deconstruction

[Otto Sell]

----- Original Message -----

> In a message dated 12/12/2000 7:51:45 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> michael.baum at nist.gov writes:
>
> << What does "deconstruction" mean? >>

From: <JBFRAME at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 7:43 AM
Subject: deconstruction

> This is something we've been asking ourselves for months now.  It's an
> attempt to explore how words can say so many different meanings
> simultaneously.  For example:  LOVE   ( I love you, I love ice cream, love
> for sale, etc)  HATE  (I hate fascists, I hate scalloped potatoes...)
>

> Of course, this doesn't even scratch the surface

Indeed, to understand what Pynchon did a little more, requires a little more
extra reading every once in a while. And JB is right, we are talking about
this on this list again and again, necessarily in my opinion.
Michael, you should scan the list-archives for the threads: postmodernism,
pomo, poststructuralistPynchon etc. What is so nice about this list is that
there are some people who don't agree with postmodernism and criticizing it,
so guaranteeing that we keep discussing instead of deciding. And it turned
out that these critics of postmodernism on this list are fantastic experts
in literature in general, providing many useful hints and clues.

So kwp wrote last May:
"I agree with (...) that the times of postmodernism and deconstructivsm are
over. The reason for this is that "anything goes" has led us into the chaos
of the world economy of today." (19.05.2000)

(...) answered:
"Derridean deconstruction does not promote an "anything goes" but something
much more serious" and posted a month later this quote from Nicholas
Spencer's essay "The Law of Simulated War in Gravity's Rainbow", proving
that this has a lot to do with Pynchon's literature, but let me add, is not
limited to the question of war. To say that "Gravity's Rainbow" is about the
war would mean, as someone once put it, to say about Moby Dick: "So this guy
Ismael goes fishing":

"In its treatment of war Gravity's Rainbow shares many
features with poststructuralist theory, especially that of
Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard. Pynchon articulates the
post structuralist notion proffered by Michel Faucault,
Filles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and others that modern
societies are disciplined by military structures rather than
being ruled by law."

I could go on for this way for hours. But if you're really new into this you
should read this book. Others will follow by itself:

Jonathan Culler: "On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after
Structuralism," Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1982.

In the second chapter of Culler's book about Jacques Derrida you can read
about "Nietzsche's deconstruction of causality" which comes down to the fact
that when you feel a sudden pain the effect will be that you begin to look
for the cause. So temporarily the effect lies before the cause since you
are only able to look for the cause (the needle) after you have felt the
effect (the pain).
Thus the *intrinsic hierarchy of the binary opposition of "cause and effect"
is turned upside down. This is the core of Postmodernism. Postmodernism is a
synonym for Poststructuralism or Deconstruction.
In fact it's much more complicated (because deconstruction requires a second
step, isn't merely the upside-down turning of the opposites) but in the end
"stop making sense" makes sense because trying to makes sense makes no sense
any more.

The *intrinsic hierarchy of the binary oppositions:
One of the sides of a given binary necessarily claims the "elect" side of
the binary, standing above the preterite pole, being pre-like in cause and
effect- or the more important part
of the opposition, like God-devil, word-text, high-low, good-bad,
white-black, center-margin, homeland-colony, heaven/sky-earth, man-woman,
sense-absurd.
Even our language which consists of the binary opposition of signifier and
significate (F. de Saussure), thus our thinking too, works this way. there
would be no perception at all without the opposition of in-out.

Some people complain that this is merely a play with words but going along
the line of those texts which relate to each other like all serious texts
relate to each other in some way I came to the conclusion that these guys
are right -- we live in such a world of binaries.

Pynchon is heavily relying on, playing with these binaries, reversions,
conversions, doublings and so on in most of his fiction so you truly miss
something if you're not keeping it in mind along the reading. So Dave's long
post on Berube is just along the line and important.

"And this brings us finally to a crucial feature of Pynchon's cultural
politics: Gravity's Rainbow's myriad "deconstructions"--of myth and
fiction, use and mention, elect and preterite, original and replication,
Us and Them, reality and fantasy, war and peace--are not simply a matter
of indeterminacy and free play, for as Pynchon and Derrida know,
"deconstructed" dualisms are not made inoperative by their
deconstruction.... we are not absolved from determining the political
work performed by such ideas as "cause," "origin," and "war" just
because they do not "really" have the priority attributed to them ...."

mmmh, really liked that . . .

And here is the answer to your question from Michael Berube: Deconstruction
is a discursive register that is undoing hierarchies of various binary
oppositions:

"What is possible in one discursive register--undoing hierarchies of cause
and effect or elect and preterite--may be wholly inappropriate to another."
(234-5)

There are claims that other-than-postmodern readings of Pynchon are possible
(like in that last sentence of that quote), but I'm really not quite sure
about that because all of Pynchon's fiction is not written along the theory,
but the theory has developed along the line of those novels of those writers
like Pynchon, Gaddis and other cornerstones of postmodernism.
For example what do you do with a textpiece like this (additionally one has
to read episode 34, pp. 336-359 of Gravity's Rainbow) from episode 68 (pp.
700-706) without deconstruction?

Young Tchitcherine was the one who brought up political narcotics. Opiates
of the people.
Wimpe smiled back. An old, old smile to chill even the living fire in Earth'
s core. "Marxist dialectics? That's not an opiate, eh?"
"It's the antidote." (.)
"The basic problem," he proposes, "has always been getting other people to
die for you. What's worth enough for a man to give up his life? That's where
religion had the edge, for centuries. Religion was always about death. It
was used not as an opiate so much as a technique-it got people to die for
one particular set of beliefs about death. Perverse, natürlich, but who are
you to judge? It was a good pitch while it worked. But ever since it became
impossible to die for death, we have had a secular version-yours. Die to
help history grow to its predestined shape. Die knowing your act will bring
a good end a bit closer. Revolutionary suicide, fine. But look: if History's
changes are inevitable, why not not die? Vaslav? If it's going to happen
anyway, what does it matter?" (GR, 701)

In fact this is deconstruction of religion and marxism at the same time in a
small piece of text. Traditionally interpreted this is simply a reference to
a well-known Marx-quote. This is the difference.

Otto