The Young Historians or Chronicles of Homes: Lily Perry's ביקור התלײן (The Executioner's Visit)

Daniel, the thirteen year old boy who is "too clever for his age but is afraid and anxious as befits his age," is the protagonist of Lily Perry's novel The Executioner's Visit. Instead of writing about the destruction of the First Temple, The First House, for his history class, Daniel chooses to write the chronicles of his dysfunctional family. The history assignment lends its discursive structure to Daniel's account of his parents' divorce and the subsequent suicidal depression of his mother. His narrative is constructed around what he perceives to be an accurate, objective, and well-researched historical account. His anger at the mother who wants to die, his oedipal rivalry with his father, and his cries for help are all delivered within the paradigms of "professional and scientific" chronicles. Through Daniel's mimcry of history telling, Perry's novel examines the discourse of the family as a paradigm and historiography as an objective discipline. The novel turns around the conventional power relations between the two: instead of appropriating the family to serve the ends of the historical discourse, it uses the historiographical discourse to represent the family. Consequently, the presumed priority of historiography is questioned and undermined. Perry's novel introduces a new perspective to the literary representations of the hegemonic/marginalized relationship by shifting the focus to the discursive. Daniel's mimicry of history writing empties it from its conventional content (international relations, wars, etc.) thus laying bare its hierarchical principles, which marginalize and trivialize the power relations that constitute the family. Furthermore, this reversal of appropriating processes suggests that gender politics govern not only family constitution but also the historical discourse.