Don DeLillo Kurgusunda Dis(ü)topya Manzaraları

Abstract

Ütopya (iyi yer) ve distopya (kötü yer) kavramlarına, insanın (inşa edilmiş) gerçeklik teması ve kavrayışı, hayal kırıklığı ve hoşnutsuzluğu ve daha iyi bir şimdiki ve gelecek zamana yönelik karamsarlığı veya iyimserliği üzerinden karar verebiliriz. Bunların ilki derin bir geçmişe sahipken, ikincisi halen devam eden bir çalışmadan ibarettir. Yani, ikisi arasındaki temel ayrım, ilkinin proaktif olup bize doğru yönü işaret ettiği, ikincisinin öncelikli olarak uyarıcı ve tepkisel olup olmadığı, bizi ne yapıp ne yapmamamız gerektiği konularında uyarması üzerinden yapılamaz. Her ikisi de herhangi bir toplumun karanlık yönlerini hayali diğer bir kültürle karşılaştırmalı olarak sunmak gibi bir odağa sahip olabilir. Birinin ütopyası, bir başkasının alternatif bir distopya olabilir veya geçmişten gelen birçok geleneksel ütopya, modern okuyucuların distopik olarak tanımlayacağı yönleri içerebilir. Distopyanın en kötü durum senaryosu olarak hizmet ettiği, sosyo-kültürel, ekonomik ve teknolojik olarak çökmüş ve/veya çökmekte olan bir toplum sunduğu ve ötekinden daha kötü olduğu, ancak yine de bir umut vaat ettiği iddia edilebilir. Ütopya, sosyo-politik yok oluşu içeren bir toplumda yaşayan insanlar için en iyi bir senaryo olarak algılanabilir. Kısaca hem ütopik hem de distopik senaryolar, ya daha iyiye doğru büyük bir değişimi işaret eder ya da kıyamet benzeri bir kabusla sonuçlanacak bir felaket üzerine geniş bir tefekküre sığınır. Bu makale, Giles Deleuze ve Jean Baudrillard’ın bakış açılarından yararlanıp Don DeLillo kurgusunun izini sürerek, özellikle distopya kavramını, gelecek varsayımları, olası zorluklar ve problemleri dijital gözetim, teknolojik kontrol, bireyin ölümü, belirsizlik ve korku kavramlarına odaklanarak ele alacaktır.

Keywords

• Ütopya
• Distopya
• Deleuze
• Baudrillard
• Don DeLillo

(Dis)utopian Landscapes in Don DeLillo’s Fiction

Abstract

The concepts of utopia (a good place) and dystopia (a bad place) might be arrived at and developed by one’s contact with the (constructed) reality and comprehension, yet frustration and discontent with it, and one’s pessimism and optimism over a better present and future contingent upon the place and time in which one exists. The former has a long history, whereas the latter is a work in progress. That is, one cannot simply distinguish between the two by asking whether the latter is primarily precautionary and reactive, cautioning us what not to do, whilst the former is proactive, pointing us towards the right direction. Both the former and latter may have similar motives, namely, to demonstrate the dark characteristics of one society by comparing it with another, fictitious culture. Someone’s utopia might alternate dystopia, or many traditional utopias from the past include aspects that modern readers would identify as dystopian. On the other hand, one could argue that dystopia serves as the worst-case scenario, presenting a degraded, collapsing, and/or collapsed society, be it socio-culturally, economically, or technologically, worse than another, yet still hopeful for a drastic change for the better. Utopia could be received as the best-case scenario for people in a society considering its socio-political demise. Shortly, both utopian and dystopian scenarios would fit into an extended framework of contemplations on a catastrophe that would either signal a tremendous shift for the better or result in an apocalyptic nightmare. Drawing on the standpoints of Giles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard and tracing Don DeLillo’s fiction, this paper seeks to explore the notion of dystopia, the future assumptions that dystopian fiction puts forward, and the challenges and issues it highlights, such as digital surveillance, technological control, the disappearance of individualism, uncertainty, and dread.

