ABSTRACT
In Chapter 6, I explore the discreet degrees of dissociation in Wallace’s works, arguing that he is fascinated by moments in which, or as a result of which, characters come to experience themselves as only tenuously incorporated. Focusing on Infinite Jest and the use of narcotics, this chapter sees addiction and recovery as a process of disincarnation and idio-metempsychosis; that is to say, addiction involves abandoning the body, commonly the abused body, only to return to an altered, atrophied body through abstinence. It is also through various physical and emotional traumas, Wallace argues, that persons can, as R. D. Laing writes, ‘come to experience themselves as primarily split into a mind and a body’ (2010, 65). Through readings of various characters, I argue that for Wallace dissociation, the division of self is illusory, providing merely a sense of escape from the body in which it is, at least until death, interred. Wallace, though, does not abandon his characters at death; he has a fascination not simply with ghosts, but with visions of life after death. For some characters, I suggest, this offers the possibility of some sense of liberation, emancipation in post-mortem disincarnation. For others, however life after and life are painfully similar.
