Jean-Luc Nancy and Oscar Wao: Singular Plurality and Wondrous Writing

Abstract

Junot Diaz's 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao approaches ontological, cultural, and national displacement with a similar sense of stakes and urgency as that of contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, making for an exciting and powerful juxtaposition. Nancy's treatment of community, singular plurality, ecstasis, finitude, and expropriation are specifically pertinent to Diaz's text which centers around the violence and terror of what Nancy calls a will to essence as well as and in contrast to the "transformative" potential of singular plurality. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the will to essence is presented in the figure of Trujillo-God and Dominican hyper masculinity/heteronormativity while singular plurality is manifest in Oscar's final writing and experience.