The Reincarnation of the Humanist Subject in Contemporary American Fiction: a New Historicist Reading in Selected Works of Don DeLillo and Richard Powers

Abstract

This research deals with the revival of the humanist subject in contemporary fiction after it was heralded dead by postmodern thinkers and writers. To do so, it compares Don DeLillo’s postmodern Americana, Libra and White Noise to Richard Powers’s contemporary The Echo Maker, Orfeo and Gain. The research relies on the New Historicist concept of Self Fashioning theorized by Stephen Greenblatt, through which it reads the self narrative, the agency, the authenticity and resilience of the characters within these novels. It also builds on some poststructuralist notions, such as Différance, Hyperrealism and Historiographic Metafiction in order to analyze the postmodern and contemporary cultures in which the subject is constructed. Accordingly, compared to the fragmented narratives of the characters in Americana, those in The Echo Maker are much more capable of creating coherent self narratives. In Libra, the subject is controlled by forces outside of his control, such that he is unable to exercise his agency and authenticity, whereas in Orfeo the subject manages to achieve a balance between an autonomous and authentic sense of self and external influence. Finally, in White Noise the characters are defeated by the alien and hostile circumstances of contemporary society, while those in Gain are much more resilient despite the difficulties they face. As such, the subject in White Noise has an anxious disposition that inhibits the formation of a solid identity, compared to Gain wherein the subject is able to create a resilient identity able to face challenge and project a possibility for change. In this manner, Powers engages in an intertextual conversation with DeLillo that assimilates the postmodern lessons on the representation of subjectivity in contemporary culture but attempts to move beyond it to a much more optimistic view of the subject.