The dissertation writing is not moving as fast as I would really like it to. But after a week's slogging, and reading of book-chapters and articles, which seemed erratic and aimless even to me, I think, I have finally figured out one of my central arguments. So here it is, in a jumbled first-drafty kind of a way.
A lot of the theories of novel I am reading right now, talk about the phenomenon of "post-modern" historical novels. There are certain strategies that are identified as post-modern:narrating the constructed nature of historical narratives and knowledge, questioning, problematizing and complicating what is perceived to be the grand narrative, bringing together multiple and often disparate voices. I do think these narrative modes make the contemporary historical novels special, and also endow upon them a very specific characteristic. In lots of ways, these novels are primarily about the voices that have previously been silenced or marginalized in history. Neo-slave narratives, or a big chunk of post-colonial historical novels use these strategies, appropriate them, so to say. But they are not novels about mere "heterogeneity", they are about conflicts. Because of the very nature of the material they are dealing with, neo-slave narratives are essentially novels about class struggle. There are ways in which these novels represent that class struggle differently from the classical Marxist understandings of it. Sometimes the class struggle appears in really muted forms. But nevertheless, these are novels about class struggle and conflict, and not mere co-existence of heterogenous elements.
So this is my argument about the forms in a nutshell. What do you think?
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