily dismissed the defining dogmas of modernism, particularly the belief that art/artists can rearrange reality. The attack on realism's narrative tools and themes is sometimes more visible. For example, postmodern writers explicitly replace most realist texts' narrative linearity and coherence with narrative fragmentation and multiple endings. At the same time, there is no doubt that post-modernists borrowed formal textual techniques such as fragmentation and self-reflexivity from modernists. However, they used them for an entirely different purpose. Thus, postmodernists use fragmentation as a phenomenological representation, not a fashionable aesthetic. In other words, they experiment of My Acquaintance are self-reflective. Still, they present a specific historical and cultural context, thereby rejecting modernism's attempt to separate art from life. Therefore, post-modernism is related to continuity and discontinuity with earlier literary movements. In this sense, I broadly agree with critics of the third postmodern school of thought, who see post-modernism as the rupture and continuation of its counterpart, modernism. Continuity and Break of Modernism to Post-Modernism Against the reductionist view of post-modernism as a radical break with modernity (such as Howe, Levin, Fiedler) and a purely continuous connection between the two traditions (e.g., Hassan, Graff, Newman). Moreover, Linda Hutcheon, Andreas Huyssen, and John Barth (the critics of the 1980s) contrasted modernity and postmodernity in discontinuity and continuity. They argued that post-modernism embraces modernist assumptions (particularly about narrative innovations) and undermines relevant modernist dogmas. Critics of the third postmodern school agree that post-modernism operates in a field of tension between tradition and innovation, high culture, and popular culture. Neither of the opposing terms holds a more privileged position than the other. In The Poetics of Postmodernism (1988), Linda Hutcheon argues that post- modernism in fiction paradoxically embraces and challenges the traditions of both realism and modernism. Post-modernism, for Hutcheon, is both historical and metaphysical, contextual and self-reflective. He argues that postmodernists share important modernist characteristics such as a desire for formal innovation and an objection to realistic representation. According to Hutcheon, however, postmodernists simultaneously destroy both the modernist belief in artistic authority and the separation of art/artist from the real world. According to Hutcheon, postmodernists combine aesthetics and history, fiction, and non-fiction. In a chapter entitled They than establishing new social hierarchies. It is certainly true of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker's fiction. As we will explore in detail in Chapters 2 and 3 of this work, in the Beloved and The Temple of My Familiar, respectively, Morrison and Walker emphasise the heterogeneity of African-American (female) culture rather than traditional antagonisms—between whites and blacks, men and women--found in dominant literary discourses. To a large extent, Huyssen agrees with Hutcheon on the importance of antiquity for post-modernism. As Huyssen points out, the infiltration of so-called minority cultures into the public consciousness sheds new light on postmodern culture. According to Huyssen, there is no complete break or continuity between modernism and post-modernism. Rather, Huyssen writes, “modernity, avant-garde and mass culture have entered a new set of interrelationships and discursive configurations that we call ‘postmodern’ and which differs markedly from the paradigm of ‘high modernity” (p. 10). It follows from Huyssen's definition that recent demands from minority groups (blacks, feminists, lesbians, ethnics, etc.) have forced us to consider cultures other than Western (white) culture. In particular, Huyssen claims the vital role of women, especially feminists, in the emergence of postmodern culture. Huyssen's theoretical explanations also illuminate the critical reading of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Postmodernist writer John Barth defines post-modernism in The Literature of Replenishment (1967) as a break and continuity with its counterpart, modernism. Barth (1967) writes: The proper program for post-modernism is neither a mere extension of the modernist program, nor a mere intensification of certain aspects of modernism, nor a wholesale subversion or repudiation of either modernism nor what I'm calling pre modernism— 'traditional’ bourgeois realism (p. 69). Postmodernist fiction does not repudiate the pre modernism conventions of linearity, rationality, transparent language, and middle-class moral values. It neither imitates the modernist contraries of these things, disjunction, irrationalism, self- reflexiveness, and moral or artistic craftsmanship. Ultimately, Barth argues that the ideal postmodern novel transcends the conflict between directness and artificiality, objective reality, fantasy, political passion, and non-political art. John Barth's definition of literary post-modernism fits well with the reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. We will see how these novels bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction, aesthetic, political interaction, history, and metafiction. Morrison and Walker explore African American people's historical and cultural specificity, simultaneously revealing a great concern for narrative innovation. And yet, Barth seems inclined to disregard the works of women in general when he formulates his postmodernist canon in the same essay. Most critics engaged in debates about modernism and post-modernism are male. They mostly refer to white male writers when they think of canonised postmodernists. The attempt of critics like Andreas Huyssen and Linda Hutcheon to consider the art, literature and criticism of the so-called minority groups in the discussions of post-modernism would seem to offer women the possibility of inclusion. However, female writers and feminist issues are excluded from mainstream postmodern theoretical and literary statements. Of course, there are strong points of contact between post-modernism, feminism, and contemporary female creativity. Historically, women's literature and criticism have been shaped by the postmodern culture of the 1970s and 1980s since the rise of post-modernism coincided with the rise of the women's liberation movement. For instance, feminism's radical challenge to patriarchal hierarchies (which have neglected the female body and mind) has much in common with postmodern critiques of the supremacy of Western values and ideals. In literary terms, both postmodernist and feminist movements have embraced other genres and forms of cultural expression (e.g., the Western, science fiction, and the sentimental novel), rejecting the dichotomy between a high and low culture of modernism established in the American academy during the Cold War. Most importantly, contemporary writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have contributed to the rise of the postmodern feminist aesthetic with their interest in formal innovation and cultural diversity. The following section describes the main points of contact between postmodern and feminist critical theories to outline the theoretical framework for analysing Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. To frame familiar. I will discuss the contributions of various postmodern and contemporary feminist critics to my definition of this structure. This definition will allow me to argue that the novels of Morrison and Walker integrate assumptions of both post-modernism and feminism while eliminating the respective limitations of the two traditions, namely post-modernism's androcentrism and classic feminism's monolithic concept of a woman other than a man. Postmodernist Critics Craig Owens’s The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism (1983) introduce the gender issue into the criticism of post-modernism. Owens writes that: The absence of discussions of sexual difference in writings about post-modernism and the fact that few women have engaged in the modernism/post-modernism debate suggest that post-modernism may be another masculine invention engineered to exclude women (p. 61). Owens argues that modernist and postmodernist theories tend to be masculine because they often overwhelm the female voice. In other words, critics generally dismiss the participation of women in discussions of the postmodern or postmodern literary canon. However, Owens argues that post-modernism and feminism do indeed have common interests. In particular, Owens explores the intersection of the postmodern critique of representation and the feminist critique of patriarchy. Postmodernists question Western systems of representation that largely adopt a unified worldview, a central, unified, masculine view of the subject. Ultimately, these systems favour the ideals of Western white (male) culture over those of other cultures, such as African Americans. Instead, Owens rightly points out that the coexistence of alternative perspectives and cultures marks the beginning of a new era of post-modernism. Significantly, Owens notes, that women, feminists or not, have revealed a similar awareness of their historical and cultural differences through the critique of patriarchy. They questioned the hierarchical representation of (white) men exposed by the patriarchal system. It is one of the most apparent transitions between modern feminism and post-modernism: "Women's insistence on difference and incommensurability can be compatible and exemplary of postmodern thought" (Owens, 1983, p, 61). Feminist concerns about the diversity of women's needs and experiences coincide with postmodern (primarily theoretical) concerns cultural forms other than Western male culture. Linda J. Nicholson, Patricia Waugh, Deborah E. McDowell, and May Gwendolyn Henderson, among other contemporary feminists, have rejected holistic notions of female identity and acknowledged women's diversity—by confusing gender with different social categories such as race, class, and sexual preferences. They criticised the implicit essentialism of classic feminist theories, which generally summarised the experiences of Western, white, and middle-class women while ignoring the experiences of other social groups like black women. Andreas Huyssen (1986) agrees with Craig Owens when he states that " women's art, literature, and criticism are an important part of the postmodern culture of the 1970s and 1980s and indeed a measure of the vitality and energy of that culture" (p. 199). Contemporary feminists have played a crucial role in deconstructing hierarchical concepts like gender, race, class, and sexuality. They have ultimately opposed the (modernist) notion that has associated mass culture with women and authentic culture with men. As Huyssen puts it in After the Great Divide: Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other (1986): It is indeed striking to observe how the political, psychological, and aesthetic discourse around the turn of the century consistently and obsessively genders mass culture and the masses as feminine, while high culture, whether traditional or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities (p. 47) According to Huyssen, modernist thinkers and writers (e.g., Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and Eliot) have considered mass culture's gendering as feminine and inferior while tying high, authentic culture to their vision of the artist philosopher-hero in their writings. In other words, they often focused on finding a male hero in which women played a minor role. However, Huyssen argues that postmodernists and (particularly) contemporary feminists reject theorising of mass culture as “feminine” and “inferior”. He stated: The traditional dichotomy, in which mass culture appears as monolithic, engulfing, totalitarian, and on the side of regression and the feminine and modernism appear as progressive, dynamic, and indicative of male superiority in culture, has been challenged empirically and theoretically in a variety of ways in the past twenty years or so (p. 58). For Huyssen, the emergence of a broader public's view of distinct minority cultures and a wide variety of women's (feminist) work in literature and the arts has been rarely discussed as postmodern. And yet, he notes, these phenomena have affected postmodern culture and literature. However, he notes that these phenomena influenced postmodern culture and literature. For example, how Toni Morrison and Alice Walker explore the diversity of African Americans while emphasising and depicting contemporary American culture and literature in the novels Beloved (1987) and The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Even more drastically than the classic postmodernists, these novelists questioned the elitist claims of (high) modernity, which did not adequately recognise the presence of African-American women in art and literature. Along with Craig Owens and Andreas Huyssen, Linda Hutcheon also reflected on the contact points between feminism and post-modernism. In A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988), Hutcheon writes, " Feminist theory [she means postmodern feminist theory] offers perhaps the clearest example of the importance of the diversity of history and culture of women: their differences of race, ethnic group, class, and sexual preference " (p. 67). According to Hutcheon (1988), women's awareness of their cultural diversity has corresponding implications for the nature of post-modernism, whose rhetoric is "multiple, heterogeneous, and diverse" (p. 66). Further, Hutcheon claims that postmodern discourses by women (feminists or not) reject traditional conceptions of binarity and hierarchy in favour of a more plural concept of difference and ex-centricity. More relevant to the subject of this study, Linda Hutcheon argues that African- American women writers, in particular, have brought an accurate understanding of their personal and historical origins and an accurate understanding of society and social context to broader postmodern culture. Hutcheon (1988) notes that "writers like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison have offered alternatives to the alienated other [black women] collective history and a newly problematised sense of female community" (p. 63). Thus, the fictions of Walker and Morrison are textual models for exploring the diverse and collective interests of black people. Though Linda Hutcheon considers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker's assertions of cultural diversity valuable to post-modernism and contemporary feminism, she avoids intersecting critical models in these writers. Hutcheon (1986) argues that " to co-opt the feminist project into the unresolved and contradictory postmodern one would be to simplify and undo the important political agenda of feminism" (p. 12). The postmodernists lack a strong feminist political orientation, although they owe not only feminists but also black, Asian, and other minority perspectives. I agree with Linda Hutcheon that there are many differences between post- modernism and feminism. I plead here for the feasibility of a postmodern feminist concept by discussing Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. As we shall see, this scheme highlights the complementary features of post-modernism and contemporary feminism that characterise the writings of Morrison and Walker. For example, Beloved and The Temple of My Familiar are similar to the discontinuous strategies of postmodern narratives. At the same time, these novels reflect Morrison’s and Walker's preoccupation with (black) women to uncover the widely shared narratives of contemporary feminists excluded from mainstream literary practices, including post-modernism. Contemporary Feminist Critics My delineation of a postmodern feminist framework relies not only on the assumptions of critics of post-modernism but also on those of contemporary feminists. The feminist writers Linda J. Nicholson and Nancy Fraser directly provided the basis of my analytical model. Unlike Linda Hutcheon, Nicholson and Fraser's arguments for the intersection of the complementary forces of postmodern and contemporary feminist theories. Though African-American scholars like Deborah E. McDowell and May Gwendolyn Henderson are indirectly involved in the debate about post- modernism and feminism, they have also contributed to postmodern feminist critique. These scholars intertwined gender with dimensions of race and class, which was missing in many classic postmodernist and feminist texts. Before I explain the postmodern feminist framework for my extensive reading of the Beloved and The Temple of the My Familiar, I will consider the different positions of these contemporary feminists. In Feminism/Postmodernism (1990), Linda J. Nicholson argues that there are many points of convergence between feminist practices and postmodern theory. Nicholson (1990) writes that "post-modernism is not only a natural ally but also provides a basis for avoiding the tendency to construct a theory that generalises from the experiences of Western, white, middle-class women" (p. 5). According to Nicholson, this alliance results from postmodernists and feminists contending against Western thoughts' universal and subjugated tendencies. He argues that both equally challenge modern ideologies that assert Western and male (white) supremacy. Moreover, both reject binary opposites that favour the first half: self/other, mind/body, high culture/popular culture, etc. critique of the diversity of women's needs and experiences. African American scholars such as Barbara Smith, Deborah E. McDowell, and May Gwendoline Henderson defied the privileged practices of feminist criticism. In various ways, classic feminist notions of a monolithic female identity and gender have been translated into gender as race, class, etc. In their divergent ways, they have attempted to replace classic feminism's monolithic concepts of woman and feminine gender identity with plural and complexly constructed conceptions of social identity, treating gender as one relevant category among race, class, and so forth. Literary feminists Helen Carr and Carolyn Brown agree with Linda J. Nicholson and Nancy Fraser on the viability of postmodern feminism. In From My Guy to Sci-Fi: Genre and Women's Writing in the Postmodern World (1989), Carr and Brown argue that postmodern assumptions about non-universalist discourses are crucial to contemporary feminist critiques of holistic notions of female and feminine gender identity. In the introduction. Carr’s (1989) introductory essay points and Brown's of voices in their fiction. However, Waugh (1989) argues, that they are mainly ambivalent about post-modernism, particularly about the notion of subjectivity. She writes: It is their mediation of a subject constructed historically through relations with other subjects, rather than a subject positioned through discourse in terms of 'alienation' and 'jouissance', that distinguishes the concerns of many recent women writers from those of the dominant modernist or postmodernist aesthetic (p. 20). According to Waugh (1989), modern women writers have reconstructed a new notion of subjectivity that emphasises the possibility of relationships between themselves and other individuals (the collectives). In doing so, they replaced both the sense of isolation/alienation from self-expressed by classical modernists (e.g., Eliot, Pound, and Faulkner) and the radical fragmentation of the subject (the “death” of the subject itself) articulated by the mainstream postmodernists (e.g., Barthes, Pynchon, Barthelme, and Sukenik). Molly Hite also sees problems at the intersection of post-modernism and feminism in contemporary women's fiction. In Hite’s The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives (1989), she argues that 20th-century women writers, notably Jean Rees, Doris Lessing, Alice Walker, and Margaret Atwood, experimented with postmodern narrative strategies and voiced critiques of a cultural and literary tradition that has been characterised as masculine. Hite (1989) States: Women's experimental fictions seem to share the decentering and disseminating strategies of postmodernist narratives. Still, they also seem to arrive at these strategies by an entirely different route, which involves emphasising conventionally marginal characters and themes, re-centring the value structure of the narrative (p. 2). According to Hite, more recent women writers use postmodern writing techniques as fragmentary and discontinuous storytelling tools. However, she notes that allowing women to tell their own stories challenges postmodern androcentrism (which she sees as more strictly masculine than modernists). In this way, these women writers articulate the "other side," or female side, of the mainstream history of Western culture. For example, Molly Hite argues that Alice Walker undermines the hierarchical relationship between male (centre) and female (margin) that structures modernism and post-modernism's 'core' genres. Hite (1989) writes that the central characters of Walker's novel, Seeley and Shug, "are intended to suggest the nucleus of a new and self-sustaining society: the triply marginalised become centre and source" (p. 117). In other words, they are not black and also older and lesbian, thereby destabilising traditional hierarchies that silence them in real life and fiction. Further, according to Hite, the men in Walker's novel, Albert and his son Harpo, become integrated into the female-defined value community of Celie, Shug and Sofia when playing the female roles of seamstress and housekeeper. Patricia Waugh and Molly Hite's discussions of postmodern narrative strategies in the writings of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker shed light on my analysis of the narrative structures of Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. Morrison and Walker tested postmodern narratives' fragmented and discontinuous strategies in their writings. However, I disagree with Waugh and Hite on several points, particularly about these critics' scepticism about the intersection of post-modernism and feminism. But I agree with Waugh that Morrison and Walker's concept of human subjectivity is based on the individual and the collaborative relationship that differs from the radically decentralised postmodern understanding of the individual. I argue that such a conception becomes a distinctive feature of these writers' postmodern feminist aesthetics. Morrison and Walker critically support postmodern formal methods to emphasise diversity and community among (black) women in chapters two and three. In recent decades, African-American scholars, feminists or not, have reinforced contemporary (white) feminist concerns about diversity while insisting on black women's cultural sensitivities. Scholars such as Barbara Smith, Deborah E. McDowell, and Valerie Smith, among others, attracted a wider audience with their objections to feminist (essentialist) theories that do not consider the needs and experiences of African-American women. These scholars have uncovered the implicit references to white Anglo-American women in classic feminist texts and the near- silence of black women in male-oriented texts. In contrast, African-American scholars have challenged the race category with the categories of gender and class to define female identity. In doing so, they also contributed to the emergence of a postmodern feminist aesthetic. Barbara Smith was one of the first black women to explore the controversial status of African-American women writers (and, by extension, black women's racial and identity issues) in mainstream literature. In her writings in the 1970s, Smith spoke out against the "disenfranchisement" of black women writers from the work of black scholars from the African-American literary tradition and the critical writings of white scholars about the women's tradition. Since then, the status of black women writers and critics in science has changed in the academy; many literary anthologies and critical studies have begun to give their work considerable attention. Nevertheless, such attention has been problematic since most critics generally approach the fictions of black writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, expecting conventional, realistic forms and themes. Barbara Smith’s Towards a Black Feminist Criticism (1980) offers some principles for a genuine black feminist critical approach. Smith (1980) writes: A black feminist approach to literature that embodies the realisation that the politics of sex and the politics of race and class are crucially interlocking factors in the works of black women writers is an absolute necessity (p. 170). According to Smith, black feminist critics should first examine how sexual and racial politics are integral parts of African American women's writings. Second, black women writers should consider themselves members of an identifiable African American tradition to emphasise certain characteristics (such as black women's activities root working, herbalism, magic, farming, and blues singing). Third, Smith points out that black feminist critics should strive to understand the interpretation of the writings of black women writers rather than attempting to infuse white/male thinking ideas or methods into African-American literature. Barbara Smith's assumptions that (black people) must question gender, race, and class when considering female identity remain influential among contemporary feminists, African American or not. As mentioned, Linda J. Nicholson did the same in Postmodernism/Feminism. According to Nicholson, postmodern feminists should replace universal concepts of gender and femininity with a complex concept of social identity that divides gender into race, class, sexual orientation, etc. In other words, postmodern feminist theories must appeal to the subject's position. However, Smith's argument for separating black feminist criticism from dominant white male theories is highly problematic because these theories can highlight relevant features in black feminist texts. In this context, I agree with the comment of the critic Annette Kolodny (1975) observes: A too self-consciously 'feminist' literary criticism would be