Rescuing history: Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, and Morrison as post-colonial writers of the Americas (William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Colombia)

Nobel laureates William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison are among the most frequently analyzed of all American writers. Critics of their work often draw comparisons among the authors' style; however, no study exists which critically compares their action. In "Rescuing History: Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, and Morrison as Post-Colonial Writers of the Americas," I analyze the style and themes of representative works of these authors and conclude that the similarities among them result from a shared concern regarding America's colonial past. As heirs to America's legacy of slavery, these authors realized that colonialism constrained much more than the physical freedom of the colonized. It silenced their history, shaped their identity, and limited their possibilities. Therefore, these authors use their fiction to rescue the stories of those outside of recorded history, attempting to locate the colonial subject's place in the past to ensure them a place in the future.; In responding to the creation and colonization of a dark-skinned, "inferior" other in America, Faulkner desires absolution for the South's sin of slavery, Garcia Marquez seeks Latin America's escape from historical silence, and Morrison pursues the spiritual resurrection of her race. Examining Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, and Morrison from a post-colonial perspective foregrounds each author's struggle against the silencing of history and the control of identity in order to exercise the regional, national, and racial afflictions arising out of colonialism.; In chapter one, I establish those characteristics of colonial domination against which American post-colonial writers struggle, using as my framework the discourse theory of Michel Foucault and Edward Said. I discuss the ways in which the West employs language and literacy, history, binary characterization, and hegemony to create and control a racially "inferior" other. In chapter two, I examine the relationship among the authors and explore their strategies for exposing the tools of colonial discourse, discrediting Western historiography's totalizing view, and replacing received history with precolonial forms of knowledge. In chapters three, four, and five, I address each author in turn, examining representative examples of his or her work from a post-colonial perspective. I have selected Faulkner's Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), and Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Jazz (1993) for my examination. I conclude that post-colonialism serves as an effective framework for allowing further insight into the similarities among the themes and stylistic strategies of three of America's most examined authors.