Alien Invasion!

[David Casseres]

I wrote

>>    ... Pynchon is at pains to contradict the Marxist 
>> analysis directly and explicitly, denying that the impetus of colonialism 
>> is economic, insisting that it is this need to find and dominate the 
>> preterite Other that really drives it.  Same thing, really, that made the 
>> Dutchman go to Mauritius and exterminate dodoes in an earlier section.
>>    Personally, I think colonialism depends on both things, but Pynchon is 
>> drawing on powerful mythic themes here, doing a twist on the Jungian 
>> quest to find the Dark Brother.

... and Craig Clark replize

>Maybe David is missing the point - the link between the Marxist 
>analysis of the impetus of colonialism and the need to dominate the 
>preterite Other. I'm very hazy on my Max Weber, but this is probably 
>where I'd go to find this link - there's surely some connection 
>between the Protestant Work Ethic (the psychological prerequiste for 
>capitalism?) and the Calvinist/Puritan notion of a Preterite Other 
>which can be kicked around by the Righteous.

Oh yes, the two are inseparable; and as many pointed out in an earlier 
discussion on the "rugged individuals" who founded American society, they 
were sent and funded and (to the extent possible) directed by big 
capitalist enterprises.  What strikes me about Pynchon's "colonies are 
the outhouses of the European soul" passage (p. 217, or is it 317, in the 
Viking paperback) is that he insists on the point-of-view of the 
individual colonist, and insists that this colonist is not economically 
driven at all, and so not subject to the Marxist analysis.

Since my previous post I've gone back and read that stunning passage 
several more times.  In fact it says that the colonist's drive is even 
more fundamental than the urge to dominate the natives and do whatever he 
will with them.  The real reason he's there, sez Pynchon, is simply and 
purely to get away from Christian Europe, which is death to the 
individual.  To go to the outhouse, like Pynchon's and Slothrop's own New 
England forebears, where he can "just drop his pants and enjoy the smell 
of his own shit."  A little privacy, is all, but of course once he (and 
he's always male) gets that privacy it's his chance to run amok, to "fall 
on his slender prey yelling as loud as he wants" (all these quotations 
are from memory, natch), to exterminate the dodoes, to rape and murder 
the Hereros.  And the best part is that "no word will get back to the 
Metropolis."  So the colonist is in no danger of losing the support of 
Christian Europe, which is only interested in the economics of 
colonialism; but he's free of European supervision, European social 
institutions.  He's Elect, as long as he stays out in the colonies, 
hiding in the outhouse (compare the outhouse to the Erdschweinhoehle for 
more fun).  And there's the implication that the capitalist colonial 
drive of the Metropolis would be thwarted were it not for that 
individualist need to escape from civilization and find the only freedom 
he can conceive of.



Cheers,
David