In Mao II, Don DeLillo demonstrates how the transformation of
Transkript
In Mao II, Don DeLillo demonstrates how the transformation of
GÜL BILGE HAN (STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY) THE ETHICS AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE SUBLIME: LIMITS OF REPRESENTATION IN DON DELILLO'S MAO II In Mao II, Don DeLillo demonstrates how the transformation of catastrophic world events into commodified forms of media creates a tension between the political and the aesthetic realms of representation. The tension is highlighted through DeLillo's problematization of the different stages of media representation as a process wherein sublime feelings of terror is caused by the vertigo of simulacra. In DeLillo’s novel, the effects of media representation are described not only as provoking terror, but also as giving rise to a sacred or religious experience. The aesthetic realm of representation is construed by the addictive effect of the experience of terror, reminiscent of Burke's articulation of the sublime. On the other hand, DeLillo’s way of treating the sublime also evokes a level of Kantian disinterestedness, a distance between the political and the aesthetic. The escalating tension between the aesthetic and political realms in Mao II raises questions that are central both to the politics of representation and the representation of politics. DeLillo's deliberate questioning of the ideological and ethical facets of representation, including his own writing, becomes tangible in his careful portrayal of the writer Bill Gray. Gray, who obsessively compares the author to the terrorist in terms of their impact on mass consciousness, ironically dies when endeavouring to join in the political as a writer. While Bill's death might be seen as illustrating the artistic failure of reconciling the two realms, DeLillo's own staging of this tension carries the moment of failure to a further ecstatic moment which Lyotard identifies with the postmodern condition of the sublime. Lyotard characterises the postmodern sublime by its specific dramatization of the “unpresentable” which includes the unpresentability of art's complex relationship to politics. All in all, in Mao II, it is possible to analyze art's situatedness between politics and aesthetics through the concept of the sublime and its different interpretations.