In Mao II, Don DeLillo demonstrates how the transformation of

GÜL BILGE HAN (STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY)
THE ETHICS AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE SUBLIME: LIMITS OF REPRESENTATION IN DON
DELILLO'S MAO II
In Mao II, Don DeLillo demonstrates how the transformation of catastrophic world events
into commodified forms of media creates a tension between the political and the aesthetic
realms of representation. The tension is highlighted through DeLillo's problematization of the
different stages of media representation as a process wherein sublime feelings of terror is
caused by the vertigo of simulacra. In DeLillo’s novel, the effects of media representation are
described not only as provoking terror, but also as giving rise to a sacred or religious
experience. The aesthetic realm of representation is construed by the addictive effect of the
experience of terror, reminiscent of Burke's articulation of the sublime. On the other hand,
DeLillo’s way of treating the sublime also evokes a level of Kantian disinterestedness, a
distance between the political and the aesthetic.
The escalating tension between the aesthetic and political realms in Mao II raises questions
that are central both to the politics of representation and the representation of politics.
DeLillo's deliberate questioning of the ideological and ethical facets of representation,
including his own writing, becomes tangible in his careful portrayal of the writer Bill Gray.
Gray, who obsessively compares the author to the terrorist in terms of their impact on mass
consciousness, ironically dies when endeavouring to join in the political as a writer. While
Bill's death might be seen as illustrating the artistic failure of reconciling the two realms,
DeLillo's own staging of this tension carries the moment of failure to a further ecstatic
moment which Lyotard identifies with the postmodern condition of the sublime. Lyotard
characterises the postmodern sublime by its specific dramatization of the “unpresentable”
which includes the unpresentability of art's complex relationship to politics. All in all, in Mao
II, it is possible to analyze art's situatedness between politics and aesthetics through the
concept of the sublime and its different interpretations.