Literary Ecology, Daniel R. White

[Jane Sweet]

Jane Sweet wrote:
> 
> Literary Ecology and Postmodernity in Thomas Sanchez's
> Mile Zero and Thomas Pynchon's Vineland by Daniel R. White,
> 1991
> 
> Literary ecological theory stands, like Pynchon's
>      work itself according to some critics, with one foot
>      on traditional metaphysical ground and one in the
>      postmodern void.2 What is traditional in literary
>      ecology is the acceptance of a value hierarchy,
>      namely the Great Chain of Being, stemming from the
>      classical and medieval worlds. The most salient
>      feature of the Chain for the human condition, Dwight
>      Eddins argues following Eric Voegelin, is that it
>      represents a metaxic tension between spiritual order
>      and material chaos:
> 
>                                       Divine--Nous
>                                      Psyche--Noetic
>                                     Psyche--Passions
>                                       Animal Nature
>                                     Vegetative Nature
>                              Apeiron--Depth [the limitless]
> 
>      The Divine Nous represents the upper limit of the
>      human quest for spiritual fulfillment, not attainable
>      in the flesh but a necessary eschaton or goal for
>      human striving. "The substitution of a finite, purely
>      'human' eschaton for the infinitely receding nous
>      means the negation of the spiritual (noetic) quest that
>      produces the real order of the human," Eddins
>      explains. "The metaxic tension collapses, and man
>      is pulled by apeirontic vectors through lower and
>      lower levels of his being . . . " (22). The Gnostic
>      quest is to appropriate the Nous to attain the
>      all-too-human goals of power and control, on the
>      part of an elite--THEM in Pynchon--possessed of
>      Gnosis, over lower orders of being, the
>      Preterite--US. The quest to become a noetic power
>      elite sets up a paranoid cycle of oppression:
> 
>          For the gnostic elite . . . the
>          alien world is a thing to be
>          "overcome" . . . the elite
>          experience, ironically, a
>          preterite paranoia that drives
>          them to seek mastery through
>          their elite gnosis; but in so
>          doing they define a new preterite
>          in those who are not privy to
>          this plexus of knowledge and
>          power, but are pawns to be
>          manipulated in its service. This
>          preterity, in turn, can escape
>          preterition only by adopting the
>          power techniques of their
>          masters; but in the very act they
>          naturally tend to become--in
>          Wordsworth's phrase--"Oppressors
>          in their turn."
> 
> 
> (23)
> 
>      Eddins' discussion is too early to have included
>      Vineland, but what better description of the
>      relationship between its oppressor and oppressed,
>      Brock Vond and Frenesi Gates, and their victims?
> 
> hmmmmmm Gnostic?
> 
> The gnostic, entrepreneurial splitting of the
>      hierarchy of being also breaks down the metaxy, in
>      ecological terms the dynamic equilibrium, of the
>      Great Chain. In cybernetic language ecosystems may
>      be viewed as hierarchies, or heterarchies, which
>      exhibit tendencies toward both homeostasis and
>      runaway. As Gregory Bateson explains,
> 
>          All biological and evolving
>          systems (i.e., individual
>          organisms, animal and human
>          societies, ecosystems, and the
>          like) consist of complex
>          cybernetic networks, and all such
>          systems share certain formal
>          characteristics. Each system
>          contains subsystems which are
>          potentially regenerative, i.e.,
>          which would go into exponential
>          "runaway" if uncorrected.
>          (Examples of such regenerative
>          components are Malthusian
>          characteristics of population,
>          schismogenic changes of personal
>          interaction, armaments races,
>          etc.).
> 
> 
> (447)
> 
>      Consider population, for example. Prey,
>      unconstrained by traditional predators, will increase
>      in population until limited by some other factor,
>      perhaps disastrously by overpopulation which can
>      decimate the population. So too, if man sprinkles his
>      produce with DDT and kills off the bird population,
>      the insects which were the original target of the
>      poison will increase all the more rapidly
>      unconstrained by their original predator and have to
>      be "exterminated" by more toxin.