ABSTRACT
As to White Noise, apocalypse is also pivotal to Underworld. Paradoxically, apocalypse (embodied in the “bomb”) serves to mitigate the fear of death. It holds out an answer to the “uncertainty” of our “Being-toward-death” and anticipates not only a radical cancellation of time but also the disclosure of a radically different time. It promises to resolve the contingencies of a profoundly changing post-war period, along with an increasing incongruity between “the space of experience” and “the horizon of expectations.” This sociopsychological function worked the better since it was based on nuclear deterrence. To account for this paradox – affluency, sense of progress and a deeply felt insecurity – this chapter offers a short cultural history of the United States.
The novel also brims with the description of behaviors and attitudes which are to distract from the terror of death: from the merging into crowds, the morbidity of a hedonist pop and consumption culture to the ritualized burying of nuclear and household waste. The surrogate function of media, sublimation in art and the purpose of killing are portrayed. Underworld also ends with a secular epiphany, here a moment of hope and relief.
