Colonial Unconscious in Don DeLillo's Mao II

Abstract

DeLillo's Mao II misrepresents the orient people and land as the other. This misrepresentation is the cause of colonial unconscious. It deals with the complex relationship between the colonizers and the colonized. This unconscious evokes the relationship between stereotypical images about the colonizers and the colonized. Thus, this unconscious provides an approach to project European's stereotype of the orient. The unconscious of Bill Gray, the protagonist of the novel, represents the hostility between the colonizers and the colonized. His sense of hatred and distrust towards the orient people and land is the cause of the colonial unconscious. After thinking at such motives of colonial unconscious, DeLillo develops the concept of self versus other and discusses the issues of colonial psychosis. Hence, Don DeLillo and his protagonist Bill Gray in Mao II are guided by colonial unconscious that represents white as superior and as the sources of everything and non-white as inferior or the Other