Human Beings in a Posthumanist World

Abstract

Although written in the late twentieth century, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest takes place in the twenty-first century and is an extrapolation on social trends, namely the trend of ubiquitous technology and entertainment in American society. In this thesis, I explore, through a twenty-first century perspective, various topics in relation to the theme of technology in the novel. In order to show the all-encompassing influence of this theme, I divide my thesis into two main sections, by looking at the big picture (the structure of the novel) and the small picture (the individual characters and their relationships with one another). In the first chapter, I categorize Infinite Jest as a work of Menippean satire. In doing so, I suggest that the novel mimics the very culture it critiques, the fragmented culture of technology. In the second chapter, I look at the ways in which the characters communicate—or rather, don’t communicate—with one another. Through a discussion on the novel’s monologic quality, I then move into the third chapter, wherein I view the theme of solipsism as a product of the culture of technology. The fourth chapter is an examination of the role of the MacGuffin in the narrative. I argue that Wallace uses the MacGuffin and the novel’s lack of resolution as a metaphor for the search for meaning in a posthumanist world devoid of meaning and clarity. While each chapter contains a distinct discussion, ultimately the overarching goal of this thesis is to explore the effects, as depicted in Infinite Jest, of the posthumanist world on humanity. According to Wallace, good fiction shows the reader what it means to be a human being, yet in a technology and entertainment-driven world, wherein the line between reality and artificiality is blurred, the issue of what it means to be a human being is problematized.