last re:quest

[Bill Burns]

I find these posts quite compelling, but I do have some questions.

>in the post-mythic world there is no such thing as home.  odysseus' homeland
>disappears at that same moment he becomes a historical (proto-bourgeois)
>'self;'  that is, a consistent ego who now has a concept of home.  the price
>paid for odyssesus' being able to identify himself is his loss of immediate
>identification with everything else, including his 'personality'--symbolized
>in his interlude with the purely functional, murderous (proto-rocket)
>Cyclops; to save his life (self-preservation is the real myth of western
>enlightenment, according to adorno and horkheimer) he is forced to sacrifice
>the identity of his name with his nature:  he becomes 'no one,' an abstract
>formal ego no different than the Kantian version.  There will never again be
>a 'home' for Odysseus, or any of us--only a perpetual homelessness which
>refers to one in the negative.  The spatial violence of myth is turned inward
>and becomes temporal--becomes memory.  

Sounds also like a bit like Heidegger's *Dasein*--especially if you invert
the concept of Odysseus' historicity. If he is identifying himself with his
lack, then he is basing his identity on a groundlessness, right? Isn't this
the equivalent of being-in-essence?  

>in the arthurian cycle, the grail is already reflecting contradictions within
>the nature of barter.  hence the profusion of auratic objects, properties
>that magically sing for their unique owners, like Nike ads.  these objects
>are perceived as eluding the grasp of barter--they already have the
>significance of art-objects, their value lies in being priceless or without
>conceivable use (the 'hoard').  in mallory's late entry in the cycle, death
>and disillusionment cause even the arthurian knights to falter, as the bodies
>and sacrifices pile up yet do not equal the 'price' demanded of the magical
>object; the object remains mythic, no matter how much blood the questors
>attempt to fill it with . . . 

So to recast my original comment, is the quest about the object, or is it
about the individual who pursues the quest? If the object is something
lacking that is forever out of the reach of the questor (that is, the
grounding of being) and the questor continues to pursue the quest (or define
him/herself in terms of that lack) then isn't it the quest that becomes of
primary import for the individual? Is the quest simply the same existential
project that every Dasein faces?

Pynchon exploits this solipsism to demonstrate how it becomes a liability.
Since the questor is defining him/herself based on something that he/she
lacks, that void can be manipulated and filled by some other agency.

--
*Bill Burns           wdburns at micron.net*
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