White Noise by De Lillo
White Noise by De Lillo could well be considered a fertile testing ground of modern and post-modern hypotheses and theories of Philosophy of Technology, which may be of recent origin but trace their roots to the days of Plato and Aristotle.
Donna Haraway uses the term ‘Cyborg’ to define human-machine identity. According to Haraway ‘oppositional consciousness’ is compatible with cyborg politics, because rather than identity it stresses how affinity comes as a result of ‘otherness, differences, and specificity’. Haraway’s ideal “cyborg world consists of people living together unafraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines.”
The novel deals extensively with fears of different kinds, from that of authority to even the fear of self, to the ultimate fear, the fear of death. De Lillo’s characters appear to be fighting death throughout the novel with pills, or by sitting in a cage with a poisonous snake or by thinking over it deeply during class-room lectures on dead celebrities like Hitler and Elvis.
Fear of death is a prime motivator in the discovery of self or the being, even as the concept of ‘self’ or ‘being’ has evolved over thousands of years in the history of philosophy. To the philosophers like Heidegger, the whole of human existence is permeated by a tragic anxiety or anguish (Angst), induced by the sense of inevitability of death. Heidegger is ascribing to death a status beyond the mere non-existence of the individual, as he associates it with ‘nothingness’. Readers can witness a similar angst prevailing in White Noise. The basic response to the present cultural crisis can be found in the writings of all the existentialist philosophers.
The philosophers respond to crisis of age accordingly as in the age they have lived. Therefore, Heidegger goes beyond ego-centric predicament of Descartes. He finds ‘being’ reduced to idea in Plato, Substantia and Actualitas in medieval philosophy, objectivity in modern philosophy and will to power in Nietzsche and contemporary thought.
When Bacon postulated a scientific society, where knowledge was power and the new technical inventions and mechanical discoveries were to be the driving force of history, he might not have perhaps anticipated a crisis in society necessitating a reinterpretation of philosophy. Today, this task has been taken up by the Philosophy of Technology.
This philosophy is still far from grand theories even as there are a number of very useful models with us to work on. They go on very well to complement each other. They interpret the meanings of concepts in relation to man and society. White Noise, a philosophical novel speaks of the angst and the existential dilemma of the modern man in the 20th century. Further, it takes a closer look at the breakdown of dualistic distinction between reality and imitation from the standpoint of technology.
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