'[T]he language of self' : strategies of subjectivity in the novels of Don DeLillo

Abstract

‘[T]he language of self’: Strategies of Subjectivity in the Novels of Don DeLillo’ explores the manner in which both self and society are constructed in the writer’s longer fiction. Divided into two sections, the first, entitled Dasein, examines the way in which the language of self forms a Mobius strip comprised of two opposing yet omnipresent urges: that of connection and isolation. Coining the term enunciation, the thesis describes the manner in which each character’s subjectivity is an historically contingent attempt at negotiating this tension between isolation and connection, self and other. The second section of the thesis, entitled 'das Man', then proceeds to explore the impact of this language of self within a wider social context, examining the manner in which it interacts with other linguistic and quasi-linguistic binaries – such as language, image, capital, waste, power and terror – likewise characterised as adopting the form of a Mobius strip. Through such a methodology, the second section of the thesis is thus able to explore the interaction and shared genesis of public and private conceptions of subjectivity, illustrating how it is this same tension between connection and isolation which governs the form that social interactions and institutions adopt in the novels of Don DeLillo.