MO's Visions on the Shuttle.GC

[Otto Sell]

>Pynchon's characteristic amalgamation of religious and scientific material
(...) cannot be understood by extra-textual
reference.<

I agree if I may put an *only* between *understood* and *by*.

Isn't "Pynchon's amalgamation" something that can be compared to/is putting
the emphasis on -  the modernization process described by Weber which
"systematically displaces religious  institutions, beliefs, and practices,
substituting for them those of reason and science" - only that Pynchon does
so to make us aware of what had happened (and how) - sometimes inverting the
process in his fiction like for example re-introducing superstition into
science and bureaucracy (GR 33), showing that the effort to eliminate all
fairytales, establish the exclusiveness of scientific knowledge, is a
fairytale in itself, the former "esoterical" knowledge being replaced by the
scientific knowledge which becomes esoterical itself by being "restricted to
scientifically trained elites" - every knowledge restricted to a certain
group can be called esoterical structurally even if its *content* is called
scientific. No doubt that this is betraying the beautiful and important
original impuls of the Aufklärung ("enlighten themselves about their world
and govern their behaviour"). I always thought that one of the "messages"
out of this is that it's inevitable in human societies.

Is Pomo maybe amalgating pre-modern and modern? Terrance will maybe say no
but amalgam, fusion are typical postmodern expressions (like oscillation and
frequency too, there are always poles mixed or inverted) explaining literary
techniques V. foregrounds. A literature that is aware of its intertextual
and intercultural relations and correspondences - trying to use it
consciously, not unconsciously like in pre-modern literature or rejecting
all old forms like some modernism did in search of the pure symbol. Every
TEXT is an amalgam of texts before it which where amalgams of earlier TEXTS
themselves. I deeply agree with Dave Monroe here.

Otto
PS to Dave Morris: DeNiro as elected personnel to complain to . . . I could
agree. What's his e-mail-address?

----- Original Message -----
From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2000 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: MO's Visions on the Shuttle.GC

----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 2:32 AM
Subject: Re: MO's Visions on the Shuttle.GC