后现代消费社会景观——浅析《白噪音》中的身体消费

Social Landscape of Post-modern Consumption——Body Consumption in“White Noise”

唐·德里罗的小说《白噪音》是美国后现代主义最具经典的代表作之一,消费作为其一大主题,是德里罗对后现代美国社会景观的深入思考。文章将小说置于消费文化的语境,分析了主人公杰克及妻子芭比特在死亡意识恐惧下,身体被消费文化规训和符号化建构的过程,以及对生活方式和认知方式的影响,进而揭示了消费社会的景象。现代生活中无处不在的大众媒介控制并操纵人的精神和身体,身体被打造成了消费符号,但身体的反抗力量难以抵抗建立在精神与肉体分离之上的消费文化,因而使人陷入了自我认同混乱、个体虚无的精神困境。

Don DeLillo is one of the most outstanding contemporary American novelists.“White Noise”is regarded as the most classic masterpiece of American postmodernism.Consumption,as a major theme of the novel,is DeLillo’s deep thinking on the post-modern American society.From the perspective of consumption culture,this paper analyzes the process of how the protagonist Jack and his wife Babette are disciplined and symbolized by consumption culture under the fear of death consciousness,and its influence on their lifestyle and cognition,thus reveals the scene of consumption society.Since the ubiquitous mass media in modern life controls and manipulates people’s mind and body,Jack and Babette’s bodies are turned into consumption symbols.However,the resistance of body fails to counteract the consumption culture based on the separation of mind and body,but instead,makes people fall into the spiritual dilemma of confusion of self-identity and individual nothingness.