shortsighted if it summarily rejected all the inherited tools of critical analysis simply because they had been based, for the most part, on the examination of men's texts and men's language (p. 89). Kolodny's argument for a much broader use of theoretical tools is beneficial for this study. I contend that Toni Morrison in Beloved and Alice Walker in The Temple of My Familiar use the same formal methods—for example, narrative fragmentation and duplication of stories and voices with mainstream postmodern writers. However, Morrison and Walker redefine and extend postmodern constructs when emphasising black women’s side of the story. In other words, they transform these methods in their rhetorical terms, which recreate a space for female narratives Deborah E. McDowell's New Directions in Black Feminist Criticism (1980) is a significant revision of an article by Barbara Smith. McDowell (1980) shares Annette Kolodna's position when she cautions against the theoretical absolutism inherent in Smith. However, she recognises the relevance of Smith's approach as a pioneering work of black feminist scholarship. McDowell accuses him of being reductionist and separatist. McDowell’s Contextual approaches to black women's literature provide the basis for a much more thorough analysis of the text. Therefore, black feminists should be aware of any theory that white men and women have developed: "I look forward to the day when black feminist criticism expands to other forms of inquiry" (p. 155). Fortunately, prominent black writers, such as May Gwendolyn Henderson, Barbara Christian, Hortense J. Spillers, and Valerie Smith, made significant advances in their theoretical practice. These scholars are no longer limited to the themes, imagery, and narrative strategies common to African Americans. Instead, they use theoretical tools from different literary traditions and the African American tradition. Here I focus primarily on the contribution of May Gwendolyn Henderson, who has provided new (and very compelling) perspectives on the critique of African-American literature. Assumptions about black women have illuminated my analysis of postmodern feminist characteristics in Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. Henderson (2014) argues that in the dominant discursive order (Bakhtin’s dialogism), black women speak a language based on racial and gender discrimination. However, she notes that they simultaneously talk about the language of race and gender identity and difference in a subdominant discursive order (Gadamer's dialectic). To illustrate her point, Mae Gwendoline Henderson analyses the classic black woman text Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). For Henderson, Zora Neil Hurston traces a woman's evolution from silence to voice. Yet, she adds, this movement did not arise on behalf of black women or without the intervention of others who spoke out about them. According to Henderson, Hurston best illustrates how the dialogue/dialectics of black and female subjectivity structure black women's discourse in the context of Janie's trial scene. Janey speaks before a judge, a jury of "twelve white men" and an audience of "eight or ten white women" and "every black male for miles" (Henderson, 2014, p. 274). Henderson writes: Janie not only speaks in a discourse of gender and racial difference to the white male judge and jurors but also in a discourse of gender difference (and racial identity) to the black male spectators and discourse of racial difference (and gender identity) to the white women spectators (p. 21). As a black woman, Janie speaks to a diverse audience about her experiences in a racist and sexist society. To participate in hegemonic and non-hegemonic discourses, you need to speak multiple languages that reveal diversity and commonalities. However, Hurston's text does not convey feminine (Janey) speech, as in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. More importantly, Mae Gwendolyn Henderson argues that the goal of black women writers is to put them at the centre of their narratives without creating new hierarchies. The black feminist writers treat black women as central to their narratives. According to Henderson (2014), these writers aim not to favour once marginalised characters over authoritarian characters in dominant discourses but “to remain on the borders of discourse, speaking from the vantage” (p. 36). Further, Henderson (2014) argues that authors like Hurston, Morrison, and Williams (I include Alice Walker among them) do not favour any particular voice or phrase in their writing. Rather, they are interested in exploring the multiple voices and diversity of discourses that are hallmarks of the intersection of post-modernism and feminism. So far, I have mainly focused on the discussions of various critics about the relationship between post-modernism, feminism, and contemporary women's writings. Based on these discussions, I would like to provide a postmodern feminist framework for my review of Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker. This framework reconciles the formal methods and assumptions about human subjectivity and diversity from critical postmodern and contemporary feminist models. This structure also points to the limitations of both models, which Morrison and Walker overcome in their novels. For example, common postmodernist strategies in Beloved and The Temple of the Familiar can be distinguished, particularly the fragmentation and reproduction of narrative examples and the need for participatory reading. I examine how Toni Morrison and Alice Walker transform the traditional plot (main plot, centre of consciousness and ending) from realistic and modernist fiction with fragmentary and discontinuous stories, multiple characters, and narrative examples of postmodern writing. These authors also reject the authoritative voice of traditional novel models, which require reader participation. In other words, I examine how Morrison and Walker constantly challenge readers to put the pieces together and fill in the gaps in the characters' various narratives. I also examine how Morrison and Walker in Beloved and The Temple My Familiar invert the long-standing antagonism between black and white, dominant and secondary while addressing the heterogeneity of female culture. In addition, I will explore how Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar push the boundaries of postmodern and feminist perspectives that marginalise black women. We will see how these novels challenge the phallogocentric structures of mainstream post-modernism and the monolithic notions of female identity in classical feminism by allowing black female characters to be the subject of their representations. I will also show that Morrison and Walker reject the human subject's radical postmodern fragmentation (death). Rather, these authors empower black women not only to maintain their subjectivity but also to relate their needs and experiences to those of others. The possibility of such a relationship between the individual and the collective is hardly mentioned in classical modern and postmodern texts. In Chapter Two, I will test the feasibility of the postmodern feminist concept using Toni Morrison's Beloved. I first briefly examine Morrison's early work to justify her progressive experimentation with fully developed postmodern feminist characteristics in her novel Beloved. I will discuss Morrison's use of postmodern feminist storytelling and assumptions about human subjectivity and diversity in her novels, particularly Beloved. I will also show how Morrison gradually addressed the weaknesses of postmodern and feminist practices.  CHAPTER TWO TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED: INDISCERNIBLE MEMORIES Since its publication in 1987, Toni Morrison's fifth novel, Beloved, has received extensive and frequently ambivalent critical attention. In this chapter, the ambivalence is large because of Morrison's ambition to create a new form of storytelling using assumptions about narrative structure and thematizing, which derive from the intersection of postmodernist and feminist theories. Margaret Atwood (1987), for example, described the novel as a triumph: Ms Morrison's versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, Beloved will put them to rest (p. 1). According to Atwood (1987), the various voices and flashbacks in the novel largely reflect Morrison's versatility and technical innovation. Atwood's opinion about Beloved was shared by critic John Leonard who, writing in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, pointed out that. Beloved belongs on the highest shelf of American literature, even if half a dozen canonized white boys have to be elbowed off. The thing is, now I can't imagine American literature without it. Without Beloved. our imagination of the nation's self has a hole in it big enough to die from (p. 12). Underlying Leonard claims Beloved failed to win the 1987 National Book Award National Book Critics Circle Award 1987. The awards were given to novels by white male authors; The National Book Award went to Larry Hyneman's Paco’s Story and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Philip Roth's The Counterlife (1986). It sparked such resentment in the black literary community that 48 leading black writers and critics paid tribute to Toni Morrison's career, arguing that Morrison had yet to gain sufficient national recognition. However, other critics were not as enthusiastic about Beloved as Atwood and Leonard. For example, Carol Iannone wrote: "the book grows massive and heavy with cumulative and oft-repeated miseries, with new miseries and new dimensions of miseries added in each telling and retelling long after the point has been made and the reader has grown numb" (p. 63). Another hostile reviewer, Ann Snitow (1987), also observed that: Even at her best, Morrison's techniques are risky, and sometimes, in Beloved. she loses her gamble. The novel revolves and searches, searches and revolves, never getting any closer to these people numbed by their overwhelming grief (p. 26). Iannone's and Snitow's critiques are disappointing in expecting formal literary traditions such as narrative linearity, finality, and emotional disconnection between protagonist and reader. However, I would argue that Morrison challenges these conventions in his presentation of the novel. In this chapter, I argue that Beloved’s achievements rest at the intersection of postmodernism and contemporary feminism. Although I will focus primarily on Morrison's fifth novel, I will first discuss how The Bluest Eve (1970), Sula (1974), Solomon's Dream (1977) and Tar Powder (1981) display some postmodern feminist traits. To analyze these features in each novel, I will consider two main points: 1. postmodern storytelling strategies such as narrative fragmentation, sound reproduction, and shared reading; and 2. a desire to validate the diverse experiences of African Americans rather than traditional social/cultural antagonisms. In addition, I will show how Morrison overcomes many of the limitations of postmodern and feminist theoretical models. For example, Morrison rejects both the modernist alienation of the self and the postmodern radical fragmentation of the subject. Instead, it continues to protect the individual by offering the possibility of a relationship between oneself and a plural other (the collective). We will see that classical feminism also undermines fundamental and unique notions of female identity by posing the question of gender with other social categories such as race and class in Morrison's writings. I want to explore how Morrison gradually experimented with new formal methods and themes, expanding the Afro-American and Euro-American traditions (particularly the postmodern tradition). 2.1 Toni Morrison’s Evolution Towards Post-Modernism In his first novel, The Bluest Night (1970), Toni Morrison is already challenging the novelistic traditions of realism and modernism. Notably, the circular narrative pattern, a single centre of consciousness and the authoritative narrative voice—when employing such postmodernist devices as narrative fragmentation and juxtaposition of points of view, demand readers' participation in the story-telling. Morrison assumes that there are only versions of the truth. In other words, we readers can never fully know any event or situation in the novel. Katherine Rainwater resembles Morrison's technique in many ways, although she does not use the term "postmodern." Rainwater (1991) notes that "Morrison's narrational strategies are traditional, yet her novels undercut the traditional kinds of authority in which such narrative forms are usually grounded " (p. 96). According to Rainwater (1991), Morrison breaks the expected perfection of the traditional narrative models he uses in his novels, allowing his narrators and readers to offer different interpretations. The Bluest Eye is set in the small black community of Lorain, Ohio, from fall to fall of 1940-41. It focuses on the painful childhood experience of a young black woman named Pecola Breedlove, who aspires to have as blue eyes as possible so that her family and the wider black community will accept her. However, Morrison rejects the linearity and conclusion of the seasons and interpolates Pecola's story with various stories about the lives of other African Americans in the novel. These stories, in turn, begin with excerpts from the Dick and Jane Reading Guide. While commenting on the structure of The Bluest Eye, Morrison asserts that "the novel turned out to be a composition of parts circling each other, like the galaxy accompanying memory. I fret the pieces and fragments of memory because too often we want the whole thing" (p. 388). In this and subsequent novels, plot fragments never make precise sense because Morrison's narrators cannot explain why things happened to Pecola the way they did. Perhaps The Bluest Eye's most important postmodern building block is Morrison's deconstruction of Dick and Jane primer. The novel begins with prose familiar to many Americans of all races and colours: Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick and Jane live in the green and white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat (p. 7) Dick and Jane portray the privileged world of supposedly privileged white children peopled by their families, pets, and friends. Throughout the story, Morrison contrasts the world of Dick and Jane and Pecola's world with two interrelated goals: (1) to undo the general belief that happiness is synonymous with whiteness; and (2) to expose what happens to people like Pecola and her family who surrender themselves to such a belief. Another postmodern building block of The Bluest Eye is the juxtaposition of narrative voices. Pecola's playmate, Claudia McTeer, is one of the novel's narrative voices. Claudia's story, who often uses the pronoun—"we" about her sister Frieda and herself consists of the reflections of an adult remembering her childhood, "We had fun in those days when Pecola was with us. Frida, and I walked, fought and concentrated on our guest without feeling him outside." (Morrison, 1970, p. 19). Morrison's use of a child's point of view greatly impacts meaning. As a child, Claudia's understanding was very limited, so she could not interpret things for the readers. There is a summary of Pecola's story at the novel's beginning. Claudia concludes that "there is nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how" (Morrison, 1970, p. 9). Morrison's narrator, then, limits herself to tell how things happened to Pecola and lets readers draw their conclusions. The Bluest Eye Critiques Western hierarchical systems that minimize African American cultural standards, along with postmodern narrative fragmentation, voice customization, and the integration of collaborative reading devices. However, in this and subsequent novels, Morrison is not concerned with asserting new racial and gender poles or favouring blacks over whites and women over men. Instead, she wants to explore the cultural diversity of black people and the variety of their experiences and choices as Morrison makes Pilate talk in Song of Solomon. "You think dark is just one colour, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black, some silky, some woolly, someare just empty, some like fingers, and it doesn’t stay still. It moves and changes from one kind of black to another" (Morrison, 1977, p. 40). Soon we will see that Pilate and his only brother Macon Dead are black, but these characters choose entirely different paths in life. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison explores the importance of Western cultural values that can affect the self-esteem of African Americans, especially young women like Pecola Breedlove. Pecola wants to be like the blue-eyed “Shirley Temple” doll so she can be loved by her parents, Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. As the narrator observes: It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights--if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove, too. Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes (Morrison, 1977, p. 40). Pecola believes her family hates her because she is black and poor and ugly. Pecola's desire to look different is amplified when her father, Cholly, rapes and impregnates her. However, Pecola's child dies shortly after birth. As a result of these traumatic experiences, Pecola stepped over into madness. She withdraws into a fantasy world where she is the most beloved little girl because she has the bluest eyes of all. It is most evident at the close of the novel when Pecola's self-splits into two as she talks to an imaginary other about her eyes: What will we talk about? Why, your eyes. Oh, yes. My eyes. My blue eyes. Let me look again. See how pretty they are. Yes. They get prettier each time I look at them. They are the prettiest I've ever seen (Morrison, 1977, p. 156). In internalizing the standardized Western (white) ideals of physical beauty, figuratively male has imposed ideological script of beauty, justice, and so forth on everybody else. More importantly, Pecola absorbs Western ideology and gets fragmented and dispersed, in the manner of a postmodernist character, primarily because she lacks the support of the black community, which ostracizes her. As the older Claudia reflects now: All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after cleaning ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous (Morrison, 1977, p. 159). According to this passage, the black community lived with Pecola's frailty rather than helping him resist self-destruction. In the subsequent novels, Morrison gradually attempts to transform the fragmentation of the postmodern world from the inside out in fragmentary narratives by exploring the viability of a dialectic connection between the individual and the community (the collective). This connection asserts difference without opposition and identity without homogenization. Moreover, she constantly reminds us that if we wish to survive the postmodern threat to end humanity, we must remember the historical past and project a future. In Beloved, Morrison asserts the possibility of a future for Sethe, who, unlike the self-parodying Pecola wandering about in an anonymous communications system devoid of actual senders or addressees, prefigures her lost narrative, that is, the slavery past, with the help of others, particularly of Paul D and Beloved. In other words, Morrison allows Sethe to reconstruct her subjectivity/humanity through her relationship with others. In Morrison’s second novel Sula, like The Bluest Eye, Morrison rejects the literary conventions of narrative linearity, closure, and the authorial voice. Sula registers more than forty years’ (hi) story of the Black Medallion community from 1919 to 1965. It mainly focuses on the striking development of two black friends, Sula and Nel. However, the chronological years of its development show that the events do not follow a linear and progressive pattern in real life or fiction. Sula divides into two parts, which founding of National Suicide Day in 1920. In chapter 1920, the narrator tells another fragmented story about the Wright family, particularly Nel's childhood experiences. Chapter 1921 jumps to another narrative about the matriarchal family of Peace, Eva, Hannah and Sula, etc. We also experience three elliptical times for which Morrison's narrator does not explain: (1) four years, between 1923 and 1927—the year Sula's best friend, Nel, got married; (2) ten years, between 1927 and 1937, the year Sula returned to the bottom; and (3) twenty-four years, between 1941 and 1965, when the lower community essentially collapsed as white people moved in and young black people moved out. Also, Sula is missing the juxtaposition of voices from The Bluest Eye. As in Morrison's first novel, the third-person narrator invites the reader to become part of the narrative: "Things were so much better in 1965. Or it seemed. You could go downtown and see coloured people working in the dime store behind the counters, even handling money with cash-register keys around their necks" (p. 162). This passage reveals that Morrison's narrator allows readers to play along in the narrative. Still, the narrator allows each to avoid omniscient knowledge through certain expressions of doubt such as "or it seemed". Thematically, Sula still has a strong focus on white and black men and women. However, Morrison seems more concerned with exploring the different life patterns of the black protagonists Sula and Nel than with the chaos of conflicting traditions. In the novel, Nel Wright follows the original plan of life that the farm had prepared for him. She chooses to stay where she was born, marry, and raise a family. On the other hand, Sula Peace decides to leave her small Ohio town for the city and go to college. Upon returning home, three serious incidents lead the black community to perceive Sula as a manifestation of evil and, most importantly, a sexual seductress. Robin first accompanied the plague to Sula when she returned to Medallion. Second, Sula took her grandmother, Eva Peace, to put her in the nursing house against Eva's will. And third, Sula went to bed with her best friend's (Nel's) husband, Jude. As the narrator points out, "she was pariah, then, and knew it. Knew that they despised her and believed they framed their hatred as disgust for the easy way she lay with men" (Morrison, 1973, p. 122). However, in the novel, Morrison is more interested in questioning the differences between Sula and Nel than the contrast between the two women. In several passages, the narrator tells the story of the merging of two women, for example: Because each [Sula and Nel] had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male and that all freedom and triumph were forbidden, they had set about creating something else to be. Their meeting was fortunate, for it let them use each other to grow (Morrison, 1973, p. 52) Morrison, neither takes side with the autonomous model of Sula nor does she defend the socially restricted model of Nel. Instead, Morrison seeks to restore both women's subjectivity by examining the problems and contradictions of their models. For example, when the matriarch Eva Peace suggests Sula get married, have children, and settle like most women in the Medallion community, Sula replies, " I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself " (Morrison, 1973, p. 93). For Sula, who has personal freedom and an independent spirit, she is above any maternity care or caring for her grandmother. Ironically, Sula's quest for unlimited autonomy leads to a restless and idle life that ultimately drives Sula to wish for a companion. Sula, therefore, begins to have many lovers who yearn to find each other. As the narrator points out, "like any artist with no art form, she [Sula] became dangerous" (Morrison, 1973, p. 121). Indeed, the black community ostracizes Sula by connecting her to everything evil. Contrasting with the modernist sense of Sula's autonomy, Nel believes that a black woman cannot escape the demands of others who exist outside of her. At Sula's death bed, Nel concludes: " You can't do it all. You a woman and a woman of colour at that. You can't act like a man. You can't be walking all independent-like, doing whatever you like, taking what you want, leaving what you don't" (Morrison, 1973, p. 142). Nel, however, becomes excessively attentive to the needs of the other/others, particularly those of her husband and children, to the point of sacrificing her dreams and freedom Morrison in Sula tries to bring the two models together in a meaningful way when Nel and Sula suggest they need each other to find the self-definition and sense of female bonding. As Nel learns at the end of the novel, “All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude We were girls together, she said as though explaining something. 