On Toni Morrison’s bday, I’m thinking a lot about the end of her masterpiece Beloved in relationship to the @WoodsonCenter’s #1776woodson project (a direct response to the #1619Project). #twitterstorians
@WoodsonCenter Beloved’s short final chapter's through-line is a repeated phrase: “It was not a story to pass on” (shifted to “This is not a story to pass on” for its final repetition). The section's overtone is forgetting, suggesting the phrase's literal meaning (don’t pass this story on).
@WoodsonCenter That desire to forget—the character of Beloved, but also the histories of enslavement, slave trade, slavery's horrors, & esp what they demand of all those affected by them of which she’s a living reminder—is entirely understandable & to some degree even necessary for survival.
@WoodsonCenter But throughout Morrison’s novel, she contrasts attempts to forget w/rememory, the act of remembering & of turning memory into story, narratives that shape our present & future lives. It’s not possible in the novel to escape that process, so it’s equally necessary to engage it.
@WoodsonCenter In that light, the end’s repeated phrase has another meaning: don’t “pass on” this story; engage it, remember it, figure out what it means to live w/it. The last sentence, the single word “Beloved,” likewise suggests neither the novel nor we can or should forget.
@WoodsonCenter So on #1776Woodson project: one of its stated goals has been to “challenge those who assert America is forever defined by past failures.” That’s how it defines the #1619Project—as a focus on the past which limits America, & specifically African Americans, in the present & future.
@WoodsonCenter Obviously I can’t & won’t speak for African Americans. But I can speak for American collective memories & narratives, not only as part of this nation but as someone who has studied & written about them for most of his career (& plans to continue doing so for the rest of it).
@WoodsonCenter & when it comes to those collective memories, we have quite literally never focused w/depth or breadth on the hardest aspects of our past. The #1619Project represents one of many impt steps that are beginning to ask us to do that work, to engage our full past in meaningful ways.
@WoodsonCenter Because despite an understandable desire to forget, this is not a story that we can any longer afford to take a pass on. Not if we want to have any chance to move forward into a future that genuinely reflects our national community, identity, story.
@WoodsonCenter That’s why I define the #1619Project as a central example of 21st century critical patriotism. Taking a critical look at our nation, past & present, in order to move us closer to our ideals, as critical patriots have done throughout our history.
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@WoodsonCenter If #1776Woodson's sincere in that shared goal, it’ll frame its work as additive, in convo w/the #1619Project but also working together to achieve those aims. That they’ve done precisely the opposite suggests a cont attempt to portray critical patriotism as un- or anti-American.
@WoodsonCenter There’s a place for more celebratory patriotism, which is why it’s part of my current book project as well. But it too easily can turn into exclusionary mythologizing patriotism, which among other destructive effects depicts critical patriotism as un-American or even traitorous.
@WoodsonCenter To my mind, Toni Morrison’s magisterial career reminds us of the vital need for critical patriotic engagements w/our past, story, community, identity. That’s the legacy I’m working to help carry forward. & it's the work of @nhannahjones & the #1619Project as well. Fin (for now!).
