THE IMAGINARY FLESH: TRAUMA, PHANTASY, AND THE INVISIBLE IN TONI MORRISON’S 'BELOVED'
THE IMAGINARY FLESH: TRAUMA, PHANTASY, AND THE INVISIBLE IN TONI MORRISON’S 'BELOVED'

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to interpret Toni Morrison’s 'Beloved' through Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of phantasy, focusing on the way in which the novel approaches history as an embodied, sensory and affective experience, rather than a simple recollection of events. Starting from the idea that consciousness is capable of re-presenting what is absent as if it were present, this paper demonstrates that Beloved, the dead child that returns as a living presence, is not simply a ghost or a psychological projection, but a phantasy-body, an apparition through which the repressed history takes on flesh. Through her, Morrison materializes trauma and memory, placing them at the core of the novel, along with the legacy of slavery embedded in scars, grief, and rituals, thus suggesting that acknowledging and confronting a painful past is necessary if its wounds are ever to be understood, mourned, and healed.

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