THE REPRESENTATION OF RITUALS IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED: COMMUNITY, RESISTANCE, EMPOWERMENT

Jose de Paiva Santos

Resumo


This article examines the role of rituals in African-American communities as represented in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987), which provide stabilization, harmony, communal bonding and individual empowerment. As such, Morrison privileges what anthropologists call a socio-functionalist view of rituals, namely, the notion that they are connected to social practices and group harmony rather than to transcendental appeals. Morrison’s view of rituals is explored in three key moments: the community feast prior to Sethe´s killing of the “crawling-already” baby; Baby Suggs’s worship services in the Clearing; the exorcism of the ghost of Beloved. Definitions and insights on the social function of rituals are drawn from anthropologists Émile Durkeim, Victor Turner, and Max Gluckman; from religious studies scholar Catherine Bell, and from mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Keywords: Morrison. Rituals. Religion. History. Redemption.

 


Referências


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DOI: 10.5935/1679-5520.20180039


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