Stretching the limits of comfortable intelligibilities: defying (Author)itarianisms in Junot Díaz's "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao" (2007)

Abstract

Postmodern literature has been frequently associated with political detachment from historical realities. The main purpose of this dissertation is to analyze Junot Díaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (2007) as a postmodern novel that not only proposes political engagement, but also demands from the reader a critical response to the atrocities carried out in the name of Eurocentric notions of the other. This study of the novel's postmodern formal and aesthetic devices tries to draw conclusions as to the author's questioning of the nature of (author)ity and the ways in which (author)itarianism has traditionally operated as the main political resource from Columbus's "discovery" of America until Bush's "War on Terror." Furthermore, this dissertation exposes the novel's questioning of the ideological basis of Latin American dictatorships (the Trujillato in the Dominican Republic), genocide, slavery and the systematic exploitation of native populations.