Non-Subjects and Post-Individuals: The Negotiation of Identity in the Postmodern American Suburb

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/3484zh116

Abstract

Suburban studies, particularly with regards to literary analysis, has only recently been recognized as an analytical space in its own right rather than as a peripheral space within urban studies. Through close readings of both Danielle Dutton's S P R A W L and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, this essay investigates the ways that the suburb functions as a type of postmodern space, specifically focusing on the implications such space poses for notions of identity, individuality and subjectivity. In this essay, I employ Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space, Fredric Jameson's theory of postmodern hyperspace, Deleuze and Guattari's theory of multiplicity, and Marc Augé's theory of non-place to illustrate how this new form of identity is linked with the social character of space which dictates normativized living practices and creates an impetus towards the maintenance of a so-called social homeostasis within the suburban spaces of postmodernity.

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