MDMD(4) p.123 small re-write

[jporter]

Paul, in response to Matt:

[snip- points about science and literature- see original post]

>One of those p-buzzwords might have been trotted out in that
>passage about gallows/slavery/crusades/the cross. Isn't the
>phrase "an essential term" something we have seen several
>times before. Sounds vaguely scientific or mathematical, for
>no very good reason that I can see. " . . . whilst Slavery must
>ever include, as an essential Term, the Gallows . . ." The
>whole sentence struck me as a tiny bit pretentious. Maybe
>he's just putting us on. I did  admire Stephen M's effort to
>analyze it however. Wanted to  help but was at a total loss.
>
>Enough questioning of the Master on my part.
>
>                        P.
>

I think you've put your finger right on the very essence of this most
significant sequence. I read "essential Term" as a recognition that the
enslavement of one group by another is inconceivable without the threat of
death, and therefore, the gallows are essential. But I also hear the
allusion to math/science, not as vague, but as quite BLATANT. Yet it is an
"against the grain" allusion.

A mathematical description of a phenomenon may include a term which is more
or less essential, in order for the description to provide a reasonable
measure of accuracy. But math is math. It is entirely descriptive, a
reductive model, if you will, of reality. And the terms of the description
are completely inconsequential to the reality, which proceeds oblivious-
like the Giant rob'd Beings- to any descriptive universe of terms.

And therein the rub, and the brillance of Pynchon...to the practitioners of
slavery, the gallows are an essential term of both the real and the
symbolic sort. Slavery is impossible without the constant threat and means
of execution.  In the minds of the slavers, however, the process has been
reduced to a calculation in human (in-human?) terms. The life of another
slave becomes the calculated price of doing business...plug in the numbers,
and decide how many and how often to kill, to keep the profit margin
reasonable.

To the enterprise of slavery the gallows are doubly essential- a real means
of enforcing slavery, and, as a "term" in the equation in the minds of the
slavers- an expression that has reduced real human flesh and blood to a
calculation.

jody