Prosthetic Paradise(2) Enfetishment&MS

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

 What's going on with the men and the women here. Are the
men
mechanistic, rational, logical, controlling, strong,
masculine while the woman are scatter-brained, lovable,
irrational, weak and so on. Do all of those yin yang
dialectics function in GR or are they perverted, distorted,
displaced and subverted by the characters, their
perceptions, the environment 

(environment functions in GR as
it does in all of his earlier fiction, but with a radical
shift in metaphysical ethics),

 the dynamics of relationships of synthesis and control
(Blicero's here, warps the
narrative)and the narrator's complex ironic knottings into?
When Pointy, a "mad scientist", goes "nuts" and begins
to hear voices, the yin yang are inverted and separated
"yang and Yin"
 or, as they are represented in some schools of yin yang,
displaced,
rendering Not the dialectic, but an Agon or irreconcilable
conflict (Freud, for example). In any event, in Pointy's
(his for my example here) conception of the
Laboratory, the experimental terms of madness, paranoia,
madman, paranoid, only appear to have clear and distinct
meanings in the Lab or Lab view. Going back to the "idea of
the opposite" for a moment. If the opposite is weakened, a
composite contradictory behavior results--the
"ultra paradoxical phase." This result, seems to render the
Pavolvian binaries a reductionist's laboratory "rule" not
applicable to the world outside the Lab where the intricate
and complex constellation of character dynamics are not so
simply brought into focus under the microscope of Pavlovian
Laboratory micro perceptions and "laws" of behavior and
conditioning.
 So Pointy projects this micro Lab, this reductive
simplicity onto the
WAR. The War is a Lab, soldiers are very useful, foxes are
men, men are dogs, and Slothrop is "pure mechanism." The
irony twists and turns as the mad scientist is going mad.
He  thinks Slothrop is a perfect madman and the madness of
Slothrop's condition is in part a result of the his
conditioning in a "Lab." This is where Pynchon, with Eliot
like ironies and allusions beats James Joyce at beating the
critics into
maddening Oediapa like projections that "collapse" into
"indeterminacy" and fictional miasma, but there is in GR, in
this discovered indeterminacy (for example, Weisenburger's
wonderful discovery of the mandala and indeterminacy) a
center, IMhO, that can hold. More on this later. So the
weakening of the opposites affect characters and character
dynamics  so that, for example, Roger
Mexico is in a way a spokesman for the human qualities of
kindness and Love and, the search at least, for positive
beneficent value in Love. In Plato (now I'm really off the
deep end), madness is a "divine gift" or "blessing granted"
to Man and it flies in the face of what is only human and
the human analytical intolerance of that form of madness
that harmonizes polarities in Ritual and MYTH--religion.  In
GR these polarities are not often harmonized and the
opposites that are perceived are most often only reductive,
simplistic analogizations. So in regards to males and
females, we find that technology, in this simple polarity is
male and Nature is female and these we recognize as sexist
stereotypes of both technology and nature  and of
individuals. The relationships of male and female technology
and nature is a perversion, and analogy of male dominance
and female submission. Roger, so very important, is groping
towards freeing himself from both the process of analogizing
and the reduction of Love between man and woman to sexist
stereotypes. The stereotypes we find in GR, are of course
not simply sexist, but applied to race, religion, culture,
Nature,
and all of these stereotypes and the analogized extensions
of them are countered by Love. Love individuates in the
interest of harmonizing human equality. Love is not a
domination, but an equality. So Pointy or Blicero, are good
examples of men enamored with a view of the separate but
unequal provinces of male and female and both Enzian and
Polker, will, as they pull from the the warping forces of
Blicero, begin to throw off his views of sexual
relationships and the symbols associated with his view. I
wonder what those dear readers, our future YOU(s) will make
of these stereotypes if the current trend of erasing them
continues? Turning to Katje, we remember that she learned
from those that "use her" that the Rocket has been
"programmed
in a Ritual of Love.. at Brenschluss it is done--the
Rocket's purely feminine counterpart, the zero point at the
center of its target, has submitted." Here the female role
is clearly a stereotype of the submissive or subservient
mistress of Rocket masculine "love." But this is not love,
but a submissive, self negating, morbid dependency on
domination. So in the current grgr mix, we find Enzian, the
submissive school boy of whiteman-Blicero (twisting irony of
Pudding
and Katje and the inequalities of imperialistic ritual
participation) has discovered that "love" among the white
men is "masculine technologies, with contracts, with winning
and losing." That demands that he "enter the service of the
Rocket" an entire system won away from feminine darkness,
held against the entropies of lovable but scatterbrained
Mother Nature...citezenship in the Zone...understanding the
Rocket...understand truly his manhood..." Enzian's view will
also be tempered as he 
considers Blicero--the king of the death, the dominant
position in the hierarchy is 
proof of the alpha-male's masculinity, but of course Blicero
is in fact at the very top in an inverted cosmos where the
center of the earth is not Satan's domain (as it would be in
the elaborate christian structures of those great Mad
poets), but Nature's. And his view is also changed as he
gropes towards understanding the role the Herero may really
have in the Zone. Pointy in contrast, does not temper his
views, does not grope towards harmonizing polarities, but is
stuck in his sexist views of power and control. Seeing woman
as "empty little heads" and determined to beat the other
chap, at winning, knowing the System, he says, countering
Roger's insights, "It's work, that's what it is, and there
is no room for any EXTRA HUMAN anxieties--they only weaken,
EFFEMINIZE the will...und so weiter." Pointy needs to take a
few courses in feminist philosophy and read Bartleby, "I
prefer not to." ("Pynchon's ironic take on work and writers
is his Sloth essay). Weiter puts Pointy in Blicero's camp.
Polker is infatuated with this very thing--submission, as is
out dear racist, Marvy. Polker's view will be tempered and
change through the Death (an important non ironic positive
death) of his wife and the relationship with Ilse and as
with others, a clearer understanding of the other
Death--Blicero.