Language out of Language: Excavating the Roots of Culture Jamming and Postmodern Activism from William S. Burroughs' Nova Trilogy

Abstract

On July 17, 1999, news of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s missing Piper Saratoga aircraft exploded into the American media like only news concerning the Kennedys can. JFK Jr.'s unexpected disappearance over Martha's Vineyard punched a sudden hole in a family narrative that the American media has been disseminating for years, rupturing a signifying chain which had been projecting (for quite some time) the younger Kennedy's eventual run for political office. In the hours immediately following the initial missing person's report, the American media vigorously attempted to fill the gaping hole his disappearance had forced in the nation's symbolic network. The major networks broadcast Kennedy coverage for most of the day, hoping to find that elusive scrap of evidence or floating piece of wing mass [End Page 107] that would allow them to narrativize the disappearance and stabilize Kennedy Jr.'s place in the American media nexus. It was then, as the media scrambled to fill the gaping hole in America's symbolic order with some sort of information on the plane's whereabouts, that something interesting happened.

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