Thesis
The body repressed/the body sublime: navigating postmodern death in DeLillo's White noise
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2010
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/100709
Abstract
The theme of death in Don DeLillo's White Noise has been discussed to the point that some may say it is overdone. However, this conversation is not fully realized: views of death cannot be separated from views of the body. In this work I initially discuss the historical precedent for the way in which views of death effect and are affected by views of the body. I then discuss how the postmodern body is under an imperative not to die since, in the late-capitalist era, acceptance of a possible future or a future generation began to decline. When no future is on the horizon the death of the body becomes a microcosmic "end of the world". Given the threat the body poses in this respect I use the theories of psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek to expose how the novel's protagonists repress reminders of their bodies. This repression returns in the form of the potential comfort the body can provide, as a material absolute in a postmodern babble of confusion, and as a terror, due to its reminder of mortality and of a newly high-stakes death. The repressed returns in the form of Wilder, Jack and Babette's son, who they find comfort in, and in the form of Willie, Babette's lover, who Jack envisions as a terror-image of the body. Given that that body is repressed and returns in this way I end my thesis by asking: what is the underlying issue with the "postmodern body" that prompts such complex attitudes toward "postmodern death?" Using the theories of Zizek, Fredrick Jameson, and Edmund Burke I argue that the postmodern body is the body sublime due to its loss of use-value and its situatedness in a temporally destabilized time period like the late-capitalist (postmodern) era.
Metrics
146 File views/ downloads
246 Record Views
Details
- Title
- The body repressed/the body sublime
- Creators
- Lindsey Rae Davis
- Contributors
- Jason Farman (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525147201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis