This book examines the contention that, in an era where the relevance of the literary novel is compromised, the novel remains an important means of exploring and interrogating societies and culture. It answers the question of what we lose with the loss of the novel as an important public space for discourse. It does so through readings of a selection of Don DeLillo’s later novels, together with the political philosophies of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou in their engagement with contemporary history.
DeLillo explores in his fiction the profound cultural and socio-political changes and historical events which affect people. His literary interest is the status of the individual in changing times. On a personal level, his concern is the writer in an epoch where the novel is challenged by crises of diminished relevance in a techno-media culture and the emergence of radical forms of censorship that target literature and its producers.
This book will appeal to students of DeLillo’s novels, researchers in the disciplines of literature, philosophy, and contemporary history, and students of Badiou and Arendt. Arendt’s political theories are currently undergoing a renaissance of interest, given current global politics.