0 Lord, Sula, she cried, girl, girl, girl girl, girl” (Morrison, 1973, p. 174). Morrison's most appropriate response to the situation shows Sula's radical alienation and Nel's extreme dependency on the others. For Morrison, the relationship between people in the community does not necessarily threaten personal freedom and perfection. On the other hand, the struggle for self-knowledge should reflect the needs of others. Milkman was to learn that lesson in the Song of Solomon. At first glance, Song of Solomon suggests a more conventional narrative style than Morrison's previous novels. Morrison's third novel divides into two parts, which in turn are divided into organized and numbered chapters by each third-person narrator. A bildungsroman, it follows the life of black youth, Macron Dead III, from childhood through adulthood. But Morrison rejects the narrative conventions of bildungsroman (1) by interpolating the chronological development of the black male hero with a series of fragments of stories of past and present characters; (2) by questioning the closure of a circular pattern; (3) breaking the authority of the third- person narrator when letting characters, especially black women, distinctive voice story-versions. In short, Song of Solomon focuses primarily on Macon's quest for self- definition and independence. Macon, or ‘Milkman' as his friends call him because he breastfed for too long, combines his desire for freedom with the reconquest of the family inheritance. Macon embarks on a journey from the north (Michigan) to the south (Virginia), searching for his grandfather's gold. But instead of finding the lost treasure, he learns of his mythical hidden African roots. Milkman discovers that one of his ancestors, great-grandfather Solomon, flew back to Africa. As Milkman notes, “he didn't need no aeroplane. He just took off; got fed up. up! No more cotton! No more bales! My great-granddaddy could flyyyyyy" (Morrison, 1977, p. 332). According to this passage, flying has both mimetic and symbolic meanings. Solomon jumped off a mountain, leaving behind all responsibilities, including his slave labour, wife, and children. The symbolic flight of Solomon in Africa stands for every black man's dream of freedom. Still, Morrison bridges the gap between the two meanings by simultaneously exploring the possibility of personal freedom and affirming each individual's responsibility to others. Along with Milkman's journey, Morrison introduces other narrative fragments, mainly involving the memories of the book's various male and female characters. Thus, his journey proceeds in a non-linear fashion as he is repeatedly interrupted by multiple narratives. For example, Milkman's father, Macon Dead, remembers his childhood and the time he worked with his father: "I worked right alongside my father. From the time I was four or five we worked together. Our mother was dead. Died when Pilate was born. Pilate was just a baby" (Morrison, 1977, p. 51). Macon tells how the white men shot his father and took away his farm. Macon concludes the passage by telling his son that " the important thing you'll ever need to know: Own things . . . Then you'll own yourself and other people too" (Morrison, 1977, p. 55). Letting Macon reveal his insides, Morrison's narrator eventually undermines any kind of moral judgment. As Macon recalls his past, the narrator observes: “his voice sounded different to Milkman. Less hard, and his speech was different. More southern and comfortable and soft" (Morrison, 1977, p. 52). So, readers have a double perception of Macon as a greedy, self-centred man and a lonely individual. In addition to experiencing more snippets of stories finding resonance in postmodern writing, Morrison also challenges the orderly plot of the circular narrative model, which usually includes a clear beginning, climax, and resolution. Offering no preparation, Song of Solomon begins with an insurance agent named Robert Smith jumping out of a building. This incident coincides with the birth of Morrison's main character, Milkman. The novel ends with Milkman jumping off a mountain called Solomon's Leap. As the narrator describes, "without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees—he leaped” (Morrison, 1977, p. 341). Milkman then disappears into a mythical realm, such as Shalimar or Solomon's ancestor. Additionally, in Song of Solomon, Morrison undermines the authority of omniscient fiction by temporarily merging the narrator's third-person view with that of a character. At several points, the novel flows back and forth between the often conflicting first-person and third-person narratives. For example, in Part One, Chapter Three, Milkman's father, Macon Dead, takes about three and a half pages of super- fiction to comment on his early years of marriage to Ruth. Macon expresses his opinion on the relationship between his wife and his father, Dr Foster. According to Macon, Ruth and her father maintained an incestuous relationship even after Macon's death: "in the bed. That's where she was when I opened the door. Laying next to him. Naked as a yard dog, kissing him” (Morrison, 1977, p. 73). Ruth disproves her husband's version of incest by telling Milkman about Macon's intention to kill his father and him: " I know he never told you that he killed my father and tried to kill you. And I know he never told you that threw my father's medicine away, but it's true. And I couldn't save my father" (Morrison, 1977, p. 124). Ultimately, readers have to rely upon both versions since the third-person narrator does not privilege the point of view of either Macon or Ruth. More importantly, Morrison rejects the Eurocentric male code of the Bildungsroman tradition by granting voice and action to the female characters in the Song of Solomon—especially to Milkman's Aunt Pilate. Pilate is one of Morrison's most unconventional characters, represented by she was born without a navel. Yet despite Pilate's unusual birth (she was separated from her mother), Pilate represents the possibility of human connection rarely articulated in classically postmodern texts. These texts largely underline the fragmentation and radical diffusion of the human subject. Indeed, Pilate is the catalyst of Milkman's manhood. Barbara Collina Rigney (1991) has a similar point of view. Rigney suggests that to define himself, Milkman must: Placate the violated female essence of his universe, atone for his mistreatment of Hagar, apologize for his failure to recognize the humanity of his sisters and his mother, exorcise the influence of his father, and embrace the teachings of Pilate (p. 29) In his development into a man (rather than a self-centred "milkman" or child), Milkman must learn the limitations of his father's patriarchal model—which emphasizes traditional Western society hierarchies that treat women as secondary. Moreover, it also considers the values of his black female heritage, especially that of her aunt Pilate. Pilate teaches Milkman that one can have personal freedom and continue to care for others. Briefly, Tar Baby follows the unsolved love story between Son, a black renegade very attached to his African heritage, and Jadine, a sophisticated black model imbued with white European values. Indeed, Jadine could be considered a ‘cultural orphan’ as she learns to disconnect physically, mentally, and spiritually from everything Africa has suggested; to cultivate the habits, the likes and the tastes sanctioned by her white guardians. With the confidence that comes from a conviction of superiority, she rejects Son and her ideas of an "authentic" black woman, the caring wife and mother. Indeed, Son's ideas are also expressed by Jadine's aunt and adoptive mother, Ondine, in the novel: Jadine, a girl has got to be a daughter first. If she never learns how to be a daughter, she can't never learn how to be a woman. I mean a real woman: a woman good enough for a child; good enough for a man. You don't need your own natural mother to be a daughter (Morrison, 1981, p. 242) In this passage, Ondine reminds Jadine of the traditionally defined roles of a woman as daughter, wife, and mother. Ondine and her husband Sydney worked hard on the streets all their lives to send Jadine to school. Now she expects Jadine to calm down and take care of her. However, Jadine cannot quickly adapt to these roles. When Jadine replies to her aunt: There are other ways to be a woman. Your way is one, I guess . . .but it's not my way. I don't want to be...like you. I don't want to learn how to be the kind of woman you're talking about because I don't want to be that kind of woman (Morrison, 1981, p. 243) The phrase "There are other ways to be a woman" suggests Jadine's rejection of the universal Western/African notions of female identity. While a surface reading of Tar Baby would support the argument that Son's (and Ondine's) position and value system take precedence over Jadine, closer examination leads to an alternative reading in which Morrison deconstructs the single notion "the black woman". Jadine can be said to represent the single black woman whose existence is structured by historical and social circumstances distinct from those of Son and the black community in general. Significantly, Tar Baby's inscription of differences emerges, which is a major concern of postmodern feminists. In other words, Toni Morrison gives equal weight to the independent voices and the conscience of Jadine and Son. She allows Jadine to challenge other definitions of black women, allowing Son of her an opportunity to bolster her status as a sign of racial authenticity. For example, when Jadine questions the value of the culture Son is a product of, she articulates a position that enhances her status as a "real" black person: "The truth is, everything you learned in those colleges. I didn't go to isn't shit. Yup. Did they tell you how I was? Did they tell you what I thought? Did they describe me to you? Did they tell you what I had in my heart?" (Morrison, 1987, p. 227). Therefore, attempts to define a single ideological position are useless. Perhaps the split between Jadine and her son in the final pages of the novel best shows that their positions remain largely unresolved. Looking at Beloved's narrative strategies and themes suggests an even stronger ambivalence of meaning than in Toni Morrison's previous novels. What develops in Morrison's fifth novel is a multitude of consciences and voices that articulate equally personal (their) stories of slavery. We will see that the narrative becomes even more fragmented and discontinuous as the numerous characters switch back and forth between present and past, Kentucky and Cincinnati, slavery and freedom to reveal their unspeakable memories. Furthermore, Morrison questions the systems of representation of society that privileged whites over blacks, men over women and introduced slavery. In other words, she examines the needs and experiences of African Americans. She rejects the old hierarchies that marginalized blacks, especially black women, both in real life and real life. 2.2 Beloved (1987) Black women's paradoxical experiences in America's complex social system have impacted their well-being and are the basis for who they are today. This conflict can easily be observed in the literature that fictionalizes history because fiction allows a voyeuristic insight into the characters' lives and psyches. Choice versus no choice becomes the antithesis in relation to the influences on black women's social and political construct and female interaction that forces peculiar outcomes. Much of the research about why Morrison's characters behave the way they do addresses social factors that impact black women. These are the social factors that leave black women economically powerless, thus, financially dependent on whites and on black men; factors that make it difficult for black women to live harmoniously with other black women because of the stress produced by lack of care and respect for each other; and factors that cause black women to victimize each other because of their lack of empathy. These are the influences hostile to them because they are females— sexism, particularly because they are black— racism, which is the essence of her struggle. As black women struggle to live in America's oppressive society, their decisions are usually motivated and instigated by forces beyond their control. Research reveals that because black women are socially and economically disadvantaged and controlled by a patriarchal society, their options are virtually few, or they have no choices as they attempt to negotiate their lives. One story that emphasizes some of the limits black women once experienced is found in Morrison's Beloved. This story is set just before and during America's Reconstruction Era. This narrative reflects the early and immediate aftermath of the system of slavery. The plot centres around the desperate actions of a slave woman, Sethe, to protect her children from becoming casualties of slavery; and the repercussions of her decision to take the life of one of those children. It is also an account of the other female characters' lives— Denver, Baby Suggs, and Beloved— directly affected by Sethe's actions. Additionally, the plot of Beloved reveals the brutal scars slavery leaves on black women because they are women. After all, they are black, and because they are powerless. The characters, the devices Morrison employs, and the themes of memory, healing, and oppression illuminate the plight of the black female's attempts to cover the scars. In short, Beloved revolves around the life of a runaway slave named Sethe and her infanticide. Sethe slits the throat of her two-year-old child to save her from a life of slavery. Rejected by neighbours for the crime, Sete and her other daughter Denver live a secluded life in a house where the ghost of Sethe's murdered child lives. Their situation is completely changed when Paul D., who was an enslaved person on a Kentucky plantation "Sweet Home", escaped, comes to stay with Sethe and Denver. First, Paul D manages to exorcise the ghost from Sethe's house. However, the spirit returns in the form of a young woman who calls herself Beloved, the same name as on the tombstone of the child Sethe. Eventually, the Beloved gains control of the house and seek to dominate Sethe. At the end of the novel, the black female community that ostracized Sethe years ago decides to help Seethe get rid of a mysterious Beloved. However, the verbal structure of Beloved is much richer and more complex than this synopsis of the plot suggests. Much of this is due to Toni Morrison's use of postmodern formal methods, especially fragmentary narrative structure and interactive reading. Fragmentary and discontinuous stories of the experience of bondage and freedom make up the narrative of the Beloved. Morrison also challenges the authority of the all-knowing narrative when she invites readers to make connections between different fragments or narratives. In addition, Morrison combines the postmodern features of narrative fragmentation and reader participation with the postmodern device of multiplying plots, characters, and narrative examples. These features and devices together dominate the argumentative and descriptive constructions of the novel. Morrison gives long-overdue recognition to black women for being the source of strength for their families, as major support for their community, and as warriors for their own right to exist in this society. The choices the female characters make, made virtually because they have no choice, are significant because they reflect the female hero orrison successfully portrays a female hero by presenting a mythic element of the supernatural— the ghost of the "crawling already?" baby. Sethe does not save the world by killing the baby, but she does save one child from the grips of slavery. Notes that black women demonstrate their love by incredible self-sacrifice; thus, Sethe believes "there was nothing to be done other than what she had done" (Morrison, 1987 p.89). As with all heroes, Sethe's sacrifice is great— the loss of her two-year-old daughter.. The Beloved is divided into three parts that are, in turn, divided into what I call sections since Morrison does not give any titles or numbers to the chapters. It tells about eighteen years of black history, from 1855 to 1873, from years of slavery on a Kentucky plantation to years of restoration in the small Ohio town of Cincinnati. However, Morrison rejects the novelistic conventions of narrative linearity and chronology commonly found in authoritative slave narratives. For example, the novel begins with the following lines: 124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it, and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old (Morrison, 1987, p. 3). Without much preparation, the readers get acquainted with specific events that took place eighteen years after the main story, that is, with the infanticide of Sethe. As the story progresses, we conclude that "124" is the house where Sete and her daughter Denver live. The house is "spiteful" and "full of baby’s poison" because its inhabitants are haunted by what appears to be the spirit of the murdered baby of Sethe. But, the identity of the spirit or Beloved cannot be unequivocally determined by different narrators. Modern language can be viewed as an inadequate way of expressing a past that many individuals consider unspeakable. However, in Beloved. Morrison remarkably says the anguish and the images of that past as she breathes life into a steadily exhausting language. Morrison accomplishes her feat by presenting the physical evidence of enduring human existences and the spiritual presences of those long passed. She gives voices and faces to the "sixty million and more" (Morrison, 1987, p. 1) black Africans who were captured and enslaved. With these humanizing elements finally allotted to these men, women and children, the enslaved ones are treated as human subjects rather than mere objects in this traumatic remembering. No longer are these individuals presented as examples and statistics of lost lives, but they are presented as living beings whose lives were stolen from them, one by one. Therefore, when the character Stamp Paid walks past 124 Bluestone Road after revealing Sethe's murderous act to Paul D, he hears the voices of those "disremembered and unaccounted for" (Morrison, 1987, p. 274). Within the cacophony of black voices which haunt 124 can be heard and felt the individual pains and unreconciled griefs of black men, women, and children. Morrison (1987) writes: 124 WAS LOUD. Stamp Paid could hear it even from the road…Ever since he showed that newspaper clipping to Paul D and learned that he'd moved out of 124 that very day, Stamp felt uneasy…[He] then began to worry about Sethe…Now 124 was back like it was before Paul D came to town— worrying Sethe and Denver with a pack of haunts he could hear from the road…Stamp Paid…believed the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumblings of the black and angry dead…Very few had died in bed, like Baby Suggs, and none . . . had lived a livable life…The more colored people spent their strength trying to convince [white people] how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they [colored people] (pp. 169-170). The women's voices are the voices Stamp Paid has the most difficulty understanding. The one man in Sethe's community who should be able to understand the voices of his people regardless to their gender lacks that understanding. The one individual in that community who has been responsible for bringing so many black people across the Ohio River to the land of promised freedom is the one individual who does not understand the voices of all his people. Within the collection of voices haunting 124 Bluestone, all the rumblings and grumblings of oppressed people can be heard. Stamp Paid's confusion about and inability to understand the voices of the black women in this vocal group should not surprise readers. Though he has been an advocate for his people, a Moses figure, a provider, and a guide, he was still a slave once. As a slave, he has been subjected to the oppressive actions of the master. Communication is a powerful system in itself—a system which allows for the transmission of information and feelings. Perhaps the slave master's greatest fear was that slaves would communicate with one another because shared communication could have led to shared ideologies and resistance. Communication is a freedom that slave masters feared because such freedom among oppressed people could lead to bloody insurrections and even revolutions. During the early nineteenth century, the black education movement flourished. The desire for equal education for blacks leads to the opening of black academic institutions all over America. In Beloved. the character Denver has the opportunity to attend this same white institution, Oberlin. Seeing education as a means of family survival or group survival—as it may be termed, Denver ventures beyond 124, beyond the self and out into the unknown other. Within 124 Bluestone, female voices are the primary voices Denver hears in her life. However, as she ventures outside of 124 Bluestone, Denver's first encounters are with the "male voices", which come closer to her with each step she" takes (Morrison, 1987, p. 245). Not used to dealing with men and therefore afraid of how the "Negro men" will address her, Denver debates with herself as to whether to pass the men or "cross the road" (Morrison, 1987, p. 245). When two men meet the frightened Denver, they greet her and continue past her. This first easy encounter with the outside other gives Denver the confidence and even the eagerness to see what happens next. Denver's first visit to the outer world is with Lady Jones, a mulatto woman who had suffered both white racism and intra-cultural racism and whose "light skin got her picked for a coloured girl's normal school in Pennsylvania" (Morrison, 1987, p. 247). Lady Jones believed in her heart that, except for her [very black] husband, the whole world (including her children) despised her and her hair" (Morrison, 1987, p. 247) and therefore, "she disliked everybody a little bit because she believed they hated her hair as much as she did" (Morrison, 1987, p. 247). Though Denver does not have any trade skills, she desires to work for food for her family. Realizing the desperate condition of the young woman, Lady Jones responds empathetically, "Oh, baby" (Morrison, 1987, p. 248). After hearing these words, Denver's life is changed forever. For the first time, she realizes that even though Lady Jones has referred to her as a baby, Denver is really a black woman with something in common with another black woman. The kindness of Lady Jones's words makes Denver feel that she has human support in a world where she has once only known loneliness. She does not have to suffer and struggle alone anymore. Days later, food and supplies began to show up on the grounds of 124 Bluestone. Denver's initiation of dialogue with the women of her community is the catalyst for changing the dreadful conditions of her family. For Denver, the ability to communicate her needs and desires becomes the true mark of distinction for strong black womanhood. For Denver, communication of her needs and desires removes some of the loneliness from her life. As she becomes more communicative with those around her, Denver opens up options for herself and her family. As a subconscious response to basic needs, Denver steps outside of her small circle, her cage, where she finds freedom in a larger circle, her community. While Beloved focuses on Seth's infanticide, it unfolds by assembling numerous and discontinuous memories that very often add a new dimension of meaning to the main story. Through a series of narrative cycles, the novel revolves around the lives of a group of enslaved people who once lived on a Kentucky plantation ironically called "Sweet Home": Baby Suggs, Holly, Paul A. Garner, Paul F. Garner, Paul D. Garner, Sixo, and Sethe. For example, Morrison incorporates Sethe's memories of a life of slavery in Sethe's account of infanticide. Thus, Morrison reveals the circumstances under which Sete's infanticide took place rather than making a moral judgment or justifying the act of murder. On a Kentucky plantation, Sethe is initially clueless about her status as a chattel. It is largely due to the unconventional treatment of enslaved people by their masters (the Garners) on their Sweet Home plantation. When Mr Garner speaks to other farmers, “Y'all got boys, he told them. Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stropping boys. Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men every one " (p. 10). Whereas Mr Garner and his wife care for their slaves, the Schoolteacher consider them less than human beings To understand Sethe and the other black women's choices, one must examine the original conception of the economic growth of America at the expense of black women. One of the political forces supporting the perceptions about black women began with the enslavement of African women. White planters also capitalized on another economic gain by the breeding of black slave women. The offspring of slave women would become "the property of the owner to whom the female slave belonged" (Morrison, 1987, p. 16). Before this profitable venture was possible, white planters had to dehumanize African women and men. "The prideful, arrogant, and independent spirit of the African people had to be broken. The methods used to accomplish this task were devised to ensure total submission. Research reveals that these methods are the key factors impacting the mental state of black women and the ideas perpetuated about them today. The most effective methods used on the slave ships from Africa to America were rape and physical abuse that terrorized African women. Morrison's Beloved unabashedly reveals how females, as victims of America's sexism and racism, were treated. Sethe and other female characters experienced slavery first-hand. America's political system of slavery becomes the impetus for Sethe's attempt to kill her children. Sethe's memory of her own bondage on the Sweet Home plantation is all too vivid. She recalls how she had little choice when the nephews of the Schoolteacher raped her. Sethe laments how, "Two boys with mossy teeth, suck[ed] on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up" (Morrison, 1987, p. 70). To add insult, Sethe’s body is further violated by the flogging inflicted on her by Schoolteacher. Ella, one of the first black women Sethe meets in Cincinnati, Ohio, struggles over the memory of her own personal experience with slavery: Her puberty had been spent in a house where she was shared by father and son, whom she called "the lowest yet." It was "the lowest yet" who gave her a disgust for sex and against whom she measured all atrocities (Morrison, 1987, p.119). Ella and most black women have no choice about what happens to their bodies or the children they are expected to bear. Ella's only defence against slavery is to allow her babies to starve in five days rather than endure even twenty-eight days in bondage. She chooses never to love anyone or anything, especially the babies she is impregnated with against her will. For the Cincinnati women, like Ella, and even Baby Suggs, Sethe's choice to free herself and her children from slavery is too bold. Sethe crosses over the line of self-preservation and kinship by killing her child. Baby Suggs explains, "Everything depends on knowing how much…Good is knowing when to stop" (Morrison, 1987, p. 87). Sethe does what black people believe only white people are capable of doing—going too far. Morrison's female characters behave according to what they believe is best. Shelia Ruth states that sexism, perpetuated by whites during slavery, functioned "not to self-affirm or self fulfil the black woman, but as a method to trade, consume and ultimately use up her black body" (Morrison, 1987, p. 225). Because of sexism, black women have never been in control of their life decisions. Additionally, black women have never had a choice in determining the views held about them. However, with the death of Mr Garner and the arrival of his brother's schoolteacher on the plantation, the situation of Sethe and other enslaved people changes dramatically as long as Mr Garner and his wife take care of it. For example, the Schoolmaster belittles Sethe's humanity by telling his nephews to "put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right" (Morrison, 1987, p. 193). Though Sethe does not fully understand the meaning of the Schoolteacher's words when she overhears such a conversation, she realizes that Schoolteacher may eventually separate her from her husband, Halle, and her children. Sethe, then, resolves to escape north to freedom with her family. She manages to get her children on board the northbound caravan, which takes them to their grandmother's home in Cincinnati. But before Sethe can join her children, Schoolteacher's nephews brutally abuse her. As Sethe recalls: Those boys came in here and took my milk. Held me down and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on em. Them boys found out I told on em. Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree (Morrison, 1987, p. 16). This passage describes the symbolic rape of a pregnant woman who is still nursing her younger child. This sexual assault and this brutal whipping are perhaps the most unspeakable incidents in the novel. Despite this, Sethe manages to escape to Cincinnati, Ohio—even though she arrives without Halle, who mysterious disappears, she still has her children, including her newborn daughter, Denver, and her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, who hosts Sethe and her family. However, Sethe's freedom is short-lived; twenty-eight days after their escape, a period that coincides with a woman's menstrual cycle. The Schoolteacher tracks down Sethe to bring Sethe and the children back into slavery. Sethe then goes mad and tries to take the lives of his children: "Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other" (Morrison, 1987, p. 149) The word "nigger" expresses the chattel condition of slaves that deprive of voice and action. By calling Sethe a "black woman", Morrison makes her experience emblematic of similar experiences made by other enslaved women on various plantations across the country. Indeed, Amata is known to be based on a true story. During the editing of The Black Book (1990), Toni Morrison encountered the experience of a slave girl, Margaret Garner, who, like Sethe, killed her son to save him a life to be saved in slavery. In Beloved, Morrison's protagonist, Sethe, shares a similar dilemma to Margaret Garner's whether to let her children live as enslaved people or kill them. Both women managed to kill a child before they were prevented from killing the others. Despite the intertextual relationship between Margaret Garner's documented life and Sethe's imaginary life, Morrison simultaneously romances the story and historicizes the narrative in the novel. In other words, she reinvents the life of Margaret Garner, whose infanticide seems more suited to fiction than the real world. Like, David and Morrison (1988): I did research about a lot of things in this book [she means Beloved] in order to narrow it, to make it narrow and deep, but I did not do much research on Margaret Garner other than the obvious stuff, because I wanted to invent her life, which is a way of saying I wanted to be accessible to anything the characters had to say about it (p. 5). Writing the story of Sethe, Morrison reconstructs Garner's story to uncover Sethe's inner workings and the circumstances that lead a loving mother to take the life of her child. It is Sethe who expresses the other side of the story that has never been spoken of in an authoritative slave narrative—such as Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). In Beloved, Morrison gradually allows Sethe to challenge his double marginalization, both black and female, from the inside out. Although Sethe speaks on the sidelines, she instead tells a story of resisting a life of humiliation. Black women are not monolithic in their views, experiences, or voices. By presenting black women as realistically, as humanly as does Morrison, the myriad tones and ranges of black women's voices can be heard. The characterizations of Beloved, Sethe, and Denver are evidence of that. Through her realistic characterization, black women characters have the opportunity to live the truth and to break the silence that commonly holds oppressed beings. As a writer, Morrison gives the call that black women readers can first identify with and then respond to. The choice to love one's children, or to protect them under the ‘no choice’ policy of slavery, is as uncertain as what a slave's future would be like. Baby Suggs knows this because she was born a slave and grew up in slavery. She had few options about what she could do until she was sixty years old, when her son, Halle, bought her freedom. Baby Suggs believes she has no right to judge Sethe's action to take the life out of everything she has given life to, rather than see them enslaved: "She could not approve or condemn Sethe's rough choice" (Morrison, 1987, p.180). Given the same circumstances, Baby Suggs may have resorted to the same alternative. The one decision Baby Suggs makes is to "quit the Word" in the "Clearing—a wide-open place cut deep in the woods" (Morrison, 1987, p.87)—where black folks laid down their burdens. She then chooses to "go to bed to think about the colour of things" (Morrison, 1987, p.177). Her action is the submission of a black woman who has been beaten upon enough by life. She lies down "to fix on something harmless in the world" (Morrison, 1987, p. 179), some other thing she had never experienced before, like colours. Though "The white folks [have] tired her out at last" (Morrison, 1987, p. 180), Stamp Paid urges her to return to the clearing to inspire the people. He does not understand her decision to just lie down. Along with Sethe's memories of her life and crime, other characters reveal their memories of life in bondage and freedom in Beloved. For example, Paul D's memories of him from his life at Sweet Home Plantation, the iron bit in his mouth, the time in Alfred prison in Georgia, and his escape to freedom. Another example is Baby Suggs's account of her life as a servant, her separation from her beloved children, except for Halle, who bought her freedom. Like Sethe, Paul D and Baby Suggs can tell readers only snippets of a past they would rather forget. These discontinuous and fragmentary reminiscences give way to another essential postmodern feature of the novel: the reader's involvement and performance in the narrative. Gerard Hoffmann writes in ‘Modern,' 'Postmodern', and 'Contemporary' as Criteria for the Analysis of 20th Century Literature, "From a communicational point of view, modernism seems to stress the relationship between the creative sensibility and the work of art, addresser and message, postmodernism that between message and addressee" (Morrison, 1987, p. 40). According to Hoffmann, postmodernists attribute much more value to the reading process than the text itself. In Morrison’s Beloved, readers are invited to participate in the production of the text, which never yields itself to a definite meaning. In various essays and interviews, Morrison affirms the belief in the intimacy between reader and text. For example, in Black Women Writers at Work (1983), Morrison states that: My writing expects, demands participatory reading, and that I think is what literature is supposed to do. It's not just about telling the story; it's about involving the reader. The reader supplies the emotions. The reader supplies even some of the colour, some of the sound. My language has to have holes and spaces so the reader can come into it (p. 125) Morrison expects readers to construct the narrative to become part of the characters' storytelling. Indeed, Morrison uses the pronoun "you"—signalling the intimacy between reader and text—much more often in Beloved than in previous novels. There are several occasions when this rhetorical device is used: " Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite for colour" (Morrison, 1987, p. 4). Furthermore, the novel openly encourages the reader's participation in the narrative. In other words, readers need to make connections between different narratives. For example, we can see some subtle connecting lines between the various fragmentary stories, particularly between the narratives of Paul D. and Sethe. As an illustration, Paul D provides some information about Sethe's husband, Halle, which adds a new dimension of meaning to Sethe's account of her rape by the Schoolteacher's nephews. Paul D observes: You said they stole your milk. I never knew what it was that messed him up. That was it, I guess. All I knew was that something broke him. Not a one of them years of Saturdays, Sundays and nighttime extra never touched him. But whatever he saw go on in that barn that day broke him like a twig. He saw? Sethe was gripping her elbows as though to keep them from flying away (Morrison, 1987, p. 68). The narratives of Paul D and Sethe lead both characters and readers to fill in the gaps in their narratives. Sethe now realizes that her husband witnessed her rape, and Paul D understands why Halle looked so devastated at the time. This narrative process involves the postmodern understanding of meaning as fluid and constructed. As a result, Morrison's characters cannot fully recover their memories. Catherine Rainwater states precisely that: In Beloved, efforts to know one human being through her past relationships to others fail because of the unrecoverable nature of the past, as well as to differences in human perception, memory, and explanation of experience (Morrison, 1987, p. 107). In the novel, Sethe herself suggests the impossibility of restoring the past while reflecting: "And if Paul D saw him (Halle] and could not save or comfort him because the iron bit was in his mouth, then there is still more that Paul D could tell me" (Morrison, 1987, p. 70). The phrase" there is even more "implies that the novel denies any realistic and even modernist form of narrative closure. Indeed, Morrison Beloved adds an epilogue that leaves the reader with more questions than a final answer. As the narrator repeatedly says: "It was not a story to pass down" (Morrison, 1987, p. 274). This sentence gives at least three meanings: (1) This was not a story to be handed down or ignored; (2) This was not a story meant to be repeated and (3.) This was not a story meant to be pass on because Morrison refused to convey full knowledge of memories of Beloved's various characters. In addition to the multiple fragmentary narratives, the multiplication of the title character is an important postmodern device in Beloved. The multiple images of Beloved can be associated with the "kaleidoscope" common in postmodern novels. The kaleidoscope image results from creating multiple versions of the narrative subject as Beloved. Who is the Beloved? The novel does not tell us who or what it is. At first glance, we simply reply that the Beloved and the spirit of the murdered son of Sethe are the same. However, Beloved is much more than a spirit or even a human being. Rather, Morrison presents Beloved as a puzzle of plural identities. At various points in the text, the signs question Beloved's identity—for example, Paul D wonders, " But what if the girl was not a girl, but something in disguise?" (Morrison, 1987, p. 127). For Stamp Paid character, Beloved is a battered black girl who escaped her white master: "Was a girl locked up in the house with a white man over by Deer Creek. Found him dead last summer and the girl gone” (Morrison, 1987, p. 235) When Paul D. Denver asks her if she thinks Beloved was her sister, she replies, “At times. At times I think she was--more" (Morrison, 1987, p. 266). As a symbol, even as a name, a floating signifier, Beloved is not just the ghost of Sethe's daughter, or Denver's sister, or something in disguise, or at least a black girl on the run, but Beloved also represents those slaves who died in the shipment of slaves from Africa to America. We can grasp this meaning in the mistress's monologue as she remembers the passage on a slave ship that Sethe's murdered child could not have: In We are not crouching now we are standing but my legs are like my dead man's eyes I cannot fall because there is no room to the men without skin are making loud noises, I am not dead the bread is sea-colored I am too hungry to eat it the sun closes my eyes those able to die are in a pile I cannot find my man (Morrison, 1987, p. 211). In this passage, Beloved uses the singular and plural first-person pronouns to express the collective and terrifying experience experienced by millions of African Americans on slave ships. Indeed, Morrison's novel bears a dedication to her: "Sixty Million and more". The Beloved ultimately represents any slave who has been physically and emotionally abused by white men or "skinless men". Furthermore, the lack of punctuation and the intervals between each sentence reflect a sense of shame in the privileged culture and physical disadvantages: the precarious conditions of the living slaves made "the hill of dead people" under the deadly sun. Beloved's most prominent postmodern feature is the gradual and systematic proliferation of narrative instances. Several storytellers participate in the storytelling process, and none have a superior point of view to the others. The most striking passages of Morrison's experimentation with multiple narrative instances appear in sections two to five of the novel's second half. The three central female characters, Sethe, Denver and Beloved, talk about their innermost memories and feelings that transcend the boundaries of place and time. In the second part, Sethe speaks from a mother's point of view. She remembers killing her little girl, whom she calls her beloved: “Beloved, she is my daughter. She is mine "( Morrison, 1987, p. 200). In section three, Denver speaks from a sister's point of view. Denver remembers what Sethe told her about her sister's death: "Beloved is my sister. I swallowed her blood right along with my mother's milk." (Morrison, 1987, p. 205). However, Sethe and Denver's views are not definitive as the novel continually blurs and reveals the true identity of the Beloved. As we move on to section four and delve into the thoughts of the mysterious Beloved character, the narrative becomes even more complex and ambiguous. The ambiguity of the meaning is primarily due to Morrison's experimental prose. Beloved’s monologue becomes illegible due to a lack of punctuation and irregular leading: I am Beloved, and she is mine I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing (Morrison, 1987, p. 210) The typographical changes to the passage above suggest a flow of meaning, an essential feature of postmodernism. Furthermore, the phrase "her face is mine" indicates the baby's merged perception with the mother. It also shows the timelessness of the title character that connects to the past, present, and dead and living. Beloved's blurry identities are heightened in section five as the voices of Sethe, Denver, and Beloved come together in a poetic language: Beloved You are my sister You are my daughter You are my face; you are me I have found you again; you have come back to me You are my Beloved You are mine You re mine You are mine (Morrison, 1987, p. 216) These lines at the end of the novel's last stream-of-consciousness chapter reveal the nakedness of Beloved's love. That love is as awful as it is real and is, therefore, frightening to humans. As this novel illustrates, love is like a tree in that love branches off into dichotomies such as the Self and the Other, ownership and self-possession, body and spirit, and the present and the past. Furthermore, a tree lives by its roots and dies by its roots. Likewise, the power and life of love depend on its connection to its source, the connection to the past. Therefore, reading and critically analyzing Beloved is a cathartic undertaking. At the centre of the text and at the centre of analyses of the text is Morrison herself. Morrison's position resembles that of the African griot, that multi-functional member of African society who possesses great knowledge of cultural history, mythical stories, and the African tradition that promotes the orality of its people. That orality takes the form of call and response. In this respect, Morrison promotes the oral tradition even though her voice is presented in the written form. She sends out a literary call, a call which invites readers to join the oral "circle" and become primary respondents. Morrison's call encourages listeners to exercise their individual and authentic voices in presenting their own history. Because she is such an engaging caller, one whose voice is lyrical, clear and honest, Morrison draws individuals of different ethnic groups into the circle. Her call is painfully clear, lyrical and honest. That call is especially timely, necessary, and striking in Morrison's character, Baby Suggs, holy. Through Baby Suggs, Morrison expresses that it is time that people of colour affirm, love, and appreciate themselves as viable contributors to the society in which they live. This section reassures readers about the multiple perceptions of the Beloved, who has no space-time boundaries. Beloved significantly represents the mythical and spiritual connection of West Africa among the dead, the living and the unborn. In other words, in writing Beloved story, Morrison seeks to connect the African ancestors and the Africans of the New World, Africa and the United States, memories and present life, the dead and the living. Thus, Beloved bridges the historical and the imaginary gap, crossing the boundaries between the real and the surreal that largely characterize postmodern novels. It encompasses all people because all people have been impacted by the destructive institution of slavery. In that respect, Morrison's circle is a global one, surpassing racial, gender, and temporal bounds. Perhaps this is the reason that with each reading of Beloved, one hears yet another independent voice entering the text. One might initially consider this addition of voices as an acknowledgement of the slaves who entered America one by one, each with his own personality, spirit, and name. However, considering Morrison's knowledge of the oral tradition, one may interpret this increase in invoices as the writer's recognition of the individual and multiple perspectives that are present within the collective culture of black people. She understands that people of colour are not monolithic in their views. Bearing this in mind, one must also be aware of Morrison's position as a caller. She realizes that she is as much African as she is African American, and she is as much American as she is African. She is each one depending on the subject at hand, and she is all three by birthright and cultural definition. Because of this position, how could Beloved be less than polyvocal? How can America, with all of its cultural groups, possess a literary canon that is less than multicultural? When one is a part of the circle, one can confidently ask such questions, present answers to them and become subjects rather than objects of them. In Beloved, Toni Morrison integrates the narrative means of postmodern writing and eliminates the limits and contradictions of both postmodern and feminist models, in particular postmodern androcentrism and the radical fragmentation of the subject, and the universal notions of female identity of classical feminism. The novel overturns traditional postmodernist and modernist discursive practices by allowing Sethe to tell her version of the story. In those practices, the (black) woman's story is usually secondary since it is told by either the white or the black male. The point of Morrison's novels, Barbara Hill Rigney’s The Voices of Toni Morrison (1991) correctly puts it, "is to give a voice to the voiceless, to speak the unspeakable on the part of the speechless" (p. 21). At several points, Sethe gains control of the narrative. Morrison lets Sethe— who is doubly marginalized as a woman and black—express her needs and experiences, usually left out in authoritative slave texts. More importantly, Morrison shifts the stress point from the protagonist's sexual victimization to her creative resistance in Beloved. In other words, she gradually empowers Sethe to reveal her inner memories and become the subject of her representation and action. An exemplary passage in section eighteen of the first part when Sethe tells Paul D. about her escape from slavery: I did it. I got us all out. Without Halle too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own. Each and every one of my babies and me too. I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did that. I had help, of course, lots of that, but still it was me doing it...Me using my own head (Morrison, 1987, p. 162) This passage indicates the victorious struggle of the black woman (Sethe) against the hierarchical system that oppressed her because of race and gender. Indeed, Beloved points out the difference as Morrison brings to light the experiences of African American women. The novel, therefore, challenges unique definitions of a woman in classical feminism based solely on gender. Moreover, it mutually interrogates gender, race, and class issues that have created slavery and marginalized Sethe, Baby Suggs, Denver and Beloved herself, among others. The character Beloved almost kills her mother, Sethe. Beloved's presence seizes Sethe's mind and almost destroys the woman's body. But Beloved is not to be viewed only as of the embodiment of grief and pain. She is not just a ghost. She is not just a dead stranger. Beloved is a trope of love, and as that figure, she possesses a love which is good, bad, and at times, even indifferent. Her love is a naked one— one which eventually leads her to beckon Paul D to "touch" her on "the inside part" of her and call her Beloved (Morrison, 1987, p. 117). Because she loves her mother only and wants no one to come between the two of them again, Beloved seduces the man Sethe has grown to love in order to ruin that supportive love and foster the destructive choking one which she has for Sethe (Morrison, 1987, p. 104) Also, the phrase “I had help, of course, lots of that” points out that Sete's struggle is not just hers only. In other words, Sethe's self-fulfilment depends as much on her efforts as on those of his family and his community (Morrison, 1987, p. 99). For example, a white girl helps Sethe stay alive and deliver Denver en route to Cincinnati, Ohio. Paul D and Sethe also help each other come to terms with their memories of a life of servitude and still have hope for a future. As the narrator reflects when Sethe is walking in the clearing with Paul D: Her story was bearable because it was his as well-- to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other--the things neither had word-shapes for--well, it would come in time: where they led him off to sucking iron; the perfect death of her crawling-already? baby. (p. 99). According to this passage, Sethe and Paul D share similar sufferings of a life in chains. Their Memories had no ‘word forms’ because such sufferings were too painful to talk. Yet these characters struggle to talk about their experiences through the collective memory of slavery. Indeed, all the characters participate in constructing the story of the other and the great story of slavery in stem from personal and collective memories. As Morrison (1987) states: When they [characters] do say it [their story], and hear it, and look at it, and share it, they are not only one, they’re two, and three, and four, you know? The collective sharing of the information heals the individual—and the collective (Morrison, 1987, p. 5). Each character has its own story to tell; they confront and renew each other through their narratives. Sethe has a lot to share with Paul D, most notably the pain of having to kill his son, “the perfect death of him crawling—already? Baby”. The word “perfect” suggests Sethe’s conscious willingness to save her daughter from a life of humiliation. For his part, Paul D must also share with Sethe the memories of the pieces of iron in his mouth and his struggle to heal the humiliation he felt in slavery. As the narrator comments, “Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. He [Paul D] wants to put his story next to hers” (Morrison, 1987, p. 273). These sentences imply that there is still hope for Paul D and Sethe to build a life together. In the novel, love is as much an aspect of the death process as it is of human living. Love comes from the heart of Sethe and the stranger Amy Denver as the child, Denver, inhales her first breath outside of her mother's womb (Morrison, 1987, p. 84). Yet, love clearly loses its intensity and vibrancy as the elder Baby Suggs, holy, exhales her last breath "twenty-eight days after her daughter-in-law [Sethe] arrived" (Morrison, 1987, p. 89). Exemplifying both the constructive and destructive powers of love is the character Beloved, as she appears in the form of a young woman whose voice is as raspy and deep as the death rattle of an aged and dying woman. Morrison writes In a responsive voice which answers the collective call of her readership. Her voice sounds simple, yet It answers polyvocal. Like the voices of the women of Sethe's community and like the voices of the worshippers in Baby Sugg's clearing, Morrison's literary yet familiar voice builds upon the black lore, black music, black language, and all the myths and rituals of black culture until it breaks over readers causing them to "tremble like the baptized in its wash" (Morrison, 1987, p. 261). In the novel, Sethe's fear was always that Beloved would leave her. Yet, at the end, which may indeed mark another beginning, Beloved is again the abandoned one. Though the following scene has already been cited for its depiction of the power of community cohesion, it is worthy of a second citation to show Morrison's presentation of Beloved's loneliness and defeated stance before the community of black people working together to protect the white man. Therefore, Standing alone on the porch, Beloved is smiling. But now her hand is empty. Sethe is running away from her, running, and she, [Beloved] feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now [Sethe] is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Alone. Again. Then Denver, running too. Away from her to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling. And above them all, rising from his place with a whip in his hand, the man without skin, looking. He is looking at [Beloved]. (Morrison, 1987, p. 262) The potential of defeat may be as frightening and disheartening as the actual experience of defeat. Sethe's attempt to murder the white man is her attempt to defeat him before he can again defeat her. In her mind's eye and, possibly, in Beloved's as well, white men are indicative of black feminine oppression, loss and grief. For Sethe, the death of the perceived antagonist or of the potential victim is the only means to prevent defeat. Perhaps she sees the possibility of eternal freedom and self-dominion in death that cannot be guaranteed in life. Or maybe Sethe is Morrison's fictional and female equivalent to Nat Turner, one black martyr who led insurrections in which whites were killed in order to secure black freedom. Ironically, in the real-life chronicles of black slave insurrections and as well as in this fictional episode, the white male remains in the centre of power, willing his whip over both free and enslaved blacks. Moreover, at the base of the infrastructure are black people wrestling with each other. Some wrestle to execute change, while others wrestle to maintain the status quo. This scene further illustrates the polarized approaches various black rights organizations within the United States have taken historically. Some groups elected to acquire black rights, or civil rights as they have been termed, through passive resistance and non-violent protests, while other groups elected violent revolutionary approaches. However, Morrison seems to believe that in order to promote a more vibrant or at least fairer quality of life for black people, these people of colour, whether they be continental Africans or African Americans, must have ‘shared recognition’ of their contributions and needs in the world. In Beloved. Morrison particularly examines black women in the community. While black women have individual autonomy to act and speak, their actions and voices often reflect the ‘continuum of struggle’ of all black women of all black people. It is within this group dynamic that many African-American women writers find themselves part. In the last pages of Beloved, thirty women, who had shunned Sethe from their company on account of her infanticide, decide to take action and help Sethe exorcize the haunting memories of her past. As the narrator describes, “Sethe is running away from her [Beloved], running. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind” (p. 262). Bringing together Sethe and the female community, Morrison rejects both the modernist alienation of the self and the radical postmodern fragmentation of the subject. But in Beloved, Morrison explores how the individual relates to other-selves (the collective) and yet retains its individuality. The postmodern feminist reconstruction of the human subject based on individual and collective experiences is hardly articulated in texts like Pynchon’s V (1963) or Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse (1968). These texts carry the modernist sense of alienation as they project the subject into an apocalyptic nihilism of an infinitely degenerate mirror game. The black women of Sethe's community march on 124 Bluestone Road and prevent her from killing the white man; these women's intentions are to preserve a fellow black woman's image and freedom. Yet, in the process of saving her, the black women prevent Sethe from acting autonomously against what she perceives as the white oppressor. While Sethe's attempted homicidal action is ‘fraught with danger’ and is most likely to lead to Sethe's own execution, her action is one of ‘self-revelation’, one which she mentally derived and one for which she is apparently willing to face the consequences. Sethe's predicament is indicative of the emotional turmoil that black women writers have faced. That turmoil comes from her apprehension that if she listens to her inner voice and speaks it, she faces potential disapproval from black men, other black women, and whites. While Sethe is being wrestled to the ground, Beloved goes away (Morrison, 1987, p. 262). Though Beloved appeared big with a child (Paul D's perhaps) prior to her leaving, readers do not witness the birth of another generation. Having lived without the guidance of her mother, Beloved's ability to parent is nonexistent. Because of slavery. Beloved and Sethe never had the freedom to express the love between a child and mother. The two never had the ‘freedom’ to feel or fulfil that ‘desire’. Though Beloved's pregnancy occurs outside of the given text, readers may expect, from the previous development of the character in the novel, that Beloved's child may die in utero. Though the outside of her looks grown and healthy, the inside of Beloved's body, which includes her memory and heart, is unbalanced, unhealthy and "full of a baby's venom" (Morrison, 1987, p. 3). Beloved's sadness is in the same place where Sethe's sadness is— "at the centre, the desolate centre" (Morrison, 1987, p. 140). But if the child had emerged from Beloved's womb, surely Morrison would have given her a simple yet meaningful name so that she might be mourned and the grief passed on. Morrison's rhetoric requires us to ask, who is guilty for the sacrifice of the "crawling already?" baby's life. Is Sethe the sole perpetrator of the crime?; can we honestly place all the blame on the system of slavery?; or do we fault Sethe— an oppressed black woman and desperate mother— alone?; is infanticide the only crime committed?; and are we qualified to choose the culprit of this heinous crime? Morrison requires that we choose so as not to ‘pass this on.’ We are to read and understand so that we ensure this is never repeated. Beloved provides a nest of latent sexist and racist offences that accompany the theme of choice versus no choice. Often the black female characters are defeated before they ever try, or resistance meets them with each choice they make. In short, black women are left with few choices. Not until the final episode is the answer given to what black women must do to have a choice. Ella and the community of black women who gather in Sethe's defence exercise a choice that unites them. The two factors that have separated them for eighteen years become the elements that pull them together— their femaleness and their blackness. This chapter examined how Toni Morrison appears in his novels, most notably Beloved, and critically experiments with postmodern formal methods to focus on the cultural diversity of African Americans. I examined how Beloved shares the postmodern devices of narrative fragmentation, the multiplication of narrative instances and the request for a participatory reading. I also discussed how the novel overcomes the weaknesses of postmodern and feminist literary practices. For example, Morrison rejects the implicit macho bias of postmodernism in allowing women of colour to express their diverse experiences and control their narratives. She also challenges classic feminism’s universal definitions of female identity, which typically emphasize the needs and preferences of white, heterosexual, and middle-class women. Morrison also reconstructs the conception of the human subject—both separate and part of a collective. Thus, it denies modernist alienation of the self and the radical postmodern fragmentation of the subject. In other words, in Beloved, Morrison resists the complete dissolution of the human subject when she affirms the possibility of a relationship between the individual and the collective. In the next chapter, I will focus on the works of Alice Walker, in particular on her fourth novel, The Temple of My Familiar (1989). I will analyze how Walker’s novel integrates postmodern features more fully than Toni Morrison’s Beloved. We will see how The Temple of My Familiar is a collage of multiple stories/themes involving multiple narrative characters that go back and forth in time—the beginnings of humanity and the present—and space—North America, South America, England— and Africa. Furthermore, I will examine how Walker also removes the limitations of feminist and postmodern critical theories.  CHAPTER THREE ALICE WALKER’S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR The Temple of My Familiar (1989) is perhaps Alice Walker's most ambitious novel. I argue that this is primarily due to Walker mixing the formal methods and themes derived from contemporary postmodernist and feminist critical models. Walker tells 500,000 years of human history, from prehistoric times to today. However, she rejects the traditional linear storyline with initiation, climax, and resolution. She offers a profusion of fragmentary and discontinuous observations on diverse and controversial topics such as ecology, sexuality, homosexuality, racism, and human and animal rights. As Ursula K. Le Guin (1987) wrote in the San Francisco Review of Books: As I read The Temple of My Familiar, the kalei doscope of people and relationships occasionally daunted and confused me. It isn't a novel of observation or of meditation, it's a story of transformation, and the essence of transformation is that it goes on. It's not a matter of "conflict" and "resolution" as in the laboratory-novel, but of urging, asserting, and recording change (p. 12). Le Guin implies that The Temple of My Familiar is not a "laboratory" or realistic novel that reflects the author's control over plot and resolution. Instead, Walker's novel eschews the novelistic conventions of chronology, unity, closure and favouring postmodern textual strategies such as multiple, fragmentary stories, narrative voices and abrupt shifts between past and present. But many critics could not positively acknowledge Alice Walker's thematic and (especially) narrative innovations in the novel. Indeed, many critics have accused Walker of technical incompetence. For example, David Nicholson (1989) states that The Temple of My Familiar lacks the gripping storyline and characters typically found in great literature. Nicholson writes: The Temple of My Familiar has no plot in the conventional sense of the word, only a series of strung-together stories in which things happen without rhyme or reason. There are no characters, only types representative of the world Walker lives in or wishes could be (p. 3). Nicholson largely rejects Walker's novel for its fragmented narrative structure and variety of characters and situations. David Gates writes in Newsweek; he also shares Nicholson's opinion on The Temple of My Familiar that "there are lots of stories but no story" in The Temple of My Familiar (Nicholson, 1989, p. 74). J.O. Tate in Smily Face With Dreadlocks (1987) states more aggressively affirm that Walker cannot write. According to Tate, The Temple of My Familiar has many technical problems, especially its disjointed voices. He points out that "A larger, fatal failure of articulation extends to the heart of the book, its voices. These voices are not connected or supported by the requisite authorial force" (p. 50). Pointing out all of these criticisms is a general expectation of a traditional storytelling model. In other words, for Nicholson, Gates, and Tate, the novel is a failure because it rejects a realistic plot (with central conflict and resolution) narrated by an authoritative narrative voice in favour of the multiple conflicts/stories and voices postmodern writing. However, this chapter asserts that The Temple of My Familiar requires a different reading than those proposed by David Nicholson, David Gates, and J. O. Tate. I argue that Walker's novel is best read within a postmodern feminist framework. For example, I discuss Walker's experiments with narrative fragmentation, participatory reading, and multiple themes and subjects conveyed through dozens of characters. Moreover, it also presents a whirlwind of times and places that reflect a postmodern concept of reality as diverse and plural. For Walker, the reality is not fixed and immutable but the construction of multiple perceptions and meanings. In fact, in an interview with Claudia Tate (1983), Walker states that writing “is about expanding myself as much as I can and seeing myself in as many roles and situations as possible. Writing permits me to be more than I am. Writing permits me to experience life as many strange creations” (p. 185). According to Walker, her narratives, most notably The Temple of My Familiar, allow her to explore human history from multiple and different perspectives. One need only recall Walker's "strange creations" in the novel, especially Lissie, who describes herself as a black woman, a white woman and a white man, to capture the author's view of reality as heterogeneous and plural. In addition to integrating postmodern narrative techniques, I argue that in The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker overcomes many limitations of both postmodernist and feminist critical models. For example, I examine how Walker rejects the androcentrism embodied in traditional modernist and postmodern practices by focusing primarily on the woman's side, the story of the (black) woman. Walker also subverts traditional social polarities—between female and male, black and white, and so on—favouring a non-hierarchical view of human diversity. Significantly, we will see that this conception is linked to Walker's dual view of the human subject as separate and part of a collective in the novel. Although The Temple of My Familiar is my main focus here, I begin my investigation with Alice Walker's early novels The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976) and The Color Purple (1982). I would like to show how Walker gradually experimented with postmodern feminist traits in her early novels. I argue that Meridian and The Color Purple are already turning their backs on more realistic/naturalistic conventions of her first novel. For example, we will see that these novels challenge the concepts of narrative linearity and closure, social hierarchy, and literary authority still associated with The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Instead, I analyse how Walker's second and third novels use textual strategies that resonate with postmodern discursive. 3.1 Early Work of Alice Walker in the Context of Postmodernism and Feminism Grange Copeland's The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) is a very realistic novel,” says Alice Walker in one of her interviews (Tate & Tate, p. 12). Indeed, Walker's first novel features an orderly plot (beginning, climax, and resolution) narrated by an authoritative third-person narrator. It chronicles three generations of a black sharecropping family in Georgia and Copelands—from the 1920s to the height of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s (marked by the systematic registration of black voters, freedom marches, and early struggles in favour of the school integration). The book is divided into eleven parts that focus on the disparaged lives of the Copelands, except for the revival of Grange Copeland, who dies shortly after taking care of her granddaughter Ruth. Within these two larger parts, the omniscient narrator authoritatively describes the impact of poverty and racism on Copeland's life. For example, in the first few pages, Grange (1970) tells her family: "We ought to be thankful we got a roof over our heads and three meals a day" (p. 6). Grange's words are followed by an explanatory note from Walker's narrator, who states that “it was more like one meal a day" (p. 6). The word "truly" suggests the narrator's readiness to provide readers with unambiguous truth, rather than allowing them to interpret the Copelands' poor living conditions and draw their conclusions. In addition to its conventional narrative structure, The Third Life of Grange Copeland tells largely dominant themes of realistic and naturalistic fiction, particularly blacks' material and cultural oppression. More specifically, Walker's novel focuses on the emasculation of black men by white men and the physical and mental victimisation of black women in the context of racism. These themes can be exemplified by the troubled relationships between Grange Copeland and his wife, Margaret, and (in particular) between Grange’s sun, Brownfield's, Copeland, and his wife, Mem.For example, after a concise and happy married life, Mem becomes a victim of Brownfield's frequent physical and psychological cruelties. According to the narrator, these atrocities stem mainly from Brownfield's deep self-respect, fostered by a dominant white slave society: His crushed pride, his battered ego, made him drag Mem away from school teaching. It was his great ignorance that sent her into white homes as a domestic, his need to bring her down to his level! It was his rage at himself, and his life and his world that made him beat her (Walker, 1970, p. 79) Feeling unable to pay his debts and save his children from the white man's plantation, Brownfield begins to humiliate and beat his wife, Mem, who is more educated and sensitive. Eventually, Mem decides to fight back and thus take control of her life and children. But Mem's fight soon ends when her drunk husband kills her. In his later novels, Walker replaces the theme of female victimisation with the theme of female resistance and survival. Walker's second novel, Meridian, essentially replaces many of the novelistic conventions of The Third Life of Grange Copeland with postmodern feminist assumptions about formal methods (e.g., narrative fragmentation and multiplication of stories) and human diversity—notably, the diversity of African American women. Meridian covers 25 years of black history in the south, between the height of the civil rights movement and its aftermath. However, Walker rejects the chronology and linearity of his first novel in favour of postmodern narratives' fragmented and discontinuous strategies. For illustrative purposes, Meridian is divided into three parts: the first part, titled Meridian, covers just over half of the narrative. Parts two and three, titled Truman Held and Ending, cover the other half. Each part is, in turn, divided into different non-chronological sections that intertwine historical and imaginary lives and past and present things. This new narrative structure explains the novel's fluidity of meaning. Meridian focuses primarily on the title character's painful quest to assert her humanity (both black and female) and that of all of her people. Meridian Hill must overcome her personal feelings of guilt and inadequacy as she battles the social hierarchies that have marginalised blacks, especially black women. Meridian gives up her only child away for adoption to go to college. Meridian feels inadequate towards her ancestors, especially her mother, in the process. As the narrator says, “it seemed to Meridian that her legacy from her mother's endurance, her unerring knowledge of rightness and her pursuit of it through all distractions, was one she would never be able to match (Walker, 1976, p. 124). Meridian's mother, Mrs Hill, and her grandmother's and great-grandmother's generation insisted on taking the children, the family, and the career to a point far beyond Meridian's left. These women had to endure all kinds of self-sacrifice to keep their families together (122-3). However, Walker affirms Meridian's sense of loss and Meridian's sense of gain in Meridian. If, on the one hand, Meridian does not live up to the ideals of her black female heritage, particularly those of motherhood and nurturing, on the other hand, the 1960s, the years of the civil rights movement and the feminism allow Meridian to wake up as black and female. And as Meridian becomes self-aware, she begins to fight for freedom of choice and equal rights for black people. I will return to this point shortly. Alongside the main character's fight for freedom and equality, Alice Walker explores other stories in Meridian. Walker rejects the clear plot of realistic novels as she interweaves Meridian's story with narrative fragments about various fictional characters and historical incidents relevant to the civil rights movement, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. In this way, Ella Walker conveys ways that individual experiences can shape and be shaped by a collective story. As Barbara Christian (1976) correctly points out: “In this story so like a guilt of complex and multiple pieces, Walker gives a vibrant and connected personal and collective history rather than a generalised and sterilised account of the sixties” (Walker, 1976, p. 205). One could easily associate the image of Christian's quilt with the postmodern trait of pastiche or collage. When she talks about her novel in Black Women Writers at Work (1983), Walker also notes that "in some ways, Meridian is like a collage" (p. 178). A collage of different stories, the novel challenges many contradictions within the civil rights movement, particularly the complex gender, interracial, and interracial relations that stand in the way of that movement's achievements. The second part, for example, focuses primarily on middle-class black civil rights leader Truman Held and his troubled relationships with his black mistress, Meridian, and his white wife, Lynne. Truman defends the ideals of revolution and equality. And yet, he can't treat either of them the same. He leaves Meridian with her baby and marries Lynne to despise her later. However, Meridian teaches Truman that "revolutions would not begin with an act of murder but with teaching" (Morrison, 1987, p. 188). In Part Three, beginning in 1968 after the civil rights movement, Meridian acknowledges that violent revolution and hatred will not foster social change for blacks and the poor. As an intellectual and political activist, she understands that individual aspirations for freedom and improvement can only be achieved through the collective activity of groups. Meridian then decides to get involved in her community by teaching uneducated black southerners like Johnny or Miss Margaret Treasure to achieve political and social equality through voting instead of bloody action. More importantly, Meridian teaches Truman the possibility of love and forgiveness between people. As she writes at the end of the novel: i want to put an end to guilt i want to put an end to shame whatever you have done my sister (my brother) know i wish to forgive you love you (Walker, 1976, p. 213) In this poem, the lowercase "i" suggests the primacy of the other over the superiority of the individual. Ultimately, Meridian affirms the possibility of love and commitment between men and women—"my brother," "my sister"—between the individual and the other (the collective) while breaking down old hierarchies that have kept them apart. Such a possibility is rarely expressed in mainstream modernism and postmodernism fiction, which heavily emphasise separation and alienation. Although Meridian's narrative structure and thematisation already mark a departure from realist and modernist models, Alice Walker does not rid her second novel of an authoritative narrative voice. I argue that an omniscient and accommodating third-person narrator still intervenes in the narration process when he interprets the characters' minds for the readers. There are several passages in which we intuit the presence of an external narrator. For example, in a segment called The New York Times, Meridian talks to Truman about the reasons for their failed love affair: “Oh no, Meridian said pleasantly. You wanted a virgin, don't you remember? (He could remember nothing of the kind)" (Walker, 1976, p. 141). The bracketed phrase "We will see that in Walker's later novels, most notably The Temple of My Familiar, the narrator controls the speechless and less, allowing the characters to express their many fragmented stories and the readers to reach their uncertain interpretations. The intersection of postmodern feminist traits is more pronounced in Walker's third novel, The Color Purple than in Meridian. There are at least three characteristics to consider here. First, Walker rewrites the traditions of epistolary and sentimental novels to merge the two in The Color Purple. Walker appropriates the epistolary form to transform a traditionally Western and Eurocentric (masculine) genre by focusing on the theme and language of the black woman. As a classical genre, the correspondence typically focuses on female figures whose images and male authors primarily control narratives (e.g., Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela). Instead, Walker allows his black protagonist, Celie, to gain control of her narrative as she expresses her version of the story through her letters, first to God and then to her sister, Nettie. Celie's letters eventually replace a story that focuses on external racial conflict by inscribing black women's silenced and oppressed voices like Mem and Margaret from Walker's previous novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland. In short, the novel spans thirty years of the life of Celie, a poor southern black woman who was physically and emotionally abused by both her stepfather and her husband, Albert, whom she calls Mr. . As a teenager, Celie is repeatedly raped by her stepfather, whom she believes to be her biological father. Celie gives birth to two children, and her stepfather gives them away. He then orders Celie not to tell anyone but God: "You better not never tell nobody but God" (Walker, 1982, p. 1). Celie chooses to write instead of talking to God. By writing down her thoughts, Celie violates her stepfather's order. In other words, Celie's letters make both her sister, Nettie and readers aware of her enduring pain and struggle with victimisation. More importantly, Celie becomes an example of woman empowerment as she changes her experience from a chattel, a victim, to an independent and