"Memory Seemed Unwise" : archaeological dynamics of memory and amnesia: an archetypal reading of Toni Morrison's beloved.

الملخص EN

An archetypal reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved highlights the archaeological dynamics of memory and amnesia at work in the novel to communicate the author's dualistic vision of the world, in general, and ofracial discrimination and the American dream, in particular.

Memory and forgetfulness are both individual and collective.

Morrison's digging into archival residues seems very effective since she addresses 'racial memory” or the 'collective unconscious'^ of all readers.

The technique underlying the whole novel is that of memory reenacted, in other words, of the ritualistic incarnation of the past, allegorically through the ghost of Beloved, then, literally through her fatal resurrection.

The ghost could be taken as a projection of Sethe's tormented conscience while the body of Beloved is, indeed, but a fatal resurrection.

Beloved is a paradoxical symbol of both past and present as well as amnesia and memory, whether wilful or unconscious, personal or racial.Is it a call for always retaining the memory or the scar of a racist past? Repressing the memory is ciystallized in the concluding statements: "it is not a story to pass on" and "memory seemed unwise"^ "They forgot her like an unpleasant dream during a troubled sleep", "quickly and deliberately forgot her" (274, 5).

The danger of forgetfulness is a national disaster of complicit silence, absence and erasure from the authentic narrative of American history.