Masters Thesis

Tragedy or Malaise: The Limits of Rewriting History from the Margins

The 21st century has seen various efforts to write marginalized characters back into historical moments from which they have previously been elided. This trend raises the question: Besides representation, what can this rewriting accomplish? Working within the genre of historiographic metafiction Jamie O’Neill’s 2001 novel At Swim, Two Boys and Sarah Waters’ 2006 novel The Night Watch offer a valuable starting point in this exploration. Using the backdrop of the 1916 Easter rising and WWII, respectively, both novels offer an alternative conception of history by looking in from the margins. Any quotidian exploration of marginal life during these historical moments will necessarily expose the social practices that led to such marginalization. This thesis posits that these two texts offer an example of what Wendy Brown calls genealogical politics. According to Brown, genealogical politics seeks to recognize history not as some purposeful march toward a better future, but rather, as a coincidental series of events shaped by structures of power; a recognition which can reorient how we conceptualize both history and our political present. Both novels turn to the past to expose social institutions not as natural and static social formations but as flawed systems of power capable of being replaced. Yet O’Neill and Waters are always constrained by the reality of history, and although they can rewrite their characters into history, they cannot write them happy endings, at least not realistically. These two novels make clear that any attempts to rewrite the margins back into history will always be limited by their marginality, and the current social order leaves no future for these subjects except tragedy or malaise.

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