The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is a tremendous novel that has been widely received as a beautiful work of art. Outside of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz’s full body of work vocalizes a powerful commentary in postmodern culture. Through themes of rewriting and writing history, pop culture, fantasy and science fiction, amongst others, Díaz creates a conversation about politics, which penetrates the personal spheres of the characters in the novel. Because of this, I wonder how modern art, Oscar Wao included, operates within politics and the cultural industries. As our society has moved into the digital age, we tend to look at culture through icons and symbols, which has started to replace the written word. But how then is history understood in the postmodern frame of time and culture and how does that understanding reflect changes in culture and politics? Why does Oscar Wao read so well under a postmodern audience? Although Oscar Wao is written, the book relies on visual entertainment to carry the narrative. With references to superheroes, our minds are flooded with images of drawn and cartoon people. The words, although written, then automatically accompany a symbol, which I argue, makes it easier and more accessible to read for a postmodern audience. Díaz will also use onomatopoeia, which creates a sensory experience as well. Even within the written words, the story becomes interactive. The footnotes that Díaz includes are witty and easier to digest than textbooks and are most importantly, conscious of the reader. This creates a counter-narrative to the more academic explanations of history. Through these examples, the novel becomes a narrative operating within the realm of counterculture. The novel talks postmodernism, and queer theory, and critical race theory, and decolonization, for example, and allows the novel to transform what we call “history.” Because the novel utilizes footnotes in such a witty manner, it calls out Eurocentric theories because his footnotes although aesthetically are witty, are actually emphasizing "real." Díaz mocks history in his footnotes because he reclaims the space in the footnotes, which he uses to talk about Dominican history. Because of this, the way we view history changes at it becomes more fluid and decentralized. Our understanding of history becomes less passive and as students, it forces us to ask more questions that are harder not only because of the content but because they are much harder to stomach. The two major questions I ask in the beginning of the novel, I realize, are quite different. Understanding how the novel operates in a postmodern culture as a mode to uproot history or expose it, is a more “historic” question. The second, talking about the audience, is cultural, and maybe therefore is less “historic,” maybe more sociological. However, these questions are also very closely related. Understanding culture and understanding history (political, economic, and social) don’t have to be two different spheres anymore. In the postmodern world, the intersections of identities and the intersection with time and culture and politics have become fused as that is the way we working to perceive the world. Oscar Wao, is an example of how art and politics are inching closer towards each other as consumers of culture have critically acclaimed this novel. Our cultural and artistic world is not far from our political consciousness and that is important because it allows narratives of people’s lives to become voices for change. It changes discourse or the way we talk about issues of race, gender, sexuality, ability, amongst other identities that have historically been disregarded or hidden. Culture is simultaneously creating ideas and reflecting them and because of this, the world becomes less disenchanted and becomes increasingly more accountable. Talking about the postmodern in the postmodern is difficult. Because understanding a postmodern consciousness with a postmodern consciousness is like tasting your own food. What I aim to say is that Oscar Wao changes culture and that is both a reflection of politics, but also the reason why politics is changing too. Our understanding and teaching of history has become more expansive and we therefore have become less illiterate as a population as we are better able to read narratives with a more three-dimensional perspective.
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AuthorNatasha Dodge |