absinthe addled frog Was:Foucault

[calbert at tiac.net]

jbor:
> Simmons goes on to talk about Fausto, but I think there are 
parallels
> with the crumbling of ol' Pop Stencil's illusions about history, not
> to mention his personal identity, after the Vheissu experience. It
> might be the Foucault text you're after, at any rate.

Hi jbor,

What you have provided does indeed seem related to what I came 
across in the loo in Colorado. Thank you for wading through the 
piles to find it. 

I've checked out a Foucault bibliography which suggests that the 
only work which Pynchon MAY have had access to while writing V 
is Madness an Personality, published in 1954. I cannot be sure that 
the sentiments expressed in the passage you provided are reflected 
in this early work, but I gather from 3rd hand reports that
 
a) M&P does touch upon the "subjective" interpretation of such a 
condition, and he shares this concern with (or may even have 
adopted it wholesale from)  one Thomas Szasz

"Yet, most of the mentally ill have, indeed, nothing wrong with them
        that any diagnostician could observe-apart from the social 
behavior
        that forms the basis of complaint against them. And that 
behavior,
        which teachers, relatives, or administrative officials call 
"problem"
        behavior is a problem to the people who complain about it; not 
to the
        individual who is said to have the problem. For him, in his own 
life
        situation as he knows it, his behavior is functional. To call him
        "neurotic" or "psychotic," and the benefits he derives from his
        particular style of life "secondary gains," is to pass a moral-not 
a
        medical-judgment against him. "

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/foucault-
madness.html

(you must be a regsitered user of NYTimes site to access)

The above citation is from a 1965 review of Madness and Civilization
( I've requested that my friend in Colo send the book which triggered 
all this - I'll have it by the end of the week.) I'm using this as a proxy 
for the earlier work - assuming that principles in question remained 
constant between the first and second titles.

b)Foucault's theories appear to be extensions of exisiting debates 
rather than brand new avenues. Says George Steiner:

"Foucault has had an idiosyncratic, often solitary career. He has
        produced monographic studies of the diagnosis and treatment 
of
        mental illness from the 17th to the 19th centuries. These books 
took
        for their pivot the conception that mental health and illness are
        variables, conditioned by history and the model on which a 
given
        society operates. Sanity and madness determine each other in 
a
        constant dialectical reciprocity. The idea is not new, but 
Foucault
        brought to it an intense learning and breadth of philosophic
        suggestion........



In a grossly abbreviated form (the style of this book is intensely
        repetitive), this is, I think, a fair outline of Foucault's 
"archaeology."
        What does it amount to? 

        The first point worth making is that similar ideas have been put
        forward as long ago as Lovejoy and Whitehead. In its gloss on 
the
        reciprocities and symbolic codes of the Renaissance, 
Foucault's
        account agrees largely with that given in the brilliant, pioneering
        works of Frances Yates. But Miss Yates's investigations of the
        16th-century intellectual world are far more incisive and 
animate
        with a sense of magic. The notion of the episteme strikingly 
recalls
        Thomas Kuhn's well-known definition of "paradigms." By these 
Kuhn
        meant the projective models, part intuitive, part programmatic 
within
        and through which scientific revolutions occur. Joseph Mazzeo 
of
        Columbia and a host of other scholars have been investigating 
the
        interactions between the development of the biological 
sciences and
        the surrounding "world-picture." The close bracketing of 
linguistic
        communication and economic exchanges is, of course, the 
hallmark of
        Levi-Strauss. The choice of Nietzsche and Malarme as 
archetypal of
        the modernity of consciousness is, in current intellectual 
history,
        almost routine. "


http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/foucault-order.html


This is, in the current context, good news. It is very possible that the 
debate in which Foucault has played such a large part may be 
independent of his particular publication schedule. Thus Pynchon 
may well be exploring those very themes as elaborated by earlier 
investigators named by Steiner.

There is another debate which appears contemporaneuous - not to 
mention, related. It appears that the early 70's marked the "death-
knell" of a school of the philosophy of perception called "sense 
datum", which, to this layman, seems to be a component of the 
Foucaultian principle. Sense datum argues that

  "(W)hat we are presented with in perception, whether by means of 
sight or the other senses.......are actually subjective occurrences in 
our minds, variously labelled impressions, ideas, representations, 
experiences, or sense data."

"Can You Believe It?" Colin McGinn    pg.71
New York Review of Books 4/12/01

In a footnote, the author mentions a 1977 work by Frank Jackson, 
PERCEPTION: A Representation Theory

"which argues for a return to the sense datum theory of perception, 
(which) went so much against the grain when it was published - 
sense datum theorists had become virtually extinct by then."

The prevailing school? The very aptly named "naive realism" which 
holds that "there is nothing wrong with the common-sense view of 
perception after all."

Captain Hugh talks about Vheissu as a tattooed savage, suggesting 
that he never did glimpse its "soul". On a very superficial level this 
could be a hint of the debate between sense datums and naive 
realists both at the level of philosophy and lit crit. It remains to be 
seen whether or not Foucault has a place at this particular table.

love,
cfa