Fluid Resistance: The Oceanic Narrative and Political Agency of Water in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
This article rereads Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) through the critical framework of the Blue Humanities, an emergent field within environmental humanities that foregrounds water as a formative ecological, historical, and political force. While existing scholarship on Beloved has productively engag...
| Publicado en: | Transcript: An e-Journal of Literary & Cultural Studies Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 1 - 23 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Bodoland University, Department of English
Jul-Dec2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191876999&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191876999 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 25829858 N4DM jtl: Transcript: An e-Journal of Literary & Cultural Studies issn: 25829858 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jul-Dec2025 vid: 5 iid: 2 pid: 72609 pub: Bodoland University, Department of English artinfo: ui: 191876999 10.53034/Transcript.2025.v05.n02.001 ppf: 1 ppct: 22 formats: tig: atl: Fluid Resistance: The Oceanic Narrative and Political Agency of Water in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. aug: au: Gogoi, Rijumoni Dutta, Sangjukta affil: Assistant Professor, Madhabdev University. Research Scholar, Madhabdev University. su: Transgenerational trauma Glissant, Édouard, 1928-2011 Imagination Novelists Fiction Morrison, Toni, 1931-2019 Slave trade African American history Environmentalism Atlantic Ocean Ohio River sug: subj: Atlantic Ocean Ohio River Transgenerational trauma Glissant, Édouard, 1928-2011 Imagination Novelists Fiction Morrison, Toni, 1931-2019 Slave trade African American history Environmentalism keyword: Black Atlantic Blue Humanities Middle Passage Oceanic Memory Wet Ontology ab: This article rereads Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) through the critical framework of the Blue Humanities, an emergent field within environmental humanities that foregrounds water as a formative ecological, historical, and political force. While existing scholarship on Beloved has productively engaged feminist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial paradigms, it has largely privileged land-based spatialities such as plantations, houses, and burial grounds. This study addresses that critical gap by arguing that Morrison’s pervasive aquatic imagery—oceans, rivers, rain, amniotic fluid, and spectral wetness—functions not merely as metaphor but as an active, agentive presence shaping memory, embodiment, and resistance. Drawing on Philip Steinberg’s concept of "wet ontology" and Astrida Neimanis’s theorization of relational, more-than-human embodiment, the article conceptualizes water in Beloved as a "blue archive": a living repository of diasporic trauma and generative possibility. Central to this reading is Morrison’s invocation of the Atlantic Ocean as both abyssal graveyard and womb-like reservoir of Black diasporic history. The Middle Passage, figured through Édouard Glissant’s notion of the "womb abyss," becomes a site of paradoxical destruction and rebirth. This aquatic liminality is mirrored in the Ohio River crossing, where Sethe’s escape from slavery coincides with Denver’s birth, staging water as a midwife of survival. Beloved’s wet, spectral emergence further embodies submerged histories that refuse erasure. By situating water as a politicized, militarized space of border-making and exclusion, the article connects Morrison’s narrative to broader global discourses on dispossession and "wasted lives." Ultimately, Beloved articulates a blue ethics of remembrance and relation, positioning water as a historical force essential to both African American memory and contemporary ecological thought. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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