“Something Extraordinary Hovering Just Outside Our Touch”

The Technological Sublime in Don DeLillo’s White Noise
dc.bibliographicCitation.firstPage52en_US
dc.bibliographicCitation.lastPage73en_US
dc.bibliographicCitation.volume4en_US
dc.contributor.authorHenneberg, Julian
dc.contributor.editorBetker, Carolin
dc.contributor.editorEcke, Stefan
dc.contributor.editorFreitag, Katharina
dc.contributor.editorHarms, Christina
dc.contributor.editorPanchenko, Nadezha N.
dc.contributor.editorPolkau, Marianne
dc.contributor.editorSchuster, Bettina
dc.contributor.editorVogel, Christiane
dc.date.accessioned2022-10-13T07:02:23Z
dc.date.available2022-10-13T07:02:23Z
dc.date.issued2011en_US
dc.description.abstractThis paper discusses how the forces of postmodernity and technology combine to create a contemporary version of the romantic sublime, and how this new ‘technological sublime’ figures in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise. The novel simultaneously depicts and satirizes a postmodern world in which the forces of capitalism, consumer culture, and technology determine people’s existences to the extent that they even invade formerly personal spheres like spirituality, dreams, and self-images. I argue that, in such a world, technology has replaced nature as the primary source of the sublime experience. Moreover, the overwhelming power of natural phenomena has been dwarfed by the complexity and scale of today’s technological networks and globalized system. For theoretical background I draw on the classic accounts of the sublime by Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, accounts of postmodernity and contemporary sublimity by Frederic Jameson, Joseph Tabbi, and Jean-François Lyotard, as well as scholarship on DeLillo in general and White Noise in particular.en_US
dc.identifier.doi10.54465/aspeers.04-05
dc.identifier.urihttp://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?fidaac-11858/2434
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.relation.issn18658768en_US
dc.relation.journalaspeersen_US
dc.relation.journalaltemerging voices in american studiesen_US
dc.rightsL::CC BY 3.0en_US
dc.subject.ddcddc:810en_US
dc.subject.fieldamericanstudiesen_US
dc.subject.fieldliterarystudiesen_US
dc.title“Something Extraordinary Hovering Just Outside Our Touch”en_US
dc.title.alternativeThe Technological Sublime in Don DeLillo’s White Noiseen_US
dc.typearticleen_US
dc.type.versionpublishedVersionen_US
dspace.entity.typePublication
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