L’espace lisse : la représentation du désert dans Point Oméga de Don DeLillo

Abstract

Point Omega is Don DeLillo’s third novel written after 9/11. After a representation of the attacks in Falling Man, DeLillo focuses on Iraq War. We shall consider how DeLillo – using a shift – sets up an indirect representation of the war: in Point Omega, the desert, one of the American spaces par excellence, appears as a virtualization of the war happening in Iraq. We will use the concepts of smooth space and striated space, forged by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus to analyze the representation of space in DeLillo’s novel.

Keywords

• American literature (21st century)
• Iraq War
• 9/11
• Point Omega
• A Thousand Plateaus
• desert