c hristine m. P effer City upon the Convexity: The Satire of American Exceptionalism in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest “Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray - a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate�” Chinua Achebe, “An Image of Africa” Achebe’s assessment of the racist forces at play in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is not meant to disparage Conrad alone, but an entire European culture, that, in the 19th century, viewed the continent and people of Africa as a mysterious, terrifying “other” that existed as the perfect antithesis to “civilized” Western ideals� Not only did European nations exploit the people and the resources of Africa, they depicted the continent as a fearsome “other” by defining it with qualities that did not match the self-image they wanted projected on themselves� The modern idea of American imperialism, from westward expansion to United States involvement in the Middle East, bears some notable similarities to 19th century British imperialism in its portrayal of the “other�” The increasingly taboo concept of American imperialism has become a facet of the 20th and 21st century concept of American exceptionalism, a worldview that has engendered much debate and starkly different opinions in recent political and philosophical conversations� On one hand, there are those who regard the idea with nationalistic pride, associating the concept with an altruistic duty on the part of the United States to promote American ideals as a way to make the world a better, more democratic place� There are, on the other hand, those who take a more skeptical view of the idea; for them, the belief in America’s exceptional status results in a misguided sense of entitlement, which in turn provides a pretense for selfish purposes or justifies an exemption from the rules and norms Americans work to enforce elsewhere in the world� In the latter view, the self-entitlement promulgated by exceptionalism has allowed the allocation of stigmatized characteristics to the “other,” which has been represented, for example, by the Cold War Soviet Union� There is only room for one city on the hill, and thus several critics of American exceptionalism see the “other” as troublingly imperative in maintaining a foothold as the world’s ideal, democratic society� Donald Pease is one of these critics� In his book The New American Exceptionalism, Pease discusses the negative implications of American exceptionalism, a state fantasy that has allowed Americans to view the U�S� “as 222 c hristine m. P effer the fulfillment of the national ideal to which other nations aspire” (7). Pease offers a succinct summary of some of this notion’s origins, citing Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, John Winthrop’s idea of “City Upon A Hill,” and the American belief in Manifest Destiny as factors that shaped the early inception of American exceptionalism� Against this background, an elaborate fantasy has been created - one in which America, blessed with an “exceptional historical role as the result of its distinctive geopolitical positioning” (8), is able to justify essentially any actions it takes, as long as these actions reinforce or support American hegemony in a variety of geopolitical crises� Another New Americanist critic, William V� Spanos, draws similar comparisons between George W� Bush’s post-9/ 11 outlook and that of its earlier manifestations� Spanos delineates the destructive nature of exceptionalism and ultimately asserts that although its proponents would call this outlook innocuous, it emerges instead as violence that contradicts and “delegitimizes…exceptionalist logic” (Spanos 176)� In Spanos’ argument, exceptionalism has reached its terminus as a logical worldview, what he calls its “liminal point,” and the Bush administration’s attempts to preserve such ideals in the wake of 9/ 11 have proven both fruitless and frightening� David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, has been subject to much critical scrutiny in recent years� However, not much has been said about the interesting ways that Wallace’s novel seems to offer a critique of American exceptionalism� The novel is set in a dystopian near-future where North American boundaries have been redrawn, ostensibly for the benefit of all nations but in fact only for the benefit of the United States, and this setting provides the context for the novel’s parody of 21st century American politics� An anti-exceptionalist sentiment seems to inspire Wallace’s satirical treatment of this bizarre political situation, which he augments by literalizing several aspects of American exceptionalism, including the creation of an “other,” and American imperialism, renamed in the novel as experialism� Wallace offers a subtle critique of American exceptionalism by ultimately portraying exceptionalism and its proponents as absurd, damagingly elitist figures, and the disturbed, least “clean” members of the novel’s urban underbelly as fixtures that most embody what it means to be human. Creating the “State of Exception” or “Emergency State” According to Pease, American exceptionalism psychologically represents a state fantasy that was agreed upon by the citizens and the state during the Cold War� With the specter of impending nuclear holocaust lurking somewhere in their peripheral, Americans readily relinquished their say in defining the national narrative, dissociated themselves from any double standards practiced by the State of Exception, and allowed the state to make decisions that were justified by national security and ascendancy - all this as long as the state promised to keep them safe from the Soviet threat� Spanos also addresses the perpetual necessity of having “a new frontier or enemy” City upon the