When Ancestors Become Ghosts—The Costs of Burying Our Past

Joshua Frank, instructor

Course description. Through the lenses of history, psychoanalytic theory, and literature, participants will analyze our tortured cultural and political moment. We will explore the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison, as well as excerpts from the writings of 21^st century novelist Jesmyn Ward, and the work of various psychoanalysts. Their insights will help us understand the impulses driving the current wave of book-banning and censorship, and the dangers these impulses pose for all of us if they remain unexamined. The course title is an inversion of psychoanalyst Hans Loewald’s phrase “When Ghosts Become Ancestors.” Instead of considering the growth that comes with recognition and acknowledgement, these authors require us to consider the damage done when we refuse to acknowledge our painful history.

We will be examining Toni Morrison’s Beloved to understand the profound costs of erasing historical knowledge. We will discuss the novel each week using curated passages from psychoanalytic literature about the transmission of intergenerational trauma through a racial lens. We will also examine curated passages from Jesmyn Ward’s novel Let Us Descend and George Orwell’s 1984. Students will receive a detailed syllabus by the end of February. Students should expect to read 80 pages of Beloved each week after the first class meeting.

Required materials. Students will need to get a copy of Beloved on their own. The instructor will provide all other materials.

Prep for first class. Instructor will provide a pdf of Morrison’s 5-page foreword to the Vintage edition to read before the first class.