Reconstruction of Textbook American History Reading E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime.

Abstract

With the application of Foucauldian genealogy and revisionist theories (i.e. new historicism and historiography), this research study comes to the conclusion that Doctorow's fictional workRagtimehas reinterpreted the official American history of ragtime era with revision and reconstruction. The vertically constructed official history of America has been horizontallyreconstructed by Doctorow that denies the objectivity of the history. The researcher undertakes an examination of the characterization and the events inRagtime,concentrating on the personal histories of the characters and the events in the historical time frame to analyze and evaluate the omission and inclusion of the historical events in written official history by rewriting and reinterpreting it. For example, Coalhouse Walker, a black from the era, suffers the racial discrimination that edits the American official history and revises the American official history of the politics of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Bearing such issues in mind Doctorow intermingles fiction and history together thereby, deconstructing the borderline imposed as factual history and false fiction. This reconstructive history in the novel helps us view the American history from new perspective that reveals American official history as based on prejudices, preoccupations, discrimination and marginalization that parodizes the so-called multicultural democracy of American history.