The Politics of Ambiguity in Historical Fiction Writing
The Politics of Ambiguity in Historical Fiction Writing

Summary/Abstract: This paper tries to analyze the role of ambiguity and uncertainty in representations of the past and their effect upon processes of meaning production. It asks how fiction writing responds to the idea of the cultural appropriation of the sufferings of the other, and what collective trauma means from the perspective of culturally non-defined constellations of remembrance. I will analyze ambiguity in relation to the poetics of intersections, distances and traces which are shaped by the constant negotiation between unifying, totalizing strategies of remembrance confronted with perceptions of marginal, fragmentary cultural remembrance. Our discontinuous planetary community also sees itself through the ways in which it defines the relationship between personal and collective spaces of historical consciousness, or between the ephemeral and the memorable. Thus, I will rely on a brief analysis of Colum McCann’s novels in order to investigate the way in which contemporary literature reflects the interplay between memories of the forgotten and the historical self. In trying to represent historical moments through multiple temporalities, his novels create dissonant possibilities of perceiving the inclusiveness and exclusiveness of the individual on a global, historical stage.

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