The Diachronic Time And The Construction Of The Subject

Don DeLillo(1936-)is one of the best contemporary American writers.He has published more than ten novels and won many important awards including the National Book Award and the Jerusalem Prize.DeLillo has an acute sense of time.His focus on time is associated with the contemporary American society and at the same time reflects his deeply philosophical thinking.Scholarly interest in DeLillo's work ranges from consumerism,media and technology,terrorism,trauma and ethics to language and art.There is only one book-length critical study on time in DeLillo's work.Other scholars discuss this subject in critical essays.These studies lack deep and comprehensive observation on DeLillo's idea of time.Taking such nine novels as The Names(1982),White Noise(1985),Libra(1988),Mao ?(1991),Underworld(1997),The Body Artist(2001),Cosmopolis(2003),Falling Man(2007),and Point Omega(2010)as the object of research,this study examines the diachronic time in DeLillo's writing and the construction of the non-identical subject.This study focuses on DeLillo's depiction of the diachronic time in the corporeal,ethical,and artistic dimensions and diachrony's construction of the corporeal subject,the ethical subject,and the subject of saying.DeLillo addresses in his work the material life,the interpersonal relationship,and the development of art in the contemporary American society.He is fully aware that the subject of contemporary Americans is faced with the assimilative synchrony of consumerism,media,technology,and the globalization of capital.DeLillo's writing,however,does not simply record the social situation,but seeks transcendence from it.Set in the synchronic background,DeLillo's work captures characters' diachronic experience which lets them see familiar people and things in a fresh way and encounter the mysterious other/Other and which constructs the corporeal,ethical,and creative subject of characters.It is the diachronic time that enables DeLillo's work to be involved with yet detached from the social situation.This study employs Levinas's concept of the diachronic time to interpret DeLillo's work.Against synchrony in the traditional philosophy,Levinas puts forward the concept of diachrony.The diachronic time signifies the immemorial past and the unexpected future which cannot be synchronized by consciousness.In diachrony,consciousness is deprived of its authority and instead signifies the ability to encounter otherness and alterity,and in this encounter the subject comes into being.Levinas's analysis of diachrony mainly centers on ethics,but diachrony in Levinas's theory has other implications.The corporeal,ethical,and artistic dimensions of the concept of diachrony shed light on this critical study of DeLillo's work.In DeLillo's work,the diachronic time constructs the non-identical subject of characters in the corporeal,ethical,and artistic dimensions.In White Noise,The Body Artist,and Point Omega,DeLillo depicts the life of matter of characters,captures diachrony in the ordinary moment and the experience of death,and thus constructs the sensible and mortal subject of characters.In his novels,the seemingly identical and meaningless ordinary moment is endowed with diachrony:the other in the material world breaks synchrony of characters' consciousness through the instant of sensibility.In the ordinary moments of eating,shopping in supermarkets,watching TV and so on,characters like Jack,Wilder,and Lauren let the other including food and commodities penetrate into the instant of sensibility and consciousness;the other ceaselessly escapes from the instant of sensibility and consciousness and cannot be possessed by characters;their consciousness moves back to the other through the instant of sensibility,transcending the synchronic representations of media and advertisements.Characters become the sensible subject in diachrony of the ordinary moment:the subject is concrete and created,and as one part of the world it enjoys the original happiness of human beings.In these three novels,apart from the ordinary moment,characters have a diachronic experience of death:the non-present death disturbs synchrony of characters' consciousness.Consciousness of characters like Jack and Elster tends to go into the atmosphere of death("there is")symbolized by night and white noise;death as the end of life endless approaches their consciousness;menaced by death,characters are patient with the duration of time in their experiences of running and body art.The diachronic experience of death constructs the mortal subject:deeply rooted in the mysterious and menacing world,the subject is of passivity and subjection to the approaching death,and shows its vitality and uniqueness in its senescence and vulnerability.Diachrony enables characters to be fully engaged in the postmodern life of matter,without being synchronized by intellectualism,media,technology,and consumerism.Diachrony in DeLillo's work goes beyond the corporeal level to the ethical level.Characters as the corporeal subject is also closely related with life of the Other.In DeLillo's writing,violence and sexual relationship are characterized by diachrony which constructs characters' ethical subject of responsibility and desire.In