The Most Absurd Garments Space-Time Can Imagine: Home’s Precarious Counter-Topography

Abstract

A Mercy ’s final words: “Florens. My love. Hear a tua mãe,” remind us that acts of voice can sometimes traverse incalculable distances. Though Florens’ mother will never hear her speak in the voice of a grown woman or learn of her decision to “last,” by opting to give a minha mãe the final word, Morrison proposes that acts of communication issuing from the imagination toward an intended destination always hit their mark. The plea a minha mãe directs toward her daughter insists that she wishes to be understood and, if not forgiven, then not forgotten. In this instance, the last words of the novel insinuate that an act of desperation deserves to be ascertained as an indication of love’s bountiful possibilities, not its nullification; a gesture affirmed by the novel’s opening words, “Don’t be afraid.” Of course, part of the problem lies in the fact that we have no way to determine when a minha mãe has given utterance to her words, but what interests me here is the manner in which novelistic closure invites us to return to the gesture of reassurance that opened the narrative .

In mapping, as in the conception of individuality, objectivity comes to the fore as the sole arbiter of truth and reality. Logic and reason increasingly dominate the scheme of the mind, acting as the orienting principle of personhood. In both realms, idiosyncrasy and emotionality, physicality and specificity, are increasingly marginalized.

—Kathleen Kirby, “Lost in Space: Re-establishing the Limits of Identity”

As an already—and always—raced writer, I knew from the very beginning that I could not, would not, reproduce the master’s voice and its assumptions of the all-knowing law of the white father. Nor would I substitute his voice with that of his fawning mistress or his worthy opponent, for both of these positions (mistress or opponent) seemed to confine me to his terrain, in his arena, accepting the house rules in the dominance game. If I had to live in a racial house, it was important, at the least, to rebuild it so that it was not a windowless prison into which I was forced, a thick-walled, impenetrable container from which no cry could be heard, but rather an open house, grounded, yet generous in its supply of windows and doors. Or, at the most, it became imperative for me to transform this house completely. Counterracism was never an option.

—Toni Morrison, “Home”