The postmodern aspect of this novel I feel is based on the history that is being told. Postmodern fiction is still strongly invested in history, but more importantly in revising the sense of what history means and can accomplish. This novel Beloved is showing the African American deep cultural memory, of keeping the past alive in order to construct a better future. African American tradition of social protest, and presence, and the resurrection of authentic history, seem to make the novel the root of postmodern fiction. With this novel Morrison acknowledges that history is always fictional but the recording of African American history is to help heal the readers. Beloved reminds us that history in not "over" for African Americans, who are still struggling to write the genealogies of their people and to keep a historical consciousness alive. One example of the historical reminders is the appearance of the newspaper clipping focusing on the dominant culture's process of historical documentation. The next example would be the apocalypse of the American national history rendering of the Civil War, as a minor inconsequential event in the lives of the former slaves. Beloved attempts to redefine history more as a jumble of personal as well as publicity recorded triumphs and tragedies.
"Morrison's commitment to historical remembering arises from her concern about the ignorance of and even contempt for the past that she sees in both contemporary African American and postmodern culture." .
I saw the plot of the novel as being the parallel dialectic the maid's struggle between remembering and forgetting the past. Beloved is a novel about the traumas and healing powers of memory, or "rememory" as Sethe calls it. Sethe worked hard to remember as close to nothing was safe. Unfortunately her brain betrayed her offering her memories of the beauty of Sweet home rather than of her children. Painfully aware that she lacks control of her memory, Sethe also attempts to repress, serious work of beating back the past.