Prosthetic Paradise (was Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1012

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:
> 
> TF:
> > OK, but this reader-orientated approach, very popular
> > today,  is only one approach. And while those that advocate
> > this approach are quick to dismiss other approaches that
> > claim privilege, the reader-orientated approach refuses to
> > acknowledge that it too claims privilege, right?
> 
> Well, no, such an approach can comfortably accommodate all the other
> approaches within its gambit. But I guess in a sense it does also
> reclaim the individual reader's privilege, so that, rather than turning
> Pynchon's fiction into some esoteric board game for which only one
> critic holds the answer sheet -- as the critic in question (and you?)
> would have it -- your common and/or garden p-lister type can have a shot
> at interpretation and analysis of the literary text as well.
> Democratisation of the reading process, you see.

An approach that can comfortably accommodate all other
approaches is sometimes called Pluralism (there are
different kinds and degrees of Pluralism, for
example,critical pluralism, but Pluralism is Not
relativism), but I'm not sure if this is what you have in
mind. Pluralism can accommodate "Postmodern" sophism
(sophistic not as the term is often used in a pejorative
sense, but without the negative connotation, principally
derived from Plato and Aristotle's poor representation of
the Sophists), Classical and Neo Classical (the mirror
reflecting or imitating to various degrees "reality" where
the author and the reader are relegated to the periphery,
the Post-Lockean period of waning confidence in an ordered
universe with its emphasis on the Poet and his/her
sensibilities (the Romantic Poets) where the traditional
mimetic view shifted to Art as expression, Formalism,
reader-orientated criticism, reader response, even extreme
subjectivism or Freudianism and the like.  When you say,
"reclaiming the reader's privilege," this includes the
reaction against New Criticism, I assume, both its aesthetic
theories and the social-political implications). My approach
does not favor the individual or sophistic perspective, nor
the perspective that eliminates the knower from
perspective--the scientific or objective, and questions the
divine or revealed perspective and allows that the knower
constitutes his/her own perspective, but does so in a way
that is valid for all knowers. This approach results NOT in
an infinite multiplicity of personal readings or views, but
results in a multiplicity of independent and impersonal
disciplines. This approach is known to philosophers through
the great founder of disciplines, Aristotle. Now, I have
only touched on perspective, so I won't ramble on here until
you have an opportunity to reply. Also, I think the heart of
our disagreement is not simply how a text may be viewed, but
the primacy of the reader and the act of reading and or
interpreting a text. When I say "Pynchon insists" I know
that those that hope to vindicate the importance of the
reader (some award the reader the reflected glory of
duplicating the author's creativity) grit their teeth and
think I should change my middle initial to S, as in T.S.,
but I assure you that I do not share Eliot's critical views,
much as I admire his Poetry. When I say Pynchon insists that
humans should not be treated as machine parts, as means to
an end, as slaves, I am offering my opinion, I insist that
Pynchon insists. I guess you don't think Pynchon insists on
anything, but I am not sure of your position. I believe
Pynchon is a Satirist and I contend that he takes moral
positions and that I can support my beliefs with my
interpretations.  

> 
> But, you've got it all back to front anyway. The process of literary
> communication has never been a one way conduit. It is a fallacy to
> insist that it is. The meaning event transfer is miraculous and unique
> at each new manifestation. Pynchon's literary mode recognises and
> foregrounds the absolute ambivalence of the word-as-text.

Not sure what your saying here. The meaning "event" transfer
sounds like the active reader manifesting the work? The
world is not a text nor is it all the texts in the world. I
think Pynchon "insists" on this in GR, I'll explain this if
you like. 


> > it seems odd that you quote
> > Hite, while attacking others, unnamed, for doing what she
> > does in her book. Would you like examples? Or is this not an
> > important point?
> 
> "Attacking"?! It's neither odd nor germane as far as I'm concerned but,
> hey, you knock yourself out.

This is a rather bold statement and I don't think it at all
fair or accurate, you wrote: 


Like those devout fools who will seek a soul
in ev'ry stone, or the paranoid and indefatigable
unravellers who
"discover" Geli Raubal or Theolonius Monk or JFK or King Zog
of Albania
in whichever oddly-named fictional character in Pynchon's
cast, all on
the most tenuous of evidence, in V. and Lot49 Pynchon
actually
consciously parodies the conspiracy theory genre, a label
with which his
own fiction -- ironically, and quite erroneously -- has
often since been
tagged.


> 
> best
> 
> CLEARING THE BACKLOG
> 
> > Are you claiming that Technology does not exist without the
> > human intent that drives it?
> 
> Er. No.

Your argument was a very good one,  you wrote:

The earliest humans painted on cave walls with their fingers
in order to
communicate with the gods/future generations, and thereby
transcend
personal mortality. The pen is simply a technological
extension of this
basic human need, or desire.

> 
> > Would you also say that "nature" is a meaningless term apart
> > from our will to define it?
> 
> Um.

The extension theory of technology usually makes this claim. 



> 
> > How can a hammer use a man? Do you mean man using machines
> > to use men?
> 
> Isn't a man using a hammer the definition of a simple machine? 

This is why I said we would need to define tools, machines,
machine tools, technology, technological activity and so on.
Reuleaux's definition of a machine is too limited: "A
machine is a combination of resistant bodies so arranged
that by their means the mechanical forces of nature can be
compelled to do work accompanied by certain determinant
motions": for it fails to include the large class of
machines operated by man-power of which a non-automatic
hammer is not. A simple carpenter's hammer, even if the
carpenter is the extending Heidegger on an existentialist's
ladder, is a tool. 

Isn't the
> equation something like this: Man + tool = machine ? 

Tools and machines differ in the degree of independence of
operation from the skill and motive power of the operator:
the tool lends itself to manipulation, the machine to
automatic action. A hammer is a tool, a printing press is a
machine. 


If the human
> environment has been changed by the advent of technology to the point
> where unless a man learns to use this hammer he will no longer be able
> to function and prosper in this environment, can we not then say that
> there has been a shift, and that rather than humans using the tools they
> are, in a sense, beginning to use us.

I don't think so. what would be an example of a machine
using a man? 

> 
> > Often said to be a Luddite essay, concerned with the borg,
> > but read it and you decide. What does Pynchon say about man
> > and machine?
> 
> It is important not to overlook the fact that the smashing of the looms
> was not a gesture directed at the technology per se, but at the
> oppressive labour relations with which it came hand in hand, and which
> it could thus conveniently symbolise. I think Pynchon makes this quite
> clear in the essay.


Yes he does. 
> 
> Good stuff on "enfetishment" in V. Thanks.

Since we are in the Dora chapter, I will turn to tourism is
V. and continue with this.