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      Don Delillo’s White Noise is a classic example of postmodern literature, known for its experimental style and thematic exploration of consumerism, media saturation, and the disintegration of the family unit.

     There is a distinction to be drawn between the terms postmodernism, the aesthetic style of art and literature characterized by traits of self-referentiality, pastiche, and fragmentation and postmodernity, the cultural condition of a society existing after modernity (i.e., after around 1980). Postmodernism arose as an aesthetic response to this new era of cultural development. By fictionalizing concepts from popular cultural theories, White Noise comments on life in postmodernity. More specif­ically, it investigates the “postmodern condition,” a new kind of malleable subjectivity emerging in our media-saturated world. Where Delillo incorporates elements of postmodern style in White Noise, he does so as a means of illustrating how characters’ subjectivities are colo­nized by media and consumer capitalism (“MasterCard, Visa, American Express”).

Simulacra

     Jack and his colleague Murray Siskind, a visiting lecturer on “living icons,” function as mouthpieces through which Delillo voices competing interpretations of postmodern culture. Jack represents a modernist whose quest for meaning and authentic self-definition, as well as his hyper-awareness of his mortality, displace him in a postmodern world. As Leonard Wilcox writes in “Baudrillard, Delillo’s ‘White Noise,’ and the End of the Heroic Narrative,” Jack “confronts a new order in which life is increasingly lived in a world of simulacra, where images and electronic representations replace direct experience.” Murray, on the other hand, represents a postmodernist who has enthusiastically em­braced this new order. He tells Jack that in the information society, there is no need to search for meaning beneath the surface of things that he should submit to the euphoric flow of the data, the information, the signs. (Gilligan)

      When Murray and Jack visit “The Most Photographed Barn in America,” a tourist attraction epitomizing Jean Baudrillard’s theory of “simulacra,” Murray explains the logic of a world where representation trumps physical reality. “We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one,” Murray says. “Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? The accumulation of nameless energies” (Delillo 45).

      Delillo explores the notion of simulacra (something that resembles something else or, in other words, simulations) in American society. In 1983, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote Simulations. He maintains that the postmodern world privileges simulacra over reality; we believe our secondary, simulated reality is more real than first-degree reality. His classic example is that Disneyland, a fantasy world, seems more real to us than the real world. Delillo utilizes this idea throughout White Noise, focusing on a nation reared on the simulated reality of the media which even had a former actor (Ronald Reagan) as President at the time. Delillo says the idea for White Noise came to him while he watched television news, and realized that toxic spills were becoming such a daily occurrence that no one the news cared about them  only those affected by the spills cared. We can see this idea play out in the airborne toxic event in White Noise, when people are upset that the media pays their crisis little attention, but it emerges in subtler ways when Delillo examines the consumerist, technological atmospheres of death we create for ourselves from our living rooms to our cars to our supermarkets (Gradesavor).

Postmodern Life

     Death hangs in the background of the pages of White Noise: in the supermarket, at the mall, in Jack’s nightmares. Delillo has cited Ernst Becker’s 1974 book The Denial of Death as an influence. Becker builds on the work of Sigmund Freud, Søren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, and other thinkers to argue that human civilization everything we do in life to find meaning, or to escape through hedonistic pursuits is an elaborate coping mechanism to help us forget about our mortality. Characters in the novel cope with their fear of death by immersing themselves in the “white noise” of the media-saturated world. When Jack ruminates on death, his subjectivity seems to become more porous and postmodern. His thoughts are suddenly invaded by lists of brand names, as if the prospect of consumption grounds him. In these instances, Jack delays his feelings of existential dread by foraying into the postmodern condition. Delillo prompts readers today to reflect on what we are distracting ourselves from when we absorb meaningless information. (Gilligan)

      White Noise both satirizes quotidian American life and functions as a cautionary tale about diving headfirst into a high-tech, media-saturated world. With its complex tone and its elusive message, White Noise transcends genre. It does fit into the tradition of the “systems novel,” a term coined by literary critic Tom Le Clair in the 1980s to refer to novels that fictionalize concepts of systems theory. Systems novels depict worlds of interconnectedness, wherein characters’ words and actions are not governed by individual agency, but by larger forces operating in the ideological frameworks in which they live.

Pastiche

       One of the key elements of postmodernism is the use of pastiche, or the playful and ironic combination of various styles and genres within a single work. Throughout the novel, Delillo blurs the lines between reality and fiction, often presenting characters who are aware of the fact that they are living in a mediated world. In doing so, he critiques the role of consumer culture and mass media in shaping our perceptions of reality, a key theme in postmodern literature. The use of humor and irony throughout the novel also reflects the postmodern tendency to rely on playfulness and experimentation in order to subvert traditional expectations, as well as the postmodern interest in fragmentation, or exploring the disintegration and recombination of various cultural and language systems.

