Symbolic Consumption And Existential Crises In The Postmodern America

Don DeLillo (1936—) is one of the most distinguished contemporary writers in America. Since his first novel Americana came out in 1971, DeLillo has published thirteen novels, four dramas, many essays and short stories. With the publication of each work, DeLillo has given a fuller play to his literary talent and his achievements are outstanding. Though there are both favorable and negative comments on this versatile and prolific writer, most of the critics agree on his unusual subject matters and unconventional narrative technique. In his novels, DeLillo takes on a wide range of themes such as political conspiracy, pornographic crime, fanatical murderer, terrorist, chemical accident and so on. In fact, most of them appear to be the problems of social life that the contemporary Americans are astonished to confront but refusing to accept, let alone to solve them. Besides, DeLillo is good at expressing these themes vividly in a satirical way and in various forms of detective story, horror story, catastrophe story, scientific fiction and sport novel. In this way, DeLillo criticizes the contemporary American culture and profoundly shows his deep concern about the dilemma of human existence in the postmodern world.This thesis is going to take White Noise, one of DeLillo's most important novels, for an example to anatomize the aspects of consumer culture in the postmodern America. It, in particular, focuses on the negative effects of symbolic consumption on people and argues that the existential crises portrayed in the novel are closely connected to the profound permeation of consumer culture in the social life.Since the middle of last century, western countries have experienced the postwar golden period of development. With the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, America has eventually step into the threshold of consumer society where consumption takes the central stage of social life. And consumer culture in this specific social pattern is prominently represented by the prevalence of symbolic consumption. Jean Baudrillard, a famous French philosopher, has given an adequate explanation to symbolic consumption. In his opinion, an object, besides its use value and the exchange value, has the value of sign. What value of sign embodies are an object's"differences"that enable the object to contain some symbolic meanings. Here, an object actually is turned into a sign. Thus consumption is"a system which assures the regulation of signs". Based on this, we may come to the conclusion of symbolic consumption: when people consume an object, they consume the value of sign instead of its materialization or utility. In this way, people can deliver some important social meanings such as social position, personal taste, unique lifestyle and so on. In consumer society, signs engulf all objects. And the consumer activities of people are undoubtedly characterized as symbolic consumption. In White Noise, Hitler, nuns,...