History, Race, Gender and ‘Binocular Vision’ - David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident

David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident deals with how John Washington, a black male historian, excavates five generations of his family's history and restores the histories of his family and black Americans buried by dominant narratives. This paper first examines the resistance narratives of John's ancestors that he discovers through 'counter-memories' such as Old Jack's storytelling and the records kept by his father and great-grandfather. It then examines how John, frustrated by the limitations of Western historical methodology, uses historical imagination and African notions of death to uncover his father’s suicide as well as the deaths of his great-grandfather and fugitive slaves. Thus it is revealed that employing both oppositional epistemologies leads John to confront the truth of his family history. Furthermore, the paper explores how John's hatred of whites and women begins to unravel as he unearths his family history and begins to move away from fixed ideas about race and gender. Through John's transformation, Bradley suggests a shift in perception that does not favor either of the opposing perspectives, but rather connects the dots between them, as an attitude which American society should seek for in the post-civil rights era when racial tensions still persist.