Libra,Cosmopolis,and Falling Man,DeLillo endows violence with diachrony:the non-present Other disturbs synchrony of characters' consciousness,enables the same-for-the-Other ethical relationship.In fictional and non-fictional violence such as the assassination of Kennedy,the demonstration of anarchists,and 9/11,non-present Others like gunners and terrorists strike characters' consciousness;characters'consciousness is led to the immemorial past of Others' misfortune;characters step out of themselves toward menacing Others and accept danger and harm caused by the latter.In diachrony of violence,characters become the responsible subject:responsibility for the Other signifies the irreplaceability of the subject who shows"in-difference" to the Other's vulnerability and death,realizes its responsibility for the Other's misfortune,and undergoes affliction in expiation for the Other.In these three novels,different from violence,diachronic sexual relationship displays the possibility of peaceful coexistence of human beings:the non-present feminine breaks synchrony of consciousness of the masculine.In their voluptuous experience,the feminine escapes to non-presence from consciousness of the masculine like Eric and Keith,neither possessed by the masculine nor assimilated by the visual culture;in their marriage crisis,the masculine steps out of themselves toward the non-present hospitable feminine,which makes the ethical dwelling possible;the masculine receives the non-present feminine like the black woman Florence,symbolizing the openness of the American mainstream culture to other cultures.In diachrony of sexual relationship,characters are constructed into the subject with desire for the Other:the subject of the masculine is limited by insatiable desire,shows its dependence on the feminine,gets rid of its identity,and is of openness and hospitality.Characters are placed in the contemporary American society of frequent violence and interpersonal estrangement.In diachrony,characters step out of their innocence and self-sufficiency and admit responsibility and desire for the Other,and the originally repressed voice of the Other is heard.In DeLillo's writing,the ethical relationship implies the possibility of facing the Other in saying.As an artist,DeLillo's diachronic thinking finally leads to art itself.DeLillo characterizes artists' creation in his work with diachrony of inspiration and fecundity that constructs fictional artists' subject of saying on the artistic level.In The Names,Mao ? and Underworld,artistic creation is a diachronic experience:the non-present language of otherness breaks synchrony of artists' consciousness.Conscicousness of artists like Tap and James receives the non-present language of otherness that results in enigmatic saying;the non-present language of otherness drives incessant re-creation of consciousness of artists like Bill and enables them to remain unique in the commercial culture;consciousness of artists like James and Owen moves toward the non-present language of otherness,showing piety to the mystery of art and languages.In diachrony of inspiration,fictional artists' subject of saying is constructed:subjectivity of the subject lies in possibility of being inspired;deprived of its position at the beginning,the subject is in restlessness and renewal and becomes an enigma with negativity in itself.The artistic creation in these three novels goes beyond artists and has a diachrony of fecundity:artists like Bill and Ismael pass time on to their works which have an independent life against the assimilation of capital and market;artists like Ismael and Klara pass time on to the audience through their work and accept their future in the audience;the audiences are often artists who base their creation on their predecessors' work and enable artistic fecundity toward the infinite future,like the passing on of graffiti.In DeLillo's writing,diachrony constructs artists fecund subject of saying:the subject accepts its own finitude and death,and through saying and giving resurrects in the absolute future of his work,the audience,and other artists.DeLillo's delineation of diachrony in the artistic dimension responds to the predicament of contemporary artists and shows the possibility of not being assimilated by the postmodern synchrony.In diachrony,with creativity and vitality,artists in DeLillo's writing neither fall into language games nor become identical producers of commodities.To sum up,DeLillo is a writer with an acute sense of time,but time in his work has not received enough scholarly attention.Taking nine novels of DeLillo as the research object and going beyond the discussion of accelerating time and existential time in earlier research,this study employs Levinas's concept of the diachronic time to provide a new approach to DeLillo's unique conceptualization of time and examines deeply and comprehensively the time in DeLillo's writing on different levels.This study associates diachrony with the construction of the subject in DeLillo's work and reads diachrony in his work against the context of the end of temporality,which reflects DeLillo's humanist concern and shows the tension in his writing and the critical consciousness and responsibility of DeLillo as a writer in the postmodern world.