Reconstructing History of the Other: The Historical Ethnography in The Rifles

Levinas holds that history is essentially a kind of connection between people, the retrospect of the present subject to the other in the past. Therefore, to understand history, we need to recognize a past that has never been present, so as to shoulder the absolute responsibility of the self to the historical other. William Vollmann's postmodern historical novel The Rifles employs postmodern multi-genre narrative techniques, integrating field research and official documents, juxtaposing the emic perspective with the etic perspective, and blending the mystery of Franklin's voyages and Inuit myth. It reconstructs an Inuit historical ethnography through fragmented, personalized yet factually rigorous literary means, upholding fairness and justice for the other and establishing an ethical connection between the subject and the historical other.