SACRED NOISE IN DON DELILLO'S FICTION

Author: Born Daniel  

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISSN: 0269-1205

Source: Literature and Theology, Vol.13, Iss.3, 1999-09, pp. : 211-221

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Abstract

Born argues for a reading of DeLillo which pays due attention to his concern with the sacred. Taking issue with Fredric Jameson's assertion that post-modern culture is characterised by the ‘extinction of the sacred’. Born uses DeLillo as paradigm case ‘The representative post-modern novelist’. He relates the views of Bataille, Girard, and Derrida—who each argue that sacnfice is fundamental to the experience of the sacred—to the way in which sacrificial violence pervades DeLillo's fiction. The latter's notion of sacredness, Born contends, lies at ‘the intersection between communal bonding, violent sacrifice and linguistic utterance, focusing primarily on what mainstream culture identifies as “cult“ behaviour’.