Rereading Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, this article explores how Morrison’s work at the limits of language performs the haunting ties between the Reconstruction era and the present day by offering readers a way to experience a rememory of their own. By repeatedly emphasizing the inadequacy of language in expressing traumatic experience, Beloved encourages its readers to, like its characters, look beyond language and seek out a kind of ineffable, embodied knowledge to better understand the lingering traumas of slavery. Through Morrison’s concept of “invisible ink,” which points to the inevitability that lived experience cannot be captured in language by the author alone but must be filled in by an active reader, this article makes a larger argument: that Beloved acts as both an invitation and a guide to read the ghostly, invisible ink of history that exists outside the novel, haunting our world itself.

本文重读了托妮·莫里森的小说《宠儿》，探讨了莫里森在语言极限下的作品如何通过为读者提供一种体验自己回忆的方式来表现重建时代与当今之间令人难以忘怀的联系。通过反复强调语言在表达创伤经历方面的不足，《宠儿》鼓励读者像书中的人物一样，超越语言，寻找一种不可言喻的、具体化的知识，以更好地理解奴隶制挥之不去的创伤。莫里森的“隐形墨水”概念指出，生活经验不可避免地不能由作者单独用语言捕捉，而必须由活跃的读者填写，本文提出了一个更大的论点：《宠儿》既是一种邀请，也是一种邀请。一本阅读小说之外、困扰着我们世界的幽灵般的、看不见的历史墨水的指南。