The Green in White Noise: Consumption, Technology, and The

The Green in White Noise: Consumption, Technology, and the Environment by Katelyn Hummer A thesis presented for the B.A. degree with Honors in The Department of English University of Michigan Winter 2013 © March 25, 2013 Katelyn Ashley Hummer Acknowledgements To all voices of encouragement forming the panasonic halo that compelled a silent pen: though I will refrain from including pages of names, please know that you are my signifieds, my referents—my rock. Words cannot express the depth of my gratitude. Abstract In this thesis, I examine consumption in White Noise from two aspects: the characters’ motivations to consume and, subsequently, the ecological consequences of this consumption. Through this discussion of consumption, I propose a re- thinking of White Noise’s canonical status as a postmodern novel, suggesting that perhaps it is a pioneer of a post-postmodern genre. Chapter One begins with an exploration of why it may be “natural” for Jack and Babette to want to consume, which reveals that the they consume to viscerally remain detached from their inanimate environment, ultimately allowing them to “conquer” death. However, the characters’ unnatural, over-consumption results in a state of being too detached; and this feeling of disconnection renders their consumption unfulfilling because they feel an ambiguous lack of a concrete something. This feeling of lack results in a desire for an attachment to something real and tangible in a world of commodities and simulacra, which I propose entails a return to “ancient” “tribal” values. But, in Chapter Two, I show that a sense of telos can also satiate this desire for existential attachment. I first discuss how consumption results in the formation of identities. In a world of commodities designed for immediate exhaustion, we see Jack Gladney consume to constitute an infinite chain of identities to shield him from his own mortality. Yet, again, we see this same ambiguous lack of something that renders Jack’s succession of identities unfulfilling. I suggest, then, what Jack truly desires is a single, stable identity as a teleologically-oriented producer, an attachment that would give his life meaning. In the second half of this chapter, I shift gears to discuss the consequences of consumption, relaying Deitering’s notion that in place of a society of consumers, we may see a society of waste-producers. I then explain how, using the idea of archeology as a tool, Jack may be able to fasten himself to a single identity by restoring the waste of his already-used-up commodities. In the final chapter, I first explain how mankind has now risen to the status of a geological force, capable of creating ecological crises. I then examine “The Airborne Toxic Event” section through ecological perspectives to show that man’s production of waste has the potential to inspire environmental cataclysms, especially when mankind refuses to acknowledge the consequences of its actions. I follow this section with a re-reading of Jack’s confrontation with Mink, showing how this scene may serve as an allegory for man’s ascension to the status of a geological force: by trying to detach from and conquer our environment, we have, ultimately, created a planet that requires us to save it; we must re-attach to our surroundings. I end by positing that White Noise’s true accomplishment may lie in its upheaval of the “ancient” and its relocation of that sense of stability within Jack, which mirrors the agency that mankind has attained as a geological force. Perhaps, more optimistically, the post-postmodern will come to show man’s ability to re-enchant his commoditized world, just as White Noise does through its descriptions of beautiful sunsets caused by the atmospheric presence of Nyodene D. CONTENTS Figures i Introduction 1 I. The Biological Need to Consume 9 II. Consumption and Identity 35 III. Mankind as a Geological Force 56 Conclusion 94 Works Consulted 96 i Figures Figure 1: The Principle of Detachment, 11 1 Introduction The Pope resigning, the latest zombie media fad, environmental toxins, climate change: our society reads like a contemporary version of the book of Deuteronomy, and one that is not too far removed from Don DeLillo’s White Noise; indeed, DeLillo’s 1985 novel features a nun who does not believe in God, a society of consumers who are alive but do not live, as well as a cataclysmic man-made toxic event. And Jack Gladney, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, is, just as most of us are, trying to find the underlying meaning of it all—an authority amidst all of the chaos. “What is out there? Who are you?”1 Jack wants to call out to the sky. But the joke is on us: there is no answer. Nothing is out there; our sky and our world have undergone a loss of depth, and there are no concrete referents for signifiers: the sky is just a flat blue plane, and our world is one of waves, radiation, and simulacra. At least, this is what a contemporary postmodern ideology would show us; and the popular consensus of much literary scholarship tells us that White Noise is a quintessential piece of postmodern fiction.2 Though Frederic Jameson explains in his book Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism that the concept of postmodernism is almost impossible to fit into “any conveniently coherent thumbnail meaning,”3 I believe we can arrive at a better understanding of what postmodernity entails by viewing this ideology within the narrative of industrialization (particularly that of the United States). Indeed, if we accept 1 Don DeLillo, White Noise, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 2009), 101. 