John Hamill's S&M

Paul Mackin pmackin at clark.net
Sun Feb 6 12:57:23 CST 2000



On Sun, 6 Feb 2000 Lycidas at worldnet.att.net wrote:

> "Looking Back on Sodom: Sixties Sadomasochism in Gravity's
> Rainbow" by John Hamill, Critique, Fall 1999, Vol.41, No1
> 
> This article is familiar to a few list members and is being
> discussed.  Be careful. Hamill makes several typical
> mistakes. First, note that he defines the S&M in terms of
> Baudrillard, Deleuze, Girard, and then says Pynchon goes
> beyond these etc. implying that the triangulation and so
> forth can be applied and expanded to account for Pynchon's
> characters and their relationships to the system. Hamill has
> got it wrong from the get-go because like so many academics
> he wants to include the above referenced texts. Without them
> his argument would only make a little sense based on a
> reading of GR and Pynchon.
> 

It's a well-known fact that P gets his theoretical S&M underpining not
from Baudriallard, but from Tom Lehrer:

I ache for the touch of your lips, dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.
You can raise welts
Like nobody else
As we dance to the masochism tango.

			P.




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