Cultural Identity in Black Subjects: the Emergence of New Black Subjects in Beloved

Rewriting history has fallen into a grip of obsession among post-colonial writers. The significance of history and past in post-colonial discussion stems from the fact that having a history constitutes an undeniable source for having a legitimate existence. Toni Morrison has contributed substantially to the current engagement of black writers in their effort to recuperate the true history of the black people. Her main concern for recovering the black history dominates her literary oeuvre. Beloved as a historical novel exploring a plethora of issues, among which identity, black subjectivity and redefinition of the self during and after the actualities of slavery is the focus of this study. The “loss of identity” as one of the ramification of “dislocation” and “dispossession” is one issue that has been interwoven in lines of Beloved. In addition, the post-colonial view of identity as subject to formation and transformation, refuting the European discourse of individuality, is another point of investigation in this study.