Reconstruction of History: Reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Abstract

The present study focuses on one of the most dominant aspects of historical reconstruction – genealogical method of analysis as proposed by Michel Foucault – in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold. This research examines how Marquez applies this innovative literary technique of genealogical analysis of the history in this novel. In this sense Marquez deconstructs the traditional concept of history by denaturalizing the facts of the official history. Blurring the traditional concept of historical reconstruction, Marquez moves forward and backward in time, while reconstructing a murder that occurred twenty-seven years back. He even challenges the concept that history always presents absolute and certain events in their periodical order. To show this uncertainty he also applies magic realism that blurs hierarchy between the real and the fantastic. Though Marquez is writing this novel to reconstruct the real happening, he also exposes how the discourses operate in society. In this matter, power plays a great role to mobilize these discourses. This novel shows how power itself shifts its balance and become creative. As a genealogical analysis Marquez's concerns also realize on the formation of self or subject, where the tradition of counseling affects. So, Marquez doesn‟t believe the official version of history as the valid and authentic one. He rather views it as a discourse created by the ideology of the state or the society, which can never go beyond the ideology in which it is written or produced.