Reorienting Historical Frames of Reference: An Appraisal of Kurt Vonnegut’s Jailbird

Abstract

“Postmodern fiction” says Linda Hutcheon in A Poetics of Postmodernism “suggests that to re-write or to re-present the past in fiction and history is, in both cases, to open it up to the present, to prevent it from being conclusive and teleological” (110). Falling within the gamut of postmodernism, historiographic metafiction refers to an amalgamation of history and fiction. Falling within the gamut of postmodern techniques, it vehemently interrogates the objectivity of historical discourses, so much so that some works of historiographic metafiction even subvert the long-held beliefs about well-marked historical events. Hence historiographic metafiction voices dissatisfaction against the knowability and certainty of the discourses of and about the past. As an art, it becomes interesting, intriguing, engaging and complex as it draws on cultural, socio-economic and political features and carries undertones of noncompliance within itself. While postmodernism challenges metanarratives as devious stratagems, historiographic metafiction in the same vein favours petite and subjective narratives, thereby problematizing the historicity of history.