2 Richard Powers, introduction to White Noise, rev. ed., by Don DeLillo (New York: Penguin, 2009), xii. 3 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durnham: Duke University Press, 1991), xxii. 2 scholar Leonard Wilcox’s notion of Jack being a “modernist displaced in a postmodernist world,”4 we may ask: how did he end up there? And, more broadly, how has our contemporary society, potentially, come to find itself in a chapter of Deuteronomy? We can root this abbreviated narrative of industrialization in the modernist’s desire to, as scholar Frederick Turner says, “rise above nature.”5 In essence, the modernist is struggling against nature to overcome the limitations it imposes on mankind. Dipesh Chakrabarty expounds on this modernist desire to rise above nature by noting, “one could say that freedom [which he defines as “a blanket category for diverse imaginations of human autonomy and sovereignty”] has been the most important motif of written accounts of human history of these two hundred and fifty years.”6 He goes on to say that “the mansion of modern freedom stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil fuel use. Most of our freedoms so far have been energy-intensive.”7 Bruno Latour corroborates Chakrabarty’s insights in his essay on modernization and environmentalism. He explains how the modernist sees himself in opposition with the omnipotent and mysterious Nature: “A modernist, in this great narrative [of the pursuit of freedom and the “Endless Frontier”], is one who expects from Science the revelation that Nature will finally be visible through 4 Leonard Wilcox, “Baudrillard, DeLillo’s ‘White Noise,’ and the End of Heroic Narrative,” Contemporary Literature 32 (1991): 346. 5 Frederick Turner, “Escape from Modernism: Technology and the Future of the Imagination,” Harper’s 269 (1984): 55. 6 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 208. 7 Ibid. 3 the veils of subjectivity—and subjection—that had hidden it to our ancestors.”8 Latour further states that the modernist hopes science (i.e. technological innovation) will allow him “to run forward to break all the shackles of ancient existence.”9 Well, Latour congratulates the modernist for escaping his attachment to (or his subjugation by) the natural environment. But what, then, is next for the modernist? Jameson offers an answer: “Postmodernism is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good.”10 Now that man has “run forward to break all the shackles of ancient existence”—now that he has reached the end of the “Endless Frontier”— where does the modernist go? He vanishes, moving into the stratosphere of waves and radiation—a vacuum for concrete referents, objectivity, a sense of self, unitary meaning, and definitive answers.11 The modernist is stripped of his sense of teleos— having already reached his end—and is “phantomized”; he is now the translucent poster child of postmodernity. Indeed, Jameson defines the postmodern as an “age that has forgotten how to think historically.”12 What we see in postmodernism is a loss of trajectory—perhaps this is why Walter Benjamin described it as “distracted.”13 The postmodern man is presented with a brick wall to climb over— 8 Bruno Latour, “’It’s Development, Stupid!,’ or: How to Modernize Modernization,” review of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, by T. Nordhaus and M. Shellenberger (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007), 5. 9 Ibid. 10 Jameson, Postmodernism, ix. 11 Jameson, Postmodernism, x. Steinar Kvale, “Themes of Postmodernity,” in The Truth about The Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World, ed. Walt Anderson (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 18-25. 12 Jameson, Postmodernism, ix. 13 Ibid. Jameson quotes Benjamin in his book. 4 yet, the wall reaches infinitely into a God-less sky, and he is already too far gone in the clouds to find the ground from which he came. Here we are in medias res of the narrative of industrialization; the postmodern man (that is, “a modernist displaced in a postmodern world”) is caught between a modernist desire for emancipation from the authority of, as economist R.H.

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