creative woman at the end of the novel. In addition to appropriating and modifying the epistolary form, Alice Walker reviews some codes of the sentimental novel. In The Color Purple: Revisions and Redefinitions (1985), Mae G. Henderson shares a similar point of view. Henderson writes: " In adopting the epistolary form, the vehicle for the eighteenth-century novel of sentiment, Walker draws on certain codes and conventions of the genre, but revises them in such a way as to turn the sentimental novel on its head" (p. 68). Many of America's sentimental novels of the late 18th and 19th centuries were written by women who adopted the letter form as it offered ample opportunities for sentimental and didactic attraction. Also, among the favourite themes of these novels were (1) the evidence of a charming and helpless girl who usually died heartbroken or destitute (e.g., Mrs Sarah Wentworth Morton's The Power of Sympathy (1789) and The Hapless Orphan, or Innocent Victim of Revenge (1793), of an American lady; (2) the miseries of a loveless marriage between a gifted heroine and a vicious husband (e.g., Mrs Susanna Haswell Rowson's Charlotte Temple, A Tale of Truth (1794); and (3) heroin's self-sacrifice for the happiness of others (e.g., Mrs E. D. E. N. Southworth's The Deserted Wife (1855) and Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Minister's Wooing (1886). On the contrary, The Color Purple represents a radical departure from those sentimental novels. Walker shuns the didactic morality of the first American sentimental novelists. It is particularly evident in Celie's account of the sexual episodes in her life. For example, the graphical depiction of Celie's rape by her stepfather forces the reader to face the horror of child abuse. The rawness of language and the appropriation of pornography in some passages, both avoided by traditional sentiment authors—demystify rape which is seen as a tool of oppression. However, Walker allows Celie to challenge oppressive forces and transform her life as the narrative progresses. When Celie becomes self-aware, she replies to her husband, Mr., who treats her like a mule instead of a woman: " I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook. But I'm here" (Walker, 1982, p. 214). Achieving self-awareness ("I am a here”) is the first step for Celie to become a subject. A second postmodern feminist feature is related to the narrative voices in The Color Purple. The influential third-person narrator of Walker's early novels settles down as first-person narrator Celie takes control of her narrative. Alice Walker not only lends voice and action to Celie but also to other female characters: Celie's husband's lover, Shug Avery, her stepson's (Harpo's) wife, Sofia, and her sister Nettie, whose letters comprise the other half of the novel. Celie's transformation depends on Celie and Shug, Sofia, and Nettie in the novel. Despite their differences, these women express a collective history of oppression and help each other fight sexual and racial subjugation. For example, Sofia despises any rigid definition of female identity and would instead fix the leaking in the roof than fix the dinner. Celie becomes the first model of resistance to male dominance. As Sofia says to Celie: “All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. I loves Harpo. God knows I do. But I'll kill him before I let him beat me” (Walker, 1982, p. 42). A more important model than Sofia—Shug functions as a vehicle through which Celie becomes aware of and empowers to fight the conditions that oppress her. Shug embodies feminist freedom and is an adventurous blues singer who enjoys sexual freedom generally restricted to men. Shug has an effective impact on Celie's character and transformation. For example, Shug makes Celie awaken her body and sexuality. It is heavily implied in the scene where Shug gives Celie a mirror so she can look at herself. Celie recognises the beauty of her body, a "wet rose" ignored by both her stepfather and husband Albert, and gains a sense of self-worth and autonomy. Significantly, the relationship between Shug and Celie, with her love and caring, reflects a relevant aspect of Alice Walker's "womanist" ideology. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Walker defines a woman as “a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexual. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. She was committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female” (Walker, 1982, p. 11). Indeed, Walker's womanist ideology has many affinities with the postmodern feminist aesthetic. Both are neither separatist nor hierarchical in terms of women's culture and strength, without necessarily creating new hierarchies or reversing the position of women as subordinates (margin) to dominant (centre). Shug also helps Celie recover Nettie's letters that Albert hides. Nettie's letters, interpolated with Celie's in The Color Purple, also become a tool for Celie's liberation, forcing her to re-evaluate her worldview. Nettie's letters differ from Celie's in both subject matter and language. Celie's letters are personal and intimate, focusing on her African American experiences. Additionally, Walker allows Celie to tell her story in Black jargon to authenticate Celie's cultural and social status, for example, in Celie's portrayal of her sexuality. On the contrary, Nettie's letters are more formal and didactic than Celie's, sometimes almost documentary in character: “It was the funniest thing to stop over in Monrovia, after my first glimpse of Africa, which was Senegal. The capital of Senegal is Dakar, and the people speak their own language, Senegalese I guess they would call it, and French" (Walker, 1982, p. 147). More closely related to my current focus. However, Nettie's letters have a strong affinity with Celie's letters, emphasising the oppression of (black) women in the African and American continents. For example, Nettie explores various African rituals, including clitoridectomy, a subject covered by Alice Walker in her latest novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992). Nettie also addresses the submissive conditions in which African women live: Many of the women rarely spend time with their husbands. Some of them were promised to old or middle-aged men at birth. Their lives always center around work and their children and other women…among the Olinka, the husband has life and death power over the wife (Walker, 1992, p. 172). Describing the gendered oppression of African women, Nettie places Celie's situation in a larger picture. The two series of letters eventually intersect to underscore the history of the universal oppression of black women. More importantly, they inscribe a feminist (postmodern) mode of consciousness that forces the reader to view female oppression from the point of view of the oppressed rather than the oppressor. One last postmodern feminist feature in The Color Purple is related to how Alice Walker rejects the traditional polarities between men and women. Although the history of black women is central to the novel, Walker replaces classical feminism's monolithic definitions of woman and man with a postmodern feminist conception of masculinity and femininity. This conception is based on equal conditions between men and women and cooperation between the individual and the other (the collective). For example, Walker subverts traditionally delimited gender roles when Shug, not Albert, introduces Celie to lovemaking secrets. Walker also challenges old divisions of labour. It is evident when Celie becomes the owner of a trouser factory, and Albert changes her initial hostility and even helps her sew in the final pages: "Now we sit and sew and talk and smoke a pipe" (Walker, 1982, p. 279). By subverting the traditional masculine and feminine representation systems, Walker finally asserts the possibility of a relationship between the individual (Celie) and the other (Albert, Shug), poorly articulated in conventional literature. In The Temple of My Familiar, we will see that Walker explores even more deeply the problematic relations between women and men, humans and animals in the historical current at the same time that she seeks to recover a sense of community life. 3.2 The Temple of My Familiar (1989) It is difficult to summarise the plot of The Temple of My Familiar (1989) because the novel follows a typical postmodernist structural principle. The novel consists of multiple narrative fragments, characters, narrative instances, and rapid changes from third to first-person narration and temporal overlaps and spatial frames. It proceeds back and forth from the beginnings of womenkind to the late 1980s. In addition, thousands of years of human evolution push the geographical limits of her fiction. She put the numerous stories on the continents South America, North America, Europe (England), and Africa. The readers travel from one place to another from time to time, from one continent to another, as various narrators unfold diverse stories and dream memories. The Temple of My Familiar is divided into six parts and a variable number of untitled sections. The focus is on three pairs of characters. Two couples live in Northern California; Suwelo and Fanny Nzingha and Arveyda and Carlotta are of mixed race and belong to the middle class. Suwelo, a history professor, and Fanny, an academic administrator, have divorced but continue to live together in San Francisco as they sort the tangled threads of their lives. Carlotta, a professor of women's studies, and her husband Arveyda, a famous rock star, lived in Oakland Hills before Arveyda decided to live with Carlotta's mother, Zede. The third couple is an elderly black couple living in Baltimore. When their friend Rafe dies, Mr Hal and Miss Lissie go down in history, and his nephew Suwelo comes to meet them. Suwelo learns from Hal and Lissie about the unconventional love bonds these two friends shared with her uncle Rafe. Young people's marriages are temporarily shattered as they embark on surprising paths of self-discovery. Fanny becomes a masseuse and eventually travels to Africa to find her half-sister Nzingha Anne and her father Ola, a mysterious figure who turns out to be a controversial playwright in the independent nation of Olinka. Arveyda leaves Carlotta and travels to South America with her mother, Zede, with whom she recently had a brief affair. Left alone, Suwelo and Carlotta pursue a turbulent relationship. However, Suwelo and Fanny and Arveyda and Carlotta change their life paths and mutual opinions after struggling and they become friends and confidants. They seem destined to share their lives with trust and affection, as the older folks in the book, Lissie, Rafe and Hal, did before them. However, Walker does not write directly about these incidents. Rather, they derive from various narrative fragments, which develop primarily as first-person conversations between the six main characters. For example, Fanny writes letters to Suwelo about her findings regarding her African ancestors. Arveyda tells Charlotte about her painful childhood. Carlotta turns to a therapist until Fanny becomes her friend and confidant. When Suwelo meets Mr Hal and Miss Lissie in Baltimore, she confides to these extraordinary elders about her troubled relationships with her parents and ex-wife, Fanny. Lissie tells Suwelo about her fantastic dream memories from numerous lifetimes. These fragmentary and discontinuous flows of conversation, storytelling and memory recreate the various combinations of ancestors and events at the forefront of contemporary African American life. Alice Walker combines the postmodern characteristics of narrative fragmentation and discontinuity with the postmodern operations of duplication and multiplication of narrative stories, characters and instances. These operations, in turn, require the participation of readers who must make connections between the different ancient and recent narratives in The Temple of My Familiar. As we will soon see, Walker's narrator uses the point of view of various characters while retaining the power to slide in and out without identifying her voice. The narrator gives the impression that readers participate in the narrative alongside the characters rather than read it. A perfect example of story multiplication occurs between sections seven and nine of the first part. Here, readers travel across three continents, encountering different situations with different characters and points of view. In section seven, Carlotta's mother Zede recalls her childhood in South America as a first-person narrator: “Of the way of my country you can have no comprehension, she said, especially as it was when I was a child. Everything was changing, it is true, but still many of the old ways were everywhere on view” (Walker, 1989, p. 45). Zede continues to tell the stories she heard from his mother about the existence of female priests and how the male community centred around women has changed for centuries: "The men both worshipped and feared the women "(Walker, 1989, p. 49) And then, one day, according to Zede, there was a rebellion, and the men decided that they could become priests. At the beginning of section eight, readers are suddenly transported from South America to today's the United States. This section begins with a conversation between two other characters, Miss Lissie and Suwelo, in Baltimore. This section opens with a conversation between two other characters, Miss Lissie and Suwelo, in Baltimore. It ends with one of Miss Lissie's memories of her childhood, most probably in South Carolina Island: Those first weeks and months, I slept as much as I could. And even as a big child, I would fall asleep. I kept falling asleep in Miss Beaumont's class, and one day the visiting health nurse noticed it. They then started to test the other children, and it was discovered that none of us had sufficient vitamin C, D, or A in our diets (Walker, 1989,p. 55) In this section, Lissie mainly talks about achieving good health. She also reveals the poor diet of black children who had never had fruit, leafy vegetables, and milk since the days of slavery. According to Lissie, all the fruits and vegetables produced on the island were sold to whites on the mainland. By bringing to light the poor diet of black children, which still threatens many black lives in the United States, Walker aims to transform an immutable situation. In her interview with Sharon Wilson, Walker states, " I think we were given art to heal ourselves, and by extension, to help other people heal themselves" (p. 322). For Walker, art is not just about entertainment but about making people change. A postmodern composite of narratives within a narrative, The Temple of My Familiar ultimately attempts to bridge the gap between the artistic and the ideological, literature and politics. In section nine, Lissie is still the narrator. However, this time she evokes one of her dreamlike memories that takes place in Africa during the slave trade. Lissie identifies with one of her African ancestors, who was sold as an enslaved person. She describes how she felt when her uncle, following the request of one of her wives, sold her and her family to slave traders: "By this time I had been stood up, bound, in front of my uncle, along with my sisters and brother. We did not attempt to bow to him. We were not crying, like our mother. We hated the man" (Walker, 1989, p. 62). Lissie then reminds the reader of the participation of blacks (like her uncle) in the slave trade, thus, undermining the myth of unblemished Africa. We will see that Lissie records other formative narratives of the (African) past as priceless archives of human suffering, hope, and action against oppression. In this section, Lissie also recounts that many men were sold as slaves because they carried on the ancient tradition of mother worship: " It was during the hundreds of years of the slave trade in Africa that this religion [she means Mother/Goddess worshipping] was finally destroyed" (Walker, 1989, p. 63). This fact marked the beginning of discrimination and oppression of women. As the previous three sections reveal, from South America, through the United States, to Africa, the novel reveals various seemingly unrelated stories to readers invited to make their attempts to connect. For example, we can draw a parallel between Zede's memories of women priests in South America and Lissie's memories of Mother worshipers in Africa. Despite their diverse backgrounds, Zede and Lissie share a common history of cultural and religious displacement of women, which is a focal point in the novel. Both are reminiscent of the ancient past when women possessed great power and were worshipped as goddesses. Significantly, Zede and especially Lissie voice stories of female empowerment. Walker aims to influence the younger generation's attitude towards traditional social hierarchies that have privileged the Eurocentric male-dominated culture over other modes of culture and beliefs such as Latin America and Africa. In addition to story multiplication, Walker also experiments with postmodern devices of character multiplication and narrative instances in The Temple of My Familiar. Character multiplication occurs when some characters are split into two or more actors in the novel. The best example is Walker's portrayal of Miss Lissie's countless lives from the prehistoric world where humans and animals lived in harmony in a matriarchal society to slavery and freedom in the United States. Like Jhon Maxwell Coetzee (1989), "less a character than a narrative device, Lissie enables Alice Walker to go back in time to the beginnings of (wo)man” (p. 7). For example, in section twelve of the first part, Lissie describes herself as a pygmy: "In my dream memory, we are tiny people, all of us, not just children, who are small" (Walker, 1989, p. 82). Lissie recalls the age of the pygmies when the tribe of men and women visited each other back and forth and with their cousins, the monkeys. Other examples are found throughout the narrative, particularly in sections four and five of part six. Lissie cites two other dream memories from her life as a white man and a lion: "Suwelo, in addition to being a man, and white, which I was many times after the time of which I just told you, I was also, at least once, myself a lion" (Walker, 1989, p. 366). Lissie is the most postmodern, multi-layered character in Walker’s entire fiction as she functions as a tapestry composed of multiple and shifting identities across the boundaries of time and space (and even human), as well as sexual and racial hierarchies. Yet Walker challenges the postmodern sense of radical decentralisation and the fragmentation of human subjectivity. Rather, Lissie means the possibility of personal freedom and human connection with the other (the collective). It is strongly implied in Lissie's recorded message to Suwelo in the final pages. She says: "It is against blockage between ourselves and others—those who are alive and dead—that we must work" (Walker, 1989, p. 355). According to Lissie, through the relationship with others, our ancestors and contemporaries, we can know ourselves in a new light with things past and present. Another more central postmodern feature in The Temple of My Familiar is the multiplication of narrative instances. The novel is told through numerous voices or points of view. Despite the presence of the third-person narrator, the various stories appear to have been focused, organised, and partially written by the various character narrators: Zede, Lissie, Hal, Fanny, Olivia, Suwelo, Ola, and Nzingha Anne, among others. Walker's narrator is inaudible in this role throughout the novel, appearing briefly to introduce the various characters, their stories and memories. For example, section six of the first part begins with Mr Hal's account of his relationship with Lissie: "Lissie and I courted from the time she was in long dresses, and I was in short pants" (Walker, 1989, p. 41). Except for a few introductory words from the first- person narrator, such as "Mr Hal said to Suwelo" (Walker, 1989, p. 41), the reader must rely on the reminiscences of Mr Hals. By allowing his characters, intradiegetic storytellers, to control their narratives. Walker challenges the traditional novel, which an extradiegetic (omniscient) narrator very often mediates. In other words, she relies less on more external ones like the narrator than the reader, who has to fill in the blanks of the various narratives. At several points in The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker forces the characters and the external reader to delve into the various narratives. Readers and characters who simultaneously tell their personal experiences and listen to each other's stories must gradually build the narrative. To illustrate, in section 9 of the first part, Lissie recounts one of her experiences on a slave ship crossing Africa to America. She interrupts her narrative and asks both Suwelo and the implied reader, "Don't you think I was there? I'm sorry for you." (Walker, 1989, p. 65). A few pages later, Lissie adds: “the slaves you have read and, alas, everything you have read, and more, is true” (Walker, 1989, p. 68). Using the pronoun" you ", Walker suggests that readers and characters (in this case, Suwelo): “You do not believe I was there? I pity you" (Walker, 1989, p. 65). A few pages later, Lissie adds: "Of the style of packing slaves, you've read, and unfortunately all that you have read, and more, is true" (Walker, 1989, p. 68). Ultimately, the reader must rely on her uncertain conclusions about Lissie's double portrayal as a real and surreal figure—namely as a free black woman currently alive and a slave who is already dead. In addition to the multiplication operations and the request for participatory reading, the postmodern duplication device dominates the narrative structure of The Temple of My Familiar. A form of duplication, the duplication by rewriting of other texts, occurs in different book sections. For example, the fifth part begins with a grotesque version of the Beatitudes, The Gospel according to Shug, a popular interpretation of the New Testament version. Walker challenges the sophisticated and impersonal language of the nine original Beatitudes to make them accessible to contemporary readers of any race, colour, social class or sexual preference. More importantly, she allows her female character Shug, a blues singer who had previously appeared in The Color Purple, to rewrite the sacred texts originally written by men. The Beatitudes of Shug are twenty-seven and begin with the word "Helped" instead of "Blessed". For example: "Helped are those born from love: conceived in their father's tenderness and their mother's orgasm, for they shall be those--numbers of whom will be called "illegitimate"—whose spirits shall know no boundaries" (Walker, 1989, p. 287). The notion of "mother’s orgasm" undermines the fidelity and submission of the mother underlined in the sacred text. Another example: "Helped are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars” (Walker, 1989, p. 289). This beatitude decisively overturns the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality. Another form of story duplication is how Walker rewrites and expands her narrative, most notably in The Color Purple. Perhaps the second part best reflects Walker's experimentation with the postmodern means of duplication that leads to intertextuality. This part is largely a sequel to Walker's third novel, as it reintroduces readers to the characters of Celie, Shug, and Olivia. For example, Olivia, who is also one of the many narrators of The Temple of My Familiar, adds a new dimension to the first part of the second part of The Color Purple by revealing more details about the personality of her mother and protagonist Celie: I was fascinated by her... By the way she invariably wore pants, even to church. But pants so subtle only other women noticed they were pants. By the way she spoke little, apparently out of a childhood and young-adult habit of silence, and how, when she did speak, there was a perkiness, a plainness, that was sometimes humorous but always compelling. She was a literal speaker (Walker, 1989, p. 145). As the passage above reveals, Walker writes beyond The Color Purple by having Olivia redefine the character of Celie as a "literal speaker". Significantly, Walker's redefinition of Celie implies the postmodern rejection of definitive endings. In this sense, The Temple of My Familiar is a profound critique of the closing conventions in classical realist and even modernist texts. As Walker expands The Color Purple's narrative into The Temple of My Familiar, Walker directs our attention to the writing process of this latest postmodern novel which is both a textbook and a textbook. In addition to duplicating the text, The Temple of My Familiar also duplicates the characters. At least two double pairs are Zede and Lissie and Fanny Nzingha and Nzingha Anne. As previously mentioned, Zede and Lissie duplicate each other in many ways. Zede is a Latin American refugee who escaped from a prison in South America to live in North America with her daughter Carlotta. Lissie has lived much of her life as an African slave. She also came to America as a slave and eventually became a free woman. As their names suggest, Fanny Nzingha and Nzingha Anne are also shotguns. They are of African descent and share the same father. Both women have common concerns as they seek self-fulfilment beyond marriage and children. Both turn to literature and art as vehicles of self-realisation. Fanny and Nzingha are also physically similar, as Fanny writes to Suwelo: "I felt I was looking into a mirror as an African American (in jeans and a loose blouse, sandals), and the mirror was reflecting only the African" (Walker, 1989, p. 253). As a literary representation of Walker’s view of history, The Temple of My Familiar is constructed as a series of stories told by men and women of different races and classes. Walker shows us not just one exemplary transformation (which might be misconstrued as being some kind of representation of the entire black race) but a plethora of transformations occurring for male and female characters, black, white and Latina characters from academia, pop/rock superstardom, the ultra-rich upper class, and the ultra-poor third world. Personal revolutions