Empire In The Age Of Media:A Study Of Don DeLillo's Point Omega (2010)

Empire has re-emerged as a popular word in cultural products circulating in the United States in the first decade of the 21 st century, particularly after the invasion of Iraq.Scholars have approached American empire from different perspectives, discussing its genealogy, characteristic features as well as some possible ways to counter it. In these discussions, the influence of cultural products in shaping the empire is a major concern and the critique of empire culture has become intimately connected with a critical analysis of domestic issues such as gender, civil rights and technologies.Developing on these insights, this thesis adopts combined perspectives of narrative criticism, American Studies, feminist film theories as well as cultural theories, and investigates contemporary American writer Don DeLillo's latest novella Point Omega(2010) in terms of empire culture under the influence of media image and technologies. It aims at exposing the mechanism through which media image, the act of watching and the aestheticization of violence all contribute to empire building. Meanwhile, it explores DeLillo's literary response to the empire culture in terms of his narrative resistance. The whole thesis consists of three parts: Introduction, the Main Body and Conclusion.The Introduction presents the research background, previous research on empire culture as well as the related research on DeLillo and Point Omega. The Main Body of the thesis is divided into three chapters as follows.Chapter one focuses on the problem of spectacle and spectatorship in empire as represented in Point Omega. It analyzes the mechanism through which male characters try to domesticate female citizen and consolidate masculinity in the empire. The textual analysis reveals the roles that both the spectacle and the spectatorship play in intensifying the ideology of “domesticity” and masculinity in empire culture.Chapter two is concerned with the aestheticization of violence in empire culture as discussed in the story. Through analysis of the inter-textual use of the plot in 24 Hour Psycho(1993) by contemporary avant-garde Scottish artist Douglas Gordon and Psycho(1960) by Hollywood film director Alfred Hitchcock, this chapter questions the effect of aestheticizing violence in media on social interaction as well as on the shaping of people's affectivity and perception of materiality. It aims at demonstrating that aestheticization of violence in media is politically complicit in fostering the desire of violence and warfare in the empire.Chapter three discusses narrative strategies that are employed in Point Omega to resist empire culture. This chapter investigates the functions of female response and her disappearance in terms of the change of narrative mode and the inspiration of narrative succession from readers. In addition, the temporal aspect of linguistic imagery, the narrativity of pictorial images as well as their potential functions are also discussed from the perspective of building critical subjectivity and countering empire culture.The conclusion summarizes what has been discussed in the thesis. It also suggests the significance of the present study and calls for interdisciplinary perspectives on further investigation of the possibilities of narrative resistance and of the social function of literature in contemporary world.