dialectics

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

People In Common wrote:

> 
> And I'm dubious about this use of the word dialectic.
> 
> As I understand the term, dialectics is the development and resolution of
> the (opposing) tensions in things, material and mental. It's the process,
> not the pairs of opposing assertions.  

Right ON! "Dialectic" is Plato's word --"Dialegesthai," to
talk WITH. So Plato's works take the form of dialogues. In
dialectic proper, the dialectician asks questions and
another answers them. The dialectician then, must work with
whatever answer he is given, and therefore the method of the
dialogue depends on Both questioner and answerer. Also,
since there are unlimited others, there can be No System of
the dialogues. 

Pynchon definitely uses that
> process, but he also includes unresolved opposite views and leaves us
> readers to take which side we will, maybe to resolve them dialectically.

YES! But how does this work? What does this tell us? It is
my vho that TRP is a dialectician. How do I know this? I
think
this can be determined quite easily by reading his prose.
Most revealing are the letter that Pynchon wrote on the
Herero and the Luddite essay.   What does this mean? Well,
not much, until we consider what kind of dialectician he is
and what the dialectic produces.  All of the
dialecticians--charaters and historical-- in GR are
satirized, including Marx.  


>          I notice that Terence omits Marx and his intellectual descendents
> from his list of dialecticians.  Being of that rescension myself, I
> primarily understand the word in a political-historical, rather than
> intellectual context.  I've always found a consistency of political
> alignment in the main narrative voice in GR and find no problem identifying
> Pynchon's political sympathies from this.
>          A friend, like myself of libertarian communist alignment, read GR
> for the first time a couple of years back.  It changed the way he saw the
> world, he said.  He didn't cease to be a marxist, but appreciating
> Pynchon's perceptions of things added another facet to his way of seeing.
>          It is common to use the Marx as sly racist quote to distance
> Pynchon from marxism but the exchange between Wimpe and Tchitcherine
> (p701)  IMO shows him to have a fine and sympathetic understanding of
> marxist dialectics.
> Message?

I omitted Marx in my recent comments, but I have discussed
him several times. I don't know if you or People In Common
are knew to the list, 
but I have also discussed several other
dialecticians here over the last 18 months,  including,
Plato,  Hegel, Pythagoras, Augustine,
Norman O. Brown, The Old and New Testaments, Tao Te Ching,
Yin Yang theorists, the Neo-Confucians, the Stoics,
Plotinus, the Christian NeoPlatonists,  Heidegger, Sartre
and
several others. Also, recently, last month or so, 
I discussed why the "racist marx"
passage can not be used to distance TRP from Marx in a
recent post. But I'm glad you brought up Marx and I would
love to hear more. Marx, and the other dialecticians are
satirized as part of Pynchon's overall satire of the West,
but Marx
& Christianity and the dialecticians are smashed harder than
almost any other group. Why is this? Their views of history,
 their views of man,  and of course, their views of god. 

We have different backgrounds (this is a big plus) and so we
often have different things in mind when we see a term like
"dialectic."  Also, sometimes a person writes 7+5=12 and
another writes 7+5=10, and it seems as though we have a real
incompatibility. And yet if the second person explains that
he is using the duodecimal system the incompatibility
disappears. 


The example I gave of how genre classification may be easier
to understand, if not accept, for a Science
person, if they consider the application of Aristotle's
classifications to Biology is applicable here too.  
Scientifically minded members may consider dialectic this
way: science progresses through the
unification of theories that were initially
seperate--celestial and terrestrial mechanics,
electromagnetism and optics, optics and mechanics, quantum
mechanics and field theory, and so on until all knowledge is
unified. 


Or, for the social scientists, this way: Dialectic can be
understood as opposed to
unresolvable conflict or elemental struggle. Freud is not a
dialectician. In his way of seeing things, neuroses, dreams,
taboos, jokes, religion, indeed civilizations are all the
result of conflicting forces.

Freud explains his view of civilization:

And now, I think, the meaning of the evolution of
civilization is no longer obscure to us. It must present the
struggle between Eros and Death, between the instinct of
life
and the instinct of destruction, as it works itself out in
the human species. This struggle is what all life
essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization
may therefore be simply described as the struggle for life
of the human species. And it is this battle of the giants
that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about
Heaven. 

Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

I am convinced that TRP had this quote written on the back
of his hand for a while or taped to his refrigerator door.
No, Not really. 





> 
>    How about "...and these are issues I reckon matter, and here, I've
> illustrated various aspects of them for you in  ways I think appropriate,
> and coz I dig intellectual games, I've buried a whole bunch of useful
> information for you to chew on. I've had a whole lot of fun putting it all
> together and hope you have as much following the threads.  A-and watch out
> for that minotaur."
> 
> Spencer:
> 
> >  What I am
> >searching for is a reason to seek out the knowledge which the lit-crits on
> >the list seem to be in possession.  The preterite will (should) always seek
> >the knowledge necessary to become the elect (wether lit-crits are elect is
> >up for discussion).
> 
>    There is no reason to seek out that knowledge.  Take their words and run
> with them.  The lit-crits may be better than you or I at untangling
> Pynchon's glorious tapestry, but determining the worth of each thread isn't
> something they have any monopoly on,and are just as likely as any of us to
> be right or wrong.  Another dialectic maybe...
> 
> Ciao fer now
> Mike the weave

As my friend Stanley says, You're Damn Skippy, which means,
Right on brother.