IG Farben

[Terrance]

Richard Romeo wrote:
> 
> Reading a biography of Heinrich Himmler by P. Padfield--in the mid to late
> 30s, there was power struggle over the economic future of Germany, pitting
> the heavy industry old-guard like Thyssen, who favored open market
> competition, contacts outside Germany, a player in the world market vs, the
> upstarts, personified by the folks at IG Farben, who believed in German
> economic prowess through its practicing of economic self-sufficiency, less
> of reliance on foreign exchange, obviously enticing Hitler in his views on
> such acquisition of such resources through conquest and outright plunder.
> Could IG Farben's view on existing within such a closed system of power
> acquisition through aggression, outside the "normal" way of economic growth,
> be a parallel to the scientific evils so evidently outlined in GR, working
> within closed systems, to perpetuate an unatural kingdom of the dead?  Also,
> isn't IG Farben's insistence on such theories make it even more beholden to
> such nationalistic ideology? And how does this view fit in with Pynchon's
> treatment of IG Farben as a truly international corporation in GR--which
> seems to view Hitler as a convienent leader for the benefit of such economic
> views.  In other words, who was really the prime mover, or is it a question
> of the gray area that history will always be susceptible to, more of a
> meeting of like-minds.
> 
> Rich
>

More from that Oaky Law Review:

Spencer says, 

However, to regard I.G. Farben as simply a metaphorical
construct, or to categorically reject the presence or the
"They"-system, is both to deny the complexity of the
relationship between the historical and the fictional in GR,
and to ignore one of the key interpretive issues within the
novel, which has less to do with the existence of I.G.
Farben and the "They"-system than it has to do with the
nature of their agency and the kinds of power they impose.
As Enzian notes, "[t]here ARE things to hold to. None of it
may look real, but some of it is. Really." 


Spencer is right on here and note that in his essay he
follows Enzian about.

Burkett's essay notes the shift in VL. 


Vineland, however, marks a distinct shift away from
Pynchon's earlier concern with these relations between
ontology and agency. Indeterminacy does not lead to anxiety
of "agency panic" and thus to a "quest" for answers to the
question of agency. Rather than searching for the source of
control, characters in Vineland already know what the prime
mover and ordering force of the world is: power. More
specifically, the power of the State as it is wielded
through law enforcement. This, of course, does not decrease
the level of paranoia; it simply makes it justified, even
necessary. If, in Pynchon's earlier works the uncertainty
and ambiguity of the systems generates paranoia over the
interests, motives, and agents of power, Vineland presents
paranoia as a "proper" response to the arbitrarily applied
coercive, repressive power of the State as it is manifested
in the late twentieth century in the form of a highly
militarized and nearly omnipotent law enforcement apparatus,
"the state law-enforcement apparatus, which was calling
itself 'America.'"

As Hite notes, "Vineland is Pynchon's first novel to name
current political names," and it explicitly identifies these
names with the systems of domination the characters face. 

Pynchon's historical vision is a little broader and perhaps
more synchronic. As Pynchon layers the 1930s, 1950s, 1960s,
and 1980s through stories of various members of Frenesi's
family and their leftist political struggles, he does around
what appears to be a common logic of the State as primarily
interested in its own self-perpetuation by eradicating
dissent and eliminating the viability of alternative
possibilities for social organization. 

And while most of the force is a bit more subtle, operating
through representations rather than direct physical force,
not a paranoid fear, but a realistic, justified one, that
Pynchon identifies as the primary means by which law
maintains order. Because the law is not, and cannot be , a
fully autonomous, closed system that operates through the
impartial application of determinate rules, law is, at root,
a Weberian system of domination. But the most important
element of the "system" is not its ability to "rationally"
utilize a formal system of rules to pursue an arbitrary end
but rather the irrational "irrationality" of its operation,
the arbitrariness of its application by interested agents of
the law, couples with its ability to enforce constructions
of reality that can remove any sense of agency from its
subjects and canalize desire toward authority rather than
individual freedom. 

The true "genius" of the law is not its ability to conceal
the violence of its operations but rather its ability ton
take advantage of popular culture to make this unnecessary
by manufacturing a desire for the violence and force of
these operations. Thus, opposition is not rendered difficult
but erases from the field of desired possibilities.  


My own opinion is that there is no shift. 

Terrance