Liberation? (was Re: Cutting ... )
Dave Monroe
monroe at mpm.edu
Tue Sep 5 10:24:42 CDT 2000
... and speaking of that Toiletship, note the "S-curved spokes on the peep-show
machines" (V450/B525), cf. not only that integral sign above, but those "cast-iron
pulleys whose spokes are shaped like Ss" (V4/B4) ... but what I'm still curious
(an ineteresting word in this context ...) about is that seemingly pointed (but
how? at what?) use of homosexuality, esp. in re: domination and submission, in
Gravity's Rainbow. Not only those "175s," that camp (no puns where none intended
...) Russian guard, the "polymorphously perverse" ((c) Herbert Marcuse, here, at
least) Thanatz (also (c) Herbert Marcuse, here, I believe), Weissmann/Blicero 'n'
Enzian 'n' Gottfried (and what happened to Gottfried after that "final delta-t"?
He got(t) fried ...), and so forth and so on ...
But, esp., @ the end of the 3rd section, @ V616/B718, "the foreplay is a game
about who has the real power, about who's had it all along," "It wasn't always
so. In the trenches of teh First World War, English men came to love one another
decently, without shame or make-believe,under the easy likelihoods of their sudden
deaths," "some poor hope that may have helped redeem even mud, shit, the decatying
pieces of human meat," "while Europe died in its own wastes, men loved," "But the
life-cry of that love has long since hissed away into no more than this idle and
bitchy faggotry. In this latest War, death was no enemy, but a collaborator.
Homosexuality in high places is just a carnal afterthough now, and the real and
only fucking is done on paper...."
Can't help but reall Michel Foucault on classical homosexuality, dominance and
submission therein indeed inscribing power relationships, perhaps primarily about
power relationships (The Use of Pleasure, methinks, in particular). But, given
that Gravity's Rainbow was written over the decade roughly 1963-73, published not
very long after those landmark Stonewall riots (1969) which in particular brought
the Gay Rights movement to public attention, the use not only of a number of
homosexual characters but of a number of gay stereotypes as well (camp, B&D, S&M,
you name it), but the seemingly crucial placement of the passage cited above seems
to make homosexuality Very Important Indeed here. Question is, how, why, to what
end(s), with what effect(s)?
Can't help but think how phrases like "the gay nineties" or "Gay Paree" or "The
Gay Science" would suddenly take on new, unintended, certainly, but inevitable,
nonetheless, connotations ...
Terrance Flaherty wrote:
> Thank you for butting in. Yes, all plausible explanation. A
> regular motif (we can trace it back to the Short Stories),
> loneliness, feelings of being close to death and most
> Alive. These are all quite plausible and make good sense to
> me, but I think there is something else as well. What I
> propose does not conflict with your three here. These three
> might also support jbor's suggestion that Weissmann's open
> homosexuality is one of the reasons that "At the top of the
> complex is Schutzhaftlingsfuher Blicero." [GR.666] However,
> I think there is another explanation provided by the text:
> Who else COULD (my capitalization) the 175's have chosen for
> their oppressor? His power is ABSOLUTE (my capitalization)
> [GR.666]. Remember that Their greatest and most insidious
> artifice is the lulling of people into a false sense of
> freedom. The 175s do indeed feel close to death, in fact,
> they Worship it. The phantom SS command here is based not so
> much on the one prisoners knew at Dora as on what they
> inferred to be the Rocket-structure next door. This
> page--666--is worth reading real close.
>
> True, he is called their "brother elite" and this goes, I
> think to jbor's point, but it is Death that they worship,
> these guys are a counter culture, a collective of brothers,
> but they have been sickened, kinda like those Africans and
> many others in the Zone.
> I'll write more on this later, but I gotta go now. Thanks
> for butting in.
>
>
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