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

[Dave Monroe]

Lessee, either I'm posting too much, not to mention allegedly violating that 
ol' "Fair Use" doctrine of copyright law (though it seems to me I'm 
generally more providing free publicity for otherwise neglected texts, not 
to mention saving people a trip to a library which may or may not manage to 
cough up said text in the first place), or I'm making "odd attempts to 
dismiss a central piece" of something or another.  Damned if I ...

Well, of course, my response here SHOULD be, get thee to a decent library 
and maybe type the whole ferschlugginer thing up for the rest of us yr own 
self if you're going to whine about it (want the *whole* text? get it 
*yourself*), but ... but, hey, had I time, patience, and painkillers (keep 
in mind, this all starts to hurt after a bit, yr arthritis, yr carpal tunnel 
syndrome, yr whatever, but I'm presuming this'll be on yr insurance and/or 
nationalized health care), I'd've probably kept going this morning, so ... 
so I'll guess I'll take "Damned If I Do" for absolutely goddam nothing, Alex 
...

>From Mark Sanders, "The Politics of Literary Reinscription in Thomas 
Pynchon's V.," Critique, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Fall 1997), pp. 81-96.  This'll be 
the last paragraph of p. 92 through much of 94, edited as I  damn well 
please (my ellipses in square brackets) ...

   Let us examine the process of borrowing for the Konig episode, applying 
first the historian's standards, as set out by Pynchon for Hirsch: The first 
part of the passage, lifted almost whole from the 1918 Report on the 
Natives, could incriminate the colonialists, were it in fact a colonialist 
speaking.  The witness to the events is, however, "Manuel Timbu (Cape 
Bastard), at present Court Interpreter in native languages at Omaruru," who 
"states under oath" ([Report] 63) that:

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] 64)

[Sanders doesn't include the corresponding V.-text, but here 'tis ...]

"Returning from the Waterberg with von Trotha and his staff, they came upon 
an old woman digging wild onions at the 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)

[but to continue from where I left off in Sanders ...]

"I was sent to Okahandja,' Timbu relates, 'and appointed groom to [...] 
General von Trotha" who "issued orders to his   troops that ... No prisoners 
were to be taken, but all, regardless of age or sex, were to be killed" 
([1918 Report] 63). [...]  The scene he describes takes place rapidly: 
'Konig jumped off his horse ..."  There would have been no time then for 
interpretation between the parties.  Earlier that day, Timbu testifies, Von 
Trotha had 'asked [another Herero woman] several questions, but she did not 
seemed [sic] inclined to give information."  The pace of activity here is 
slower; there is time to establish that the prisoner knows what is being 
asked, but does not wish to volunteer information.  A soldier kills her with 
his bayonet, and the party moves on.
   The scene Pynchon chooses has an imaginary unity to it, made possible, in 
the first place, by Timbu's authority as a translator, and in the second, by 
his subsequent reconstruction of events.  The use to which the passage is 
put in V. brackets the extent to which translation enters into the 
testimony. [...]  First, the historian senses that there is no guarantee 
that (or of even deciding if) the Herero woman understood (or, for that 
matter, misunderstood) each other.  Without even considering Foppl/Godolphin 
as focalizer and Mondaugen as intradiegetic narrator, at least six 
possibilities present themselves: (a) Konig addresses the woman in a 
language she understands, and she replies in a language he does; (b) Konig 
addresses the woman in a language she does not understand, but she answers 
him a language he does; (c) Konig addresses the woman in a language she 
understands, but she replies in a language he cannot understand; (d) Neither 
Konig nor the woman understand what the other says; (e) Timbu understands 
both Konig and the Herero woman; (f) Timbu, under oath, is lying.  
Possibility (b) is, to my mind, closest to Pynchon's reading--Konig, as 
focalized and narrated in V., assumes that the woman's words are a response 
to what he has just said, an assumption that could only be made given the 
operation of a myth of complicity, which, as we have read, is replayed in 
the novel's very next episode.  Second, although Foppl, as witness to the 
scene, might have imagined death uniting Konig and the women he kills, he 
would hardly have been in a position to translate their verbal exchange as 
confirmation of what he imagines.
  It could also be argued from the perspective that Pynchon either forgot 
whose testimony he copied and worked into the text he was writing, changinga 
few words here and there to tighten the weave, or he deliberately overran 
the conventional constraints of historical writing.  either way, the effect 
is the same: the ability of the documents to engender interpretations other 
than those Pynchon expects to find in the writings of a colonial 
administration is lost, and the declared historical project lapses.  In 
substituting the point of view of a German officer for that of the 
interpreter Pynchon, in parodying colonial fantasies [...], has put another 
fantasy in the way of understanding.  African testimony in this case is 
lost, not, as Pynchon claims, because it never existed, but because of a 
lack of care.
  in other words, one way of reading Pynchon's reinscription is to argue 
that, in order to see the passage as an instance of the myth held by Foppl, 
Pynchon would have had to make the initial interpretive move of believing 
that to be plausible--even, in this case, himself reading timbu's testimony 
as reexpressing a version of a myth of complicity.  Although it i not 
impossible [...] it is improbable, given the evidence.  There is a sense in 
which the scene could never have been as Pynchon relates.  In an effort to 
be critical he allows Konig too much time to enact the relevant myths of 
sexual difference. [...]
   On the other hand, it is possible to argue [...] that the words Pynchon 
gives the Herero woman figure a final but hopeless attempt by their speaker 
to assume historical agency; Godolphin's "humanity,' picked up by Mondaugen, 
is in that case the focalizer,However riskily then, her words thus gesture 
toward 'the African side of it,' however impossible that might be, 
interrupting the universal impositio of Western culture. [...] where 
"humanity" is pitted vainly against historical process. (Sanders 92-4)

... I do and do and do for you kids, and what do I get in return?

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>(Considering how much you
>actually have quoted from the essay, and also your
>recent comment about the
>incredibly complicated and convoluted Eddins book
>being one "of the most
>interesting, provocative, and challenging" reads
>ever, it does seem an odd
>attempt to dismiss a central piece of Sanders'
>interpretation.)

Jee, thanks ...
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