Prescience

doi:10.1017/9781009025676.012

Chapter 9 - Prescience

The Idea of the Future

from Part II - History and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 May 2022

Paul Petrovic

Edited by

Jesse Kavadlo

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Jesse Kavadlo: Affiliation:
Maryville University of Saint Louis, Missouri

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Summary

Don DeLillo’s fiction has long catalogued American fear and dread surrounding the future. While a select few texts, most memorably Underworld (1997) and Falling Man (2007), foreground a sense of narrative and cultural possibility, the future is often depicted as a lament. That sense of future vision is evident in his latest text – at the time of writing – Zero K (2016), which explores environmental decline and a shift from Underworld’s ideal of a democratic collective to a neoliberal embrace of necropolitics. Using both ecocriticism and a range of prior DeLillo scholarship, this chapter reads Zero K as a prescient warning of political upheaval and loss, and thus anticipates how hope and renewal can be located even in DeLillo’s late period writings.

Keywords

Don DeLillo Underworld Zero K Anthropocene Ecocriticism Future Mass Culture Terror Necropolitics Prescience Post-9/11 literature crowds,

Type: Chapter
Information: Don DeLillo In Context , pp. 91 - 98

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025676.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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References

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