Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Toxins, Drugs, and Global Systems: Risk and Narrative in the Contemporary Novel

Toxins, Drugs, and Global Systems: Risk and Narrative in the Contemporary Novel American Literature some modifications, for literary representations of other ecological and technological hazards. This focus allows me to foreground how my argument builds upon Buell’s earlier analyses of toxic discourse but also how contemporary novelists use chemical substances as a trope for the blurring of boundaries between body and environment, public and domestic space, and harmful and beneficial technologies. My analysis begins with Don DeLillo’s postmodern classic White Noise, whose exploration of a local risk scenario by means of satire raises complex questions about the role of realism and hyperbole in risk perception and representation. The second section lays out the theoretical background of this analysis in more detail by giving an overview of some important approaches and insights in risk theory. The third section returns to the literary representation of risk through a very different novel, Richard Powers’s Gain, which examines risk in the context of complex global systems and thereby raises the question of how such systems can be effectively captured in narrative. These readings of particular texts may point the way toward some of the implications risk theory might have not only for a thematic study of literature but, beyond that, for the consideration of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Literature Duke University Press

Toxins, Drugs, and Global Systems: Risk and Narrative in the Contemporary Novel

Heise, Ursula K.
American Literature , Volume 74 (4) – Dec 1, 2002
Download PDF
32 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/toxins-drugs-and-global-systems-risk-and-narrative-in-the-contemporary-Rif9GF8uRD

References (39)

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2002 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0002-9831
eISSN
1527-2117
DOI
10.1215/00029831-74-4-747
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

American Literature some modifications, for literary representations of other ecological and technological hazards. This focus allows me to foreground how my argument builds upon Buell’s earlier analyses of toxic discourse but also how contemporary novelists use chemical substances as a trope for the blurring of boundaries between body and environment, public and domestic space, and harmful and beneficial technologies. My analysis begins with Don DeLillo’s postmodern classic White Noise, whose exploration of a local risk scenario by means of satire raises complex questions about the role of realism and hyperbole in risk perception and representation. The second section lays out the theoretical background of this analysis in more detail by giving an overview of some important approaches and insights in risk theory. The third section returns to the literary representation of risk through a very different novel, Richard Powers’s Gain, which examines risk in the context of complex global systems and thereby raises the question of how such systems can be effectively captured in narrative. These readings of particular texts may point the way toward some of the implications risk theory might have not only for a thematic study of literature but, beyond that, for the consideration of

Journal

American Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2002

There are no references for this article.