Representations of Technoculture in Don DeLillo’s Novels

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.

Table of Contents:
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