Body Politics in Don DeLillo, Adrienne Rich, and Andy Warhol: A Study in Postmodern American Culture

Abstract

For many postmodern artists, such as Don DeLillo, Adrienne Rich, and Andy Warhol, the human body and identity are constantly challenged, refigured, and re-envisioned. In this thesis, I explore to what extent each of these artists depicts the human body as disempowered or empowered in postmodern American culture. In Chapter One, "Technology, Death, and Identity in Don DeLillo's White Noise," I examine the ways in which White Noise explores the nexus between the body, pop culture, fear, and death. In Chapter Two, "Adrienne Rich: Toward an Embodied Poetics," I explore the shifts in emphasis throughout most of Rich's poetry and how she explores the fate of the female body in a capitalist, patriarchal society. In Chapter Three, "The Visual Art of Andy Warhol: Fame, Death, and Disaster in American Popular Culture," I investigate how Warhol explores the human body as image and surface that lack depth or inherent meaning and human identity as a façade manufactured by American culture. In the "Concluding Remarks," I discuss the relationship between genre and each artist's perspectives of the body while also exploring each artist's conclusions about the empowerment and disempowerment of the human body in postmodern American culture.