Dialectics of Self-Ownership and Spirit in Beloved
Theron U Schmidt


For everything outside the phenomenal world, language can only be used allusively, but never even approximately by way of comparison, since, corresponding as it does to the phenomenal world, it is concerned only with property and its relations.

Franz Kafka, Aphorism 57


My thesis here is that the abolition of first-order reference, an abolition accomplished by fiction and poetry, is the condition of possibility for the liberation of a second order of reference that reaches the world not only at the level of manipulable objects but at the level Husserl designated by the expression Lebenswelt, and which Heidegger calls being-in-the-world.

Paul Ricouer, "Philosophy and Religious Language," p. 42


Beloved/ You are my sister/ You are my daughter/ You are my face; you are me/ I have found you again; you have come back to me/ You are my Beloved/ You are mine/ You are mine/ You are mine

Beloved, p. 216



Beloved is a book about learning. (This is not to say that it is pedagogical; being about learning does not imply that its purpose is to teach. Nor is this to say that the book is only about learning.) The characters of this novel must learn the difference between what "possession of self" means in the context of "possession by others" (slavery) and what it means in "self-possession" ("freedom"). I will argue that this learning occurs by the dialectical movement through experiences of property and of the dissolution of property, of self and of loss of self. Because this dissolution of property and loss of self is related in the novel to the presence of a spirit, Beloved, it is plausible to connect it with a spiritual existence � the existence of spirit. This spirit-existence is not constrained by property-relations, by boundaries of the proper either to one's self or to others; Morrison uses the language and images of fluidity to convey the dissolution of these boundaries. In this way, the spiritual enables a way of seeing beyond property relations to a "second order of reference" (in Ricouer's terms). The book enacts a dialectical movement, however, in which the "first order of reference" � the world of property relations � is recovered and recuperated, but by virtue of the existence of spirit.
This is not a dialectic in the strictly Hegelian sense of the term; the movement is not a movement beyond the terms, but rather among them. In this sense, it is more akin to Kierkegaard's use of the dialectic in Fear and Trembling (subtitled Dialectical Lyric), which describes the "dialectical struggles of faith" (32). In Kierkegaard's dialectic of faith, the first movement is an ethical one in which individual concerns are relinquished in accordance with universal (and universally understood) responsibilities; the second movement is a religious one in which ethical concerns are suspended in accordance with a spiritual (and uncommunicable) demand. Kierkegaard writes, "the tragic hero relinquishes himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith relinquishes the universal in order to become the single individual" (75). While this second movement may take place infinitely removed from others ("on a mountaintop," as it were), its result is to return the individual to the everyday conditions of finitude; "through a double movement he [Abraham] had obtained his first condition... the very same finitude again by virtue of the absurd" (36). Kierkegaard emphasizes that this return from a relation of singularity recuperates the self as a "single individual"; it is this type of recuperation that is enabled by the spiritual in Beloved. Referring to a specific passage on p. 27 but applicable (at least in my reading) to the rest of the book, Satya Mohanty writes, "a kind of braiding of consciousness is achieved, a weaving together of emotional perspectives, through which not only is a memory relived but a new meaning created as well.... The perspectives shift back and forth, occasionally without warning, and 'fusion' is achieved gradually. The text points to new knowledge as well as a new way of knowing, both registered in the word 'free'..." (58, my emphasis).
Articulations of selfhood and relationality in Beloved, directly influenced by the conditions of slavery, are made in the language of ownership and possession. This is true of the concept of freedom itself; freedom is not the freedom from ownership but the freedom to own, the freedom to own oneself, the freedom to own one's self. For Paul D, this means the freedom to determine how his body (particularly his feet) will be used: "If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up" (10). He has learned to take an objectifying view of himself, for after being rounded up by schoolmaster, "He learns his price. The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future" (226). After this lesson, his desire for freedom is a desire to be the one to regulate the use of these objects: "That was when he decided that to eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got" (269-70). However, there is already a yearning that goes beyond this self-objectifying stance; Paul D not only desires control of himself, he desires control of desire itself: "not to need permission for desire � well now, that was freedom" (162). As we will see, this control is part of what Paul D learns through his encounter with (a) spirit. For Baby Suggs, and similarly for Sethe, freedom is explicitly self-ownership. Suggs's freedom has been purchased, and so she now owns the rights to herself. This is very different from the dissolution of those rights; the rights still exist, for they have only changed hands. Thus Suggs feels freedom through recognition of herself (as object) as hers: "These hands belong to me. These my hands.... My heart's beating" (141). In a sense, Sethe's freedom is similar, for she feels that she has paid for it: "I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much!" (15). Yet her payment is incomparable with Suggs's, and her type of freedom, unlike Paul D's, is the freedom to stay still: before her freedom, "Sethe was walking on two feet meant for standing still" (29).
