PRECARITY AND HEALING: ON THE ROLE OF GRIEF IN EDWIDGE DANTICAT’S "THE FARMING OF BONES" (1998)

Ágnes Zsófia  KOVÁCS

doi:10.24193/subbphilo.2022.2.19

Authors

Ágnes Zsófia KOVÁCS Department of American Studies, University of Szeged, Hungary, akovacs@lit.u-szeged.hu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6259-142X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2022.2.19

Keywords:

Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, Judith Butler, Haitian diasporic women’s writing history, empowerment, healing, precarity, grief

Abstract

Precarity and Healing: On the Role of Grief in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998). Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998) is a fictional account of the undocumented Parsley massacre of 1937, when black Haitian migrant workers were killed by Rafael Trujillo’s government in the Dominican Republic. The paper places the novel in the African diasporic tradition of writing about the traumatic past, with the Parsley massacre being one such traumatic event of Haitian diasporic writing. The paper highlights the critical problem that unlike most post-colonial fiction, this Haitian diasporic story about gaining voice and agency fails to provide a satisfactory therapeutic valence or an explanation for individual suffering. The paper proposes an application of Judith Butler’s concept of precarity in order to reconsider the problem of healing the wounds of the past in Danticat’s novel. For Butler, social relationality makes subjects vulnerable within the social structure they inhabit, but this vulnerability may also carry a potentiality for the experience of social vulnerability to be shared in makeshift acts of solidarity. The paper claims that precarity does have a limited potential in the novel, which can be detected through the analysis of the water imagery. Amabelle Désir, the protagonist, is already living a precarious life before the Parsley massacre, but the brutality to which she is subjected isolates her socially even more afterwards. She is unable to bear her testimony, living in the past, mourning her lost lover. The representation of precarity in the novel’s water imagery indicates that making contact with her former employer in 1961 brings a momentary sense of connection and community that enables her to commit suicide eventually. This element of truncated healing can be read as the limited potential of precarity available in the Haitian diasporic context.

Article history: Received 9 February 2022; Revised 20 April 2022; Accepted 3 May 2022; Available online 30 June 2022; Available print 30 June 2022.

REZUMAT. Precaritate și vindecare: despre rolul deplângerii în The Farming of Bones (1998) de Edwidge Danticat. The Farming of Bones (1998) de Edwidge Danticat e o relatare ficțională a masacrului din Parsley, rămas nedocumentat, unde în 1937 muncitori haitieni migranți au fost uciși de guvernul lui Rafael Trujillo în Republica Dominicană. Lucrarea plasează romanul în tradiția diasporică africană a scriiturii despre trecutul traumatic, masacrul din Parsley fiind un asemenea eveniment traumatic în literatura diasporică haitiană. Studiul evidențiază problema critică a faptului că, spre deosebire de majoritatea ficțiunilor post-coloniale, această poveste diasporică haitiană a găsirii unei voci și a unei posibilități de acțiune nu reușește să furnizeze o valență terapeutică satisfăcătoare sau o explicație a suferinței individuale. Lucrarea propune aplicarea conceptului de precaritate al lui Judith Butler pentru a repune în discuție problema vindecării rănilor trecutului în romanul lui Danticat. Pentru Butler, relaționarea socială face subiecții vulnerabili în structura socială pe care o populează, însă această vulnerabilitate poate avea și un potențial, în sensul că experiența vulnerabilității sociale poate fi împărtășită în acte improvizate de solidaritate. Lucrarea afirmă că precaritatea are un potențial limitat în roman, fapt ce poate fi detectat prin analiza imaginilor apei. Amabelle Désir, protagonista, trăiește o viață precară deja înainte de masacrul din Parsley, însă brutalitatea la care este supusă o izolează social și mai mult ulterior. Ea nu este în stare să-și aducă mărturia, trăiește în trecut, deplângându-și iubitul mort. Reprezentarea precarității în imaginile apei din roman indică faptul că luând legătura cu fostul ei angajator în 1961 îi provoacă eroinei un sentiment trecător de conexiune și comunitate care îi permite să se sinucidă în cele din urmă. Acest element de vindecare trunchiată poate fi interpretat ca potențial limitat al precarității disponibil în contextul diasporic haitian.

Cuvinte-cheie: Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, Judith Morrison, Judith Butler, istoria literaturii diasporice haitiene, empowerment, vindecare, precaritate, deplângere

Author Biography

Ágnes Zsófia KOVÁCS, Department of American Studies, University of Szeged, Hungary, akovacs@lit.u-szeged.hu

Ágnes Zsófia KOVÁCS is associate professor at the Department of American Studies, University of Szeged, Hungary. Her research interests include late nineteenth-century proto-modern fiction, conversions of literary modernisms, popular fiction genres, and contemporary multicultural American fiction. Her current research into travel writing involves re-mapping travel texts by Edith Wharton. She has published extensively on Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Toni Morrison, see her homepage at https://ieas-szeged.academia.edu/%C3%81gnesZs%C3%B3fiaKov%C3%A1cs. Email: akovacs@lit.u-szeged.hu

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