Reconstruction of History: Reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Date
2007
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Department of English
Abstract
The present study focuses on one of the most dominant aspect 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 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
foreword and backward in time, whiledealing witha 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 fantasy.
Though Marquez is writing this novel to reconstruct the real happening,
but he also exposes how the discourses operate in society. In this matter power
plays great role to mobilize these discourses. But this novel shows how power
itself shifts its balance and becomes creative. As a genealogical analysis
Marquez's concerns also rely 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
that ideology.
Description
Keywords
Sexuality, Marquez'sTreatment