Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum By Mar ...

ambivalence, offering a tentative definition of this slippery term and exploring the ways in which it is manifest throughout DeLillo's earlier works. Subsequently, the remainder of this volume examines the ways in which terror and art may or may not be effective responses to consumer culture.

Contrasting DeLillo's ruminations on terrorism with those of Baudrillard, I conclude that far from subverting consumer culture, acts of terror ultimately reinforce it. Conversely, I argue in the remaining chapters that DeLillo presents art and artists as agents of ambivalence. In contrast to Baudrillard, who sees artists as merely reproducing the social norms of consumer culture, DeLillo sees art— unlike terror—as a truly radical force with the potential to reshape, if not entirely subvert, that culture. This reading of DeLillo ultimately points to the author's own ambivalence toward consumer culture: while DeLillo recognizes consumer culture's potential for degrading and dehumanizing the masses, he also sees it as an arena in which the smallest acts of intimacy have the potential to take on the greatest significance. Thus where Baudrillard argues that the only hope for humanity lies in the total eradication of consumer culture, DeLillo's novels adopt a less vitriolic position and suggest that humanity will survive even in the shadow of consumerism. Thus, while Eric's limousine may insulate him from the world at large throughout much of Cosmopolis, he is by no means trapped within it.