Transnational Latino/a Literature and the Transmodern Meta-narrative. An Alternative Reading of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In this chapter I examine transnational Latino/a fiction as transmodern literature and discuss the consequences of privileging this perspective over a transnational outlook. In particular, I use Enrique Dussel’s transmodern project as a framework to analyse Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Os...
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| Format: | book part |
| Publication Date: | 2020 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (USC) |
| Repository: | Minerva. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:minerva.usc.gal:10347/45318 |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10347/45318 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Transmodernity Latino/a literature Diaspora Metanarrative Palimpsest transnational literature 6202 Teoría, análisis y crítica literarias 620201 Crítica de textos 620202 Análisis literario 620203 Estilo y estética literarios |
| Summary: | In this chapter I examine transnational Latino/a fiction as transmodern literature and discuss the consequences of privileging this perspective over a transnational outlook. In particular, I use Enrique Dussel’s transmodern project as a framework to analyse Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). Dussel suggests that Transmodernity emerges in the liminal space between centre and peripheries; it incorporates the obliterated discourses of the peripheries into the hegemonic centre, resulting in a hybrid meta-narrative. I contend that Latino/a fiction occupies a similarly liminal space and produces discourses that are radically hybrid and thus transmodern. However, this hybrid status cannot be fully apprehended within a Western-biased episteme. In this chapter I argue that adopting a transnational perspective in order to analyse Latino/a fiction might inadvertently consolidate a Western-biased framework that undermines the subversive potential of its liminal condition. In Díaz’s novel, the rewriting of Dominican history exposes the gaps in a transnational genealogy of oppression (fukú) that is counterbalanced by peripheral discourses of resistance (zafa). The result is a palimpsest that can be best understood within the transmodern metanarrative. |
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