The Story of Intrusion: Time, Life/Death, Affirmation, and Representation in Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” and Jean-Luc Nancy’s L’Intrus

Bringing Ted Chiang’s SF novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) into conversation with Jean-Luc Nancy’s autobiographical philosophical text L’Intrus (2002) sheds new light on both of these texts’ central concerns. This enables three arguments: 1) Nancy’s central notion of “intrusion” can be critically expanded by considering Chiang’s simultaneous time perception, 2) this expanded notion can help to reevaluate Nancy’s original sombre conceptualisation of life/death, as instantiated in some scenes of “Story of Your Life”, and 3) “Story of Your Life” is therefore a literary representation of intrusion, something that Nancy believed to be impossible. These three points show how speculative philosophy and science fiction can inform, enhance, and represent each other, going beyond what these fields can do separately.