Politics of conspiracy and paranoia: Dissemination of power and resistance in Don Delillo's The Names, Mao II and Underworld

Don DeLillo?s canon of novels mainly portrays the social, political andcultural context in contemporary America with reference to various institutions.In consequence, representations of late capitalism, with its multifarious facets,have thematically been an integral part of his fiction. His novels, following fromthe 1980s, truly reflect the implementations of the capitalist apparatus, namelythe production and culture industries, touching upon the organization of powerand the design of hegemony in the post-Fordist society. The main purpose ofthis dissertation is to examine the power structures, the formation of culturaland political hegemony, and to investigate the resistance patterns as pictured inDeLillo?s The Names (1982), Mao II (1991), Underworld (1997). This primaryobjective is basically met by taking into consideration the organization of powerinscribed within both the capitalist cultural forms and global finance networks.Another major focus of this study is to reveal the dynamics of conspiracyand paranoia in DeLillo?s fiction in order to illuminate the power of resistancepatterns. The use of the politics of paranoid speculation and conspiratorialviews provides, in DeLillo?s fiction, a critical framework for the evaluation ofthe administrative mechanisms and the dominant cultural imperatives that haveinfluenced the exercise and distribution of social power. In addition, thisdissertation, by taking into account various Marxist cultural and social theories,aims to present differing models of power and resistance strategies found incontemporary American society. Post-Marxist theories are, thus, helpful inpositing the contemporary social conflicts and power-resistance relations.Furthermore, another significant approach in this study is conflating post-Marxist criticism with the dynamics of conspiratorial and paranoid lines ofthought. Such a methodology is especially appropriate for analyzing the?culture of paranoia? in Don DeLillo's novels in order to explicate theentanglements of power and resistance. Basically, this study argues that, in DonDeLillo?s novels, power and resistance patterns are organized in the forms ofnetworks and that late capitalist cultural mechanisms and internationalbusiness economy are the real sources of conspiratorial plots against the civilsociety and the autonomous individual.