Is Postmodern Literature Soulless?

A rapidly written response to an e-mail from a student who explained that his/her slacking in my class was partly due to the fact that the novels we'd read (with, interestingly, the exception of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49) were not his /her "cup of tea" and seemed "soulless":

If you find the novels that we've read 'soulless,' that’s fine. Literary critics don’t need to like what they’re studying, they just need to be able to understand it. The claim that a lot of postmodern literature is soulless is not an uncommon one, and this offhand, subjective impression might be developed into a final-paper topic.

What would it mean to describe a text as 'soulless'? Why would we personify a literary text in such a way? How might a text's author respond to such a description of his or her writing?

For example, a writer like Burroughs, were he still alive, would likely embrace the tag of being a 'soulless' writer. Why? Because Burroughs would agree with Foucault that “The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body” (Discipline and Punish 30). Indeed, one might argue that Burroughs’ literary aesthetic — his cut-up technique, his ‘language is a virus’ trope, etc. — is designed to undermine traditional humanist concepts of the soul. How? By exposing these concepts to be ideological tools and subjugating technologies that infect our bodies, making us submissive in the face of authorities who want to dominate us (kneeling before God's priestly representatives, etc.).

But DeLillo, who you'll be writing about, is hardly advocating as radical a posthumanism as Burroughs. Right? After all, many passages in Underworld seems to express a strong spiritual impulse. Would you agree? If so, why or why not? Consider the opening of part one, "Long Tall Sally," when Nick Shay remarks about his Lexus, an auto that was assembled entirely by machines. What do you think DeLillo intends to say in such moments. What about all of the religious stuff going on in the novel? How are we to take,say, Nick Shay's appreciation for his Jesuit upbringing or Sister Edgar's visionary experience near the end of the novel?

One thing is certain. You could definitely write the art and aesthetics paper on a topic related to ‘soullessness’. You’d just have to define what you mean by ‘soul’ up front.

Another way of approaching the topic of 'soulless postmodernism' is to begin by examining how, as a literary artist, DeLillo constructs his novel in response to an increasingly cybernetic world: is the text designed to be a soulless construct — a sort of machinic entity — or is it representing a ‘soulless’ world where human lives matter less than, say, the flows of capital? Does DeLillo intend his work to be making a critical intervention? As a writer and rhetorician, what techniques does DeLillo employ to make readers think about various phenomena?

Another topic that is much discussed in conjunction with postmodernism (a term that you'll need to define: a historical epoch, a literary movement, a shared sensibility) is the topic of irony. It’s been said (particularly well by David Foster Wallace in his book A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again) that we postmodern Americans are excessively ironic. That we constantly live life at a distance and are overly skeptical about the possibility of having authentic experiences. We ironize everything, including our affective responses, by treating them as arbitrary constructs that are programmed in advance (through language and other semiotic systems). The problem with certain modes of irony, then, is that they can lead to cynicism and apathy. We become a nation of smart-assess — Jerry Seinfelds— voyeurs who scrutinize things and other people carefully, but only to make fun of them and to assure ourselves, if only temporarily, that we’re not so naive.

What’s the problem with that? Well, perhaps the pervasiveness of irony helps to explain the way phrases such as “compassionate conservatism” function in contemporary political discourse. Perhaps our psychological tendency to distance ourselves from the world, to report on events, even our own experiences, like, second-hand as if, like, we’re removed from them . Maybe this, like, affected, ironic distance, like, explains why half the country doesn’t seem to care about the destruction of welfare programs, of the privatization of social security, of the fact that the richest country in the world doesn’t provide health coverage for its citizens, etc. You get the point.

I’m sure you don’t want an e-mail lecture and I don’t want to write one, so I’ll stop. I hope this inspires you to a more rewarding engagement with Underworld.