Postmodernism and Cold War Military Technology in the Fiction of Don DeLillo and William S. Burroughs Melanie Suzanne Parker Ph. D Department of English Literature August 2008 Volume One Postmodernism and Cold War Military Technology in the Fiction of Don DeLillo and William S. Burroughs This thesisexplores Don DeLillo's and William S. Burroughs' ongoing fictional engagementswith the intimacy betweenCold War military technology and postmodern networked culture. Thesenovelists respondfrom seeminglydivergent perspectivesto the social and historiographicaluncertainty generatedby networked militarization. For DeLillo, this takesthe form of a neo-realistnarrative reconsideration of history, designedto emphasisethe effects of the Cold War unconsciouspropagated by the speed and disseminationof cultural data.By fictionalising the breaksand ambiguitiesin our everydayexperience of social reality, DeLillo's novels WhileNoise (1982) and Underworld (1998) require that the readerparticipate in metafictional processesof historical restoration.This thesis suggeststhat DeLillo's rewrite of history works to exposethe military initiatives underpinningcultural life; thereby reinstatingthe societal 'balance' and equilibrium otherwiselost to networked subjectivity. Burroughs"response takesthe form of a counter-assaultdesigned to overthrow and replacethe 'control machinery' operatingthrough the military-technological information system.By using avant-gardemethods of linguistic resistancein the 'Nova' trilogy (1962-1964)to break the 'associationallines' of control, and by redirecting the application of Cold War military-technological researchin the 'Red Night' trilogy (1981-1987),Burroughs' narrativeroutines work to fashion retroactive counter-historiesof utopian possibility. This thesis investigateshow Burroughsuses the postmodernhistorical fragmentation derived from military-technological ascendancyas a springboardfor uninhibited fictional escapism.Although divergent in terms of their engagementwith militarization and networkedinformation culture, the fiction of DeLillo and Burroughs supportsa reassessmentof the 'de-realised' postmodernsociety identified by Fredric Jameson,Paul Virilio and JeanBaudrillard. For example,Jameson sees the intimacy of military and networked information technology as symptomaticof the postmodernsituation. However, as DeLillo and Burroughs recognise,rather than being symptomatic,the mergerbetween military and information networks taking place during the Cold War has helpedestablish postmodernism. This thesis,then, will draw upon DeLillo's and Burroughs' fictional engagementsas a meansto reorient and consolidateexisting postmodernanalyses. Contents Introduction I Critical Responsesto DeLillo and Burroughs 9 DeLillo and Burroughs:Fictional Responsesto Military-Technological Culture 18 Chapter One: Cold War Containment and Biotechnological Risk in Don DeLillo's "ite Noise 27 Cold War Simulation: The ReaganEra 31 ContainmentIdentity in "ite Noise 37 Media Risk Contaimnent 47 Community Risk Containment 57 SimulatedDisaster andNuclear Contingency 62 Consumerismand the Military Complex 67 ContainmentMeltdown 74 Chapter Two: William S. Burroughs' Biotechnological Mythology: Narratives of Cold War Resistancefrom the Nova Trilogy to Cities of the Red Night 85 Cut-ups: Viral Pandemicsand Textual Resistance 90 The Nova Conspiracy 96 GovernmentAgency Mind Control Experimentation 103 Burroughs' 'Guerrilla Serniotics' and the Retum to Narrative 107 Burroughs' Scientific Revolt and GovernmentAgency Exposure 112 Brion Gysin's Gobi Desert Myth and Cities of the RedNight 117 BiotechnologicalConspiracy 122 Burroughs' Viral Technologies:The 'Germs' of Political Criticism 128 Fictional Escapism 133 Chapter Three: Posthuman Potentials in William S. Burroughs' The PI"e ofDead Roads and The WesternLands 142 The JohnsonFamily: 'A Potential America' 148 Burroughs' Biotechnological Takeover 157 Cybernetics:The Military-Technological Body 161 JohnsonFamily Genetics 166 Yhe WesternLands: A Hybrid Text 173 The Post-HumanistProject 181 Chapter Four: Information War and the Militarization of Media Technologiesin Don DeLillo's Undenvorld 192 Technoscienceand National Identity: The Radio Era 201 Radio:Military Developmentand Propaganda 205 Televisionand Satellite: The ImageWar 213 TheKennedy Assassination as Historical 'Interruption' 220 DomesticMilitarization and Vietnam 229 Vietnam and Battlefield Innovation 234 The Internet: DeLillo's Information Bomb 241 The Loss of Military-Technological Consciousness:Networking 251 TechnologicalTransformation 255 Conclusion: Don DeLillo and William S. Burroughs: Historical Neo-Realism or Utopian Escape? 