Keywords

• Utopia
• Dystopia
• Deleuze
• Baudrillard
• Don DeLillo

References

1. Atwood, M. (2006). Writing with intent: Essays, reviews, personal prose: 1983-2005. Carroll & Graf Publishers.
2. Baccolini, R., & Moylan, T. (2013). Introduction: Dystopia and histories. In Dark horizons (pp. 1-12). Routledge.
3. Baudrillard, J. (1983). In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities... or the End of the Social, and Other Essays, (Trans. P. Foss, P.Patton, & J. Johnston). Semiotext (e).
4. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulations and simulacra. 1981. (Trans. S. F. Glaser). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
5. Beauchamp, G. (1986). Technology in the dystopian novel. Modern fiction studies, 32(1), 53-63.
6. Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine domination. Stanford University Press.
7. Boxall, P. (2006). Don DeLillo: The possibility of fiction. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203315422
8. Boxall, P. (2013) Twenty-First-Century fiction: A critical introduction. CUP. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511902727

9. Claeys, G. (2013). News from somewhere: Enhanced sociability and the composite definition of utopia and dystopia. History, 98(330), 145-173. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12005
10. Cohen, J. (2020, October 20). In Don DeLillo’s new novel, technology is dead. Civilization might be, too. New York Times. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/books/review/don-delillo-the-silence.html
11. Cvek, G. (2014). A man melting into war: Militarization and liberal imagination in falling man. Terror(ism) and Aesthetics.(Eds.) G. Fogarasi, Z. Cora, & E. Török, Et al.
12. Davis, L. (2013). Dystopia, utopia and Sancho Panza. In F. Vieira (Ed), Dystopia(n) matters: On the page, on screen, on stage.Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
13. Deleuze, G. (2017). Postscript on the Societies of Control. In Surveillance, crime, and social control. Routledge.
14. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? Columbia University Press.
15. DeLillo, D. (1986). White noise. Penguin.
16. DeLillo, D. (1998). Great Jones street. Penguin.
17. DeLillo, D. (2001, December). In the Ruins of the Future. Harper’s Magazine. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://harpers.org/archive/2001/12/in-the-ruins-of-the-future/
18. DeLillo, D. (2007). Falling man. Simon and Schuster.
19. DeLillo, D. (2017). Zero K. Scribner.
20. DeLillo, D. (2020). The silence. Simon and Schuster
21. Docherty, T. (1991). Postmodern characterization: The ethics of alterity. In E. J. Smyth (Ed.), Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction, Batsford.
22. Fiore, Q., & McLuhan, M. (1967). The medium is the massage (Vol. 9). Random House.
23. Gordin, M. D., Tilley, H., & Prakash, G. (Eds.). (2010). Utopia/dystopia: conditions of historical possibility. Princeton University Press.
24. Gray, J. (2007). Black mass: Apocalyptic religion and the death of utopia. Macmillan.
25. Han, B. C. (2018). Topology of violence. MIT Press.
26. Herbrechter, S. (2021, March 11). DeLillo’s (the) silence. Critical posthumanism network. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://criticalposthumanism.net/delillos-the-silence/
27. Jameson, F. (2010). Utopia as method, or the uses of the future. In M. Gordin, H. Tilley, & G. Prakash (Eds.), Utopia/Dystopia:Conditions of Historical Possibility, (pp. 21–44). Princeton University Press.
28. Jong, J., & Halberstadt, J. (2019). Death anxiety and religious belief: Responses to commentaries. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 9(2), 207-218.
29. Keesey, D. (1993). The ideology of detection in pynchon and DeLillo. Pynchon Notes, 32, 44.
30. Kumar, K. (2013). Utopia’s shadow. In F. Vieira (Ed.), Dystopia(n) Matters: On the Page, on Screen, on Stage, (pp. 19–22). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
31. Kümbet, P. (2017). Commodified lives: Humn cloning in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the television series, Orphan Black. In D. Bozer (Ed.) Depictions of Utopias in English, (pp. 171-191). Hacettepe University.
32. Laist, R. (2008). Review of Don DeLillo: The possibility of fiction, by P. Boxall. Rocky Mountain Review, 62 (2), 146–148. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479554
33. Little, W. G. (2002). The waste fix: Seizures of the sacred from Upton Sinclair to the Sopranos. Psychology Press.
34. Lyotard, J. F. (1999). Postmodern Fables. U of Minnesota Press.
35. Maffey, R., & Teo, Y., (2018). Changing channels of technology: Disaster and (i’m)mortality in Don DeLillo’s White Noise,Cosmopolis, and Zero K. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, 6(2), 6, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.74
36. Marcuse, H. (1991). One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Beacon Press.
37. Nebioğlu, R. Ç. (2020). Deleuze and the schizoanalysis of dystopia. Springer International Publishing.
38. Orwell, G., & Fromm, E. (1962). 1984... with an afterword by Erich Fromm. New American Library.
39. Sargent, L. T. (2013). Do dystopias matter? In F. Vieira (Ed.), Dystopia (n) matters: On the page, on screen, on stage, (pp. 10-13), Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
40. Vieira, F. (Ed.). (2013). Dystopia (n) matters: On the page, on screen, on stage. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
41. Yanar, M. (2018). Technoculture and hyperreality in Don DeLillo’s Americana, Great Jones Street and White Noise (Doctoral dissertation, İstanbul Aydın University Institute of Social Sciences).