A Postsecular Reading Of Don Delillo's Novels

Having drawn most of its inspiration from Western postmodern philosophy,post-secularism is a burgeoning set of theoretical discourses that are first applied to Western sociological researches.With an aim to reviewing postsecularism's history of development and summarizing all of its main arguments,the dissertation is meant to amass relevant but sporadic discourses from Western philosophical and sociological writings to develop an organic whole of postsecular discourse,by which a postsecular framework can be erected for opening a brand-new paradigm of criticizing Western literature,especially American literature.On the prerequisite that a postsecular framework of literary criticism is built,the dissertation is to choose Don DeLillo,admitted as one of the greatest novelists of contemporary American literature,as an author about whom a tentative postsecular criticism will be practiced.DeLillo's 10 representative works will be selected from his 16-novel oeuvre for a tentative postsecular reading,which is conducted in the dissertation in the hope that the postsecular implications of DeLillo's decades-long writing career can be revealed and in the meantime,the possible ways that DeLillo's postsecular writings can both inspire and enrich the emerging theoretical discourses of postsecularism will also be presented.The dissertation is therefore written with a conviction that it can work as an exemplification of how the creative texts of literature and the theoretical discourses of philosophy can interact with each other in a mutually beneficial way.Postsecularism,a term that Jurgen Habermas coins,epitomizes a traditionalist practice Western,especially German philosophers,have observed,in which,they reflect on the Enlightenment reason.Having witnessed World War ?,Cuban Missile Crisis,the Chernobyl disaster and the 9/11 terrorist attack-the cataclysms that combine to draw an apocalypse-like picture in the scroll of human history-these Western philosophers and sociologists push forward a revisionist meditation on absolute rationalism and its derivant-secularism.More and more Western scholars have deepened their understanding that the secularized Western society,as its tyrannical ruler-reason has both marginalized and debilitated its institutional religions to a great extent,is seized with an undue self-respect and resultant insatiable thirst for control of nature and itself as well,and therefore,it exerts,in more than one way,some irrevocable and catastrophic impact upon both the two.With the despairing incidents befalling the Western society in quick succession,its scholars come up with a judgment that secularism,whose birth can be traced back to the Enlightenment,cannot fulfill a promise of "civility,prosperity and peace" it makes to the Western society in an uncompromised manner,and what is worse,secularism deals one deadly blow after another against the meaning or value of a human life.To counteract the pernicious influence of secluarism's rampant growth,since the 1960s,the Western scholars have been preoccupied with framing up a new set of philosophical discourses with a view to playing its due role in the field of sociological studies of returning to the secular society the religious faith,which will take effect as an antidote to the toxic effects of secularism.Cautious against the risk of producing a new wave of grand narratives if they should still follow the guidance of pure rationalism,the Western scholars decide to imbibe into their own discourse essential academic nutrients from the postmodern philosophy.By doing so,they tend to innovate the return of the religious to the secular in a poststructuralist way so that the new formula of faith can topple down the absolute ruling of secularism,usher in the postsecular discourse,and meanwhile,retain its most necessary character of deconstructing both the secular and the religious,in which,all that the prefix "post-" of "post-secularism" means lies.The dissertation argues that what secures the "post-ness" or the double deconstructivity of postsecularism is secular spirituality.As a concept of paramount importance to the postsecular discourse,secular spirituality can distill from institutional religions'conceptualization of their gods its very essence-spirituality,by which it can well perform its given duty of deconstructing the secular.Besides,secular spirituality involves a thoroughgoing fusion between the spiritual and the secular,and so,it takes a visible and tangible form right in the secular,which,as a result,can,with a character of full immanence,be worshipped as an ideal object of faith.It is in such a way that secular spirituality can also deconstruct pure religiosity that was once separated off from the secular.It does not go too far to claim that what is most essential to secular spirituality's double deconstruction of the secular and the religious is its ultimate deconstruction of an absolute separation between these two assumingly independent categories,on which,secularism is by itself based.Secular spirituality,with its spiritual immanence,can perform a duty that all institutional religions are supposed to perform-to affirm the meaning or value of mankind's life and answer their quest for it;and meanwhile,by its poststructuralist nature,it can rule out the fundamentalism that is easy to come off