herero motif

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

>  could it be that the herero motif functions as a kind of "missing link"
>  between 
>  the issues of slavery and genocide? the german mass-murder of 1904 would
>  then 
>  appear to be something like an "included middle" between the holocaust (this 
>  connection is explicitly made in v) and american slavery, one of the major 
>  themes in mason & dixon. gr is also about the strange afro-diasporic  
>  experience of the hereros in germany, and this might be considered to be an  
>  echo of the contemporary afro-american situation, pynchon is writing about
>  in  
>  the watts essay. in both cases the cultural consequences of social exclusion
>  are described in a similar way, though the watts essay does, if my memory
>  works 
>  right, not use the word "death-wish" (yet it speaks of two completely
>  different 
>  cultures). an impressive artistic construction. but is it also "pc"?
>
>  are there, btw, articles or something on pynchon's construction of
>  ethnicities? 
>


 

    ... woke up this morning and rolled myself a bone, the sky's so blue and the 
   future just unknown ... in "pynchon's politics: the presence of the absence" 
  (pynchon notes 26-7, 1990, pp. 5-59), charles hollander writes about pynchon's 
 watts essay: 

   "he sees white culture as unreal, hyped illusion generated by the mass media, 
   but sees watts as a 'pocket of bitter reality'. watts is the sacred, l.a. the 
   profane. and the sacred, as frazer and graves amply demonstrate, may involve 
   violence:
                                'but in the white culture outside, in that 
                                creepy world full of pre-cardiac mustang drivers 
                                who scream insults at one another only when the 
                                windows are up; of large corporations where 
                                niceguymanship is the standing order regardless 
                                of whose executive back one may be endeavoring 
                                to stab; of an enormous priest caste of shrinks 
                                who counsel moderation and compromise as the 
                                answers to all forms of hassle; among so much 
                                well-behaved unreality, it is next to impossible 
                                to understand how watts may truly feel about 
                                violence. in terms of strict reality, violence 
                                may be a means to getting money, for example, no 
                                more dishonest than collecting exorbitant 
                                carrying changes from a customer on relief, as 
                                white merchants here still do. [again: is it ok 
                                to be anarchist? kfl]. far from a sickness,     
                                violence may be an attempt to communicate, or to 
                                be who you really are.' 
   
   pynchon sees l.a., white culture, as refined away from its human, primal, 
   violent origins. watts, black culture, is closer to the primordial, the 
   pagan, the magical. on these levels, black culture is more human, more 
   subject to resonant images. at an art festival in a watts junior high school, 
   pynchon finds what to him is the most compelling image of the relation of the 
   two cultures:
                                'in one corner was this old busted, hollow tv 
                                set with a rabbit-ears antenna on top; inside, 
                                where its picture tube should have been, gazing 
                                out with scorched wiring threaded like 
                                electronic ivy among its crevices and sockets, 
                                was a human skull. the name of the piece was 
                                'the late, late, late show.' 

   not dada, but voodoo-techno-art. not an ironic statement, but a hex, a charm, 
   an invocation of the older cultural magic to supplant the new. the tv set is 
   the frontier between the sacred and the profane, the doorway to religious 
   time. it is also a way of hipping up the middle class, saying 'hey whitey, 
   it's later than you think'." (pp. 55f.)



 & now someone please tell me again that this hiphop thing is  n o t among the  
 highly relevant p-list issues ... ich hör' nix ... anyway, this was kfl for 
 kcuf, live from the hollander festival weeks in hamburg, germany ... here it's 
 gonna be a real hot day ... stay tuned!