LITR 5439 Utopias UHCL 2009 research posting

LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

Research Posting 2009

Joshua Schuetz

Second Research Posting –

Utopia in Narrative Form

This research posting arises from considering Toni Morrison’s Paradise as an alternative utopian novel. My interest from a literary perspective is in the narration or the story telling, and its history. Can the narrative form mediate or reconstitute the individual self and society at large through a ‘utopian’ attitude or paradigm? Does the past play a significant role in imagining or creating a future? Interestingly, I found an abundance of academic writing on Paradise that supports this idea of assessing the role of narrative in idea of self and in the community as a whole (Gauthier 5), and the importance of the historical backdrop of the novel (Davidson 355).

In overview, Paradise (1998) completes Morrison’s trilogy of historical novels that began with Beloved (1987) and Jazz (1992). The trilogy is concerned with "re-membering" the historical past for Morrison herself, for African Americans, and for America as a whole. It is this looking back at the past that shapes her fictional community of Ruby, Oklahoma. The idea that the past shapes the future in terms of utopian thought began with my first research posting, The Role of Religious Imagination in Utopian Thinking, and I continue this line of reasoning with this research review. As in my first posting that described the exodus as the pivotal event in the shaping of Jewish belief in the promise of a future, the migration of the African Americans to escape persecution in the South mirrors the Jewish exodus event. Fraile-Marcos comments that this sense of desire was also seen in the Puritans quest for “a city upon a hill" as a belief in a religious high purpose and a millennial history.

I consider the community of Ruby as the protagonist of Paradise along with the rag-tag band of Convent women who live on its fringes. Much like utopian novels, the story depicts a rigidly controlled community predicated on the subordination of the individual to the group (Mazlish 47). Steward and Deacon Morgan, Ruby's recognized leaders, enforce and defend this communal narrative via their patriarchal system. Isolated from the outside world, (as are other utopias) its very existence is dependent on racial separatism. By positing the existence of an all-black society, Morrison frees her readers from the moral confusion that has come from years of viewing black culture primarily in terms of the ills that the dominant, white society has inflicted on it (Bent 147). Ironically, when this little paradise unravels (teenagers running wild, random acts of violence, people disappearing), they blame the mysterious women at a rural house called the Convent. The women are innocent, but they are also pretty strange, so Ruby's straitlaced town fathers allow their imagination to make the women into witches.

Morrison’s relational and dialogical narrative approach highlights the significance of history and socio-cultural discourses in the composing of our lives (Dalsgard 83). As with our other class readings we find that a story is not simply a story, but instead it acts to create, sustain, or alter worlds of social relationships. In Paradise, Morrison demonstrates the power that stories have for community building (utopia), and paradoxically for community destroying (dystopia) (Kang 56) (Kearly 43). Morrison’s choice of images and narrative strategies illuminates the problem of reinventing from within our present cultural order what we consider or desire as a utopia (Adams 33).

This review supports the idea that a ‘utopian’ attitude can be mediated and expressed through narrative form as in the novel Paradise. Additionally, the history of a community plays a significant role in the expression of self and society and in the creating and shaping a better future (Romero 13).

Word Count - 606

Works Cited

Adams, Rebecca . Narrative Voice and Unimaginability of the Utopian 'Feminine' in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.' Utopian Studies, 1045991X, 1991, Vol. 2, Issue ½.

Bent, Geoffrey. Less Than Divine: Toni Morrison’s Paradise. Southern Review, Winter99, Vol. 35 Issue 1, p145, 5p; (AN 1580311)

Dalsgard, Katrine. The One All-Black Town Worth the Pain: (African) American Exceptionalism, Historical Narration, and the Critique of Nationhood in Toni Morrison's Paradise. African American Review, 10624783, Summer 2001, Vol. 35, Issue 2.

Davidson, Rob. Racial Stock and 8-Rocks: Communal Historiography in Toni Morrison's Paradise. Twentieth Century Literature, 0041462X, Fall2001, Vol. 47, Issue 3.

Fraile-Marcos, Ana María. Hybridizing the “City upon a Hill” in Toni Morrison’s Paradise. MELUS, Winter2003, Vol. 28 Issue 4, p3-33, 31p; (AN 12190406)

Gauthier, Marni. The Other side of paradise: Toni Morrison's making of mythic history. African American Review, Fall, 2005.

Kang, Nancy. As if I had entered a paradise: fugitive slave narratives and cross-border literary history. African American Review, September 22, 2005.

Kearly, Peter R. Toni Morrison's Paradise and the Politics of Community. Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, 15374726, Summer2000, Vol. 23, Issue 2.

Mazlish, Bruce. A Tale of Two Enclosures: Self and Society as a Setting for Utopias. Theory, Culture & Society. Feb 2003, Vol 20 Issue 1, p 43-60, 18p.

Romero, Channette. Creating the beloved community: religion, race, and nation in Toni Morrison's Paradise. African American Review, September 22, 2005.