<em>White Noise</em> ovvero la realtà come ritorno del represso

Abstract

The essay focuses on Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise with the aim to understand its author’s reaction to the advent of the ‘civilization of appearance’. This analysis shows how DeLillo’s view is ambivalent: despite being indeed fascinated by the coming of the new world, he still is deeply interested in real-life events that can be concretely experienced in opposition to their representations and simulations. What strikes him the most is individual death, namely a problem that cannot be subsumed within the symbolic order of new society. In a certain sense, the novel depicts a ‘return of the repressed’ built on a disturbing ‘return of reality’. The novel oscillates between a sense of tragedy and a sense of irony (if not of ridiculous). Therefore, from one side, it testifies the arrival of what will be called ‘postmodernity’; from another side, it criticizes postmodernity by showing how its ideologists are silly, trivial and grotesque.

Keywords

• Simulacra
• Real
• Media
• TV
• Catrastrophes
• Body