Osmosis & P's Gnostic Cosmoses

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

otto schrieb:

> That Pynchon's literature is postmodern and should be looked at with the
> postmodern toolbox. It's as simple as that.

  in these two sentences there are, according to my ever so humble opinion, at 
  least four mistakes. reminds me of that chick who once told me it's not 
  necessary to figure out what's actually happening in gr, since we all know 
  that this is a "postmodern novel" where content as such is not important ...  
  don't get started! you care about the content, i know. but i really cannot see 
  what's - beyond the act of naming - the use in making an ontological statement 
  on the nature of pynchon's literature (- "pynchon's literature is 
  postmodern"). i mean, both, frank o'hara (- like him a lot) and umberto eco, 
  have been called "postmodern", but there is, imo, not one little thing they 
  have in common. to put it a little simple: pynchon's literature is pynchon's 
  literature. "postmodernism" is a world-wide intellectual fashion whose 
  originality and fruitfulness can and should be questioned. & whatever 
  pynchon's literature, in terms of ontology, might be, i, hereby, allow you to 
  use  a n y  tool while having fun with it ... it's as funny as that.        

> "Pluralism is the key term of Postmodernism" (Wolfgang Welsch, "Unsere
> postmoderne Moderne," Weinheim 1991, Introduction, p. XV, eigene
> Übersetzung)

  welsch' title would be a good thing to start with: our postmodern modernity. 
  the structure of the modern society - which implements itself beyond a point 
  of no return between 1750 and 1850 - is basically one of functional   
  differentiation. the great functional systems like economy, science, politics 
  or art (- think of goethe's notion of "world-literature") are historical 
  mega-machines following their own logic without anything to stop them. this 
  hasn't changed with the violent history of the 20th century, and this also 
  hasn't changed with the upcoming of 'poststructuralist' philosophy. it's 
  just that the social "poly-contexturality" (gotthart günther) that came along 
  with functional differentiation needed some time to manifest itself on the   
  level of semantics. but blake's "urizen" is still the archon of our      
  'postmodern' modernity. as a synonym for "pluralist semantics" i might accept 
  the term "pomo", but there is definitely no such thing as "postmodernity" in  
  the sense of a "postmodern society". if you really need an adjective with     
  "post-", you may call the present age "post-fordistic late modernity". 

>
> > What are all these Jewish characters doing in V.?
> >
>
> Why is the major character of "Ulysses" an Irish Jew?

  perhaps because the jewish experience of being a stranger to society becomes 
  in modern times virtually the experience of everyone.

>  Why is German postwar culture so poor
> (and American so great and important)? All those Jews have gone or have been
> murdered - the Jewish impetus is missing.

  well, first thing i'd like to say is that i feel a little uneasy with 
  your implicit instrumentalization of the jewish people. it's not their job to 
  "refresh" gentile cultures, is it?! and then it's not quite true: adorno,   
  horkheimer, and bloch did return to germany. & there were or are also people 
  like jacob taubes, alphons silbermann, marcel reich-ranicki or peter zadek. 
  btw, since the wall came tumbling down the number of jewish people living in  
  germany has tripled up to about 90 000. mostly because of migration from 
  russia.       
 

> Monotheistic
> religions are necessarily logocentric (there is no exception),

   
    so this goes for 'decon' too?!  


> The Jewish nose, an old prejudice used even up to nazi-Germany cartoons.

  in one of his books, i assume it's "portnoy's complaint" or "the counterlife", 
  philip roth describes how the main character travels to israel for the first  
  time. looking around he sees many people with big noses and reports to the 
  reader something like "they all looked like having jumped out of antisemitic  
  cartoons ...". once met a guy who had just been to israel and was, & for a   
  non-jewish german this is quite understandable, somehow ashamed to tell me   
  about his astonishment that there were really so many people with big noses on 
  the streets. he thought it to be  j u s t  a prejudice having to do with the  
  resemblance of noses and genitals. talking about german-jewish relations, i 
  remember now that there is a provoking passage in "operation shylock" where 
  roth writes about the official return of the banished jews to berlin in the 
  year 2000: "our jews are back!" anyone for the page number? malign?     


> "The Lord's angel, Gebrail, dictated the Koran to Mohammed the Lord's
> prophet. What a joke if all that holy book were only twenty-three years of
> listening to the desert. A desert which has no voice. If the Koran were
> nothing, then Islam was nothing. Then Allah was a story, and his paradise
> wishful thinking."
> (chapter three, p. 83)

> Would you say that Pynchon is writing anti-Islamic here and thus just being
> more clever then Rushdie in leading a reclusive life?

  good question i asked myself too while reading the passage. 

> No, in being
> postmodern [- i'd say: "being an anarchist", kfl] he steps on any feet. 

  remains the question if trp would write this "islam was nothing" stuff 
  the same way today.  

>Declared Marxists have their trouble with
> his texts, with Postmodernism in general, too, like the Mystics and the
> Modernists.

  oh well, i consider myself to be something like a "post-marxist modernist   
  mystic", but i don't have more trouble with pynchon's texts than you should.


kai (- having, as far as i know, neither jewish nor irish roots)