ABSTRACT
Postmodernism clarified why overarching, ahistorical claims are untrustworthy, and this gave rise to a form of fiction that the noted scholar Linda Hutcheon refers to as historiographic metafiction. In such works, a character projects into being an interpretation of the historical past, but that interpretation is subsequently deconstructed, thus confirming the postmodern view that certain knowledge is untenable. In making her case, Hutcheon briefly analyzes John Banville’s Doctor Copernicus, which, I argue, is a biofiction rather than a historiographic metafiction. Instead of installing a way of thinking that is subsequently deconstructed, biofictions subvert a dominant way of thinking and then install a new one. However, authors of biofiction do not treat their “truth” proposal as immutable, incontestable, and absolute. To the contrary, they treat it as a provisional but authoritative (not authoritarian) system. In other words, their “truth” proposals never rise to the level of the metaphysical or the ontological, but they still passionately make the case for it as something that can be politically significant and personally meaningful nonetheless.