Freedom as immediately opposed to enslavement designates a relation of ownership to oneself; similarly, relations to other selves manifest themselves at first as those of ownership and property. In particular, familial relationships are represented in proprietary terms. Halle's look at Sethe was "as though he were examining an ear of corn for quality. Halle was more like a brother than a husband. His care suggested a family relationship rather than a man's laying claim" (25). In this passage, the relation between husband and wife is one of appreciation of property, rather than claim of it; perhaps this is one way in which enslavement has been superseded even within relations that are still proprietary. Sexual relations are still self- and other-objectifying, but at least they are no longer objective in the sense of "property that reproduced itself without cost" (228). Baby Suggs also privileges family relationships over romantic ones: "'A man ain't nothing but a man,' said Baby Suggs. 'But a son? Well now, that's somebody'" (23; compare her "Well now, that's somebody" with Paul D's "well now, that was freedom" cited above). Finally, the relation between Sethe and her children (at least Denver and Beloved) are of mutual ownership; hence Denver's jealousy when Paul D and Sethe share memories that "belonged to them and not to her" (13).
Regulating the boundaries of one's property � of what is proper to oneself, the limits of one's self � is necessary for self-ownership. In this way, the demarcations of internality/externality and the determinination of access to what is inside becomes very important. Paul D provides the most lucid examples of these stakes: "A man ain't a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can't chop down because they're inside" (69); "There's a way to put it [wildness] there and there's a way to take it out. I know em both and I haven't figured out yet which is worse" (71); similarly, Stamp Paid recognizes that the tangled jungle inside blackfolks was "the jungle whitefolks planted in them" (198). Paul D's concern with protecting his internal property is explicit in the image of the rusted tobacco tin, which "nothing in this world could pry it open" (113; note "in this world"). The fervor of his concern seems to be behind his ability to bring other's deepest selves to the surface: "Emotions sped to the surface in his company" (39). It is important to note that his ability is not that of penetration to the depths, but of drawing to the surface; this act preserves the internal property of the other. Both because of her gender and because of her character, Sethe's internal self is less shielded than Paul D's, as in his description of her eyes: "They were like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held" (9). This is true of her relations to others, as well: "Your love is too thick," Paul D accuses; "Thin love ain't love at all," she replies (164); Sethe too fiercely expands the domain of her proprietorship, making her claim on her self all the more easily violated. Nevertheless, she insists on the rigidity of these boundaries: "Whatever is going on outside my door ain't for me. The world is in this room. This here's all there is and all there needs to be" (183); "There was no entry now. No crack or crevice available" (188). The conditions of slavery not only allowed the penetration of these boundaries, but also the determination of how hard or soft they were; the hardness of the bit leads to the softness of the smile ("They said it was the bit that made her smile when she didn't want to" [203]); the violation of Sethe's/Halle's property leads to the softness of the cream on Halle's face. Therefore it is not only the existence but also the constituency of the boundaries of one's property that is important in this novel, as in Baby Sugg's sermon to love one's flesh "hard" (88); the intensity of attention she calls for solidifies the boundaries of flesh that had previously been ignored and trespassed. Broken at last, she dies "soft as cream" (7).
We have seen a penetration and domination of boundaries, and hence of self/property, that was possible under slavery. Though they must ultimately be maintained, the novel suggests an alternative mode of relation that works through the dissolution rather than the penetration of the boundaries of property. This dissolution of boundaries is concomitant with a dissolution of property, and it depends on the existence of a spiritual world and the emergence of a spirit � Beloved. Mohanty writes, "The community that is sought in Beloved involves as its essence a moral and imaginative expansion of oneself, in particular one's capacity to experience" (55); this expansion spills past boundaries, dissolving the proper (propertied) self in a move that is captured by the image of melting. Thus it is not a coincidence that Beloved's emergence, the irruption of spirit, is surrounded by language of fluidity and loss of (proper) self; to get to an ownership of self in which "ownership" is not determined by the language and threat of enslavement, the categories of both "self" and "ownership" are suspended.
