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Don DeLillo (1936 - )

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White Noise (1985)

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Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985) Underworld (1997)

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Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985) Underworld (1997) Cosmopolis (2003)

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New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.

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New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.

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New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings. Beware the novel of ideas, particularly when the ideas come first and all the novel stuff (like the story) comes second. Walter Kim

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New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings. Beware the novel of ideas, particularly when the ideas come first and all the novel stuff (like the story) comes second. Walter Kim

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The Guardian, June 14, 2012 DeLillo's highly charged language, when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent and fatally shallow. Peter Bradshaw

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The Guardian, June 14, 2012 DeLillo's highly charged language, when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent and fatally shallow. Peter Bradshaw

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Los Angeles Review of Books The democratic idealism of a left movement dedicated to raising the consciousness of the masses to their own real interests and persuading people that capitalism can be sort of, you know, excessive and unkind is exposed as foolishly ineffectual. All opposition to the techno-capitalist nexus in Cosmopolis is reduced to loud but merely cathartic protest, symbolic gesture, and at its outer reaches, literal martyrdom, assassination and terror. Its all impotence and despair. Historys done. Techno-capitalism won. --Cornel Bonca

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Los Angeles Review of Books The democratic idealism of a left movement dedicated to raising the consciousness of the masses to their own real interests and persuading people that capitalism can be sort of, you know, excessive and unkind is exposed as foolishly ineffectual. All opposition to the techno-capitalist nexus in Cosmopolis is reduced to loud but merely cathartic protest, symbolic gesture, and at its outer reaches, literal martyrdom, assassination and terror. Its all impotence and despair. Historys done. Techno-capitalism won. --Cornel Bonca

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New Yorker, August 27, 2012 We can feel DeLillos loathing for the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg cast the right man for a living cyborg. David Denby

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New Yorker, August 27, 2012 We can feel DeLillos loathing for the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg cast the right man for a living cyborg. David Denby

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New Yorker Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillos dialogue, which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studdeda kind of postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillos curt and cool equipoisea style of filmmaking that is classically measured and calm, without an extra shot or cut.

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New Yorker Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillos dialogue, which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studdeda kind of postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillos curt and cool equipoisea style of filmmaking that is classically measured and calm, without an extra shot or cut.

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Cosmopolis Problems: -Novel of ideas

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Cosmopolis Problems: -Novel of ideas -Relation to capitalism before and after dot.com bubble

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Cosmopolis Problems: -Novel of ideas -Relation to capitalism before and after dot.com bubble -Anticipating financial crisis

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The machine age is over: He took out his hand organizer and poked a note to himself about the anachronistic quality of the word skyscraper. No recent structure ought to bear this word. It belonged to the olden soul of awe, to the arrowed towers that were a narrative long before he was born (9).

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The machine age is over: He took out his hand organizer and poked a note to himself about the anachronistic quality of the word skyscraper. No recent structure ought to bear this word. It belonged to the olden soul of awe, to the arrowed towers that were a narrative long before he was born (9). Why do we still have airports? (22)

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They [the bank towers] looked empty from here. He liked that idea. They were made to be the last tall things, made empty, designed to hasten the future. They were the end of the outside world. They werent here, exactly. They were in the future, a time beyond geography and touchable money and the people who stack and count it. (36)

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rats Epigraph: A rat became the unit of currency Zbigniew Herbert (Polish poet and essayist)

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Parker and Chin Theres a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency. Yes. That would be interesting, Chin said. Yes. That would impact the world economy. The name alone. Better than the dong or the kwacha. The name says everything. Yes. The rat, Chin said. Yes. The rat closed lower today against the euro. (23)

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Electronic display: A RAT BECAME THE UNIT OF CURRENCY (96) Following: A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING THE WORLDTHE SPECTER OF CAPITALISM

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Protest Even with the beatings and gassings, the jolt of explosives, even in the assault on the investment bank, he thought there was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating, even, in the parachutes and skateboards, the styrofoam rat, in the tactical coup of reprogramming the stock tickers with poetry and Karl Marx (99).

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Protest Even with the beatings and gassings, the jolt of explosives, even in the assault on the investment bank, he thought there was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating, even, in the parachutes and skateboards, the styrofoam rat, in the tactical coup of reprogramming the stock tickers with poetry and Karl Marx (99).

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Protest performance 1 [first clip: 01:41 ]

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Protest performance 1 [first clip: 01:41 ] Protest performance 2 [second clip: 58:39]

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Protest performance 1 [first clip: 01:41 ] Protest performance 2 [second clip: 58:39] Security performance [01:41]

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Digital sublime He studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets. In fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planets living billions. (24)

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Digital sublime He studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets. In fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planets living billions. (24)

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Adam Smith (1723 1790)

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Professor of Logic, moral philosophy Theory of Moral Sentiments (1859) Sympathy Self-interest Market (competition) Division of labor Invisible hand

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Adam Smith (1723 1790) System of perfect liberty, hampered by Monopolies Guilds Import dues and taxes

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Adam Smith (1723 1790) Role of the government Defense Justice Infrastructure Education

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Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790)

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Benjamin Franklin (06 1790) The Art of Virtue

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Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790) The Art of Virtue Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. waste nothing. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions (83)

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Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790) Life writing (autobiography): creation of self Mode of life, including values and habits (culture) These values are geared towards increase in wealth They are realized by calculation, a form of book keeping (his method).