Identity Crisis

     Another postmodern element found in the excerpt includes the focus on the instability of identity and the breakdown of the binary oppositions that structure traditional modes of thought. In White Noise, characters frequently experience confusion and anxiety related to their identity, which is often closely tied to their fear of death. This theme is connected to postmodernism’s emphasis on the absence of singular or fixed meanings in language, which can lead to feelings of uncertainty and cognitive dissonance. (Exploring Postmodernism)

      Jack Gladney is a character in search of an identity. He describes himself as a college lecturer who “invented Hitler Studies in North America in March 1968” (Delillo 4). At the time, the college chancellor had advised him that his name and appearance let him down. As a consequence, Jack changes his name to J. A. K. Gladney: a “tag [he] wore like a borrowed suit” (Delillo 16). Equally, Jack has a “tendency to make a feeble presentation of self”, particularly his physical self. The solution, he tells us in his first person narrative, along with wearing the medieval academic robes of a departmental chairman, is to “gain weight” because: [the chancellor] wanted me to “grow out” into Hitler. [...] The glasses with thick black heavy frames and dark lenses were my own idea [....] Babette said she liked the series J. A. K. [....] To her it intimated dignity, significance and prestige. I am the false character that follows the name around. (Delillo 17) These gestures of self-hood are symptomatic of the decentering effects of post-structuralism and the consequent destabilization of identity in a postmodern world. Jameson describes this move away from the stable self as “the decentering of that formerly centered subject or psyche” (15). This decentering has the effect of liberating the self from the destructive forces of modernism and modernist anxieties about the distortion of individuality because “the liberation, in contemporary society, from the older anomie of the centered subject may also mean not merely a liberation from anxiety but a liberation from every other kind of feeling as well, since there is no longer a self-present to do the feeling” (Jameson 15). In the case of Jack Gladney, his original conception of self is evacuated by the stereotype of a college don provided by his chancellor (a man who is both large and successful) leaving a vulnerable sense of identity which will later be occupied by stereotypes drawn from popular culture. The conflicted individual, struggling against the chaotic world of commodified forces to construct a stable and coherent sense of who they are, is neatly embodied in the figure of Orest Mercator who wants to break the world record for sitting in a cage with poisonous snakes. Gladney describes how Mercator is “creating an imperial self out of some tabloid aspiration” (Delillo 268). What Jack does not see is that his own imperial self, the distant academic, is equally crafted with dark glasses and the robes of a departmental chairman.  (Brown 22-23)

     Overall, Don Delillo's White Noise exemplifies several key elements of the postmodern literary movement, including the use of pastiche, the exploration of media saturation and consumer culture, and the focus on instability and fragmentation. Through these devices and themes, the novel offers a rich and complex critique of contemporary life, inviting readers to question the assumptions and structures that underlie their own worldviews.

The table below summarizes the features of postmodernism in Delillo’s White Noise

Feature of Postmodern Literature	Explanation	Examples in White Noise
Fragmentation	Non-linear narrative with disjointed scenes and shifts in tone, voice, and structure.	The novel is divided into three loosely connected parts; sudden changes in setting and focus.
Irony and Dark Humor	Use of irony to critique serious issues like death, media, and consumerism.	Jack teaches “Hitler Studies” without knowing German; the toxic event is treated bureaucratically.
Pastiche and Intertextuality	Blending of various genres, styles, and references to other texts or media.	Mixes family drama, academic satire, and disaster narrative; echoes of commercials, TV shows, and history.
Metafiction	Self-aware commentary on fiction, language, or storytelling itself.	The novel questions reality through characters' reliance on mediated information and simulations.
Hyperreality / Simulation	Reality is replaced or blurred by simulations, images, and media representations.	The airborne toxic event is known more through data than experience; media defines perception.
Paranoia	Anxiety or distrust of systems, institutions, or even reality itself.	Jack becomes paranoid about his exposure to Nyodene D and fears dying from it.
Technoculture and Media Saturation	Focus on the influence of mass media, advertising, and technology on thought and behavior.	Constant background of TV, radio, and supermarket announcements; media shapes identity.
Loss of Grand Narratives	Distrust of overarching explanations like religion, science, or progress.	Characters turn to pills, pop culture, or consumer goods for comfort instead of traditional beliefs.
Ambiguity and Unresolved Endings	Resistance to clear conclusions or moral certainties.	The novel ends without clear resolution; death remains an open question.
Blurring of High and Low Culture	Mixing of elite and popular culture in both form and content.	Scholarly discussions of Hitler coexist with supermarket scenes and soap-opera-like dialogues.