(Fwd) Political Pynchon

[Aaron Yeater]

> fred Jameson is a classic mis-interpreter of third world
> literature.  That article (among other things) participates fully
> in the stereotype of the 3rd world as nothing more than an
> ecconomic backwater, and takes the stupid old Marxist stance that
> ideas are only a function of economic conditions, in (t)his case:
> we are rich, and therefore have the luxury of writing
> psychological novels, while the latin americans and africans
> can't really do much more than fight the socialist struggle.

That's a rather unfair reading of the article, I think.  First of 
all, the fact of the matter is that the post-colonial world IS 
economically underdeveloped--to suggest otherwise is really well, a 
denial of reality.  Secondly, perhaps Jameson overstates the case, but in 
the case of post-colonial lit, politics plays a different role, a more 
heightened role (a perfect example:  Midnight's Children, where the 
person is hardly a person at all, just an allegory for the nation.)  
I'm not sure he's perpetuating stereotypes instead of categories, since he's 
talking about lit., not people--but most importantly, it seems you've missed the 
crucial argument here.  There is a fundamental way in which the literatures of the 
modern and post-colonial worlds do not belong to the same category 
(hence it gives us the ability to call one group "post-colonial").  
That line is a political one (because the reality that divides 
colonist from colonized is a political one) and for all its didactic 
foibles, Jameson's piece does not allow us to dismiss the political 
reality of the post-colonial experience for a safer, cuter 
"psychological" one.

It's a deeply troubled piece, i agree, but it doesn't deserve a 
cursory dismissal.  And marx  deserves 
better than the pop-philosophy one-line summary you gave him up above...

soory, it's early.  i'll cool off later
aaron  
***********************************************************

"Look at the mess we've got ourselves into," Colonel 
Aureliano Buendia said at that time, "just because we 
invited a gringo to eat some bananas."
                           --Gabriel Garcia Marquez
                             "One Hundred Years of Solitude"