Convexity 223 by dissecting the rhetoric of neoconservative political scientist, Samuel P� Huntington� Spanos notes the shift in attitude that occupied the chasm between the Cold War and the War on Terror, saying, “It is not the peace following the implosion of the Soviet Union that Huntington celebrates� On the contrary, this peace, according to his exceptionalist narrative, brings ‘uncertainty’: the disturbing absence of a national enemy” (Spanos 178)� In Pease’s and Spanos’ arguments, the threat of communism during the Cold War acted as a sort of catalyst for American exceptionalism� The fear of impending nuclear holocaust was enough for citizens to buy into the new state fantasy� Wallace depicts his dystopian, ravenously consumerist society as being in danger of complete environmental catastrophe� The streets of the novel’s U�S� are “chemically troubled,” and the president, Johnny Gentle, vows to “rid the toxic effluvia choking the highways and littering the byways, grungeing up our sunsets and cruddying our harbors” (Wallace 383)� Gentle, known for his obsession with cleanliness, won the presidency by running under the banner of the Clean U�S� Party, C�U�S�P� - one of Wallace’s many original acronyms that adds to his infamous authorial jargon - whose campaign slogan, “A Tighter, Tidier Nation,” hinges on the promise of literally cleaning up the United States� The politics of Infinite Jest are driven by the Gentle administration’s act of Reconfiguration, which creates the Organization of North American Nations, or O�N�A�N� O�N�A�N� is an interdependent alliance comprised of the U�S�, Canada, and Mexico� After the Reconfiguration, Gentle oversees what is ostensibly his purpose for establishing O�N�A�N� - Canada’s forced annexation of a chunk of formerly New England territory that serves as a dumping ground for American waste, known as the Great Concavity by Americans, and, perhaps more fittingly, the Great Convexity by Canadians� Gentle erects massive fans to surround the Concavity, to keep even the toxic fumes out of his “Tighter, Tidier Nation�” The Need for State Fantasy The proponents of exceptionalism, according to Pease, were able to exert influence over the American psyche by offering American citizens an agreement that basically said, If you give up some of your civil liberties, we promise to keep you safe and free from the spread of communism� This sentiment rose to the surface during the second Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s with the call to relinquish certain freedoms in the name of national security, and has been reinvigorated in the post-9/ 11 climate, according to Pease and Spanos, by the Patriot Act� Pease claims that state fantasies act as “unacknowledged legislators” that unconsciously demand subjects who “want the state to govern them�” He goes on to say that these fantasies also cause their subjects to “structure their desires within the terms of the fantasy” (6)� What Americans wanted between 1950 and 1990 was a promise of safety from nuclear holocaust� This 224 c hristine m. P effer desire fit into the state’s fantasy by assuring them that whatever measures the state took to provide this protection were justified, all the more so because the state is exceptional - the democratic standard for the rest of the world� Wallace’s Johnny Gentle steps into the presidency after promising to handle the pollution besmirching American streets� Wallace describes Gentle as a president “who said he wasn’t going to stand here and ask us to make some tough choices because he was standing here promising he was going to make them for us� Who asked us simply to sit back and enjoy the show” (383)� Wallace characterizes Gentle as an absurd figure whose rhetoric is that of an entertainer, not a politician - the first president to swing his microphone around by the cord during his inaugural address� Through Gentle, Wallace satirizes the idea that the leader of the U�S�, the quintessential democracy, according to exceptionalists, should be given the authority to make decisions for its citizens� Wallace further satirizes the willingness of American citizens to relinquish their civil rights with his creation of the “Entertainment”: the mysterious video that, once a person begins viewing, he is essentially paralyzed by pleasure and will continue to watch the tape until his death� The Quebecois terrorist group in the novel is perpetually seeking out this video with the hope of releasing it to the American public� I will discuss the parallels Wallace draws between exceptionalism and consumerism in a later section� Creating the “Other” American exceptionalism, in Pease’s argument, has allowed the allocation of stigmatized characteristics to be unloaded on the “other,” which has been represented, for example, by the Cold War Soviet Union� There is only room for one city on the hill, and thus American exceptionalism requires the “other” to maintain a foothold as the world’s ideal, democratic society� If others do not remain as such - undesirable, inferior - the United States’ shine is by comparison not quite as brilliant� When “other” begins to take shape as not simply “different” but “less desirable” or “inferior,” the geopolitical scales are thrown out of balance, leaving room for racism and violence to thrive� The Soviet Union slowly evolved into this fearsome “other,” during the Cold War - the communist antithesis to democratic ideals� Exceptionalism became a helpful tool that neoconservatives fashioned so that they might advance their ideology of America being exceptional by arming “us” against the threat of “them�” While policymakers disavowed communism, the idea of it was necessary in painting Russia as the “other�” Without communism as the main characteristic separating “them” from “us,” the U�S� would not