Metafiction, Figures of Time and Language Interface in "Guyana" by Élise Turcotte

Abstract

In 2011 Élise Turcotte released Guyana, a historiographic metafiction in which the characters come to realize the sheer impossibility of accessing a collective imagination. The famous Jonestown massacre surges to the forefront of the writing through the murder of Kimi, a hairdresser from Montreal, and initiates a frantic quest for the understanding of self through another, in order to get past the ineffable characteristic of the past. This article will explore the metafictional aspect of Guyana and its polyphonic narration before revaluating the stakes of, and the way in which we perceive, tales of trauma.