REKONFIGURACIJA ZVANIČNE ISTORIJE PUTEM SEĆANJA U ROMANIMA VOLjENA TONI MORISON I O LjUBAVI I SENCI IZABELE ALJENDE

Abstract

Although the novels which make up the corpus of this paper do not share a geographical background – which is North American for Beloved (1987) and South American for De amor y de sombra (1984) – Toni Morrison and Isabel Allende both shed light on the silenced voices “disremembered and unaccounted for” (Morrison 2005: 323), emphasizing alternative testimonies which had been marginalized or completely deleted from official historical records. Through a comparative analysis of Beloved and De amor y de sombra, this paper focuses on themes of the reconfiguration and reinterpretation of canonic versions of history, and the reappropriation of memory, which is denied to subaltern individuals and collectives in the dominant order envisioned as exclusionary and hierarchical. In terms of methodology, this paper relies on Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historical metafiction and Miguel de Unamuno’s concept of intrahistory, alongside ideas stemming from trauma theory, which enable an examination of the novels in terms of the representations of otherness, as a marginalized category of ex-centricity, of the validity of accepted historical narratives, and of traumatic experiences which bring about a transformation of the novels’ protagonists into culturally and socially subversive individuals.