261 Bibliography 270 Introduction Every position on postmodcrnismin culture-whethcr apologiaor stigmatization-is also at one and the sametime, and necessarily,an implicitly or explicitly political stanceon the natureof multinational capitalismtoday. ' (Fredric Jameson) According to Fredric Jameson,all conceptsof postmodernism.provide an ideological responseto the conditionsof a late-capitalistsociety. This set of global economic relations,otherwise identified as the post-industrialor consumersociety, makeapparent the evolution of capital from the growth of industrialism,to the developmentof advancedtechnological forms of production and information distribution. From Jameson'sperspective, the easiestway to understandthe conceptof postmodernityis to think of it as an attemptto historicize this techno-capitalistpresent in an age incapableof thinking historically in the first place.This frustrating condition leadsto a kind of 'historical deafness'whereby serialisedculture attemptsto recuperatethe loss of historicity in a 'spasmodic', 'intermittent' and 'desperate'fashion. 2 In fact, 'culture' has becomea product in its own right, and so postmodernismcan be describedas 'the consumptionof sheercommodification as a process'.3 In this sense,postmodernism is not necessarilythe cultural dominant of a brand new social configuration, but rather it is a perceptualshift denoting thesealterations in the economicsystem. The relationship betweenthe late-capitalisteconomic base and the cultural superstructuretakes the form of a continuousinteraction prone to ambiguity and fluctuation. Therefore,the certainty of totalising and stableconcepts becomes engulfed by the heterogeneityof a system subjectto perpetualfeedback. Jamesonattributes the economicpreparation for postmodernism.to the introduction of new technologies,consumer products and media networks taking place during the 1950s.The material shortagesof World War Two had somewhatdissipated by this stage,meaning that the burgeoningconsumer society was ready to accommodate 1Fredric Jameson,Poshnodernism, or the Cultural Logic ofLate Capitalism, (Durham: Duke University I)rcss.S, 1991),3, (Jameson'semphases). 2 Ibid. Poshnodernis7mintroduction, A 3 Ibid.: introduction, x 2 a new era of techno-scientificresearch and innovation. As a result of theseprogressive forces of production and consumerdemand, society now facesa situation in which aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-sccming goods (from clothing to airplanes) at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and expcrimentation. " This senseof speedand urgency in cultural and commodity production causesthe following postmodernconstituents: 'a new depthlessness'which is prolongedand propagatedby a societyfixated on the image or 'simulacrum', a subsequent'weakening of historicity' affecting both public history and 'private temporality', and a schizophrenic' subjectivity determiningnew spatial aestheticsand emotional 5 'intensities'. Although Jamesonacknowledges this historical crisis as a worldwide phenomenon,he stipulatesthat theseconditions are particularly noticeablein American culture and society, and as suchthey spreadoutward acrossthe globe. Jamesonstates that eachof thesefactors contributesto a new historical situation in which the subject is forced to experienceand elucidatehistory through the simulationsand popular images we producein lieu of that history. Hence,the focus on technologicalprecision and networked communicationcapability has contributedto the fragmentationof our historiographical perceptionof everyday social reality. This type of historical and aestheticfragmentation is identifiable as a key motif of modernism;however it becomes subjectto an unprecedentedlevel of technological intensification within the postmodern situation. I concurwith Jamesonthat the economicand aesthetic basis for postmodernism is tied to the technologicalinitiative of Americanenterprise since the 1950s.Crucially, this periodof aestheticand technological success was stimulated by the military- industrial requirementsof strategicCold War hostility. Thetechno-scientific research andadvancement enabling military precisionensured that the US/Sovietbinary oppositionremained in a perpetualstate of competition.Therefore, the continualfocus on weaponssystems and network communication capability engendered the 4 Ibid., 5. 5 Ibid., 6. 3 militarization of society at large. The consumersociety demanding'fresh wavesof ever more novel-seeminggoods' becameimplicated within military-industrial productivity as it mergedwith domestictechnologies and information networks. For journalist Fred J. Cook, the social and economicpressures experienced post-World