This essay, written as a sequel to my earlier one ¡°¡®Hush! Caution! Echoland¡¯: Rereading Joyce¡¯s Finnegans Wake as a Postcolonial Echo,¡± aims at reinterpreting Finnegans Wake as an alternative historiography. In my earlier study, I argue that the language of Finnegans Wake is not English but the echo of English, which is amputated, fragmented, and hybridized, and that Joyce¡¯s language experiment deconstructs the authority of English and reverberates postcolonial recalcitrant echo. As a follow-up study, this essay reads Finnegans Wake as an alternative historiography, which means re-writing or writing back of the orthodox colonial/nationalist historiography. While the missing letter on HCE¡¯s sin symbolizes the absence of absolute truth, the text of Finnegans Wake is written by numerous unreliable stories, rumors, and gossips, which ceaselessly crisscross and contradict each other. As a dream-text, Finnegans Wake wakes readers from the nightmare of orthodox historiography and suggests the possibilities of variegated versions of alternative historiographies. |