Representations of Technoculture in Don DeLillo's Novels

It explores the manner in which Don DeLillo's characters experience technocultural everyday decade after decade. The changing technoculture is resisted at times by the characters, it points out to a transitional mode of being. This state does not dehumanize DeLillo's characters as much as reveals their humanity in the postmodern world

This book is the first to explore technoculture in all of Don DeLillo's novels. From Americana (1971) to The Silence (2020), the American author anatomizes the constantly changing relationship between culture and technology in overt and layered aspects of the characters' experiences. Through a tendency to discover and rediscover technocultural modes of appearance, DeLillo emphasizes settings wherein technological progress is implicated in cultural imperatives. This study brings forth representations of such implication/interaction through various themes, particularly perception, history, reality, space/architecture, information, and the posthuman. The chapters are based on a thematic structure that weaves DeLillo's novels with the rich literary criticism produced on the author, and with the various theoretical frameworks of technoculture. This leads to the formulation and elaboration on numerous objects of research extracted from DeLillo's novels, namely: the theorization of DeLillo's "radiance in dailiness," the investigation of various uses of technology as an extension, the role of image technologies in redefining history, the reconceptualization of the ethical and behavioral aspects of reality, the development of tele-visual and embodied perceptions in various technocultural spaces, and the involvement of information technologies in reconstructing the beliefs, behaviors, and activities of the posthuman. One of the main aims of the study is to show how DeLillo's novels bring to light the constant transformation of technocultural everydayness. It is argued that though such transformation is confusing or resisted at times, it points to a transitional mode of being. This transitional state does not dehumanize DeLillo's characters; it reveals their humanity in a continually changing world.

Autorentext

Laila Sougri, PhD is a Moroccan translator, writer, and researcher. She has published numerous translations, short stories, and papers. Some of her current interests include methodologies of interdisciplinarity, American literature, memory studies, and speculative realism in literature and psychology.

Klappentext

This book is the first to explore technoculture in all of Don DeLillo's novels. From Americana (1971) to The Silence (2020), the American author anatomizes the constantly changing relationship between culture and technology in overt and layered aspects of the characters' experiences. Through a tendency to discover and rediscover technocultural modes of appearance, DeLillo emphasizes settings wherein technological progress is implicated in cultural imperatives. This study brings forth representations of such implication/interaction through various themes, particularly perception, history, reality, space/architecture, information, and the posthuman. The chapters are based on a thematic structure that weaves DeLillo's novels with the rich literary criticism produced on the author, and with the various theoretical frameworks of technoculture. This leads to the formulation and elaboration on numerous objects of research extracted from DeLillo's novels, namely: the theorization of DeLillo's "radiance in dailiness," the investigation of various uses of technology as an extension, the role of image technologies in redefining history, the reconceptualization of the ethical and behavioral aspects of reality, the development of tele-visual and embodied perceptions in various technocultural spaces, and the involvement of information technologies in reconstructing the beliefs, behaviors, and activities of the posthuman. One of the main aims of the study is to show how DeLillo's novels bring to light the constant transformation of technocultural everydayness. It is argued that though such transformation is confusing or resisted at times, it points to a transitional mode of being. This transitional state does not dehumanize DeLillo's characters; it reveals their humanity in a continually changing world.

Zusammenfassung
It explores the manner in which Don DeLillo's characters experience technocultural everyday decade after decade. The changing technoculture is resisted at times by the characters, it points out to a transitional mode of being. This state does not dehumanize DeLillo's characters as much as reveals their humanity in the postmodern world

Inhalt

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Don DeLillo's Technoculture

The Interrelatedness of Culture and Technology

"Radiance in dailiness"

Prototypical extensions in Ratner's Star and Zero K

Clearing technological determinism: "they shoot horses, don't they?"

Breaching the Beyond: Attaining the Extraordinary through the Ordinary

"The electric stuff of the culture"

Promethean shiny shield in White Noise and The Names

Television as "Waves and Radiations" in Americana and White Noise

2 Latent History and Techno-Progress

The Implication of Image Technologies in the Rise of Latent History

"Latent history" in Great Jones Street and Running Dog

From truth to technocultural possibilities within history

Historical Uncertainty and the Televisual Event in Libra

Kennedy's filmed assassination: a pioneer of historical uncertainty

Oswald's third line of history: the fall of historical causality

3 Reconceptualizing the Real

The Simultaneity of Recording and Receiving Events: Underworld and Falling Man

Visual insertion of the unusual in dailiness

The superreal and underreal aspects of the televisual event

The Reprogrammed Mind in Mao II, The Body Artist, and The Silence

The emergence of a third reality

Mediated gaze: "the virus of the future"

4 The Phenomenology of Technocultural Space

"Technocultural space" in End Zone

Perception at the margins of civilization

The ontological internalization of outer space

Tele-visuality in the desert

Encounters with Technocultural Parallax in Players

The complexity of postmodern architecture

Pammy's phenomenological mode of being

5 Perception in the Informational Era

The "Dominant Metaphor" of Postmodern Technoculture

Information in DeLillo's novels

The vitality of information: a reading of Cosmopolis

DeLillo's Posthumans

Seeking the beyond: the other side of the screen

Transhumanism: the emancipation of consciousness in Point Omega and Zero K

Toward a virtual reality

Conclusion

Works Cited

Index