Sanders, "The Politics of Literary Reinscription ..."

[Dave Monroe]

>From Mark Sanders, "The Politics of Literary Reinscription in Thomas 
Pynchon's V.," Critique, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Fall 1997), pp. 81-96 ...

Treaties between a colonial administration and nonliterate native subjects 
were typically sites of misunderstanding, places of translation from one or 
more language to another as well as antagonostic meeting palces for the 
written and the oral.... Treaties were thus, in the context of their 
contestation, open to interested interpretations, enabled in part by the 
exploitation of an awareness of the interpretive problems associated with 
treaties ....  The 1923 report [Report of the Commission Appointed to 
Enquire into the Rebellion of the Bondelzwarts] reproduces, in English, a 
letter signed by Jacobus Christian, leader of the Bondelzwarts, who had 
understood that "if those men [Abraham Morris and four others] surrender 
every thing will be forgiven and forgotten" ([Report] 18). (87)

The administration used various tactics to distance itself from the 
reconciliatory remarks transmitted to, or at least received by, Jacobus 
Christian. (88)

... the letter does not constitute a treaty, only a prelude to one. (88)

... the Bondelzwarts viewed the initial wrong as collectively inflicted.  
Laying down the law, in feigned ignorance, is willful misunderstanding.  The 
administration effectively dismisses the Bodnelzwarts' claims as 
fabrications.  Although entertaining different interpretations of a written 
document (Christian's letter), the government defends its orginal actions. 
(88)

Pynchon parodies that defense in V. as he begins his account of the 
Bodelzwarts uprising ....  The 1923 Report supplies not only the historical 
facts but is the verbatim source of Van Wijk's words in V.:

[these passages are side by side in Sanders' text, with similarities 
helpfully italicized, but ... and I've inserted a few ellipses myself here, 
to save time, to accentuate similarities, so ...]

   "What's happened."
   "That was the location superintendent at Guruchas.  Apparently, they 
caught up with Morris, and a Sergeant van Niekirk tried an hour ago to get 
him to come in to Warmbad peacefully.  Morris refused, van Niekirk placed 
his hand on Morris's shoulder in token of arrest.  According to the Bondel 
version ... the Sergeant then proclaimed 'Die lood van die Goevernement sal 
nou op julle smelt.'  The lead of the Government shall now melt upon you.  
Poetic, wouldn't you say?
   "The Bondels with Morris took it as a declaration of war...." (V., p. 
232) (89)

  In the afternoon Van Niekirk returned to Guruchas ....  He ... saw Morris 
and after some convesation during which he denied being unwilling to go to 
Warmbad and repudiated any knowledge of teh statements contained in 
Jacobus's letter, Van Niekirk then placed his hand on Morris's shoulder in 
token of arrest.  The Bondelzwarts now interfered and reiterated their 
unwillingness to allow Morris to be arrested.  Threatening actions, gestures 
and words followed ....  Native witnesses aver that the phrase used against 
them was "die lood van die Goevernement sal nou op julle smelt." (Literal 
translation: "The Government's lead will now melt upon you").... the 
Bondelzwarts believed that the Government had by the words used by Van 
Niekirk declared war on them.... (1923 Report 14-15 ...) (89)

The report does not dispute the fact that the hand of Van Niekirk came to 
rest on Morris's shoulder, or that this gesture was a "token of arrest."  
That is all the gesture emant, the report claims.  It was not also, as the 
Bondelzwarts averred, a declaration of war by teh South African governemnt.  
Nor was any statement relating to smelting or forging made: the Bondelzwarts 
are the ones who have ingeniously forged significance, wrought a token of 
war from a random combination of words sent forth in the air: "Van Niekirk 
and the Native Constable who accompanied him emphatically deny any such 
statement, or any collocation of words which could be interpreted into any 
such statemnet was ever made and it may be that this phrase was coined 
afterwards by teh extremists who used it to strengtyhen their case" (1923 
report 15).  The authority of the native informant is added to make the 
story stick.  In laying down the law, they all maintain that only the 
individual must pay the penalty.  Yet the tribe answers. (89)

[hm ... "Native Constable" ... cf. Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?    See 
perhaps Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Race-Ing toward a 
White Future (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1998)]

Pynchon leaves no doubt that the conflict, at least as it is understood in 
the paranoid and possessive minds of the white settlers, is one that takes 
place between groups, rather than individuals and an impartial judicial 
system. (90)

In figuring the white response in terms of the Von Trotha genocide, Pynchon 
is both engaged in historical reconstruction and submitting, in a highly 
mediated way, other frames for giving an account of events. (90)

... which reminds me as well, Paul Verhoeven's leftist filming 
against-the-grain of Robert Heinlein's rightist Starship Troopers.  In the 
film, at least, it is never necessarily clear that the asteroid strike on 
buenos Aires which starts the Terran/Klendathu (Human/"Bug") war was a 
purposive alien hostile strike.  Might just as well have been a random, 
natural collision, for all anyone knows.  It's not as if the humans could 
communicate with the "Bugs" ...

Anyway, there's also a particularly complicated reading of that Herero woman 
who seemingly thanks her murderer in Chapter 9 of V., which has its source 
in the 1918 Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and their Treatment 
on Germany, also consulted by Pynchon (again, see the "Letter to Thomas F. 
Hirsch" in David Seed's The Fictional Labyrinths of thoams Pychon).  Perhaps 
I'll post in detail later, but here's the source text, the testimony of one 
"Manuel Timbu (Cape Basatrd)" ...

"On our return journey we again halted at Hamakari.  There, near a hut, we 
saw an old Herero woman of about 50 or 60 years digging in the ground for 
wild onions.  Von Trotha and his staff were present.  A soldier named Konig 
jumped off his horse and shot the woman through the forehead at point blank 
range.  Before he shot her, he said, 'I am going to kill you.'  She simply 
looked up and said, 'I thank you.'" (1918 Report p. 64, cited in Sanders p. 
93)

Cf. ...

"Returning from the Waterberg with von Trotha and his staff, tehy came upon 
an old woman digging wild onions at teh side of the road.  A trooper named 
Konig jumped down off his horse and shot here dead: but before he pulled the 
trigger he put the muzzle against her forehead and said, 'I am going to kill 
you.'  She looked up and said, 'I thank you.'" (V., p. 264)

... note Pynchon's addition here, "he put the muzzle against her forehead 
...."  Again, Sanders' reading of this passage and its reinscription in 
Pynchon is complicated, convoluted, even, but it comes down to, again, 
problems of translation and interpretation.  Does the woman understand Konig 
in the event reported in the, er, Report?  Does she know what she is saying 
to him?  Is it clear to her what is going to happen?  And what of that 
will-to-suicide that's strongly implied in Pynchon's resinscription, floated 
as conjecture in Pynchon's leter?  Again, not only problems of translation 
and interpretation, but also of projection.  The deathwish of the colonized 
or the fantasy of the colonizer?  And so forth.  And I still say, compare 
this section of "Mondaugen's Story" with what may or may not be Pirate 
Pentice's "dream" at the outset of Gravity's Rainbow ...


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