Everywhere and nowhere : metamodern resonances in Infinite Jest

Abstract

This dissertation explores David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest as a manifestation of metamodernism, specifically analyzing its negotiation with (post)modernism through the lens of its opposition to the postmodern and its spectral liminality. Metamodernism, as a proposed paradigm to fill the post-postmodern vacuum, seeks to transcend the modernism-postmodernism dialectic in a move that is simultaneously antithetical to the postmodern, but also results in an unresolved synthesis that remains suspended both above and between the opposing poles of modernism and postmodernism. Central to this opposition towards the postmodern in Infinite Jest is a critique of postmodernity through the satirisation of hyperreality and the emphasis placed on the materiality and consequent affectivity of the body. The novel also embodies the typically metamodern ongoing yet unresolved synthesis, as demonstrated through its invocation of Derridean spectrality and liminality, particularly in the presence of the wraith of James Incandenza. In its constant oscillation and the haunting presence of the past within the present, Wallace's novel exemplifies the metamodern condition: a state of perpetual negotiation, suspension, and becoming, wherein contradictions are not resolved but persist. Infinite Jest emerges as a novel that shows metamodernism to be spectral, stuck in a state of suspension both above and between modernism and postmodernism.