Media Exposure: Communicable Disease and Communication Networks in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Don Delillo’s White Noise

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Pandemics are media events in that they reveal the hidden materialities of influence that shape the connections among bodies embedded in wider ecological and technocultural systems. Examining the relationship between communicable disease and communication networks, this article offers an analysis of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) and Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1984), two American novels that focus on subjectivities in flux and radically exposed to the forces of their material-semiotic environment. Drawing on insights from elemental media theory, cybernetics, and ecocriticism, I illustrate how coming to terms with the specter of pandemics entails a critical awareness of physical communication infrastructures.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)417-433
Number of pages17
Journal Configurations : a journal of literature, science and technology
Volume29
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85121855826

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

DFG Classification of Subject Areas according to Review Boards

Subject groups, research areas, subject areas according to Destatis

Sustainable Development Goals