One's consumption of a fluid begins for an interaction between the fluid and oneself that does not necessarily recognize the boundaries of selfhood. Sethe/Denver/Beloved are both physically and spiritually bound through this consumption: "You went in the water/ I drank your blood/ I brought your milk" (216). At her birth, Denver was "drowning in its mother's blood" (84), and later in her sister's; as they lie in bed together, Denver inhales Beloved's breath (121). Beloved herself emerges as all fluidity: "A fully dressed woman walked out of the water" (50). She lacks any external fixity, even to the extent that she falls apart (133): if Sethe stops at the door of 124, then it is significant that Beloved says "there is no place where I stop" (210). To Paul D, she is "shining" without reason (64), and he is disturbed by "Her shining, her new shoes" (66); here her self-lessness is indicated by both her lack of property � she doesn't use her feet � and her lack of proprietary self � her internality is readily apparent, unbounded. Of Beloved's lyrical passages, Karla Holloway writes, "The rest evidences a fully divested text. Western time is obliterated, space is not even relevant because Beloved's presence is debatable, and the nature of her being is a nonissue because her belonging ('she is mine') has been established by her mother and sister" (520, my emphasis).
Beloved's entry into these character's lives dissolves what is proper. It is telling that she controls Paul D through the property he has stressed it is most important to control � his feet: "Paul D could not command his feet" (126). But her control is not the control over property that he experienced as a slave; her control comes from within (his internalized urges to leave the house) and from without (the lowering of her skirt) at the same time, without knowledge of what is proper. Mohanty describes the importance of this dissolution: "Before his reconciliation with Sethe, what Paul D must acknowledge is that his dependence on Beloved is a sign of his connection with the past he has up till now misunderstood, the past of water and death and ocean-deep emotion that threatens to both engulf him and liberate him" (65). Beloved softens both Sethe (her "knotted, private, walk-on-water life gave in a bit, softened" [97]) and Denver ("Denver's skin dissolved under that gaze and became soft and bright ..." [118]). Proprietary relations spill over their former boundaries, losing their proprietariness and keeping only their relationality, and three successive chapters begin: "Beloved, she my daughter. She mine" (200); "Beloved is my sister" (205); "I am Beloved and she is mine" (214). Even Beloved's name, though it is purchased property, is not a proper name; it is a name that does not belong to a person, but to a spirit, to "Sixty Million and more," to a book, to a story that "is not a story to pass on."
This dissolution of boundaries serves to dissolve the ownership relations of slavery, but it is itself too dangerous; the novel must arrive at a reconciliation that does recognize "self." It is necessary that Morrison "reenact that plane of in-betweenness..." (Christian, 14), but one cannot live in that plane. In Paul D's thoughts, we can recognizes the necessity of both moves. It is "risky" to invest to much in one's claims to property; "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love" (45). Yet it is comparably dangerous to lose all sense of self: "Sethe didn't know where the world stopped and she began" (164). If the first move is made through the irruption of spirit, then the second (the reclamation of self) is enabled by a reconciliation with the community, as Mohanty's essay suggests: "Sethe's capacity to know herself is tied up with her capacity to feel with others" (Mohanty, 57). Sethe's reconciliation with the community is one both with herself as part of that community and, more fundamentally, with her (bounded) self. She had "lost her mind" (254), and as she runs at Bodwin, "The ice pick is not in her hand; it is her hand" (262); fortunately, the community knows better. Denver, too, embarks on a reconciliation with the community, and additionally with white community. Her recovery of these relationships is informed by the spiritual dialectic of the novel, and so her acknowledgement that Miss Bodwin is "'experimenting on me'" (266) only recalls, and does not reenact, schoolteacher's sinister experiments. Finally, Sethe and Paul D must be reconciled, giving their selves back to each other. Paul D recalls Sixo's words: "She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind" (272-3). Gone is the idea that a "Sweet Home gal make you lose your mind" (263); instead, they come together as an act of recovery: "You your best thing, Sethe. You are" (273).
The characters of Beloved must learn the difference it makes to own oneself rather than being owned; this is a dialectic learning process, that includes losing "self" to "spirit," and, for all the characters, to "a spirit." This is encouraging as a response to slavery that is not couched in the terms of property; but it is not at all a reassuring alternative. If Morrison shows us that living with a spirit isn't easy, it is to remind us that living with spirit isn't easy either. Yet this loss of self must ultimately be recovered. Much of this dialectical movement can be read in Morrison's term "rememory," which in many seems to describe the novel. Rememory is not learning (memorization), nor is it reenacting what has been learned ("remembering seemed unwise" [274]), but instead a reaching of the past by virtue of the possibility of (a) spirit, by virtue of a communally recognized spiritual existence.

Sources 

Christian, Barbara.  "Fixing Methodologies: Beloved".

Holloway, Karla F. C.  "Beloved: A Spiritual".

Kierkegaard, S�ren. Fear and Trembling and Repetition (1843), ed. and transl.
     by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University  
     Press, 1983.

Mohanty, Satya P.  "The Epistemic Status of Cultural Identity: On Beloved and
    the Postcolonial Condition".

Morrison, Toni.  Beloved.  New York: Penguin Books, 1988.