POSTMODERN CRISIS OF METANARRATIVES IN WHITE NOISE: A LYOTARDIAN READING THROUGH BELSEY’S TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study investigates how Jean-François Lyotard’s philosophy of postmodernism, specifically his concept of “Incredulity toward metanarratives” (Lyotard, 1984), is textually enacted in Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985). The central argument is that DeLillo’s novel does not merely reflect postmodern conditions but actively produces postmodern discourse through its narrative strategies, linguistic devices, and ideological configurations. The study employs Catherine Belsey’s (1980, 2002) model of textual analysis as its primary methodology, a poststructuralist framework that examines how language, ideology, and discourse construct rather than reflect meaning. By aligning Lyotard’s theoretical framework with Belsey’s analytical method, the research operationalizes philosophical abstraction into close literary analysis. The study identifies a significant gap in existing scholarship: while Lyotard’s philosophy has been widely discussed in cultural theory, it has not been systematically applied to White Noise through a rigorous textual methodology. This research bridges that gap by demonstrating how DeLillo’s novel, through devices such as irony, simulation, discursive fragmentation, and hyperreality, enacts the collapse of grand narratives and validates knowledge through performativity rather than universal truth. Textual evidence is drawn exclusively from White Noise, with citations aligned to Lyotard’s postmodern principles and Belsey’s analytical stages. Findings reveal that the supermarket, media broadcasts, pharmaceutical discourse, and consumer rituals in the novel function as language games that replace transcendent authority with localized, provisional meaning-systems.