3.2.1 The reconfigured self

Leonard Wilcox calls Jack Gladney a "modernist displaced in a postmodern world."(76) Throughout the novel Wilcox detects attempts on Gladney's part to preserve "an authentic and coherent identity by observing the tribalistic rituals of family life."(77) Again and again Jack searches for authentic and real moments, be it in family life, during the disaster or at the anti-epiphanic showdown. His attempts are thwarted by his own consciousness which constantly reduces everything to familiar sights which do not allow for any kind of authentic experience or at least not the kind he searches.

Wilcox detects in White Noise radical changes in subjectivity: an old modernist order with its dialectic of alienation and authenticity has been replaced by new one in which the subject experiences a Baudrillardean "ecstasy of communication" through the unabating barrage of images and information. For the ecstatic subject "conventional structures of meaning dissolve and the ability to imagine an alternative reality disappears."(78) The showdown clearly is such an example of a subjectivity which is less authentic than ecstatic. Instead of a modernist epiphany,(79) Jack experiences an ecstatic dispersal of fragments where no meaningful essence is revealed but rather "surfaces gleamed."

Instead of speaking of "ecstasy" and "schizophrenia", it is perhaps sufficient to discuss the subject's colonization by the media discourses. The media's repertoire of representations and interpretations are part of the subject's consciousness, and since this repertoire determines all of the subject's perceptions, something like a completely unmediated, authentic experience is not possible anymore. One of the places Gladney turns to to regain some kind of authentic connection to the past and thus himself is "the old burying ground" (p. 97). The place seems to belong to a different, unmediated realm, Jack notices "three small American flags, the only sign that someone had preceded me to this place in this century." (p. 97) In contrast to the most photographed barn in America, the cemetary is distinguished by its lack of signs. It is also silent, there is no "traffic noise" or "stir of factories". Nevertheless, the epiphany does not occur, "the peace that is supposed to descend upon the dead" and "the light that hangs above the fields of the landscapist's lament" remain absent. The peace and light that Jack associates with the burying ground again are familiar stereotypes connected with such places, preexisting notions within his head which do not let him perceive the "real" burying ground. There need not to be any material signs about a place to render it familiar (as with the barn) because the signs are always already there, in people's minds.

In her "conversation" with a computer-generated voice on the telephone, Steffie is "activated [to] respond with the names of consumer products as if she were just another relay in the machine of the advertising industry":(80) "'Virgin acrylic', she said into the phone." (p. 49) The two words do not originate from Steffie or her personal experience, but rather are derived from the consumer industry, which sponsors market research and develops acrylic garments. In this instance, Steffie has become an extension of the machine, she is not the agent behind the conversation but rather a passive and empty relay channel carrying information from the sweater via the telephone to the market researchers. Even Steffie's subconscious seems to have been remodeled by the media: when one night Jack watches her as she sleeps, Steffie "uttered two clearly audible words, familiar and elusive at the same time [...]. Toyota Celica." (p. 155) DeLillo carefully builds up tension towards this moment, during which the reader as well as Gladney expect some mystic revelation. Alas, the child as a source of an innocent and thus authentic uttering is shown to be an obsolete notion, for kids are today the main target group of the media.

The (re-)construction of the self does not only operate on a subconscious level but also on a conscious level. At the same time that TV's enormous visual repertoire restructures consciousness to a kind of mirror which only reflects familiar objects (or rather, their familiar elements), it also provides subjects with ready-made lifestyles and personalities on which to ground their identity. This kind of type "is not a naive given, an embodied universality, but a self-conscious enactment."(81)

Examples of these "self-conscious enactments" of characters are numerous. Jack's description of Murray, for example, evokes not so much a real person as an assembly of clothes which together constitute the type "college teacher":

Murray was [...] a stoop-shouldered man with little round glasses and an Amish beard. [...] Murray was dressed almost totally in corduroy. I had the feeling that since the age of eleven in his crowded plot of concrete he'd associated this sturdy fabric with higher learning in some impossibly distant and tree-shaded place. [...] The small stiff beard, confined to his chin and unaccompanied by a mustache, seemed an optional component, to be stuck on or removed as circumstances warranted. (p. 10/11)

Gladney himself, who has a tendency to make "a feeble presentation of self" (p. 17), later begins to wear heavy-rimmed sunglasses and changes his name to J. A. K. Gladney. By taking on the insignia of an impressive personality he tries to actually become one, but only feels like "the false character that follows the name around." (p. 17) For him the transition between types does not work as smoothly as for his German teacher, Howard Dunlop, who after the death of his mother turns from the "semiological network"(82) of God to that of weather: "I turned to meteorology for comfort. [...] It brought me a sense of peace and security I'd never experienced." (p. 55) The passage reveals the profound importance of types, namely to give the subject a stable self and thus "peace and security." The same dynamic can be observed in one of Jack's colleagues who modeled himself after "Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. [...] It resolved a number of conflicts. [...] It got me through some tough emotional periods. [...] Helped me become a person." (p. 214/215) For this character "personality" is thus not connected with the notions of "essence", "soul" and "experience", but rather with superficiality, appearance and enactment. His individuality is based on Widmark's "sadistic laugh", and thus is a copy.

The project of constructing an authentic and original identity for oneself is a paradoxical one and can have hilarious effects. The attempt of Heinrich's friend Orest Mercator to establish a new world record for sitting in a cage with deadly snakes can be seen as an endeavor to reach beyond mediation by putting the self in extreme danger. Again, as in the showdown, physical danger appears as the last retreat for "real" experiences. Orest seeks himself in the physical realm: "I'm looking to punch somebody in the face. Bare-fisted. Hard as I can. To find out what it feels like." (p. 208) What seems to be an example of a raw, unmediated experience reveals itself as an ordinary cliche derived from televisual representations, i.e. fist-fights. In Orest's conception the punch, just like sitting in the cage with snakes, is no threatening and complex experience, but a very reduced and controlled gesture: one punch, not a complex confrontation; a cage, not a real jungle. This gesture has no meaning for him other than generating some kind of "self" in the first place. The same is true of Babette's jogging-exercises, which she does not truly want ("It's not what I want, it's what I need", p. 301) but which fit a pre-packaged lifestyle and thus are "the only available means [...] for contact with one's 'authentic' being."(83)

The restructuring of consciousness on the one side and the employment of reductive televisual stereotypes and lifestyles to build a self upon on the other, put the notion of subjectivity itself into question. If perceptions are generic rather than particular (every event is reduced to its most common features) and selves are copies rather than singularities, then it becomes difficult to speak of stable and distinguishable identities. Reality does not always comply to the little formulas and narratives in which the self can be fitted and secured. It spills over, becomes "toxic" and thus creates real differences which mark the subject: Orest gets bitten, Jack is exposed to the chemicals. They have what they were so desperately trying to ward off: painful experiences which remind them of their own mortality.