in doctrinal religions so as to prevent the probable occurrence of religious zealotry and resulting terrorist acts.It is in this sense that postsecularism,by dint of its secular spirituality,can complete its ethicizing mission on both individual and social level so that it can fulfill the unfulfilled part of the promise that secularism makes to mankind.Generally recognized by American literary critics as a postmodern novelist,Don DeLillo,under an impact that his family of Catholic Italian immigrants exercises on him,has developed a strong postsecular consciousness in himself.In his writing career that has been going on for almost half a century,Don DeLillo has,in an all-round way,externalized his postsecular consciousness in his works through his character portrayals,plot designs and narrative structure frame-ups.So,it follows that the attempt the dissertation is making to read his works from a postsecular perspective will push into depth the academia's understanding of postsecularism and verify DeLillo 's extraordinary capability for philosophical mediation not inferior to that of any Western philosopher,which counts as a reason why a close reading of his works can be conducive to the further development of the postsecular discourse.First of all,Don DeLillo presents in several of his works the scenarios of his characters' ludicrous and deplorable lives that have since long been run by a domineering presence of reason and therefore rendered faithless.The main characters in DeLillo's Americana,Great Jones Street and White Noise are all tortured by a severe existential angst since their subjectivities have been unrelentingly demolished by a secularism that has developed itself to an advanced stage-one in a postmodern American society.As they cannot even imagine that they will reclaim their meaning of life if they can re-establish their religious faith,these DeLillo characters allow themselves to slide on and on to the depth of a great mire of despondency.David Bell in Americana,Bucky Wunderlick in Great Jones Street,Sister Edgar in Underworld and Gary Harkness in End Zone have all been working hard to patch up their once dismembered subjectivities;however,as they struggle without breaking free from the stringent bondage of rationalism and secularism,what awaits them all ahead is nothing but an increasingly distressing self-deception.It is only in the closing chapter of Underworld that DeLillo charts out a route to self-redemption for Sister Edgar because after she witnesses at close quarters that Esmeralda,a raped and murdered lone girl,has her face projected on a billboard,Sister Edgar gains a faith,non-Christian but postsecular in nature.By this crafty design of plot,DeLillo hints at both the necessity and possible means of opening up a postsecular mode of faith,and he surely goes on,in his other works,to cast more and profounder thoughts on the nature of the new faith and the ways in which it can be pursued.DeLillo's effort to define the nature of the postsecular faith is first focused upon his shaping out its object of faith-secular spirituality.In The Names,DeLillo affords his protagonist-James Axton an opportunity to have a life-or-death contact with a cult called "The Names",by which,James comes to realize the spurious nature of a spirituality that the cult is worshipping by sacrificing innocent lives in a ridiculous and merciless way.Determined to cut off all his ties with the cult,James at last is comforted with an understanding of the spiritual truth incarnated in the material features of language that he develops by reading his 9-year-old son's short,ungrammatical and misspelled composition.In Libra,a work that stimulates a much warmer response from both American readers and critics than all his previous works,Don DeLillo,with his conscientious characterization of Lee Harvey Oswald and ingenious delineation of two parallel plotlines,brings to the spotlight the spirituality that has hidden itself in Oswald's Libran personality and the seemingly contingent development of the human history.Besides,born and reared as a New Yorker,Don DeLillo,through years of his close observation and in-person experiencing,tries to convince his readership of the presence of secular spirituality in New York,the world's No.1 center of finance,in Underworld and Cosmopolis.American commercialism and cybercapitalism that Underworld and Cosmopolis represents in their separate ways,as DeLillo suggests,both work as an ideal incarnation of secular spirituality.The leading characters of the two novels-Sister Edgar and Eric Packer,with their communion with secular spirituality,have achieved their self-redemption in their own way and to a different extent.In addition to reminding his readers of possible incarnations of secular spirituality,DeLillo does not leave undone in his writing practices a job of exemplifying acceptable means of pursuit of secular spirituality.To be more exact,he sets examples in his works for both "to-dos" and "not-to-dos" in the pursuit of a secular spirituality.In the Epilogue of Underwrld,by narrating Sister Edgar's personal experience of witnessing Esmeralda's spirit on the billboard,DeLillo approves the necessity of individualizing one's means of pursuit.Whereas in Falling Man,DeLillo portrays Lianne Glenn as the example of an American who manages to cure himself of a tremendous 9/11 trauma