Prosthetic Paradise(2) Enfetishment&MS

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Like Carl Barrington of "The Secret Integration", the more
V. functions as an abstract entity, the more she becomes
inanimate and non-human. The processes are co-extensive.
V.'s transformations (identity changes) are directly related
to the development of the major themes in the novel. These
major themes can be grouped under the term "enfetishment."
Enfetishment, is an ironic process because it invests the
inanimate with human characteristics and inanimates human
subtleties, first by divesting human characteristics through
reification and then reinvests them with pseudo-human
characteristics, turning them into fetishes in the process. 
They become artificial objects posing as humans, a poor
substitute for humanity, yet fully acceptable in the
decadent world or in Fausto's terms, a world "moving towards
non-humanity." This non-humanity is not, as so many have
argued, simply Pynchon's Borgs or Terminators,
human/machines, humans with plastic parts.  The process is
not mechanical and the humans are not machines, but are
humans in a world that no longer recognizes their humanity.
In his essay, "Is it OK to be a Luddite," Pynchon defends
science fiction, the luddite genre, the gothic, and in the
course of his defense, explains how his own fiction is
constructed and what his concerns are. His concern is not
machines, but humans. In V., Benny Profane has an imaginary
conversation with SHROUD about Elmira's junkyards and
Hitler's Auschwitz: "Remember, Profane, how it is on Route
14, south, outside Elmira, New York? You walk
and see the
setting sun on a junkpile. Acres of old cars. If I could
die, that's what my graveyard would look like."  

A few paragraphs after Benny's conversation with Shroud,
Esther has a conversation with Schoemaker: "You want to
change me into something I'm not," she argues. "In return he
could only argue a kind of Platonism at her." "It was her
soul, he loved." "her soul would be there on the outside,
radiant, unutterably beautiful." Platonism and the
unutterable beautiful Soul and Voltaire. What has Plato got
to do with machines and the soul? Yesterday in my comments I
said, Pynchon insists that Humans are not to be valued for
their usefulness, understood by their purposes, but for
their unique human elements and
antecedents. On this, Pynchon pulls away from Plato, Neo or
Christian Platonism. Though a dialectician, he rejects
Plato's dying words in the Phaedo, words that would, with a
blending of Aristotle and others, define the world and man's
place in it for thousands of years. Pynchon returns to the
philosopher Plato rejects in the Phaedo, Anaxagoras. Plato
argues for the beautiful, unutterable soul and  Reasoned
universe in
the Phaedo.  Anaxagoras argues what Pynchon calls in GR,
"scatter-brained mother earth." This use of the ironic
process of enfetishment is traditional in Satire and reminds
us that Pynchon is a Satirist in the tradition of some of
his more influential predecessors, like Swift (GT), Dickens
(HT), Conrad (HoD) and of course T.S. Eliot (WL). In any
event, in V. we see enfetishment functioning satirically, as
ironic comments on those that are dull of mind or
single-mindedly analytical. Is this a reader trap? 

TBC
more V.

PS Happy givings and thanks to all you U.S. American
Turkeys.

GR.110: "Or, had we but found savages on this island, the
bird's (Dodo)
appearance might have seemed to us no stranger than that of
the
wild turkey of North America. Alas..."