GRGR(24): Tchitcherine, Wimpe, Marxism, and you

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Well, except for a slight problem, I would have said Vasclav was merely
> alluding to dialectical materialist thinking under which any
> intentionality  behind an historically significant act (that which might
> occupy 'the time between' and could be pure or impure) is
> irrelevant.  Only the significant action itself (say, the blowing up of
> the bridge that saved the battalion) has meaning.

Right, that seems right to me. 


> 
> Problem is, why does Vasclav expressly deny the Marxist angle and
> seemingly putting it into the realm of subjectivity? Reverting to
> bourgeois morality.
> 
> Dunno.
> 
>                 P.


Not sure what you are saying here Paul, could you explain.
Is it the comment, "No. Real to himself" GR.702.6, That you
are referring to when you say the realm of subjectivity? 

If so, I think part of the answer might be Death. Two
things, first, Pynchon is smashing dialectal History (Marx
and Co.) again, and two,  Tchicherine has had a death bed
conversion [GR.704], only he's not a god fearing man now,
he's a death fearing, no, not fearing, denying man. Only,
not that there is "life after death", but another opiate,
another comfort "in the dialectical ballet of force,
counterforce, collision, AND NEW ORDER (my caps)." Tch's
Theory of History, is "the cold comforts" Tch has  exchanged
for "a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage" of
Marxist opium, or Oneirine, a haunting denial of Death. 

To tie it back, we can say that the "other" 

(Tch. has an other, a half black brother, Enzian, the half
black "brother" of Slothrop)

 embodies or carries those aspects of human experience that
are either "successfully" repressed or to which human
consciousness has submissively abandoned itself. 

 Enzian is the "black version of something inside of himself
[GR.499] that Tch needs to liquidate, Exlax, oh, no, yes,
the intestinal oven where death is quite literally in life,
a situation we discover is reversed in the novel in
Slothrop's Schwartzphanomen, which as Tch says,
"choreographs [Slothrop]" with unyielding discipline and
control.  

"Mine's always trying to destroy me. We should be exchanging
those, instead of uniforms." [GR.513]