globalization & Pynchon?

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane Sweet" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: globalization & Pynchon?


>
>
> Jane Sweet wrote:
> >
> > Exports and Imports of goods as a percentage of Gross
> > Domestic Product in current market prices for the USA is
> > around 15-16 percent. That's Exports and Imports and that
> > includes intangibles and tangible products. Take away the
> > financials and services and Imports and  as a percentage of
> > GDP, what the USA exports is very little. So the argument
> > that runs, the USA is exporting its culture and products all
> > over the globe, manufacturing it in the developing world
> > with cheap labor blah, blah, is, to put bluntly, Bull.
>
> BTW, in 1973, the year GR was published, though it was
> probably written earlier,
> Exports and Imports of goods as a percentage of Gross
>  Domestic Product in then current market prices for the USA
> was
> 10 percent. And again, that's exports and imports, and
> intangibles, like currency, stock, bonds, etc., so what the
> USA exported in 1973 to the entire globe was around three
> percent of GDP. Granted, the US GDP is HUGE, but again,
> Canada is and was the largest part of US trade. So
> globalization was more of a myth then than now.
>
Of course not, and I've never really heard anyone argue that "globalisation"
in the sense that the term is being deployed today was an issue of much
magnitude in the 30s, 40s, 60s.  My reading of Vineland is that conditions
of power have changed by the end of Reagan's first term.  Where Vond and his
ilk were required for social control in Nixon's time and before, now he
isn't, because a paradigm has shifted.  P barely hints of the economic
consequences/underpinning of this, but in my country, the emergence of the
free market as a solution for virtually any policy problem dates from about
then.

It is possible that in earlier decades conditions were not right for the
total expansion of free-market ideology, and that it is getting closer now.
Pynchon therefore wrote about what was happening in the 30s, the 40s, the
60s, and the 80s.  Hence, we may have to await a future Pynchon novel for
him to actually directly concern himself with the phenomenon.

Phil

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