Crownshaw's PN article

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2000, Mark Wright AIA wrote:

> Howdy
> --- Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net> wrote:
> 
> > There was an exceedingly interesting footnote to the paper which by
> > its
> > very nature--it's about something P said outside the book--would be
> > of
> > interest to p-listers. However it's 14 lines and I don't know if I
> > should
> > reproduce it unless John K or someone sez it's OK.
> 
> It's OK.

Heh, heh, I was just thinking I might be violating a copyright
recklessly in plain view of the owners by reproducing more than what's
allowed under fair use--the extent of which I didn't know off the top of
my head. What I should have done was merely  summarize what seemed to me
an interesting footnote relating to P. It not earth shaking and some might
think it redundant but you can judge.

The author of the paper, Richard Crownshaw, feels it's possible
"to motivate" allegories he finds in GR "to register not just the absence
of preterite histories but the presence of their discontinuity." (this
being being a fine thing I judge in the cause of giving the Holocaust
victims a just representation) In making his claim however Crownshaw feels
obliged to cite something P once said that might indicate that P might
possibly be dubious about such a possiblity or then again might not. It
seems there was a 1968 letter in which P linked the genocide of the Herero
to that of the Jews in Hitler's Europe (not a surprising revelation of
course). This fact can be put together with the story in GR of the Hereros
led by Enzian who in searching for their historical origins get all
confused and search for V2 rocket technology instead getting involved in
the bargain with the discourses of fascism. How, Cranshaw wonders, is this
story to be read: Is it throwing into question the possiblity of
historicizing the Holocaust and more generally Nazism (what Cranshaw
would like) . Or is that P "has finally succumbed to the impossibility of
historical discontinuity." (contrary to Cranshaw)

The stuff in parentheses is my own ignorant explication. Hope I haven't
got things hopelessly muddled. 

			P.