• Possibility and A Mercy
• Michelle S. Hite (bio)

Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy (2008) appeared in the marketplace within the context of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential election. Given this context, interviewers were interested in the novel's preracial context as directly tied to the suggestion of the postracial world order used to shape conversations following Obama's election. Specifically, they wanted to know from Morrison how much the possibilities of Obama's postracial era recalled or could recall the preracial antecedent one that Morrison claims for A Mercy. Ignored in this inquiry, however, was the basic fact that conceptualizations of the postracial itself depended on the vocabulary and ecology of race and its attendant structures of meaning, which constrains possibilities for imagining the very new world order being suggested. To understand this critique, one of Morrison's famous passages on race, this one delivered to her 1975 Portland State audience, may be helpful:

The function, the very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. … Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdom, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

("Portland State" 35:55)

Distraction can easily be regarded as constitutive of race for Morrison, since she contends that greed explains its invention more than a belief in the inherent inferiority or inhumanity of Black people ("Portland State" 33:48). A Mercy suggests that moving beyond the racial hierarchy requires turning toward the nation's prehistory and so before possibilities for expressions of human personhood were reduced to racial inevitabilities.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Morrison offers that in A Mercy, she reached the heights—that in "some respects she's never been better" as a novelist ("Interview" 1:40). The research into the landscape and the laws [End Page 129] that enabled her to realize the integrity of the characters' voices yielded this declaration. In addition to accepting Rose's suggestion that A Mercy serves as a "prequel to Beloved" (2:58), Morrison also describes it as "preracial" in that it occurs "before it all got institutionalized; when everybody was for sale and for rent … whites, mixed, everything. And slavery itself was this universal thing; and there was no nation, no empire that did not rest on it whether it was Egypt, or Athens, or Moscow" (3:09, 3:15) In responding to Rose's claim that, like Beloved, the story centers on a Black, female child to which Morrison accepts and describes focusing on that age as a "rich field to talk about" because "that's where you're vulnerable and imaginative" (4:14, 4:10). Importantly, Floren's journey and her evolution parallel the country's changing, and so, as Rose notes, the period of A Mercy is "America before it was America" (5:56). Morrison agrees and adds that this period marked a time when "America" was, "in flux, ad hoc—anything could have happened. … It was young, and kind of scary, and there was so much promise. And you want to know what were these [ordinary] people running from" (6:03). The ordinary people in this period were important for Morrison's own, long-standing reflections on race because they existed during an actual time in the nation's history when personhood could be experienced without an appeal to racial hierarchy.

Morrison carefully outlines her ambitions to move within the realm of the human in her essay "Home," where she outlines the problem by suggesting that race lacks meaning despite its articulation through a socioeconomic public sphere. Importantly, for Morrison, race constrains. It limits the imagination and has such thoroughly entrenched meaning that possibilities for going beyond them appear messianic, ethereal, superhuman, and idealistic. Morrison suggests that a more useful metaphor for realizing earthly conditions without racism would be "home" because making it is a "manageable, doable, modern human activity" ("Home" 4). In this way, "home" as...

• 可能性和仁慈
• 米歇尔·S·海特（个人简介）

托妮·莫里森 (Toni Morrison) 的小说《慈悲》(A Mercy , 2008) 在巴拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 2008 年总统选举背景下出现在市场上。鉴于这种背景，采访者对小说中的前种族背景很感兴趣，因为这与后种族世界秩序的暗示直接相关，后者用于塑造奥巴马当选后的对话。具体来说，他们想从莫里森那里知道奥巴马的后种族时代有多少可能性回想起或能够回想起莫里森在《仁慈》中声称的前种族时代。然而，这一探究忽略了一个基本事实，即后种族本身的概念化取决于种族的词汇和生态及其伴随的意义结构，这限制了想象所建议的全新世界秩序的可能性。为了理解这一批评，莫里森在 1975 年向波特兰州立大学的观众发表的关于种族的著名段落之一可能会有所帮助：

种族主义的功能，非常严重的功能……就是分散注意力。它让你无法完成工作。它让你一遍又一遍地解释你存在的理由。 ……有人说你的头部形状不正确，所以科学家们正在研究这一事实。有人说你没有艺术，那你就把它挖出来。有人说你没有王国，所以你把它挖出来。这些都是不必要的。总会还有一件事。

（《波特兰州立大学》35:55）

对于莫里森来说，分心很容易被视为种族的构成要素，因为她认为贪婪解释了它的发明，而不是对黑人固有的自卑或不人道的信仰（“波特兰州”33：48）。《仁慈》表明，超越种族等级制度需要转向国家的史前史，因此在人类人格表达的可能性被简化为种族必然性之前。

在接受查理·罗斯采访时，莫里森表示，在《仁慈》中，她达到了小说家的高度——在“某些方面，她从未如此出色”（《采访》1:40）。对景观和法律的研究[完第129页]使她能够认识到人物声音的完整性，从而得出了这一宣言。除了接受罗斯关于《慈悲》作为“ 《宠儿》的前传”的建议（2:58）之外，莫里森还将其描述为“前种族”，因为它发生在“一切都制度化之前；当时每个人都在出售和出租” ……白人、混血儿、一切人。奴隶制本身就是普遍存在的事物；没有一个国家、没有一个帝国不依赖它，无论是埃及、雅典还是莫斯科”（3:09, 3:15）回应罗斯的说法，即像《宠儿》一样，故事以一个黑人女孩为中心，莫里森接受了这一点，并将重点放在那个年龄上，认为这是一个“可以谈论的丰富领域”，因为“那是你脆弱和富有想象力的地方”（4 :14, 4:10)。重要的是，弗洛伦的旅程和她的演变与国家的变化并行，因此，正如罗斯所指出的，慈悲时期是“美国之前的美国”（5:56）。莫里森同意这一点，并补充说，这一时期标志着“美国”“不断变化、临时性——任何事情都可能发生……它还很年轻，有点可怕，但有太多的希望。你想知道这些[普通]人在逃避什么”（6:03）。这一时期的普通民众对于莫里森本人对种族的长期反思非常重要，因为他们存在于国家历史上的一个真实时期，在这个时期，可以在不诉诸种族等级制度的情况下体验人格。

莫里森在她的文章“家”中仔细概述了她在人类领域内前进的雄心，她在文中通过暗示种族缺乏意义来概述问题，尽管它是通过社会经济公共领域表达的。重要的是，对于莫里森来说，种族是有限制的。它限制了想象力，并且具有如此根深蒂固的意义，以至于超越它们的可能性显得弥赛亚、空灵、超人和理想主义。莫里森认为，在没有种族主义的情况下实现地球条件的一个更有用的比喻是“家”，因为创造它是一种“可管理、可行的现代人类活动”（“家”4）。如此一来，“家”就...