| Despite the egalitarian and pro-social claims that inform popular accounts of life in the United States, the recorded experiences of domestic workers, oppressed and exploited women, child prostitutes, immigrant laborers, slaves, political prisoners, indentured servants, Native Americans, and colonized subjects within and without the territorial borders of the nation testify to real systems of privilege and disprivilege that support the internal and external operations of United States empire. In the last century, contemporary American authors across diverse cultural and literary backgrounds have turned to historical fiction as a vehicle for reinstating spectral subjects back into the national narrative. This study treats ten works of historical fiction spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in order to answer the following research questions: How can contemporary writers reconcile the histories of imperial ghosts to the dominant anti-imperialist national narrative? Can the subaltern subjects of empire be represented, and, if so, by what strategies? How can writers navigate and articulate the violence of racial, gendered, and socioeconomic categories that support imperial designs without reproducing the ideology that generates these constructions of otherness? What methods can be used to place competing narratives in dialogue with one another in order to form a more complete picture of the past? How do these methods connect to specific strategies of United States empire---namely, the production of domestic subjects; the institution of American slavery; the campaign of continental expansion; and the acquisition of economic, political, and military influence abroad? By offering creative strategies for circumventing the historical authority that edits out certain stories inconsistent with the democratic achievements of the United States, these writers expose the myth of American exceptionalism and connect the empire building projects of the nineteenth century to the domestic and foreign policies of the present; their efforts have contributed to a more representative, equitable, and inclusive archive of American history and a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the interplay between individual interiority and national consciousness. |
