Week 10 Questions

What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie genres?

Alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie genres all fall under the specific literary, fictional genre, that involves the concepts of parallel worlds and timelines. The alternate history genre can be seen as an overarching genre which involves narratives where one or multiple historical events may occur differently. The uchronie genres, derived from a French term, includes an ‘alternative history,’ where a story occurs in a similar world to ours until a specific event is altered to what we believe is true. In Mountfort’s (2016) research, subgenres of the uchronie genres are identified, and there appears to be three different variations such as ‘pure uchronie,’ involving a singular alternative world, ‘plural uchronia,’ consisting the existence of an alternative world in parallel, and ‘infinite uchronia,’ where there is the possibility of many or infinite parallel worlds.

In addition, the term uchronie mostly emphasizes a less causal or ‘diachronic’ form of history, but rather a ‘synchronic’ one. Mountfort (2016) explains the relevance of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (TMITHC), as one of the most critically acclaimed, and a prime expample of the uchronie or alternative history genre. TMITHC was primarily inspired by the I Ching, which is an ancient, Chinese literary device also known as a text of divination, or the ‘Book of Changes.’ Dick’s novel inspires the use of this in it’s main plot, and figuratively uses it and gives the reader a sophisticated postmodern fiction that examines the extremities of the text and the world in which it occurs. In fact, many academic sources have studies TMINHC as a formative example of alternate history, but specifically as a novel of the uchronie genre. However, Dick uses a more synchronic view of history than diachronic in TMINHC.

Moreover, other scholars such as Carl Jung have also tried to explain theories behind the concept of ‘synchronicity,’ which is a major element in the alternative history genre, as it involves the altering of certain events in history. Jung describes synchronicity as something related with the ‘postmodern,’ which was objectively true, but a distinct factor of Jung’s understandings were that he was concerned with the simultaneities between the objective events of the genre and the related subjective states (which often had a psychological or spiritual quality to them). Jung addressed synchronicity as an ‘acausal connecting principle,’ and as a ‘meaningful coincidence.’ Where, the critical disjunctions found in the linear timeline is a factor of the uchronie genre.

Overall, alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie genres all involve the existence of an alternate world, where although it is similar to our world, events may occur differently to what we believe. The major distinguishing features between these three concepts is whether they involve a more synchronic or diachronic narrative to them.