ABSTRACT
At first sight, including Toni Morrison in an overview of transgressive fiction may strike some as an unexpected choice. Although intersectionality did not gain widespread currency as a critical concept until the 1990s, well after Beloved was published, it is a particularly useful construct when considering how the novel traces the formative effects of boundary transgressions on the shape of the society they demarcate. Beloved is part of a much larger literary and critical movement that regards gender and race as intersectional constructions and uses fiction to carve out space for black feminist thought. Beloved is part of a larger critical project that uses fiction to rethink and reconsider its extra-textual context, exploring the past to analyse the present and imagine the future. It is part postmodern fictional slave narrative, part gothic horror and part critical reflection, pairing its often shocking images of rape, abuse, murder and torture with an experimental style.
