some loose ends

[Otto]

Come up, Father Flaherty, you fearful jesuit ...

> jbor wrote:
> >
> > 1. Is Pynchon really a religious writer?
> >
> > Doug has suggested that he is. I agree that Pynchon often writes *about*
> > religion, as he also writes about many other things (which makes his
work
> > "encyclopedic", to quote Edward Mendelsohn), but I don't really think
that
> > this is enough to qualify him as a "religious writer". It seems to me
that
> > in writing *about* religion Pynchon is more often critiquing (and
> > deconstructing) religious systems and their institutional practices and
> > arrangements.
>

Couldn't agree more of course. The "religious writer" is the box they put
him in, but it makes him small.
First Terrance says "maybe the term "religious writer" is a box we can't
use. It's too big and too small at the same time" and later "Pynchon is, I
submit,  our most important religious writer." But at least there's a
serious question: "What is a religious writer in the postmodern world?" --
Answer: no religion without binaries, sinners and saints, above and below.
No postmodern novel without the topic of religion possible imo 'cause
religion, pre-Christian religious rites like the 'Sacre de Printemps' lie at
the foundation of our culture.

"Logocentrism: "In the beginning was the word." Logocentrism is
the belief that knowledge is rooted in a primeval language(now lost) given
by God to humans. God (or some other transcendental signifier: the Idea, the
Great Spirit, the Self, etc;) acts a foundation for all our thought,
language and action. He is the truth whose manifestation is the world. He is
the foundation for the binaries by which we think: God/Man,
spiritual/physical, man/woman, good/evil. The first term of the binary is
valorized, and a chain of binaries constitutes a hierarchy."

> What is a religious writer anyway? Clearly Pynchon is not a
> religious writer as
> Graham Greene is a religious writer,  as Dostoyevsky
> (Sinners and Saints Otto) or Tolstoy, or Melville, or Joyce,
> or Faulkner, or Lawrence, or Eliot (TS), or so on, and so
> on.  So maybe the term "religious writer" is a box we can't
> use. It's too big and too small at the same time. No boxes
> you say? OK, no boxes, but as stupid as the boxes may seem,
> as crunched and cramped and reductionistic and la deee da,
> they are very useful if we take the time to define them,
> their perimeters, their sides and angles. Genre is a good
> one, and here we have only a small disagreement, the novel
> V., for example, we mostly agree, is picaresque, but we
> can't agree on how the picaresque is or is not subordinate
> to the Satire (Menippean or Encyclopedic as Mendelson
> defines it or Frye or Braha with Bakhtin--Dostoyesvsky's
> Poetic Problems).  But if we insist (and we all know that
> all great writers make and break their own boxes from the
> materials of other boxes broken by their fathers) that a
> great work of fiction is unique ( this is obvious) and
> therefore can not be brought into a common or relative or
> comparative or hermeneutic discourse, then this discussion
> can not and should not proceed. But is P is simply an author
> who writes about religion? What should we call a great
> writers who critiques and deconstructs religious systems and
> their institutional practices and arrangements as
> Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy have, but also as Melville has and
> Joyce has and Pynchon has? The two Russians may be said to
> be religious writers in sense that Joyce and Melville may
> not. They have a reformation of the Christian religion in
> mind not found in either the fearful jesuit or  Melville the
> Seeker. Pynchon is, I  submit,  our most important religious
> writer. What is a religious writer in the postmodern world?
> Sounds like an interesting course. Shall I put M&D on the
> silly bus?
>

The silly bus with M&D on it isn't silly at all, but leave that 19th-century
stuff and put Gaddis on it too, whom I consider far more relevant for
understanding Pynchon than the Pyndustry has acknowledged yet.

> The postmodernist Pynchon is not the problem as I see it.
> What serious student of Pynchon would fail to recognize the
> merit of McHale, Weisenburger, and the dominant school in
> the Pynchon industry? But here, by rj mostly, this school is
> presented as the wings at the expense of the poesy so that
> he sails us into the sun with his ideological
> baggage. When Doug and rj go at on this one, Pynchon is but
> one lone Samsonite going round and round at three Oh clock
> in the morning on the JFK carousel.
>
> Away away for I will fly with theee
>
> --Keats

A few (over-simplified) definitions to tie some ends:
http://130.179.92.25/Arnason_DE/Derrida.html

Grammatology: The science of writing. Derrida proposes to move beyond
traditional models of writing that describe its history and evolution to
develop a theory of writing, to apply that theory and to move in the
direction of a new writing. The difficult in doing so is the result of the
relationship between writing and metaphysics.

The metaphysics of presence. The assumption that the physical presence of a
speaker authenticates his speech. Speaking would then precede writing (the
sign of a sign), since the writer is not present at the reading of his text
to authenticate it. Spoken language is assumed to be directly related to
thought, writing a supplement to spoken language, standing in for it. This
is the result of phonocentrism the valorization of speech over writing.

Logocentrism: see above

Binary Oppositions: The hierarchical relation of elements that results from
logocentrism. Derrida is interested more in the margins, the supplements,
than in the centre.

The supplement: Derrida takes this term from Rousseau, who saw a supplement
as "an inessential extra added to something complete in itself." Derrida
argues that what is complete in itself cannot be added to, and so a
supplement can only occur where there is an originary lack. In any binary
set of terms, the second can be argued to exist in order to fill in an
originary lack in the first. This relationship, in which one term secretly
resides in another, Derrida calls invagination.

Originary lack: Some absence in a thing that permits it to be supplemented.

Metonymic chain: Derrida argues with Saussure's notion that signs are
binary. (signifier, signified) The signified, he says, is always a signifier
in another system. As a result, meaning cannot be in a sign, since it is
always dispersed, deferred and delayed. (dictionary analogy). In terms of a
text, then, all signifiers must be seen as defective. A signifier always
contains traces of other signifiers.

Trace: The indications of an absence that define a presence. (The present is
known as the present only through the evidence of a past that once was a
present.) The traces of other signifiers in any signifier means that it must
always be read under erasure.(sur rasure).

Erasure: The decision to read a signifier or a text as if its meaning were
clear, with the understanding that this is only a strategy.

Difference (Différance) A pun on difference and deference. Any signifier (or
chain of signification, ie. text) must infinitely defer its meaning because
of the nature of the sign (the signified is composed of signifiers). At the
same time, meaning must be kept under erasure because any text is always out
of phase with itself, doubled, in an argument with itself that can be
glimpsed through the aporias it generates.

Deconstruction: an attempt to dismantle the binary oppositions which govern
a text by focussing on the aporias or impasses of meaning. A deconstructive
reading will identify the logocentric assumptions of a text and the binaries
and hierarchies it contains. It will demonstrate how a logocentric text
always undercuts its own assumptions, its own system of logic. It will do
this largely through an examination of the traces, supplements, and
invaginations in the text.