GRGR Finale Re: Homophobia in GR?

[jbor]

----------
millison:

> How free is the colonialized individual in the power of a
> high-ranking representative of the oppressing Authority, I wonder.

     *We make Ndjambi Karunga now, omuhona . . . a whisper, across
     the burning thorn branches where the German conjures away energies
     present outside the firelight with his slender book. He looks up
     in alarm. The boy wants to fuck, but he is using the Herero name
     of God [...] to the boy Ndjambi Karunga is what happens when they
     couple, that's all; God is creator and destroyer, sun and darkness,
     all sets of opposites brought together, including black and white,
     male and female . . . and he becomes, in his innocence, Ndjambi
     Karunga's child (as are all his preterite clan, relentlessly, beyond
     their own history) here underneath the European's sweat, ribs, gut-
     muscles, cock (the boy's own muscles staying fiercely tight for what
     seems hours, as if he intends to kill, but not a word, only the long
     clonic, thick slices of night that pass over the bodies). (100)

> Even without GR's colonial setting, the psychodynamics of sexual use
> and abuse of young people by adults -- which is a motif throughout
> GR, after all, via Slothrop and Bianca, Pokler and his "daughter" --
> makes it very difficult to assert with confidence that the younger
> person is acting freely, without coercion, not under duress.

See above.

> Seems
> clear to me that Pynchon wants to highlight this, when he chooses to
> characterize Enzian as a minor,

A Western legal category. Irrelevant in the context.

> not an adult, jailbait,

A colloquialisation of the same category. Still irrelevant.

> rather than
> make him an adult homosexual male

A Western psycho-social category. Irrelevant in the context.

> freely consenting

Again, see quote from the text above.

> (although even as
> an adult, he would be a colonial subject

Of the Weimar Republic. What does this have to do with the personal
relationship depicted?

> in that particular power
> relationship with Weissmann/Blicero).

Textual evidence? Colonialism and sexual choice are two separate things
entirely.

> There's no reversal, not in any
> kind of practical sense that would prevent Gottfried from serving as
> sacrificial victim,

      Gottfried kneels, numb, waiting. *Blicero is looking at him*. Deeply:
     his face whiter than the boy has ever seen it. A raw spring wind beats
     the canvas of their tent. It's near sunset. In a moment Blicero must go
     out to take evening reports. His hands rest near a mound of cigarette
     butts in a mess tray. His myopic witch's eyes, through the thick
     lenses, may be looking into Gottfired's for the first time. Gottfried
     cannot look away. He knows, somehow, incompletely, that he has a
     decision to make . . . that Blicero expects something from him . . .
     but Blicero has always made the decisions. *Why is he suddenly
     asking . . . *    (724.10)

> nor that would undo the crimes that have burdened
> Enzian and his Herero brethren.

Crimes committed 25 years earlier by an entirely different regime to the one
Weissmann represents (316-318; *V.* 245).

> The exploiters prevail, after all,
> and we're all waiting for the missile death as a result, when the
> novel closes. And Pynchon only escapes to tell us.

I'm still here. So are you, it appears.
>
>>Readings which appear to isolate and see implicit vilification of one or
>>another of these groups appear to me to be coming at the text with such
>>prejudices and stereotypes already in place [snip]
>
>
> A fancier way to call somebody a bigot.

Well, no. Although it does throw your recent remarks about Holocaust denial
and neo-Nazism into rather stark relief. I have not once called Terrance a
bigot. However, I have absolutely no compunction about calling you a
hypocrite, QED.

>  Cool. I've been faithfully
> following Terrance's posts ever since he started writing on
> Pynchon-L, and it seems to me that his critique encompasses all of
> GR's sexual and power relationships. I wouldn't say he's singling out
> homosexuality for a critique that doesn't also apply to other forms
> of sexuality in the novel. An even-handed approach, you might say.
>
>