The Dynamic Imbrication Of The Rhizome And The State Apparatus In The Development Of Transnational Subjectivities In Leila Aboulela’s The Translator And Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Abstract

Abstract Oscar, in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Sammar, in The Translator, move within and against multiple state spaces. They represent two different ways of understanding the dialogic interaction between the openness of the rhizome and the ideological or restrictive function of the state apparatus for transnational subjects. Each subjective position functions to deterritorialize the repressive apparatus of the state: by Negative or Relative deterritorialization in The Translator, which enables divergent, excluded modes of thinking to be interpellated into the state, but only so as to enable them to be closed back off into pre-given, ideological authority of the state; and, by Absolute deterritorialization in Oscar Wao, which forms a space of openness and connectivity that circumvents the effectiveness of the state to produce and then crush the othered individual. Sammar and Oscar are indicative of potential subjective positions within an increasingly globalized context.