thus transcend gender, race, and class differences. Walker’s novel is like the The Temple of My Familiar itself, which is part bird, part reptile, part fish, yet one energetic being that represents the urge for freedom. Lissie describes to Suwelo a dream about her familiar, Mho skitters and rushes about While she tries to speak to some white visitors. She feels compelled to contain the familiar and continue her conversation, so she imprisons the familiar under a series of bowls and, against her better judgement, metal tubs: "1 understood quite well by now that all of this activity on the familiar’s part was about freedom" Walker, 1989, p. 117) But the familiar flies out of each trap and finally leaves her to remember "the beautiful little familiar, who was so cheerful and loyal to me, and who £ so thoughtlessly, out of pride and distraction, betrayed" (Walker, 1989, pp. 118-120). Fanny’s mother, Olivia, tells her, “Forgiveness is the true foundation of health and happiness just as it is for any lasting progress. Without forgiveness, there is no forgetfulness of evil" (Walker, 1989, p. 308). This advice resembles one of Shug’s postulates (which Olivia helped to write), “HELPED are those who forgive, their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new earth" (Walker, 1989, p. 289). But how to remember and to forget? Olivia’s philosophy urges Fanny to remember those who suffered and to forgive those who were tortured. Thus she will be blessed with the ability to forget the pain she has endured. This view stresses remembrance without guilt so that even the guilty parties may heal themselves. Olivia also reminds Fanny, "If you tear out the tongue of another, you have a tongue in your hand the rest of your life. You are responsible, therefore, for all that person might have said" (Walker, 1989, pp. 310-311). You would also be responsible for their liberation, and their liberation is more important than your ability to control them. When Master Saxon clipped Louvinie’s tongue out, he demonstrated his ownership of and domination over her. But the stories, people remember to focus on Louvinie’s verbal powers, not on Master Saxon’s control. Olivia stresses to Fanny that torturers "die utterly, leaving not one iota of inspiration, encouragement, or joy" (Walker, 1989, p. 310). One of the most important keys to remembrance and self-knowledge, for Walker, is the significance of one’s name. If, in The Color Purple, Walker emphasizes the importance of characters being able to name themselves, as Mary Agnes does when she finally demands respect from Harpo and her family, then in The Temple of My Familiar, Walker re-emphasizes this point and stresses the importance of characters recognizing and knowing the meaning or significance of their names. Suwelo and Arveyda, most importantly, do not fight oppression from other people; they fight their own self-inflicted illness and paranoia. The inner revolution that occurs when characters learn about their ancestors— and therefore, about themselves—frees them to be healthy and whole. According to Walker, the ancestors provide the clue to the meaning of your name, and by hearing their stories, you will learn the significance of your name and, therefore, yourself. Hearing the ancestors' stories requires patient 1istening. Many of Miss Lissie's stories contain spiritual information about past lives and the past history of humans and animals. Walker employs mystic, mythical trappings for Lissie’s story—tel1ing context such as characters ritualistically covering the television before beginning a story and delivering long stories without interruption from their audience: He was in the habit of covering the T.V. whenever it was off…That small ritual completed, a gesture that seemed unconsciously designed to close off completely an erroneous and trivial point of view, Mr. Hal settled back to take up his narrative where he had left off. For Suwelo’s talks with him and Miss Lissie were not conversations. They were more correctly perceived as deliveries (Walker, 1989, p. 96) These stories, which are more mythical or powerful than ordinary stories, allow characters to understand the transformations which need to take place in their lives in order for them to be healthy. Their revolution is thus inner and personal and, as Gil Scott-Heron would agree, cannot be televised. But you cannot tell your story without first knowing and understanding your name, and you cannot hear the stories of others without knowing their names. For instance, Suwelo bemoans the lack of names on the pictures in his great Uncle Rafe's house, "I wish there were names on the pictures around here though. The faces are so expressive. They all look like they're trying to speak, but without names, I can't seem to hear them" (Walker, 1989, p .38). When he learns the names of the people in the pictures, Suwelo understands the stories Hiss Lissie and Mr Hal have been telling him. And when he realizes the significance of his own name, he understands and tells his own story. Suwelo was named after his father, Louis, hut gave up Louis Jr. for a name of his own choosing. Although other characters associate his chosen name, Suwelo, with wholeness, he suffers from an emotional emptiness or incompleteness. Carlotta muses over the meaning of his name, "The rune for wholeness. But I don't think it applied to Suwelo—not, anyway, when I knew him" (Walker, 1989, p. 291). Suwelo’s father is not whole literally, for he has lost part of an arm "and all of his mind" in World War II (Walker, 1989, p. 402). Suwelo’s memories of his father are of a drunken, domineering man who drives too fast, thereby threatening the lives of his family. After Louis, Sr., crashes his car, killing himself and his wife, Suwelo tries to shut them both from his memory. When Suwelo finally allows himself to think about his parents, telling Carlotta their story, his mother and father walk through the door of his mind. Then his father appears whole—with both arms outstretched— and Suwelo can see how much he resembles his father. By acknowledging his parents’ story and their existence, Suwelo repairs a psychic part of himself, restoring his wholeness as well as, symbolically, his father’s. Miss Lissie had cautioned Suwelo: if our parents are not present in us, consciously present, there is much, very much about ourselves we can never know. It is as if our very flesh is blind and dumb and cannot truly feel itself. And, more important, the doors into the ancient past, the ancient self, the preancient current of life itself, remain closed (Walker, 1989, p. 353) And not until Suwelo allowed himself to consider his parents' story and thereby accept them can he -feel whole himself. Similarly, Arveyda needs to learn his mother's story to understand her and himself because his ignorance of his mother "caused him to stumble blindly in the world" (Walker, 1989, p. 389). He regains his health only after learning why she grew dissatisfied and seemingly gave up on life, "Arveyda holds the knowledge of his mother's dissatisfaction with her limited reality close to his heart; he is amazingly comforted by it" (Walker, 1989, p. 393). Arveyda does not learn that Katherine Degos was not his mother's given name until many years after her death. She had been named Georgia Smith originally but chose the name Katherine Oegos even though her family disapproved. "The damn thang doesn't fit for shit" (Walker, 1989, p. 391); she complained about her old name. The name, Katherine Degos, does seem more appropriate for this woman who looks more Latina than African, but not until Arveyda learns that she changed her name, why she changed her name? and the disapproval that she endures because she changed her name, does he begin to feel close to her. His Aunt Fryer's words, though uttered harshly, provide Arveyda with the narrative he seeks and the comfort he needs: "Even though 1 am a grown man…each of her words against my mother struck me like a blow as if I myself were still a child. But, oddly enough, as she raved, I felt closer and closer to my mother (Walker, 1989, p. 391). Arveyda needs to be healed, for his thoughts of his mother remind him of an old wound: “Katherine Degos wasn't even her real name! he says, still incredulous. There is residual pain around the old wound caused by her indifference to him as a child, some emotional awkwardness” (Walker, 1989, pp. 389-390). During a massage, Fanny's touch reveals his pain to him, and Arveyda tells Fanny that his mother "named me for a bar of soap from India that my father gave her—'Aryuveda,' which I think, means health" (Walker, 1989, p. 393). Arveyda is not certain if his name means health, but he can know the familial origin of his name, which commemorates a gift from his father to his mother. If speaking and storytelling lead to self-knowledge, health and wholeness, then silence leads to anger, bottled-up emotions, and ill-health. Lady Peacock writes in her diary about her friend, T., "eating, eating rather than talking if any subject arose at dinner that made him uncomfortable. There were many such subjects. In another few years, I thought, T. will be quite fat. The fat of silence" (Walker, 1989, p. 835). This aspect of the novel reiterated Meridian’s ordeal when she moved from strategic silences to raising her voice with her community or Celie's despair and confusion when she cannot tell anyone about the rapes she has endured. Walker suggests that bottled up anger can be released through speech or some other form of expression and that this angry silence can have potential good when it finally gets put to use. Noting the emotion in her sister’s voice, Fanny contemplates "the bottled-up, repressed anger of the African woman, silent for so long. She thought of this anger as an enormous storehouse of energy and wondered whether the women knew they owned it. Anger can also be a kind of wealth, she thought” (Walker, 1989, p. 266). But this emotion can be considered wealth only if there is the possibility of using the energy behind the anger. Unused anger can only destroy the person holding it in, the way T.’s anger will lead to his obesity or the way Celie’s anger led her to homicidal fantasies about her husband. Similarly, Carlotta’s grief over what she perceives as the loss of her husband leads to her emotional withdrawal from the world. She covers up her feelings of rejection by dressing up in three-inch heels and lots of make-up, refusing to let herself think about her situation. "It’s so hard to remember anything that happened," she says when she tries to recall that period of her life, "I just dressed myself up like a tart and trundled my tits on out there…'To market to market, to buy a fat pig,’ I used to hum under my breath, but I never bothered to think why" (Walker, 1989, p. 384). Suwelo, who has an affair with her at this time, feels she has no substance, although as her masseuse, Fanny knows differently! "She was small but as dense and as heavy as lead. I knew the body of the woman you said had no substance. Carlotta’s very substance was pain" (Walker, 1989, p. 320). Arveyda returns with the story of her mother, father and other ancestors’ lives: He sang of the people who came to this country long ago. He sang of the red parrot feathers in their ears. He sang of the coming of the enslavers and the cruel fate of the enslaved. He sang of two people who loved for a moment and one of them who died horribly with nothing to leave behind but his seed that became a child, and some red parrot-feather earrings and three insignificant stones (Walker, 1989, p. 125-126). The story he sings to her, not his physical return, brings Carlotta out of her withdrawal. Once she cares for the stones and red feather earrings her father left for her, Carlotta begins to dream of her ancestors. She loves the story about her mother’s mother, who sewed special feathered capes for the priests: “she had had a little chime outside the door of her hut. She would strike it and if the sound corresponded with the vibration of her soul…she would nod, once and begin to create" (Walker, 1989, p. 398). Carlotta uses the example of her grandmother’s life when she chooses the new career and creative lifestyle of a bell chimist. While some characters need to undergo personal transformation to heal inner wounds and regain their health, others need the transformation to better prepare themselves to fight outer oppressions. Fanny’s father, Ola, reminds her, "Talk is the key to liberation, one’s tongue the very machete of freedom" (Walker, 1989, p. 311). Just as talk earned Celie her liberation, the talk in Ola’s plays subverts the oppression of the government and works to liberate the people of his country. And the talk between Fanny and her African half-sister, Nzingha, will unite them to fight the sexist African government Nzingha lives under. Fanny Nzingha and her half-sister, Nzingha Anne, have been given the same name—that of an African warrior Queen who led her people against the colonization and slave trade of the Portuguese in the seventeenth century. Anne Nzingha; the ruler of Angola; who fought the Portuguese for forty years; the woman who refused the title Queen and required that her subjects call her “King”; the woman who…always dressed like a man and led her troops in battle. At once woman, man, king, queen, master strategist and fighter, daughter, mother, pagan and Catholic, supreme ruler and wily female (Walker, 1989, p. 63). This description of Anne Nzingha’s various roles resembles Lissie Lyles7 description of herself. Lissie sees herself as a multi-faceted goddess: "Hal loved me like a sister/mystic/ warrior/woman/mother…But that was only part of who 1 was. Rafe knowing me to contain everybody and everything, loved me wholeheartedly, as a goddess, which 1 was” (Walker, 1989, p. 371). But Nzingha is primarily a fighting name. Realizing the significance of their name, the sisters will work together to write and produce plays about their father’s life and struggle, thus continuing what seems an insurmountable struggle against the sexist and classist African government. "Two Nzinghas being better than one. She swears she expects to have to fight this government for forty years, just as our namesake fought the Portuguese" (Walker, 1989, p. 349). Carlotta’s mother, Zede, also fights outer oppression. After working for a corrupt asylum for the rich, and keeping silent about the administration’s abuses, Zede fights the conditions of her exploitation through her writing. Partly because her oppressors assume that she is illiterate, and they persist in giving her pet names such as Consuelo or Connie, Zede reestablishes her name by writing a letter that details the crimes of the asylum’s corrupt administrators: I myself wrote a letter telling her parents! their daughter’s fate. I did this partly because I grew to like Mary Ann, but also to rebel the gringos and assert who 1 was. That I could read and write . . . in striking a blow Ton her I liberated the one called Chaquita, Connie, and Consuelo in myself (Walker, 1989, p. 80-82) Writing confirms Zede’s identity, both for herself and to the outside world. It also turns out to be an effective weapon against the asylum, and a tool for Mary Ann’s salvation. Rescued by Zede’s letter, Mary Ann arranges her final disappearance Trom a life of riches Trom exploitation which she cannot tolerate. She also rescues Zede and her daughter, Carlotta Trom the asylum before staging her death. Once "reborn,” she gives herself a new name, Mary Jane Briden. She later becomes Ola’s bride, and by the end of the novel, her name change is complete as the African children she works with call her Miss B. Just as her name has been transformed completely, so has her life. Her first attempt to repudiate her rich girl status by becoming a hippie did nothing but irritate her parents. She remained a hippie with a large bank account. But her transformation from Mary Ann to Mary Jane, teacher of an art school for orphans in Africa does make a difference. And she chooses the snake, capable of shedding its skin, as her personal symbols I left the Recuerdo sinking decisively into oblivion^ like my old life, and went off in The Coming Age…a small turquoise snake embroidered on her sails. After years of barely conscious deliberation, this symbol had emerged as my personal emblem of spiritual expression (Walker, 1989, p. 207) Mary Jane's situation differs from the other characters in the novel as she only speaks to her relative briefly and must learn her great-aunt Eleanora's and her great-great-aunt Eleandra's story from Eleanora’s published books and the remaining sections of Eleandra's diary. She also learns about herself through the written words of her ancestors: "Eleanara, whose books, she hoped, would reveal to Mary Jane, as the diary of Eleandra, 'The Lady Peacock' had, in a major way revealed Mary Jane to herself" (Walker, 1989, p. 234). Mary Jane's ancestors give her examples of their extraordinary lives. They had both repudiated their family's wealth and worked in Africa as missionaries. After learning of her great-aunts' models, Mary Jane buys up enough art supplies to last her a year and takes off for Africa. Although Eleandra, The Lady Peacock, preserved her story in writing, and her diary was kept secure in an English library, her sherds eventually disappear as the paper they are written on decays. By the time Mary Jane comes looking for information about her great-great-aunt, the diary, which was very difficult to obtain in the first place, is so old that the pages crumple to dust in her hands. "Here, there was the most maddening evidence of the work of tiny, tiny teeth. Moths had chewed away the rest of the pages; indeed, the rest of the diary now began to fill the air around Mary Jane’s chair in the form of a cloud of dust" (Walker, 1989, p. 33). Likewise, Suwelo reads a letter from Miss Lissie where she has written down a story of a past life that was too painful to speak aloud. But she has written it in invisible ink that can only be read by candlelight, and the heat of the candle causes the ink to evaporate completely after it has been revealed (Walker, 1989, p. 198). Walker reminds us that words written down are not necessarily words preserved. These words, imprisoned in a library where no one reads them, or purposely written in disappearing ink, deteriorate, and their message does not get passed on to other generations unless someone like Mary Jane or Suwelo makes an effort to read them. Notably, the word "mirror" is prevalent in postmodern texts, such as John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse (1969) and Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night (1979). However, while the mirror suggests a radical alienation and fragmentation of human subjectivity in these texts, Walker's novel indicates the connection between Fanny and Nzingha. We will shortly see that The Temple of My Familiar examines doppelgangers Zede, Lissie, Fanny, and Nzingha to suggest a collective story of women's struggle against oppression. The shared life of these women ultimately gives way to Walker's postmodern feminist conception of the human subject as a distinct individual and part of a collective. Experimentation with the aforementioned postmodern narrative features is further complicated by a combination of contemporary feminist principles in The Temple of My Familiar, particularly the awareness of plural and diverse female identities. Significantly, Walker challenges classical feminism's universal notions of female identity, which primarily reflect the needs and experiences of middle-class white women. Rather, Walker allows African, African American, and Latin women to express their cultural specificity and heterogeneity in the novel. For example, in the first pages, the reader learns something about an essential tradition in South America, namely the making of cloaks: In the old country in South America, Carlotta's grandmother, Zede, had been a seamstress, but really more of a sewing magician. She was the creator of clothing, especially capes, made of feathers. These capes were worn by dancers, musicians, and priests at traditional village festivals and worn for countless generations (p. 3).According to the narrator, Carlotta's grandmother and mother, both named Zede, tried to keep the tradition of making beautiful cloaks with peacock feathers for the priests to wear during the holidays. However, the white settlers confiscated the Indian village and banned the holidays. As a result, the beautiful feathers and priestly headdress lost their expressive design, as Carlotta's mother had to sell them to the "gringas" (the white-blond women) to earn a living. In other words, these creations have become trivial, "kitsch" for the western (white) world (Walker, 1989, p. 9) The art of cloaks and headdresses the material of his fiction, Walker intends to restore the lost tradition of South American women. In the collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983). Walker clearly shows his interest in regaining women's creativity, especially their black ancestors, who, according to Walker, were artists with a rich spirituality. While The Temple of My Familiar focuses on women's history, it also transcends the boundaries of traditional postmodernism, especially the trend towards androcentrism. Walker lends voice and action to his female characters, whose stories are usually silenced in modernist and postmodern classical texts. Most of the voices and narrative minds in the novel are women—such as Miss Lissie, Zede, Olivia, Fanny, Nzingha, and Carlotta. Above all, these women reveal the difficulties of being women in a world still ruled by patriarchal authority. For instance, in the second part of the fourth part, Nzingha Anne and Fanny Nzingha talk about the oppression of women in Africa and the United States, respectively. "I am so frustrated," says Nzingha, " because the men can always run on and on about the white man's destructiveness and yet they cannot look into their own families and their own children's lives " (Walker, 1989, p. 254). In essence, Nzingha complains about the lack of participation of blacks in general and her husband Metudhi in particular in children's education. To one of these concerns, Fanny replies that “the same things are happening to us in the United States only. There is happening to everyone; there are many more white women and children receiving public assistance than there are black ones” (Walker, 1989, p. 254). Significantly, Walker replaces the general discourse on racism in America and imperialism in Africa with stories about the oppression of women from different backgrounds. Although The Temple of My Familiar focuses on female narratives, Walker avoids the gynocentric definition as something other than a man. Indeed, the novel replaces the essential notions of "masculinity" and "femininity", and the hierarchical dualisms—male/female, black/white, and man/animal—favoured the first half. Walker's portraits of Miss Lissie and her ex-husband, Mr Hal, strongly suggested this. As noted above, Lissie's countless incarnations as a black woman, white man, and lion are best at the forefront of Walker's reworking of all the fixed notions of gender, race, and even humanity in the novel. In other words, Lissie stands for the breaking of the "slash," that is, for the harmony of all living beings. Hal also integrates male and female roles into the novel. For instance, he acts as a midwife since he has delivered all Lissie's children. Also, Hal likes to cook Gumbo with Lissie. As we know, cooking and midwifery are primarily female roles, not male. Walker largely subverts patriarchal assumptions about gender roles as Hal performs the so-called women's activities. In The Temple of My Familiar Alice, Walker redefines the new conception of male and female subjectivity and human relationship. Walker rejects the modernist conception of the alienated self and the postmodern sense of a radical fragmentation of the subject. For example, no matter how decentered the character of Lissie is, she reconstitutes her subjectivity through her relationship with others, notably with Mr Hal and Suwelo. For Walker, the human subject is constructed through connection with other subjects that do not threaten his differences. The final pages of The Temple of My Familiar also bond the younger couples, Fanny and Suwelo and Carlotta and Arveyda, after sharing a collective experience of mutual suffering and growth with other characters such as Zede, Mr Hal, Nzingha and especially Lissie. As the narrator describes: The two couples are now close friends. Though Fanny and Suwelo are constructing a house and live an hour away on an old chicken farm outside Petaluma, they find themselves visiting Arveyda and Carlotta often. They are always welcome. Besides, they all vaguely realise they have a purpose in each other's lives. They are a collective means by which each of them will grow (Walker, 1989, p. 395) According to this passage, these four people can share their different experiences and remain free to seek growth or improvement. The relationships between the two couples represent a small version of Miss Lissie's dreamlike memory of a utopian tribal community. In her dream, Lissie recalls when humans and animals lived together in harmony: " In these days of which I am speaking, people met other animals in much the same way people today meet each other. You were sharing the same neighbourhood, after all. The women alone had familiars” (Walker, 1989, p. 358). Lissie describes how women and lions share similar strengths and kindness. Perhaps Lissie's memory of this somewhat biblical Garden of Eden symbolises Walker's attempt to transcend old antagonisms and reunite men and women, black and white, humans and animals in her narrative. This chapter has primarily examined the intersection of complementary principles of postmodernism and contemporary feminism in The Temple of My Familiar. I have argued that Walker integrates postmodern feminist assumptions about cultural diversity and formal methods (e.g., narrative fragmentation, multiplication of narrative instances, and participatory reading) into the novel. I have also argued that Walker removes the limitations of postmodern and feminist critical theory. For example, I have outlined how The Temple of My Familiar defies androcentrism and the radical sense of the fragmented subject in mainstream postmodernism and the universal notions of female identity in classical feminism. We have seen Walker allow women to take control of their narratives and affirm their heterogeneity in the novel. Yet she does not privilege women over men. Rather, Walker emphasises each individual's vital role in producing a collective story. In the conclusion, I will discuss the efficacy of postmodern feminist models in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. I will also examine how Morrison and Walker, in their different ways, review and expand the new conventions of Euro-American and African-American traditions. Furthermore, I will argue that Morrison and Walker's critical appropriation of postmodern feminist characteristics must lead to reasserting the postmodern canon, which largely neglects the fiction of (black) women.  