David Foster Wallace e Martin Heidegger. A Heideggerian Perspective of Infinite Jest

In his celebrated novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace makes some reference to Martin Heidegger and the question concerning technology. The aim of this article is to show the extent to which the novel can be regarded as a literary transposition of philosophical-phenomenological categories. Wallace’s name for technology is entertainment. According to different languages, both elements combine to define our world as a technologically constituted space. During a party of cinema graduate students, anonymous voices mention exactly the Heideggerian Perspective, according to which the space, i.e. the world, is enframed by technology. Now, this world is depicted both in the book Infinite Jest, and in a movie with the same title, whose structures prevent us from a complete understanding, and impose an endless repetition of the message, until it loses all meaning. Thus, the only real «jest» consists in a suspension of the understanding, which can be expressed only by means of the true antidote to the entertainment, i.e. irony.