돈 드릴로의 『포인트 오메가 』(Point Omega)에 나타난 시간과 이미지의 개념

Abstract

In Point Omega (2010) Don DeLillo not only appropriates postmodern phenomena but also keeps a critical distance from them. His ambivalent attitudes toward the postmodern can be illuminated by the distinctive concepts of time and image, Aion and simulacrum, which were theorized by Gilles Deleuze. Arranging Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho in the beginning and the end of the oeuvre, DeLillo suggests a world of Aion, in which a traditional self defined by an omnipresent perspective of Chronos can no longer sustain, a characteristic of postmodern ontology. Aion resonates with an omega point, the ultimate state of human consciousness in the course of evolution, to which both the protagonist Elster, a former U.S. military strategist in the Iraq war, and DeLillo are seriously attracted. By calling into question a conventional definition of the self, the omega point is juxtaposed with a desert setting, in which a revolutionary state of the self transcends not only a biological realm of a human being but also a cognitive one. On the other hand, DeLillo is keenly aware of negative aspects of postmodern phenomena. Individual singularities in a city and a war are promptly evaporated, substituted with languages of representation, such as numbers and images. What he suggests as alternatives to those abstract languages are film and literature. As in his vivid description of 24 Hour Psycho, DeLillo resuscitates a world of singularities ignored by a conventional act of seeing, in which simulacra, independent of the original, retain their own meanings, unswayed by overwhelming power of representation.