CONCLUSION Throughout this study, I have argued that the novels of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, notably Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar, represent a ground-breaking force in American literature. I pointed out that the intersection of postmodern and contemporary formal feminist methods and themes essentially constitutes the essence of innovation in her novels. Reviews of Morrison and Walker's novels emphasising postmodern feminist traits have been rare because most reviewers and critics have treated their works with the expectation of traditional romantic conventions such as narrative linearity and coherence and consistency and authoritative voice. They neglected the critical appropriation of postmodern experimental forms by these two African American writers. Indeed, the novels of Morrison and Walker are central to the redefinition and expansion of Afro-American and Euro-American traditions, particularly the traditions of (American) postmodernism and feminism. I will have more to say about this attitude in due course. For now, I would like to briefly outline the general logic of my study and evaluate the effectiveness of Morrison and Walker's postmodern feminist models. Chapter One of this study looked at the contact points between postmodernism, feminism, and contemporary feminist writing. Indeed, the debate on the encounter between postmodernism and feminism has dramatically increased in recent years, as more and more scholars have begun to grapple with the perspectives and problems of postmodern feminism. It is strongly suggested by the publication of numerous journals and essays on the affinities between postmodernism and feminism in various fields, notably anthropology, philosophy, culture, visual arts, film, and literature. For example, in A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism. Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility (1992), Margery Wolf notes that the postmodern critique of Western upremacy has made (female) anthropologists understand that Western society is but a community among many human communities (p. 136). Also, in Feminine Sentences:Essays on Women and Culture (1990), Janet Wolff asserts that postmodernism is valuable for feminist politics largely because it enables the destabilisation of patriarchal thought (p. 7). Furthermore, Wolff notes that postmodernism created space for women to articulate their diverse experiences since feminists recognised that feminism is partial. Therefore, it is exclusive discourse expressing the experience of white heterosexual women of the middle class. In terms of literature, postmodernism has provided many contemporary writers with new forms of critical expression that challenge and confuse dominant narratives and discourses. Writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have engaged in experimental writing that subverts the conventions of linear conspiracy and the one centre of consciousness in the literary practices of classical realism and modernism. Mainly through their experimentation, Morrison and Walker created the space where different voices can be heard—and subjects hitherto silenced women of colour can articulate their own needs and experiences. In Chapter Two, I showed that Beloved's narrative structure and empathetic themes represent the genius of Toni Morrison's postmodern feminism. Beloved replaces the novelistic conventions of linearity, unity and closure—normally found in realistic and even modernist texts with postmodern textual strategies such as narrative fragmentation and multiplication of voices. Morrison challenges premodern notions of objective reality and ‘perfect’ memory. Moreover, multiple narrators present their memories of the central story—Sethe's infanticide, in a non-linear pattern. Morrison also rejects the modernist notion of the past as a fixed reality. Rather, she allows her characters to question each other's enslaving historical past with their most personal and intimate memories. Through intertwining multiple perspectives and consciences that affirm different past perceptions, Morrison ultimately postulates an opening to the past. Through intertwining many perspectives and consciences that affirm different past perceptions, Morrison ultimately postulates an infinity of interpretations. And since no narrative authority is solely responsible for the text of the memoirs in Beloved, readers are asked to make connections between the various narrative fragments and, at best, to formulate our provisional conclusions. However, Toni Morrison does not limit herself to adopting the narrative strategies of postmodern writings. In Chapter Two, I also argued that Morrison reverses the phallocentric structures implicit in most postmodern discourse, which have placed (black) women's narratives on the periphery of the true drama of the story. Significantly, Morrison leaves her protagonist (Sethe) to write herself and her story of slavery into history. Furthermore, Beloved resists radical postmodern fragmentation and decentralisation of the human subject. Instead, Morrison offers her characters the opportunity to reconstitute their fragmented selves. Their relationship with one another, rather than being called upon from an external and all-encompassing point of view. All the characters participate in constructing the stories of others and in the reconstruction of the great history of slavery by sharing personal and collective memories of slavery. I have shown that Sethe and Paul D's relationship in Beloved west reflects how the collective sharing of experiences and suffering helps both characters construct their personal stories. As they stitch their stories together, Sethe and Paul D eventually renew themselves and hope for a future built on the reconstruction of their past. Similarly, in The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker explores how the human subject can shape and be shaped by a collective story. Of Walker's novels, The Temple of My Familiar more fully articulates a postmodern feminist aesthetic. As I analysed in Chapter Three, the novel spans 500,000 years of human existence, from prehistoric times to the present day. However, Walker radically replaces the linear and chronological presentation of the story with a variety of themes and characters and a whirlwind of places and times that find resonance in postmodern narratives. The novel focuses on numerous narrative fragments that develop mainly as first-person conversations between three pairs of characters: Suwelo and Fanny, Arveyda and Carlotta, Mr Hal, and Miss Lissie. The fragmented and discontinuous flows of conversation between these people bring back a variety of ancestral stories and memories that form the forefront of contemporary life and add a new dimension (racial and gender) to human history. Furthermore, Alice Walker challenges the monolithic images of women in classical feminism by experiencing the postmodern characteristics of narrative fragmentation and the multiplication of stories and points of view. Rather, in The Temple of My Familiar, Walker offers space for African, African American and Latin American women to articulate their specificity and cultural heterogeneity. Although The Temple of My Familiar focuses on the female side of the story, Walker is more interested in grasping the possibility of change in society rather than creating new hierarchies. In chapter 4, she puts her female stories in dialogue with male perspectives. In this way, Walker overcomes traditional antagonisms between masculine and feminine, dominant and peripheral—to create a new conception of subjectivity and human relationships based on individual freedom and community life. Although she did not attempt to distinguish the postmodern feminist aesthetic in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar, I don't think these authors' models are the same, given the number of reviews and essays. From the quotes, it is easy to conclude that Morrison's postmodern feminist model in Beloved seems to appeal to a much larger (critical) readership than Alice Walker's model in The Temple of My Familiar. For example, in Knitting and Knotting the Narrative Thread (1993)— Beloved as a Postmodern Novel, Rafael Perez-Torres argues that Beloved's narrative emerges where premodern and postmodern forms of literary expression intersect. According to Perez-Torres, the novel intertwines the mythical, folkloric and poetic threads of an Afro-American oral tradition with postmodern rhetorical and discursive trajectories. More importantly, he also states that Beloved differs from classical postmodern texts in its relationship to socio-historical reality. In other words, Perez-Torres observes (correctly, in my opinion) that Morrison modifies the postmodern aesthetic by transforming the historical, cultural, and political absence of African Americans into a strong presence in the novel. At least three reasons suggest why Morrison's Beloved has received far more positive critical acclaim than Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. First, Morrison does not completely disentangle his fiction from a preoccupation with fictional aesthetics, aligning it with such prominent modernist writers as Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf. Indeed, Morrison ties them together seemingly disparate realms of politics and aesthetics (particularly in the North American context) through the critical appropriation of postmodern (aesthetic) forms to emphasise the historically marginal. My argument is that the postmodern textual strategies found in Beloved, particularly the multiple decoding and recoding of Sethe's slavery and infanticide, emerge from the urgent need for the political survival of African American (female) narratives. Second, although Beloved is made up of multiple stories and haracters, it is primarily focused on the personal research of the protagonist Sethe. herefore, Morrison creates a space where the reader can identify with Sethe's suffering and even feel in their flesh. And third, Morrison's formal methods are entirely inductive and require a long read. I argue that the Beloved moves from the image to the meaning(s) to the text— a journey that frees the signifier from a fixed frame of reference. Perhaps, this technique is best illustrated by the narrator's description of Sethe's infanticide: " Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood- soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other "(p. 149). Like an image, this passage first appeals to the reader's visual sense before articulating their conclusions about the incident. Morrison ultimately forces readers to break out of detached positions and painfully confront untold (unspoken) truths about slavery by prioritising image over content. On the contrary, one can think of The temple of My Familiar as a novel of ideas. First, Walker conveys his artistry with several clear political and ideological statements on topics as diverse as racism, homosexuality, vegetarianism, and animal rights. Indeed, most reviewers and critics have complained about Walker's ideological bias in the novel. Second, given various themes and characters, readers may not readily identify with a particular story or character. Third, Walker's text is mainly deductive, consisting almost entirely of speeches. Political issues are not dramatised as in Morrison's Beloved. Rather, they appear in monologues and dialogues are spoken mainly by and between black women. Despite these so-called "faults", Walker is also committed to the cultural liberation of women, especially African American women. In other words, Walker, along with Toni Morrison, claimed the empowerment of (black) women's voices. Black women can speak in Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar, which has been silenced in Western (androcentric) culture and literary tradition. Where did Toni Morrison's experimental novels come from, and Will Alice Walker guide us? In conclusion, I claim to use postmodern feminist traits in Beloved and The Temple of My Familiar. Morrison and Walker examine important formal structures and themes drawn from Euro-American and African-American traditions. I also argue that the critical appropriation of the postmodern and contemporary feminist models is relevant to current literary study and canonisation. Morrison’s and Walker's innovative efforts must lead to a reconsideration of the predominant masculinist postmodernist canon. In the novels featured in this study, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker redefine essential principles of both postmodern and feminist models that still largely reflect Eurocentric thinking. In particular, Morrison and Walker challenge the traditional androcentric constructions of most modernist and postmodern discourses that have excluded women as a significant audience for the performance. Rather, these authors liberate (black) female characters from their reticence and silence while critically appropriating the dominant experimental movement of postmodernism. For example, in Beloved, Morrison allows Sethe to get a voice and change her status from a voiceless asset to an object in her narrative. As Sethe tells Paul D. describing his escape from slavery, "I did it ... I used my head" (162). In The Temple of My Familiar, mainly through Lissie—a black woman has incarnated hundreds of times. Walker tells stories that deal primarily with the female experience, namely the matriarchal religion of Africa, the Latin American women's tradition of cape making and the collective oppression of (black) women. In doing so, Morrison and Walker ultimately restore the cultural and literary significance of historically marginalised narratives in Western discourse. Also, in Beloved and The Temple of My Familiar, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker review Euro-American notions of human subjectivity. In contrast, they accept that the humanist imagination requires decentralisation to the extent that it supports the claim that the autonomous individual is the sole master and solitary centre of all meaning. These authors reject modernist alienation and radical postmodern fragmentation of the human subject. Rather, Morrison and Walker challenge the classic postmodern apocalyptic view of subjectivity or subject death presented in Thomas Pynchon’s V to address the awakening of (black) women as subjects on the "other" side of her story. Perhaps Lissie Lyles better reflects a postmodern feminist subjectivity in Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. To some extent, Lissie is fragmented and decentralised as she comprises many changing identities. She primarily describes herself as a black woman, but she has also lived as a white man, a white woman, and even a lion in her other lives. However, Walker challenges the postmodern drive for dehumanisation, claiming a subjective status previously denied to women despite Lissie's decentralisation. More significantly, Walker offers his female characters the opportunity to achieve self-definition and establish an ethical dimension through the relationship with the other (the collective). As Lissie tells Suwelo in the last pages, "it is against blockage between ourselves and others—those alive and dead—that we must work" (p. 355). Indeed, Lissie connects with everything, human and animal, dead and alive, past and present. Finally, in The Temple of My Familiar, Walker offers a vision of a peaceful and just society in which personal (female) identity strengthens the collective. Also, in Beloved, Toni Morrison opposes the postmodern undecidability of the human subject. Initially a fragmented and decentered object of slave owners, Sethe clearly articulates her struggle to free her mind and action from someone else's (especially Schoolteacher's) representation. More importantly, Sethe's struggle isn't just his battle. Morrison lets Sethe speak for herself and on behalf of the wider community/society. In other words, Morrison connects Sethe's personal experiences with those of other characters in the novel, most notably the white girl Amy, Baby Suggs, Paul D, and Stamp Paid. Morrison wants the reader to understand the extent of the suffering of the characters and the possibility of confronting others. The commitment is made even more evident when thirty women—who had shunned Sethe from their society due to his infanticide take responsibility for Sethe's torment. It helps Sethe exorcise the haunting memories of his past. As I have stated, the encounter between the individual and the collective in Morrison's novel is rarely found in classical texts. Toni Morrison and Alice Walker review and expand important formal methods and themes of the African American tradition. Additionally, the conventions of the Euro-American tradition and postmodernism. In The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey (1983), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. shares a similar argument. Although Gates does not examine the novels of Morrison and Walker, he argues that " black writers read and critique other black texts as an act of hetorical self-definition" (p. 290). According to Gates, contemporary black authors such as Ishmael Reed appear to revise at least two earlier texts, often from different generations or periods within the tradition. Similarly, Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar may be thought of as books about texts—metafictions— since they reflect a rethinking of preceding African American narratives. In Beloved, for example, Toni Morrison rewrites and expands 19th-century slave narratives. In her The Site of Memory (1995), Morrison explains why and how she expands the authoritative narratives of slaves: For me--a writer in the last quarter of the twentieth century, not much more than a hundred years after Emancipation, a writer who is black and a woman--the exercise is very different. My job becomes how to rip that veil drawn over 'proceedings too terrible to relate (p. 110) However, in Beloved, Morrison lets Sethe speak to tell the story in his voice and publicises the monstrous violations she has experienced, "proceedings too terrible to relate”. Moreover, Marilyn Sanders Mobley also argues that " Morrison uses the trope of memory to revise the genre of the slave narrative and thereby to make the slave experience it inscribes more accessible to contemporary readers” (p. 191). According to Mobley, Morrison uses memory as a metaphor for the inner life to explore the dimensions of slavery that the classic slave narrative omitted, particularly the sexual and mental injuries suffered by female slaves. Significantly, in rewriting 19th slave narratives, Toni Morrison creates a hybrid genre or "neo-slave" narrative. As Ihab Hassan (2002) observes in "Pluralism in Postmodern Perspective," the feature of hybridisation, or the mutant replication of cultural genres, is pervasive in postmodernist texts” (p. 20). According to Hassan, hybridisation changes the concept of literary tradition: one in which continuity and discontinuity, identity and difference, merge to extend the past into the present. In Beloved, Morrison does not merely reject conventional narrative structures but also reexamine the institutional racism and sexism that shaped the authoritative slave texts. Although Morrison continues to express the struggles, the rituals and the messianic hope of the black people--which is best illustrated by Baby Suggs' sermons in the Clearing (p. 87)—she relies more on the deception of the storytelling than on didactic prose. My argument is that in Beloved, Morrison is less interested in teaching contemporary readers a moral lesson for which slavery is a distant historical fact— than inviting them to act alongside their characters in the storytelling process. She allows the characters, especially Sethe, to personify their innermost feelings about slavery. In other words, Morrison does not simply describe the precarious life in which it was illegal for slaves to read and write, love and marry, and keep their children to maturity. Still, Morrison makes readers witness the physical and psychological sufferings of a slave woman and mother with great intensity. Witnessing Sethe's experiences and the circumstances that led to the murder of her beloved two-year-old, readers tend to sympathise with Sethe and thus refrain from making judgments about the act of killing. Although Alice Walker wasn't necessarily involved in rewriting the slave narrative in The Temple of My Familiar, she certainly shares Morrison's emphasis on gender and race-based forms of subjectivity found in black male texts. Walker's novel gives voice and representation to women (especially black women) who have been silenced and confined in life and literature. As Walker (1972) declares in her In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, "we must fearlessly pull out of ourselves and look at and identify with our lives the living creativity some of our great-grandmothers were not allowed to know" (p. 237). Walker's ultimate purposes in the novel are (1) to reconstruct and reclaim the past, the self and the community of (black) women and (2) to expand the work of her foremothers, particularly that of Zora Neale Hurston, whom Walker considers the precursor of many contemporary African American women writers like herself. "Condemned to a desert island for life, with an allotment of ten books to see me through," Walker reflects, I would choose, unhesitatingly, two of Zora’s: Mules and Men, because I would need to be able to pass on to younger generations the life of American blacks as legend and myth; and Their Eves Were Watching God, because I would want to enjoy myself while identifying with the black heroine, Janie Crawford, as she acted out many roles in a variety of settings, and functioned (with spectacular results) in romantic and sensual love. There is no book more important to me than this one (p. 86). By contrast, Walker's The Temple of My Familiar liberates women characters from androcentric structures even more boldly than Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Unlike Hurston, who rendered the story of Janie Crawford in the third person, Walker grants the right of speech to women as culturally and socially diverse as Lissie, Zede, Olivia and Fanny Nzingha, among other female characters in her novel. The Temple of My Familiar can be read as a critique of discriminatory (literary) practices of authority that have disregarded the historical, cultural and political presence of (black) women. Moreover, I argue that Toni Morrison and Alice Walker's process of claiming the diversity of black women's culture in their fiction is a deliberate attempt to reformulate the traditional literary canon. Canon here designates what academic professionals, critics, or other institutional authorities have judged to be great texts by exemplary figures--nearly always male and privileged. Morrison and Walker have engaged in the rediscovery and canonisation of ‘lost’ women's narratives such as Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Mules and Men (1935). Both have also become central figures in the nascent renaissance of black women's studies. Many colleges and universities throughout the country started incorporating the fiction of Morrison and Walker in their syllabuses and the writings of their foremothers and contemporary sisters like Gloria Naylor, Toni Cade Bambara and Ntozake Shange, among others. Perhaps the nomination of Morrison for the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature is the best evidence of the black woman's participation in the canon formation and triumph in the academy at large. In this study, I have intended to posit a postmodern feminist assessment of Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Temple of Mv Familiar. As a result, I hope that scholars of postmodernism and feminism will no longer ignore the critical role of these two African American women in the vitality of postmodern culture and literature. However, as I have argued, one cannot simply apply postmodernist or feminist theory per se to (black) women's texts but must translate it into a new rhetorical realm to recreate the critical theory at hand. As Gates (1983) accurately observes, "We must learn to read a black text within a black formal cultural matrix, as well as its white matrix" (p. 79) First, postmodernists must realise that there is no seemingly neutral position to discuss theory. Many feminist scholars see the postmodern orthodoxy of indeterminacy and relativism as inimical to their political agenda. Second, feminists must reexamine the limitations of their critical models, which have often postulated (universal) conceptions of feminine identity according to the experiences of white, middle-class, heterosexual women. Postmodernists and feminists must consider that all theories and literary practices reflect the subject's ideological orientation regarding gender, race, and class. As I have claimed in this study, Morrison's Beloved and Walker's The Temple of My Familiar illustrate that it is possible to integrate postmodernist and feminist theories. While critically appropriating postmodern formal methods and strategies of representation, these writers in their novels chiefly reassess the diversity of African American (women's) culture. BIBLIOGRAPHY Atwood, M. (1987). Haunted by Their Nightmares. New York Times Book Review, 13, 49- 50. Barth, J. (1967). The Literature of Replenishment. Lord John Press. Bradbury, M. (1983). Modernisms/postmodernisms. 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