pyn quotes foucault?

[Paul Mackin]

From: 	Craig G. Bleakley[SMTP:cgbleak at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu]

Perhaps even more interestingly, Pynchon and Foucault both use the phrase
"signs and symptoms" in important, potentially compatible ways.  On Page 90
of The Birth of the Clinic, F. disourses on "*signs* and *symptoms*"
(italics in original); In GR, Leni also uses the phrase when attempting to
explain what's wrong with Franz's rebuttal to astrology: "Parallel, not
series.  Metaphor.  Signs and symptoms.  Mapping onto different coordinate
systems" (GR, P. 159).  I'll leave it to more knowledgeable folk to unpack
this stuff.


>>>>>>>Not to be too much of a party pooper, but leaving aside Foucault for a second, Leni's use  of "signs and symptoms" seems to me  quite straight forward in its own right within the context of the passage. She is arguing for parallel events and is citing examples. "Signs and symptoms" are an EXCELLENT example of an "outside" and an "inside." Or as Franz would have it a "here" and an "out there. 

Let me try to elucidate. Signs (in medical jargon) are what the diagnostician HEARS with his stethoscope or SEES on his X-ray. They are in other words objective facts about the patient viewed as as object. Symptoms on the other hand are WHAT THE PATIENT TELLS the doctor. That he feels dizzy, for example, or that her head hurts. It is very much in the realm of the subjective. Hence, an outside and an inside.

Damn good example, Leni. We only wonder how you came to know such things. Pynch could well know, and without resort to Foucault. Could easily have read it in a human physiology text, or maybe he knew some medical students at Cornell. Or the old family doc might have told the inquisitive young lad on some occasion.

None of this is to deny that the whole thing doesn't sound VERY Foucaultian.

				P.