MDDM "Another Slave-Colony"

[Scott Badger]

Rob:

> I'm wondering if, historically-speaking, there were inklings already in
> America of the colonial revolt to come, and Royalist factions there had
> passed the information back to people in Westminster or the
> Palace, and thus
> orchestrated the commission between themselves. Divide and Rule
> (Brittania),
> you might say?

...and still, America's most active, and dangerous, "fault" line.

> However, I also agree that the slavery issue looms large in
> Pynchon's text,
> much larger than the political struggle for self-determination
> (i.e. the War
> of Independence), and that this might be a reason why he chose to bypass
> American colonial history to such a degree. I think this is in
> keeping with
> the civil rights agenda of his fiction and non-fiction throughout his
> career.

While I don't really disagree, for me at least, all of Pynchon's works
exhibit a strong interest in the formation of America - the paths taken, the
paths that might have been taken - politically, socially, culturally...and
maybe the "might have beens", at least, are more apparent from an "exterior"
vantage.

> I think that the despairing words spoken by both Mason and Dixon here, at
> the end of the first section - "Another Slave-Colony...so have I heard as
> well. Christ." -  really bring it home to American readers who might have
> laughed at and scorned the Vrooms and the Dutch slave-colony at the Cape.

This seems a bit unfair. While we may have a ways to go yet in rectifying
this and other wrongs, I don't think that the history of American slavery is
in any way "swept under the rug". Some reflection on our own past is
inevitable for any American reader of the Cape sections.

Scott Badger