through his communion with secular spirituality,and DeLillo places his emphasis on sharing with his readers all that Lianne comes to understand after she watches Falling Man's falling performance-only by humbling down himself and conceding to his vulnerability and mortality can mankind lower his self-conceit that is caused by his unconditional belief in reason and so,gain access to secular spirituality and be granted a clear-cut definition of his meaning of life.While stressing the importance of revolutionizing one's cognitive schemata,DeLillo,in his White Noise,Underworld and End Zone,affirms that communality of a group of believers should play a positive role in helping its members pursue a postsecular mode of faith.The believers' groups,as represented in these three novels,can facilitate mutual approval of each other's faith pursuit so that the comforting power of a secular spirituality can be strengthened a lot,and besides,the presence of a secular spirituality can also be better verified.What distinguishes Mao II from DeLillo 's other postsecular writings is its truthful reflection of how alert the novelist remains against the risks involved in the process of pursuing a secular spirituality.In the novel,DeLillo draws a vivid portrayal of Abu Rashid and his terrorist group so as to teach a lesson that if over-immanetized in an individual person,secular spirituality will be incarnated as a Hitler-like figure and in all probabilities give rise to outrageous violence that is no better than the Holocaust.By doing so,DeLillo launches his severe criticism against cult of personality for its renunciation of all the moralization duties that a postsecular faith is born to fulfill.Further on,in Mao ?,DeLillo spends a great effort on his representation and criticism of "the terrorist spectacle" as a product of terrorism's collaboration with modern media.Besides,DeLillo laments that Bill Gray the novelist,the hero of the novel,should pay his life as a price in his failed attempt to snatch a novelist's right to shape the public consciousness back from "the terrorist spectacle";and thus,DeLillo can voice out his firm belief that the art of fiction has to be postmodernized so as to both dismantle "the terrorist spectacle" and help fulfill the ethicization mission of a postsecular faith.Started in the 1970s,Don DeLillo's commitment to his postsecular writings comes down to his ambitious plan for fulfilling the two-level ethicization-a job postsecularism is meant to do.In the first place,secular spirituality,in its capacity of postsecularism's central idea,can deconstruct secularism and propose to all its potential believers that a postsecular faith can work as a new and feasible cognizant schemata,and besides,function as well as any institutional religion does in affirming the meaning or value of any individual life.What is more important is that one's belief in a secular spirituality affirms not only the life's value of "?" but also that of all"Others".As a result,"I" will be instructed to guard the right to live of both his own and "Others'" in full respect and even awe towards life's inborn value.Postsecularism's ethicization of an individual is thus finished.On the precondition that the first-level ethicization is fulfilled,a nation,in which its citizens live with mutual respect for each other's life,can be established with justice,equity and harmony as its defining characters.Besides,such a nation,as a big"I",is sure to make an affirmative judgment on the existential meaning or value of other nations-big "Others".In the way,an international community that is also defined by justice,equity and harmony can be born.This is all that postsecularism's higher-level ethicization is about.Throughout his years of practice in postsecular writing,Don DeLillo keeps reminding himself and his readers that postsecularism's fulfillment of its ethicization job can not be possible without its persistence in deconstructing both the secular and the religious—a poststructuralist character that is open,tolerant,changing and so daring as to deconstruct itself.In order to manifest such a nature of postsecularism,Don DeLillo,more than once in the concluding parts of his novels,casts a shadow over his character's once bright prospect for self-redemption,or he even goes as far as to cut short his character's pilgrimage to secular spirituality.Such a habitual arrangement of DeLillo's does well,though to his readers' great discomfiture,in highlighting the poststructuralist character of his works that an American author with a strong sense of responsibility commits himself to safeguarding.So,in a nutshell,DeLillo is,at most,a problem raiser and expounder of possible solutions,but not a final resolver of the problems raised.His non-commital attitude prevents his art of fiction from being reduced to an accomplice of any newly-born grand narratives and also helps him to decree the prerequisite on which both postsecularism and postsecular fictional writings can continue their two-level ethicization-to not raise themselves above their status as "a possible solution",while retaining their poststructuralist nature of being open and changing,so as to allow all the believers a chance to keep on ethicizing themselves in an ever-going process of pursuing secular spirituality,and so,elevate postsecularism 's ethicizing work to a higher social level.