'The grip of systems': Excrement, waste, and the re-fused self in post-postmodern literature.

摘要

Don DeLillo's novels are traditionally considered through the critical lens of postmodern fiction. However, a recent family of contemporary authors, loosely dubbed the "Post-postmodernists," has released work that critiques and interrogates the notions of postmodernism. The majority of this new group cites Don DeLillo as an inspiration or father figure. This project explores DeLillo's opus Underworld as it represents American culture over the latter half of the twentieth century. Underworld turns its lens to waste, landfills, foul-mouth comedians, and graffiti artists to narrate contemporary American life. Likewise, David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen turn a critical eye to the waste material of the body---excrement---to explore the status of the self in contemporary society.;DeLillo turns waste into a positive metaphor, asserting that it is the best and most important indicator of ecological existence. Similarly, Wallace's novella "The Suffering Channel" looks at how excrement is a human inevitability and common to everyone. Admissions of this ugly human truth allow for the creation of relationships an interconnection. Franzen's novel, Freedom, similarly explores human-to-human connection, marriage, and the family through the metaphor of excrement.