Pornography & Technics & Death

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> I do seem to remember the text attempting to answer this question
> but am a little foggy on that at present. It does occur to me that
> since porno IS itself a technology of a sort--in that it manipulates
> nature (the naturally occurring sex drive)--that the word is not simply a
> metaphor for writing and analysis but for technology in general.

Yes, I think Pynchon's Luddite addresses this. Perhaps the
passage you are searching for is GR.167 ('life' ) or GR.567
("imitation of flight")? The technological quest (the cure
for cancer with computers, Luddite) creates a pornography
through imitation that is confused with AND substituted for
what it imitates. 


In terms of a ship of fools or damned. either or and but
not, some kind of paradoxical dialectic involving the law of
contradictions I guess, but  take one side at a time, a ship
of the damned I say.