stand out as the democratic ideal it needed to in order to remain exceptional� Similarly, Wallace’s Gentle despises the idea of filth and waste, and yet he needs it in order to show his nation’s cleanliness in comparison to a heavily polluted Canada� City upon the Convexity 225 One of the novel’s Canadian characters, Remy Marathe, points out what he sees as the American necessity of “hating some other…un ennemi commun,” and the narrator also comments on the panic that arose with the absence of some “Foreign Menace of any real unified potency to hate and fear” (319)� Hugh Steeply, an American, responds to these sentiments by explaining that there has always been “some third thing” between the U�S� and the other: “Revenue, religion, spheres of influence, Israel, petroleum, neo-Marxism, post-Cold-War power-jockeying” (Wallace 422)� This laundry list, while remaining stylistically consistent with his satire and exaggeration, illuminates Wallace’s ostensible philosophical alignment with the likes of Pease and Spanos - what he sees as the apparent need to constantly keep something, anything that can be justified at the time, between “them” and “us.” According to Wallace scholar Marshall Boswell, Infinite Jest’s America is seeking, “amid the void left by the end of the Cold War…to unite the country in opposition to ‘some cohesion renewing Other’” (124)� The passage Boswell refers to comes from the narration of Gentle’s inaugural address, when he refuses to blame the American government for what he calls, “terrible internal troubles,” saying, “there just must be some people besides each other of us to blame� To unite in opposition to” (Wallace 384)� Boswell’s assessment of Gentle’s rhetoric corroborates Pease’s and Spanos’ assertion that creating an “Other” is necessary for U.S. citizens to somehow feel more unified in their own identity� In the world of Infinite Jest, the threat of environmental collapse fills the need for a threat, and Canada fills the need for an “Other.” Charles Philippe David, an editor of “Hegemony or Empire? : The Redefinition of US Power under George W. Bush,” argues that the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early-mid 2000s were representative of the Bush administration’s “discourse about ‘the enemy’” which served as “a justification for a military response rooted in appeals to empire and American exceptionalism” (221)� Similarly, David Noon asserts in his article, “Cold War Revival: Neoconservatives and Historical Memory in the War on Terror,” that 21st century neoconservatives have viewed the War on Terror as “the next phase in a war for democratic expansion that began in earnest after the Second World War” (88)� It became a chance to reinvigorate the mindset of the “National Security State” in which exceptionalism could flourish. Wallace himself raised questions about American involvement in the Middle East in relation to drilling for oil and the effects this relationship has had on American consumers� The necessity of “othering” countries from which the U�S� hopes to gain something - or, in the novel’s case, dispose of something - in order to perpetuate its lifestyle is at the heart of exceptionalist notions� As the exceptional nation, the U�S� should be allowed to involve itself in the affairs of the “other” and benefit from such involvement, even while simultaneously disparaging the culture of this “other�” Wallace saw this connection, and said in a 2003 interview - seven years after the publication of Infinite Jest - with a German media outlet, ZDFmediatek, 226 c hristine m. P effer Our voting for people who are deciding to go over and very possibly kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in order to kill a few enemies…the fact that no one here is talking about the connection between how we live and what we drive and the things that are happening� The speed with which it’s become those bad people, those bad fanatics, they’re evil, what they really hate is our freedom and our way of life…which is just hard to swallow…who hates freedom? People hate people, not freedom� [My emphasis] Wallace is aware of what labeling Middle Easterners as a strange and distinctive “them” has done to justify U�S� involvement and the animosity this has created between this invented image of “them” and “us�” Wallace’s “Experialism” and Other Terminology Americans have constructed this identity upon the foundation of the assumption that other nations aspire to be like them, and that the United States must be allowed certain privileges of hegemony in order to fulfill a global responsibility as, for example, the defender of “freedom” against the spread of “antidemocratic” communism� It is for this reason, Pease argues, that Americans disavowed the idea of imperialism as inherently un-American and, instead, a tactic of the enemy� Imperialism, in Pease’s exceptionalist argument, becomes one of the qualities the American national identity must lack so that it is distanced and distinguished from the “other�” Maintaining a distance from the other is the only way American culture can stand at the forefront of civilization as the model of the ideal� So while American exceptionalists disparaged imperialism as an adverse characteristic of the communist “other,” they, in order to prevent other nations from exercising their control imperialistically, recognized that the United States would need to do so first. The rationalization was that if the United States used imperialism as a means of preventing other nations from doing the same, it was acceptable� Pease argues, American exceptionalism produced the desire within U�S� citizens to construe U�S� imperialism as a nation-preserving measure that would prevent Soviet imperialism from destroying America’s national ideals� (21) Because America was established as exceptional, it was allowed, according to Pease, to break some of the rules that had been applied to the Soviet Union in order to keep the perceived threat of the “other” at bay� Pease notes the Cold War state’s authorization to “carry out illegal covert activities” made possible by the “continuous noneventuation of the nuclear holocaust�” Legislature like the Truman Doctrine served as “exceptions” that rationalized the necessity of destroying “imperialism as a Russian way of life” (21)� Noon states that the Truman Doctrine “struck neoconservatives as a landmark declaration that effectively Americanized the entire project of internationalism” (88)� Using the term “internationalism” implies that there is give and take on the part of all nations involved - however, “Americanizing” this process seems to City upon the Convexity 227 undermine the whole idea of balance� Allowing one nation to be the main beneficiary because it has a purportedly greater “responsibility” in determining the world’s progress seems to subvert the intent of such a goal entirely� Wallace’s creation of O�N�A�N� seems to raise similar questions about American foreign policy� Gentle and Tine, when negotiating with the Mexican president and Canadian prime minister, assert that O�N�A�N� is necessary because “North Americans have to stick together” and become “interdependent” (Wallace 386)� However, Gentle assigns the roles within this alliance so that he is the Chair, while the other two leaders share consolatory Vice-Chair duties� This arrangement echoes Noon’s succinct delineation of “Americanizing internationalism�” Wallace critiques the ability to establish these exceptions by literalizing the concept of “othering�” In Pease’s view, American exceptionalism became a means of defining the national identity through a series of absences and presences - what the United States does that other countries do not, and vice versa� Wallace plays with this idea of absent and present qualities, and turns them into physical commodities� The diction of the Concavity/ Convexity, for example, inherently resembles the psychology of the absences and presences used in the exceptionalist argument to differentiate the United States from the “other�” The different names of the territory itself play with the idea that there must either be something missing (concave) or something extra attributed (convex) to keep the distance between Gentle’s clean, untarnished nation and Canada, the “other�” While Gentle and Tine refused to allow the U�S� to contain filth and waste, it was necessary to impose this load on Canada. Tine says, “No way we can possibly permit territory publicly exposed as this befouled and waste-impacted to continue to besmirch the already tight and tidier territory of a new era’s U�S� of A” (Wallace 401)� By separating the United States from its physical waste and instead forcing the annexation of the Concavity/ Convexity, Gentle and Tine wash their hands of the waste that becomes Canada’s problem� Wallace has taken the psychology of American exceptionalism as it developed during the Cold War and literalized it in creating his satirical portrayal of “experialism,” which also inversely echoes the containment policy of the Cold War mindset - instead of containing communism, Gentle is containing waste� Rather than using exceptionalism as a pretense for geopolitical expansion, Wallace instead depicts the psychology of exceptionalism as gaining control over a region to discard something of its own that it no longer wants� This, in turn, helps to create Gentle’s “Tighter, Tidier Nation�” While Pease argued that, during the Cold War, exceptionalists attributed, or “gave,” any problematic qualities to the “other,” Gentle gives away a portion of land that contains all the waste that would physically contaminate the United States’ image or identity� Wallace’s satire is largely effective through this use of original, pointed terminology that brings the reader into the fold of the novel’s world and reinforces its message - I have already discussed the Convexity/ Concavity and experialism� The term Wallace uses when referring to O�N�A�N�’s new 228 c hristine m. P effer division of territory, or the Reconfiguration, also plays a role as it becomes a starting point for slang words used throughout the novel� “Demapping” is a term Wallace uses for characters to talk about death� When a character is “demapped,” it means he or she has died or been killed� He makes the connection when a character is mentioned as having his “map seriously…reconfigured” (914). Canada’s map was reconfigured to subsidize the whims of the self-involved President Gentle, and this concept has been likened to the slang term for death, which speaks to the public opinion or view of the reconfiguration and its implications� The students at Enfield Tennis Academy, along with the majority of the other American characters in the novel, refer to Canadians as “Nucks�” While perhaps seemingly innocuous, Wallace’s implications of racism show yet another facet of exceptionalist critiques and further augments his use of exaggeration to complete the satire� Using Canadians as the target of racial slurs, Wallace is emphasizing the hypernationalism and neoconservative, monocultural aims promulgated by the novel’s American government� This term is also indicative of the exceptionalist strands of racism Pease mentions in conjunction with Vietnam and the Rodney King incident� Racism was manifest in these events, according to Pease, as a component of exceptionalism that allowed the stigmatization and confinement of the “other” to a term that not only keeps them at a distance, but does so by keeping them below the image of the “ideal�” “Americanizing” the World Stage Harry Truman’s tenure as President is marked, in part, by the creation of the United Nations, the Truman Doctrine, and the containment policy during the early stages of the Cold War� Pease says that Truman “invoked the representation of America as the ‘Leader of the Free World’” (9)� While the United Nations was meant to promote balanced internationalism, the United States filled the role of global police officer, vowing to contain communism, and to lend help to nations that might have been in danger of falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. Truman’s National Security State and John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier helped to “legitimate the United States’ place as the subject and telos of universal history” (165)� In his “negotiations” with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Rodney Tine suggests that not only will the establishment of the Concavity be a reinventing of government, but it will also be a reinventing of history: “Torch the past� Manifest a new destiny� Boys, we’re going to institute some serious intra-O�N�A�N� interdependence” (Wallace 403)� The new destiny that Tine and Gentle want to write into the history books not only has the United States at its center, but also as the author of this geopolitical narrative� In his second inaugural address, Gentle says, “Let the call go forth, to pretty much any nation we might feel like calling, that the past has been torched by a new and millennial generation of Americans” (381)� He is concerned only with City upon the Convexity 229 the place the United States will hold in the world and uses the term “interdependence” as a pretense for asserting his authority as O�N�A�N� chair over both Canada and Mexico� Gentle orchestrates the agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada that establishes the “interdependent” Organization of North American Nations, where the U�S� president is the chair, with the Mexican president and Canadian prime minister sharing vice-chair duties� These roles were selected by the United States government and show the inherent hierarchy within the organization� This relationship is meant to solely benefit the United States, but the other two leaders accept the terms with “tightlipped handshakes” (394), suggesting that the agreement would have gone ahead regardless of their approval, and that such a confluence of “interdependent” views is really just a fiction. Wallace also seems to be playing with the fictitious governmental body, O.N.A.N., as it relates to onanism, and the self-gratifying, masturbatory nature of the U�S� he depicts� Gentle and Tine bring the psychology of the unwanted traits and the “other” into existence, by physically giving Canada the territory that would contain all American waste, thereby “proving” that the U�S� itself is waste-free� American historian Thomas Bender asserts that the self-identified features of difference and autonomy have caused Americans to look “inward, implying an American history unlike and unconnected with all others” (qtd� in David 24)� Tine recognizes that his and Gentle’s desire to create what they perceive as an ideal United States is impossible without Canada’s forced compliance� However, the ultimate goal of purifying the country using the Concavity/ Convexity as an outlet holds no positive gains, but rather serious implications, for the Canadians� Tine and Gentle claim that the Reconfiguration - Canada’s annexation of the Concavity/ Convexity - will reinvent history, but in their disconnected, entitled way never mention how it will affect any other parts of the world� One of the only times other countries are mentioned in the novel at all, in fact, comes during the traditional game played by the Enfield Tennis Academy students - Eschaton - which is essentially a children’s game loosely resembling “capture the flag” and “Risk.” This virtual absence of the rest of the world further enforces the Gentle administration’s Americentric worldview� It is also ironic that the players in the Eschaton tournament are all the younger students at Enfield, children who are coached and watched by the older pupils for entertainment� This underscores the idea that Wallace is showcasing international politics only as, literally, child’s play� Marathe and Steeply: Opposite Ends of the Continuum The ongoing conversation between Hugh Steeply and Remy Marathe that takes place throughout the novel highlights the different ways Americans and Canadians perceive the political relationship between the two nations� Marathe sees what he repeatedly refers to as the Americans’ “freedom to 230 c hristine m. P effer choose” as a destructively self-indulgent worldview, while Steeply simply sees it as a necessary facet of democracy, calling Marathe’s Canada “Cuba with snow” (320)� While there are certainly problems with Steeply’s view of the world through his O�N�A�N� American lens, Marathe’s character is not without its faults� In David Lipsky’s book, Although of course you end up becoming yourself: a road trip with David Foster Wallace, Wallace states bluntly in his discourse with Lipsky that Marathe is a fascist, and is representative of the fictional Canadian culture� In the pair’s discourse about what freedom means in their respective cultures, it becomes clear that Steeply is a staunch believer in democracy, while Marathe’s fascist views center around the idea of the government as a father figure. He asks Steeply: But what of the freedom-to? Not just free-from…How to choose any but a child’s greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform, teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose? (Wallace 320) Marathe’s character does not necessarily serve to make the American characters look more justified in their appeals to exceptionalism, but he does add a layer to the complexity of the conundrum posed by having two characters, Marathe and Steeply, who are on complete opposite ends of the political spectrum when it comes to the question of free choice� In the same interview from Lipsky’s book, Wallace elaborates on Marathe’s political alignment and the novel’s Canadian polity as a whole when he says: You’re talking about a culture that teaches people how to make moral choices, that teeters very easily into…a totalitarian, authoritarian culture� But a culture that doesn’t, and that prides itself on not…I think we’re just beginning to see, that on either side of the continuum there are terrible prices to pay� (qtd� in Lipsky 158) Wallace does not intend to paint either Steeply or Marathe as right or wrong; instead, he intends them to show the dangers of either extreme� As political foils of one another, Marathe and Steeply highlight the deeply flawed aspects of both nations that have entered, either passively on the part of the Canadians or forcefully on the part of the Americans, into the O�N�A�N� compact� Ironically, Wallace depicts his American citizenry as apathetic to this “freedom to choose,” as Gentle is consistently allowed to engender Red Scare/ Patriot Act-like domestic policies� The reason Wallace gives for this apathy is, in part, the people’s surrender to ravenous consumerism and pleasure-seeking that makes a threat like the Entertainment video a plausible threat� Marathe, when confronted by Steeply about the Quebecois terrorist plot involving the Entertainment, simply responds, “Us? We will force nothing on U�S�A� persons in their warm homes� We will make only available� Entertainment� There will be then some choosing, to partake or choose not to…How will U�S�A�s choose? ” (Wallace 318)� Though the satire is absurd, and humorous, the concepts suggest Wallace’s earnest concern for the way American citizens have chosen to accept the state fantasy and ideology of the “Tighter, Tidier Nation�” Overlaying Wallace’s City upon the Convexity 231 fiction and nonfiction provides some valuable insight into his political concerns� In his essay detailing the 2000 presidential campaign of John McCain, “Up, Simba! ”, Wallace expresses concern for the role of the individual in government: If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day� By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting� In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote� (207) Although Gentle has, to some extent, coaxed the American citizenry to buy into his exceptionalist schemes, Wallace colors the issue so that the people are not blameless� Gentle, a multiple-term president, is noted as being “roundly disliked for over two terms,” but is allowed to remain in office. The Role of Consumerism Pease claims that state fantasies act as “unacknowledged legislators” that unconsciously demand that subjects “want the state to govern them�” He goes on to say that these fantasies also allow for their subjects to “structure their desires within the terms of the fantasy” (6)� Gentle’s version of Red Scare rationale (and I leave out the Patriot Act here simply because the novel pre-dates 2001) and his subsequent control over the collective American psyche, implies that if his citizens relinquish their constitutional right to have a voice, he will handle the “burden” of making tough choices, essentially allowing Americans to give up their right to play an active role in the U�S� government� Pease maintains that the doubt sown by the Vietnam War was combated with a similarly altered relationship between the government and its citizens, as the “cold war spectacle repositioned that doubt itself as a threat to the national security, and thereby effectively depoliticized the relations between U�S� citizens and the security state’s mode of governance” (53)� The main component of this relationship becomes the “freedom from” the difficulty of decision-making that Wallace satirizes through Gentle and Marathe, whose political views line him in opposition to this concept� Though Wallace’s plot thread of Gentle and the C�U�S�P� is different from what Pease calls the Cold War state’s authorization to “carry out illegal covert activities” achieved through what Spanos calls an “always threatening crisis,” Wallace’s satire is effective in its humor and depiction of the relinquishment of any political voice by the citizens of the novel’s United States� In her article, “Anti-Interiority: Compulsiveness, Objectification, And Identity In Infinite Jest,” Elizabeth Freudenthal links the obsessions with brand-name products in Infinite Jest to the obsession with toxic waste 232 c hristine m. P effer production and removal when she states that the novel’s American society is “dominated at every level by a global commodity system, from the plethora of brand-name goods to energy sourced from toxic nuclear waste” (195)� The use of Subsidized Time in Infinite Jest is an ingenious, subtle imposition of the fictional state’s will to sell out even the names of years to fund experialism, throwing an entire way of chronologically structuring and recording events into an indecipherable, arbitrary chaos that sells the name of the next year to the highest bidder� This is ingenious because the need to refer to the name of the current year and years past as reference points is ever-present in all O�N�A�N� citizens’ lives� Thus, they must be reprogrammed by necessity to refer to the years not by their chronological numeral, but by their commercial names, essentially turning time into a commercial entity� Freudenthal asserts that the aims of Gentle’s administration come from a “debilitating interiority,” which relates to Thomas Bender’s diagnosis of a problematic American view that renders historical text unable to connect to any history that exists outside of the United States’ self� By organizing their very unit of measuring time and events based on a consumerist system, the system subsequently underscores the importance of America’s ability to not only produce and spend, but to own - as O�N�A�N� essentially leaves the United States in an “ownership” of sorts with Canada and Mexico� Pease states that America’s shift into a contemporary brand of exceptionalism is linked to its self-representation as “Conqueror of the World’s Markets” (8)� This self-representation also indicates where the novel’s United States places emphasis, which is on the market, and thus inescapably on producing, buying, and owning� Furthermore, all of the companies buying rights to year names are American� The subsidization of O�N�A�N� time is something that will change the geopolitical landscape not only of the West but of the world, and the looming figure of American consumerism that funds the Concavity/ Convexity cannot be ignored� Through his use of absurd year names like Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar and Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, Wallace is hinting at the absurdity of such extreme materialism that, in his United States, has permeated even the most unchanging regulation of time� Pease and Wallace both use the terminology of “desires for self,” or “desires of self-interest,” which are crucial in the understanding of Pease’s American fantasy of exceptionalism and Wallace’s solipsistic, materialistic American culture� In his interview with ZDFmediatek, Wallace comments on the reality of America being looked at as a cripplingly consumerist, hedonistic society: The idea that America is one big shopping mall, and that all anyone wants to do is, you know, grasp their credit card and run out and by stuff is a stereotype, and it’s a generalization, but as a way to summarize a certain kind of ethos in the U�S�, it’s pretty accurate� In Infinite Jest, he portrays the mass influx of brand-name products as one of the debilitating contributors to the cycle of purchasing and discarding that will conceivably continue to perpetuate the need for the Concavity and the fans that contain it� Freudenthal also notes that the two years containing the majority of the novel’s plot, the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment and City upon the Convexity 233 the Year of Glad, “are sponsored by products that contain waste while creating more of it” (198)� The adult undergarments and trash bags, though they are used to contain two types of human waste, are ironically only adding to the mass that the Concavity/ Convexity imposed upon Canada is steadily becoming� Freudenthal succinctly summarizes the roles of Gentle and Tine as the absurd figures that advance an ideology of exceptionalism and rampant consumerism in what she calls Wallace’s “funhouse mirror reflection of our own dangerously corporate government, our potentially apocalyptic addictions to consumption” (197)� The People of Infinite Jest as Byproducts While the Gentle administration is easily able to throw its weight around in the implementation of Reconfiguration, Wallace juxtaposes the topically clean, waste-free United States with his grotesque portrayal of the seedy urban culture that one-time Ennet House resident Randy Lenz refers to in the novel as “one big commode�” Boswell appropriately describes the streets of Infinite Jest’s Boston, which are “overrun with bewildered drug addicts and ‘feral hamsters’ bloated to monstrous size, thanks to the toxic and radioactive waste of the Great Concavity” (124)� The novel’s Boston is teeming with characters who each have their own unique, often horrifically disturbing private lives, and Gentle is incapable of eradicating this type of “befoulment” from his “Tighter, Tidier Nation�” The impossibility of removing all waste, even in the form of human life, would be impossible� As one native Quebecois says, Fans do not begin to keep it all in the Great Convexity� It creeps back in� What goes around, it comes back around� This your nation refuses to learn� It will keep creeping back in. You cannot give away all your filth and prevent all creepage, no? Filth by its very nature it is a thing that is creeping always back� (Wallace 233) The exceptionalist ideal as portrayed in Infinite Jest is extreme, but as a satire it shows that no matter how many metaphorical fans a nation builds, there will always be “filth” that cannot be stamped out - humanity will always be riddled with imperfections� The Alcoholics Anonymous/ Narcotics Anonymous subculture that the reader is thrust into when first approaching the Ennet House drug and rehabilitation center is one that resounds as something of a rebel yell directed at the “mainstream” culture overrun by sterilization, corporate media, and capitalism� The great lengths Wallace goes to in painting most of these characters as intensely disturbed and/ or grotesque set a stark contrast to the policies held so dear to the Gentle administration� For example, Bruce Green, a resident at Ennet House, represents one such character� His mother died of a heart attack after opening a Christmas present from Bruce only to find that it had been rigged by Mr� Green to conceal a “coiled cloth snake” as a joke� The description of her death is what takes the scene from being absurdly comical to disturbing: “…Brucie’s Mama’s hand at her delicate throat becomes clawshaped and she claws at her throat and gurgles and slumps over to starboard 234 c hristine m. P effer with a fatal cardiac, her cyanotic mouth still open in surprise” (580)� Bruce’s father becomes completely unhinged after the death of his wife, and is sentenced to die by lethal injection after “grotesquely decapitating” three Rotarians by concocting a batch of explosives� The majority of characters on the streets of Boston or living in the Ennet House have similarly bizarre and disturbing backgrounds� And yet, they are the ones that emerge as the heroic, most human characters� It is Bruce Green, for example, who helps Don Gately when he is defending the house’s residents from an agitated and violent band of “Nucks” and helps tend to Gately before taking him to the hospital after he was shot� Green and his fellow addicts at the Ennet House provide an exception to the rule of Gentle’s exceptionalist goals in their extremely raw representation of humanity� Mario Incandenza, the middle Incandenza child, is, however, probably the best example of Wallace’s portrayal of the disparity between the “clean” and the grotesque. This disparity almost works to flip the appearances, as the grotesque characters become the most human and the Tines and Gentles of the novel are illuminated as self-interested, elitist, and ultimately surreal� Mario, who is probably the most morally sound character in the novel, is also one of the most severely deformed and disabled� His birth scene is an especially bizarre, grotesque occurrence that Wallace does not gloss over: He had to be more or less scraped out, Mario, like the meat of an oyster from a womb to whose sides he’d been found spiderishly clinging, tiny and unobtrusive, attached by cords of sinew at both feet and a hand, the other fist stuck to his face by the same material� He was…terribly premature, and withered, and he spent the next many weeks waggling his withered and contractured arms up at the Pyrex ceilings of incubators, being fed by tubes and monitored by wires and cupped in sterile palms, his head cradled by a thumb� (313) As he grows older, Mario does not grow out of these abnormalities but rather further grows into them and must simply learn to adapt� Despite all of his struggles, he remains an endlessly compassionate and innocent figure throughout the novel who is idolized and adored by his physically and intellectually superior younger brother, Hal� Conclusion Infinite Jest is a dense, multilayered novel, but Wallace’s satire of American exceptionalism, despite its subtlety, stands out as one of the most poignant critiques he makes of American politics� The images of waste permeate through the novel as a constant reminder of the Gentle administration’s self-pleasing worldview, and act an exaggerated literal portrayal of some key components of exceptionalism as it has become manifest throughout American history, especially since the beginning of the Cold War, and has experienced a resurgence since 9/ 11� Though the satire is absurd, and humorous, the concepts suggest an earnest concern for the way American citizens have chosen to accept the state fantasy and ideology of the “Tighter, Tidier Nation,” City upon the Convexity 235 as evidenced by his attitude in “Up, Simba! ” and various interviews� In the ZDFmediatek interview, specifically, Wallace again expresses concern for the role of the individual in perpetuating destructive exceptionalist ideals: It works really well in an economic way� Emotionally, spiritually, in terms of citizenship, in terms of feeling like a meaningful part even of this country, forget the world, and I’m sure the U�S� government’s sort of arrogance and disdain for the rest of the world is unpleasant, but it’s also a natural extension of certain cultural messages we send ourselves about ourselves that work very well in some ways and make us very rich and very powerful…it’s all, complicated� The rhetoric with which a nation and its people choose to structure their national narrative has implications not just for all of the “others” created along the way, but for the “State of Exception,” as well� By living within a limited sphere of fantasy and defining a national identity by what it lacks when compared with some “other,” combating it against some “other” or creating an “us” versus “them” mindset, the identity can find no secure footing. Pease discusses the desire of the citizens for the state to govern them - Wallace depicts the implications of a comatose, consumerist society that allows Gentle and Tine to run the show� Despite Gentle’s best efforts, his nation is rotting from the inside out, and the disfigured, addicted outcasts ultimately emerge as the nation’s only chance for redemption� Works Cited Boswell, Marshall� Understanding David Foster Wallace� Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2009� Print� David, Charles Philippe, and David Grondin� Hegemony or Empire? : The Redefinition of US Power under George W. Bush� Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006� Print� Freudenthal, Elizabeth. “Anti-Interiority: Compulsiveness, Objectification, And Identity In Infinite Jest.” New Literary History 41�1 (2010): 191-211� Academic Search Premier� Web� 12 Sept� 2012� Lipsky, David, and David Foster Wallace� Although of Course You End up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace� New York: Broadway, 2010� Print� Noon, David Hoogland� “Cold War Revival: Neoconservatives And Historical Memory In The War On Terror�” American Studies (00263079) 48�3 (2007): 75-99� Academic Search Premier� Web� 11 Nov� 2012� Pease, Donald E� The New American Exceptionalism� Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2009� Print� Spanos, William V� “Redeemer Nation and Apocalypse: Thinking the Exceptionalism of American Exceptionalism�” Literature Interpretation Theory: Literary Counterhistories of US Exceptionalism 25�2 (2014): 174-200� Web� Wallace, David Foster� “David Foster Wallace on Gas Prices, War, and the Economy of Comfort�” Interview� YouTube� ZDFmediatek, 6 May 2011� Web� 22 Nov� 2012� <http: / / www�youtube�com/ watch? v=2ybffCLFPpI>� -----� Infinite Jest� New York: Back Bay, 1996� Print� -----� “Up, Simba! ” Consider the Lobster� New York: Back Bay, 2006� Print