Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T01:12:12.773Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 27 - Gender

Masculine and Feminine Subjectivity

from Part VI - Social and Cultural Constructions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

Jesse Kavadlo
Affiliation:
Maryville University of Saint Louis, Missouri
Get access

Summary

A critical consensus has emerged that, rather than consolidating masculine power, DeLillo’s fiction unsettles it by exposing masculinity as a fragile social construct. Bearing in mind Philip Nel’s injection   to consider DeLillo’s depiction of women as well as men, this chapter argues that DeLillo’s fiction not only undermines the central myths of white American manhood, but it also actively favours feminine forms of subjectivity and a feminine aesthetic. While DeLillo’s white men attempt to recover “true” selves that never existed, his women are fully aware of the ways in which the culture they inhabit both constructs and constitutes their subjectivity. More or less immune to the hankering for the real that haunts his men, DeLillo’s women, especially his women artists, tend instead to manipulate existing cultural codes in a fashion that permits them – paradoxically – some of the autonomy that his male characters seek. DeLillo’s recurrent engagement in his most recent fiction with the threat posed to women viewers of art demonstrates that his work remains committed to the scrutiny and critique of misogyny and masculinity in its most toxic manifestations.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

@men_write_women. ”Well, my tits have stood up and walked out (COSMOPOLIS, Don DeLillo).” Twitter, Aug. 6, 2019, 12:33 p.m.Google Scholar
Birdwell, Cleo [DeLillo, Don]. Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman to Play in the National Hockey League. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980.Google Scholar
DeCurtis, Anthony. “‘An Outsider in This Society’: An Interview with Don DeLillo.” In Introducing Don DeLillo. Edited by Lentricchia, Frank. Duke University Press, 1991: 4366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Americana. Penguin, 1990.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. “Baader-Meinhof.” New Yorker, Apr. 2002: 78–82.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. The Body Artist. Scribner, 2001.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Cosmopolis. Scribner, 2003.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. End Zone. Penguin, 1986.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Falling Man. Scribner, 2007.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Libra. Penguin, 1991.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Mao II. Vintage, 1992.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. The Names. Picador, 1991.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Point Omega. Scribner, 2011.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Running Dog. Picador, 1992.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. “The Starveling.” Granta, 117, Oct. 27, 2011: 6590.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Underworld. Picador, 1998.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. White Noise, Picador, 1986.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Zero K. Scribner, 2016.Google Scholar
Engles, Tim. White Male Nostalgia in Contemporary North American Literature. Springer, 2018.Google Scholar
Ferry, Peter. Masculinity in Contemporary New York Fiction. Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar
Helyer, Ruth. “DeLillo and Masculinity.” In The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo. Edited by Duvall, John N.. Cambridge University Press, 2008, 125–36.Google Scholar
Herren, Graley. “Don DeLillo’s Art Stalkers.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 61.1, 2015, 138–67.Google Scholar
Kucich, John. “Postmodern Politics: Don DeLillo and the Plight of the White Male Writer.” Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 27.2, 1988: 328–41.Google Scholar
Lewin, Katherine Da Cunha, and Ward, Kiron. “Introduction: A Trick of the Light: Don DeLillo in the 21st Century.” In Don DeLillo: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Edited by Da Cunha Lewin, Katherine and Ward, Kiron. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018: 116.Google Scholar
Nel, Philip. “Amazons in the Underworld: Gender, the Body, and Power in the Novels of Don DeLillo.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 42.4, 2001: 416–36.Google Scholar
Parish, Mary J. “9/11 and the Limitations of the Man’s Man Construction of Masculinity in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 53.3, 2012: 185200.Google Scholar
Robinson, Sally. “Shopping for the Real: Gender and Consumption in the Critical Reception of DeLillo’s White Noise.” Postmodern Culture, vol. 23.2, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veggian, Henry. Understanding Don DeLillo. University of South Carolina Press, 2015.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Gender
  • Edited by Jesse Kavadlo
  • Book: Don DeLillo In Context
  • Online publication: 19 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025676.034
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Gender
  • Edited by Jesse Kavadlo
  • Book: Don DeLillo In Context
  • Online publication: 19 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025676.034
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Gender
  • Edited by Jesse Kavadlo
  • Book: Don DeLillo In Context
  • Online publication: 19 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025676.034
Available formats
×