Special Session

American / City of God, City of Destruction

Lauren White (University of Southern California)
whit@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This virtual (online) panel contends with DeLillo's use of space, virtual or physical, as new religious sites. From Jack Gladney's transcendent trips to the supermarket in White Noise to Sister Edgar's implied dissolution into the virtual heaven of the internet in Underworld, religious spaces proliferate throughout DeLillo's work. Yet in contrast to the religious experience, DeLillo also suggests a destructive inversion: The Airborne Toxic Event, The Kazakh Test Site. In conversation with this year's conference theme, "City of God, City of Destruction," some readings may relate to DeLillo's dualistic use of space as both religious and destructive in any of his works.

The Don DeLillo Society invites abstracts for this virtual (online) panel on DeLillo's use of space, virtual or physical, as new religious sites. From Jack Gladney's transcendent trips to the supermarket in White Noise to Sister Edgar's implied dissolution into the virtual heaven of the internet in Underworld, religious spaces proliferate throughout DeLillo's work. Yet in contrast to the religious experience, DeLillo also suggests a destructive inversion: The Airborne Toxic Event, The Kazakh Test Site. Characters often undertake pilgrimages to mid-Western towns, art exhibits, weapons testing sites, and even city dumps. In each of these excursions, characters seek to understand a sociality between themselves and the contexts they inhabit. In conversation with this year's conference theme, "City of God, City of Destruction," we invite submissions relating to DeLillo's dualistic use of space as both religious and destructive in any of his works.