Newt, Systems, etc......

[Jan KLIMKOWSKI]

David Pelovitz - (PELOVTZD at Acfcluster.nyu.edu) wrote:

>How so?  Katje strikes me as being firmly planted in an
excluded middle.  First off, the Ones and Zeros may not
be equally powerful, but who or what in these works is
>absolutely One or Zero?

>The excluded middle is based on the notion that everything
that is Not-One must be Zero and vice-versa.  But very few
of the characters or systems can be placed on one side
of any of the binary oppositions TRP gives us without
qualifications (maybe They as a concept is absolutely
committed to Them, but who exactly arre They?)  It isn't a
question of ducking out by placing the characters in
an excluded middle, it is recognizing that the poles are
>usually excluded, and the midles never are.


Okay - I'll bite.  I think Richard M Zhlubb/Nixon/The Adenoid can be placed 
at one of the poles, on the basis of p754-7 GR.

 --------------------------
"... a glance inside the glove compartment reveals an entire library of 
similar tapes: CHEERING (AFFECTIONATE), CHEERING (AROUSED), HOSTILE MOB in 
an assortment of 22 languages, YESES, NOES, NEGRO SUPPORTERS, WOMEN 
SUPPORTERS, ATHLETIC  - oh, come now - FIRE-FIGHT (CONVENTIONAL), FIRE-FIGHT 
(NUCLEAR), FIRE-FIGHT (URBAN), CATHEDRAL ACOUSTICS...."

"'We have to talk in some kind of code, naturally,' continues the Manager."

"'At least it's not those tambourines', Zhluub mutters.  'There aren't as 
many tambourines as last year, thank God.'
"Quilted-steel catering trucks crisscross in the afternoon.  Their ripples 
shine like a lake of potable water after hard desert passage.  It's a 
Collection Day, and the garbage trucks are all heading north toward the 
Ventura Freeway, a catharsis of dumpsters, all hues, shapes and batterings. 
 Returning to the Center, with all the gathered fragments of the 
Vessels...."
 ------------------------

In Vineland the big One/Zero is the Tube.  The big network television 
stations we've all grown up with are Systems.  They manufacture consent or 
stop people from thinking - depending on how you like these things 
articulating.  They also define the agenda.

As Jesuit priest and eminence grise of the Catholic League for Religious and 
Civil Rights, Virgil Blum, expressed it in the 1970s in the context of 
abortion: "Crucial to influencing public opinion is getting the people to 
define the issue your way.  Since language not only defines the situation 
but also shapes attitudes, a group's cause has an almost insurmountable 
handicap if it permits opposing forces to define the terms of the 
discussion."  To which I would merely add - it's sometimes more expedient 
for the subject simply to be excluded from debate, eg two decades of 
Western-sponsored genocide in Indonesia.


Tim Ware wrote:

>One thing that is very clear is that although IG was this monolithic
corporate "beast," it was driven by some very bad cats, e.g. Carl Duisberg
and Hermann Schmitz, who represented and articulated Nazi ideology and
corportate over individual (i.e., workers') interest.  This paragon of
the "evil system" was no "bad" system composed of "good" people, but
rather a sprawling corporate monster, with business "visionaries"
>dictating policy and everyone else just doing their part.

This is partially true.  However, it has to be seen in the context of that 
very Nazi ideology, which regarded a  nation state based on Teutonic 
mythology as the thing which could save the German people from a regression 
to their bestial material selves and from communism, Zionist financiers, 
etc.  According to this ideology, only the System/the greater German state 
mattered - the individual and individual rights did not.  IG Farben played 
along with this 'cos it suited them.

Systems have their own logic and momentum.  When the likes of Duisberg and 
Schmitz attain positions of power, they try to use the logic of the System 
(for instance, what is disingenuously called corporate capitalism) for their 
own purposes.  Sometimes they succeed.  Sometimes the System ousts them. 
 And sometimes they succeed in guiding/channelling the growth of the System 
itself.  However, the ability of a Duisberg or a Zhlubb to ride/use a System 
is disproportionately greater than the power of a Leni or a Katje.

Leni and Katje live in a world defined by Their Systems.  L&K's acts of 
resistance have the potential to become kneejerk, systematized, but to me, 
this is far more about the, say, the routinization of charisma, than it is 
about the creation of a big, monolithic System opposed to the dominant Ones. 


I happen to work in telly.  The System itself, which is hopefully about to 
be fragmented by cheap digital production and delivery technology, does have 
its own logic and momentum, and there is a defined agenda which only rears 
its ugly head when one crosses the  borderline.

In fact, just to invite in that ole brassy dame, Paranoia, we can't all go 
live in some nice excluded middle because there isn't one in the first 
place......

A rambling E-Mail, for which I apologize.  I'll have one last go at 
articulating this.  I've just seen a Cost/Benefit analysis of 15 
contraceptive technologies, which claims to have built in costs of sexually 
transmitted diseases (STDs) and  HIV infection, as well as undesired 
pregnancies.  The Cost/Benefit analysis finds that IUDs, sterilizations and 
Norplant (all of which provide no protection against STDs/HIV) are the most 
cost-effective contraceptives over five years.  The barrier methods are the 
least cost-effective.  The study was funded by Wyeth-Aherst, manufacturers 
of Norplant.   Methinks there's little point in engaging in a debate defined 
by Cost/Benefit analysis, such circumstances demand a meta-solution....

Brotherly
jan