ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how pathology is embedded in national history and how it interferes in the construction of subjectivities. The first and main 'tool' that Toni Morrison's texts provide us with is the notion of ghosts and haunting in terms of collective memory. As Jacqueline Rose has suggested, 'Beloved is a novel of transgenerational hauting where a woman becomes the repository of an unspoken and unspeakable history'. Beloved is clearly a ghost story; one where haunting plays a crucial role. Beloved is based on the real story of Margaret Gardner, a fugitive slave who killed her daughter in similar circumstances. In the novel, Beloved is the materialization of a girl who was killed by her mother, Sethe, before she was three years old. Beloved describes the primal experience of being cramped in the boat and losing her mother and her father to the sea.
