The Interrogation of Knowledge and (Re)Writing of History in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World

The Interrogation of Knowledge and (Re)Writing of History in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World

Edward P. Jones’s The Known World (2003) probes into the fallacy of the written texts which are primarily law and the Bible, compares these with other forms of knowledge, and reconfigures history through fictional writing. This paper first examines the power/knowledge relationship by looking into how law and the Bible worked in tandem to buttress slavery in the antebellum South. To undercut the exclusive power of written knowledge, Jones examines the strengths and weaknesses of competing art forms. In so doing, Jones reveals that knowledge exists in many different figures, that other forms can empower Blacks. As such, Jones is both expanding what counts as knowledge and how it is materialized. Finally, Jones writes both as a historian and a fiction writer. Using his imagination, Jones rewrites the past parodying the ways in which “history” has been written. Hence, The Known World is the assessing of the past, a rewriting of the history, and a comment on the present.