Quotation (Capitalism, Holocaust and the "free market")

KXX4493553 at aol.com KXX4493553 at aol.com
Tue Jul 25 16:52:19 CDT 2000


"Her (Katje's) performance of allegory connects the two wars and literally 
dramatizes the reasons for the construction of a continuous sense of History 
that masks the realiy of war. As Seed notes, this reality is the connection 
of IG Farben, the Holocaust and, eventually, the American military-industrial 
complex. The circulation and reproduction of capital is a seemingly natural 
and unstoppable dynamic that transgresses all social boundaries - eventually 
in the extreme form of warfare. The Holocaust, inextricable from Germany's 
contribution to war,  entails the expendability of Jews as well as other 
ethnic, religious, sexual and political victims. So, it is not just an 
economic narrative that underlines the orthodox and popular sense of History. 
Under the economic one is a narrative of genocide that does not seem to stain 
the antiseptic institutions and transactions of money. A sense of historical 
continuity from 1914 to 1945 is created to mystify the unacceptable economic 
determinants of war, and the even more unacceptable, genocidal cost or 
byproduct of reproducing capital."

Richard Crownshaw, Gravity's Rainbow: Pynchon's Holocaust Allegory, in: 
Pynchon Notes 42-43, spring-fall 1998, pp. 199-212, p. 202.




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