Bodies Set in Assigned Positions: Dis/Embodiment and Placial Subjectivity in Don DeLillo’s Zero K

Abstract

This article examines placial thinking in Don DeLillo’s Zero K, arguing that Jeffrey Lockhart’s insistence on embodiment is grounded in his understanding of subjectivity as fundamentally implaced. In Zero K, the Convergence facility promises a disembodied “pure self” through cryopreservation. While critics read Jeffrey’s resistance as existential humanism, the deeper philosophical logic of his stance remains underexplored. Through close textual analysis informed by Edward Casey’s exploration of place, the study interprets Jeffrey’s worldview as grounded in implacement. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of body-place relations, it examines his spatial metaphors, temporal orientation, and embodied relationality. The analysis demonstrates that Jeffrey’s subjectivity emerges from lived situatedness within spatiotemporal coordinates. His memories, perceptions, and identity depend on bodily extension in place. The study positions Jeffrey’s narrative as a sustained defense of material implacement against the abstraction of disembodied subjectivity. It asks how embodiment enables place, and how place, in turn, enables subjectivity.