Time and disaster in Don DeLillo and Maurice Blanchot

Abstract

Don DeLillo (1936 – ) is regarded as a significant American writer whose body of work is strongly connected to contemporary theory and philosophy. This dissertation will analyse two of his recent works, Point Omega (2010) and The Silence (2020) using Maurice Blanchot’s (1907 – 2003) literary theory. The introduction will identify the shared ground between DeLillo and Blanchot as well as the merits of such an analysis. Here, the roots of both writer’s thought will be established, foregrounding their shared concerns regarding language, its limitations, role in contemporary life, and effects on the perception of the world and time. Point Omega will be discussed in the first chapter, where DeLillo’s portrayal of an encounter with art will be considered using Blanchot’s discourse on the Orphic space and passivity. The line of argument on the theme of art will continue, this time focusing on literary form, utilising Blanchot’s distinction between poetic and mundane language to emphasize DeLillo’s political concerns, as exemplified in the protagonist Richard Elster. This chapter will conclude by tracing the dwindling belief in the titular Omega Point as a consequence of encountering death, drawing a parallel to Blanchot’s idea of the unavowable human community. The second chapter will investigate The Silence and the process of collapse through the transformation of language. Here, DeLillo’s narrativization of the interim period preceding the catastrophe left out of the fabula will be discussed, for which purpose Blanchot’s concepts of the Disaster and the philosophy of waiting will be employed. The conclusion will establish the continuity and transformation of the concerns interrogated in both works.