Osmosis & P's Gnostic Cosmoses

[Terrance]

Michael Baum wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 11:08:33 -0600, Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> >less-than-deconstructive (though, certainly, appealing, and a reading
> >I've made myself) reading of that Pynchonian deconstruction of the
> >Elect/preterite binary, but also because of that perhaps
> 
> What does "deconstruction" mean?

What Dave Monroe posted: 

... but I do think the tendency to read Pynchon as
valorizing gnosticism
stems not only from a slightly less-than-nuanced,
less-than-deconstructive (though, certainly, appealing, and
a reading
I've made myself) reading of that Pynchonian deconstruction
of the
Elect/preterite binary, but also because of that perhaps
less-than-nuanced, less-than-deconstructive as well
straightforward
association of the heretical, of gnosticism, with
"dissidence," with
Pynchonian dissidence, whatever that might be, esp. in light
of those
fabled, dissident 60s

And later Posted: 

... which is, of course, to ask, in what context is the text
being
deconstructed, well, being deconstructed?  And so forth ...

de·con·struc·tion:  n. A philosophical movement and theory
of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions
about certainty, identity, and truth, asserts that words can
only refer to other words, and attempts to demonstrate how
statements about any text subvert their own meanings: “In
deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be
found in the actual text, but only in the various, often
mutually irreconcilable, ‘virtual texts’ constructed by
readers in their search for meaning” (Rebecca Goldstein).
--de”con·struc“tion·ism n. --de”con·struc“tion·ist n. & 
adj.

AHD

Deconstruction, as defined above is a concept. It is a
concept used in critical theory.
It is a strategy.   It is a strategy applied to writing
generally, and to literature in particular, whereby systems
of thought and concepts are dismantled in such a way as to
expose the divisions that lie at the very heart of meaning
itself. If interpretation is a process designed to reduce a
text to some kind of 'order', Deconstruction seeks to
undermine the basis upon which that order rests.
Deconstruction challenges the notion that all forms of
mental and linguistic activity are generated from within an
autonomous 'center', advancing the more disturbing
proposition that such centers are themselves to be grasped
textually only as rhetorical constructions.  It is also
defined as a philosophical movement and it  has a long
philosophical pedigree, and although it is often associated
with a bunch philosophers, usually Derrida is the first bead
on the string that includes Lyotard, Baudrillard &c., this
threading bias fails to account for the rich diversity of
styles and schools that form contemporary philosophical
culture. However, this is the case with any school or style
let alone the latest, the BIG, the Terms, like Modern,
Gnostic, Dialectic, and so forth, and while I'm sure that
Deconstruction is what you are asking us to define, I hope
you did not expected anything more than a change of Subject.
Deconstructing my own argument here, well maybe not... no
meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the
various, often mutually irreconcilable, ‘virtual texts’
constructed by readers in their search for "meaning."  I ask
you Dear Reader to search Nietzsche's text, Beyond Good and
Evil, the String or Thread in my Dear Writer's Head, here it
is trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York Vintage Books, 1966),
par. 20, p. 27. 

"That individual philosophical concepts are not anything
capricious or autonomously evolving, but grow up in
connection and relationship with each other: that however
suddenly and arbitrarily they appear in the history of
thought, they nevertheless belong to a system as all the
members of the fauna of a continent--is betrayed by the fact
that the most diverse philosophers keep filling in a
definite scheme of possible philosophies...."

What has all this to do with TRP and the American Novel, I
mean the girl on the bus on her way to get a nose job, I
haven't the big dust cloud over the American night of a
chance of guessing at, but 

as we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of
the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers
waving and yelled and talked excidedly...He was simply a
youth tremendously excited with life...because he wanted so
much to live...And a kind of holy lightening I saw flashing
from his excitement and his visions, which he described so
torrentially that people in buses looked around to see the
"overexcited nut." 

			JK, On The Road