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed (self-interest) Capitalist adventurers (irrational speculation)

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed (self-interest) Capitalist adventurers (irrational speculation) War expenditures

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT It becomes a dominant system in Christian countries

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Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT It becomes a dominant system in Christian countries AND It thrives in Protestant countries as well as Protestant areas of multi-confessional countries more than in Catholic ones

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What is worldly asceticism? Benjamin Franklin: frugality and industry This mean: Limits on consumption. Cradle of modern economic man. Work as ascetic practice, not means to an end. Work as calling (vocation). Fixed calling (Luther) justification for division of labor.

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Herman Melville (1819 1891)

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Pilvi Takala, The Trainee (2008) Deloitte: audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management firm Takala was just Just sitting there, without a computer Spending all day in elevator

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Ibsens World Doctors, lawyers, real estate developers, bankers World of bourgeois capitalism (Weber) Not set at the office or workplace Home

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Harley Granville Barker (1877 1946)

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Preferred shares (Alguazils preferred) Atherley Trust 4 percent (government bonds) Land lease Mortages

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Risk Interest Debt Tax

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George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950)

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Weapon manufacturing Salvation Army Act II+III: conflict between these two institutions and their interrelation

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Karl Marx (1818 1883)

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Communist Manifesto as world literature Revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie, creating a globalized world Sublime force of bourgeois capitalism But the bourgeoisie creates its successor: the proletariat (dialectics)

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Historical materialism Materialism as inversion of idealism: Marx turns Hegel around: economic conditions determine ideas, not the other way around. Marx turns Hegel back on his feet. (Economic) base (political and cultural) superstructure

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Cultural explanation: Question of origin: a mode of life originating elsewhere (Puritanism) gets selected because it happens to suit capitalism (agency lies with capitalism) Question of (ultimate) cause: sometimes ideas transform economic relations

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Karel apek (1890 1938)

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R.U.R. = Rossums Universal Robots Robota = serf labor, hard, manual work Rozum = reason

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Economic explanation Industrialization created a class that will overthrow bourgeoisie: the workers (Robots) Reforms (Helen), seeking recognition of workers as human, are useless Only nationalism can avert united front of workers Historical reference point: WWI and Russian Revolution

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Ending? Robots become human: emotions superfluous words admire beauty uselessness (Helen and Helen Robot) they will procreate like animals/humans (Alquist: If you want to live youll have to breed, like animals!) Robots are re-naturalized: evolution continues

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Eugene ONeill (1888 -1953)

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Hairy Ape (1922) First Machine Age: Steam engine Rail road Steel Heavy industry

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Muybridge, Horse in motion

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Chronophotograph (1882)

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Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending A Staircase (1912)

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Frederick Winslow Taylor Against rule-of-thumb method; experiment in order to economize all movements Break down motions into parts; eliminate unnecessary motions Conserving energy Paths way for Henry Fords assembly line

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Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874 1940) Theater of the first machine age New acting and movement: biomechanics Taylorism for the stage

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Fritz Lang (1890 1976)

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Future (futurism): Metropolis (2026) Model for 20 th century science fiction, such as Blade Runner Vertical organization Elimination of nature

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Tower of Babel, Peter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

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Charlie Chaplin (1889 1977)

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Chaplin and the machine: Keeping up with machine Repetitive movements Concentration (absorption) Becoming one with the machine Interruptions Work and leisure

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Sophie Treadwell (1885 1970)

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Ruth Snyer

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Office machine Home machine Honeymoon machine Maternal machine Law machine Electric chair

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Bertolt Brecht (1898 1956)

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Paul Samson-Krner

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Brechts emerging theory of theater Going to the theater like watching sports Not about motives, but moves in a game Do not empathize, but observe impartially Brechts admiration for the objective fighting style of Boxer Paul Samson-Krner, to whom he devotes a (unfinished) play called The Human Fighting Machine

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Shen Te and Shui Ta played by same actor Visible costume change: audience knows something the other characters dont Expert audience Estranged acting

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Brecht on Chinese acting No fourth wall Use of symbols visible scene changes the actors openly choose those positions which will best show them off to the audience, just as if they were acrobats

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Joseph Schumpeter, Harvard Yard

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Source of creative destruction is entrepreneur Entrepreneur emerges from the culture (or spirit) of capitalism

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Ayn Rand (1905 1982)

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Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1987 - 2006

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Rand portrays not the rational, calculating economic actor but exemplifies in her characters and the world she constructs around them the philosophical base of capitalism, a world that is meant to reveal the values of capitalism

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Rand and Brecht Views on charity? Manifesto-like speeches? Construction of character? Techniques of political art?

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Wright, Falling Water

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David Mamet (1947 - )

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How language works: Threats Fantasies Insinuations Robbery plot: just listening means being implicated [third bookmark: 0:45]