Although the influence of Søren Kierkegaard’s thinking upon Wallace’s work has been addressed – in particular by Marshall Boswell and Allard Den Dulk – the bulk of these treatments has focused primarily on the theme of irony. Den Dulk, for example, expands upon Boswell’s treatment of the concept of irony in Wallace’s work as an existential mode of comportment, arguing that ‘liberation from irony is only possible through (what Kierkegaard calls) a “leap,” by “ethically” choosing one’s freedom, by choosing the responsibility to give shape and meaning to that freedom.’ However insofar as this reading remains at the level of the ‘ethical’, it fails to address the question of the religious leap which, for Kierkegaard at least, is the paradigmatic question of existence. In this paper I explore the question of the religious in Wallace’s work through the theme of the Great Ohio Desert (G.O.D.) in The Broom of the System. Like Kierkegaard’s notion of God, an absurdity at the heart of the self, the Great Ohio Desert is ‘an Other for Ohio’s Self,’ a place of contrast, black sand, and desolation – at the center of Ohio, at the center of America – ‘a point of savage reference for the good people of Ohio.’ And like Kierkegaard’s understanding of God, it is in the desert that Lenore confronts Rick, and hence, it is this desert that truly brings Lenore into an authentic sense of herself.
About the presenterVernon W Cisney
Vernon Cisney is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. His areas of research include contemporary continental philosophy, and philosophy of film and literature. He is the author of Derrida’s Voice and Phenomenon: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2014); as well as Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative (forthcoming, Edinburgh University Press, 2018).