FW: Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[Richard Fiero]

jbor wrote:
>  . . .
> >From: "Samuel Moyer" <smoyer at satx.rr.com>
> >   If
> > there truly are a finite number of words (and meanings) then please
> > unsubscribe me.... I'm wasting my time.
>
>It's a good point. If Pynchon were simply an orthodox "religious writer" as
>claimed then he wouldn't be as important or interesting as he obviously is.
>
>In the field of semiotics/semiology it was Roland Barthes who, almost
>singlehandedly, effected the shift from structuralism to post-structuralism
>in a couple of works written in the period 1968-1970 (after the Paris
>Evenements: there *was* a political component to it as well).

Every once in a while I toss in something that would have fully 
flowered and been in wide distribution by 1960 and would have 
been available to Pynchon. Thus my repeated assertions about 
the Christ sacrifice being a sacrifice of the alienating 
influence of logocentrism and in line with the main thrust of 
western tragedy -- Oedipus, Hamlet, Crime and Punishment, Death 
of a Salesman . . . Perhaps by wishful thinking I'm finding all 
sorts of transformed and disintegrated culture heros such as Slothrop.

1968-1970 might be a bit late to include in the formative 
Pynchon with respect to Barthes' redirection of semiology to 
semiotics. Jbor's assertion is quite correct about Barthes' 
reexamination of the Sausserian dichotomy and his extension of 
the research to nonverbal communication such as food and 
fashion. However by 1939 or so, Benveniste had removed 
psychollogisms from the Sausserian dichotomy by noting that 
both the signifier and the signified are mental constructs. The 
root of all this is of course the remark by Marx that 
"consciousness is language."

My questions are: what is religion? what is folklore? what is 
myth? what is literature?
Another is "why do we presuppose that the Individual precedes 
Society and that Nature precedes Culture?" I think these are 
treated at length in M&D.

>But Pynchon was already destabilising that rigid Saussurean equation of
>signifier + signified = sign in the early stories and _V._, some 7 or 8
>years previously. There's this from 'Entropy':
>
>     [Saul] "Tell a girl: 'I love you'. No trouble
>     with two-thirds of that, it's a closed circuit. Just you and she. But
>     that nasty four-letter word in the middle, *that's* the one you have to
>     look out for. Ambiguity. Redundance. Irrelevance, even. Leakage. All
>     this is noise. Noise screws up your signal, makes for disorganization in
>     the circuit." ('Entropy' 1960)
>
>Even the terms he is using here ("leakage", "ambiguity", "noise") have their
>counterparts in post-structuralist concepts such as "trace",
>"disseminations", "indeterminacy", Derrida's "différance", and so forth. The
>metaphor itself (the electrical "circuit", in later works the computer
>circuit) is straight out of information theory (and I suspect that this is
>where Luhmann might fit in too.)
>
>And then there's "V", and "V.", in _V._ So, Pynchon's early fiction, both
>thematically and structurally, prefigured what was to be an incredible
>paradigm shift in Western thought, one which has had far-reaching
>repercussions in all branches of human endeavour. Pretty cool, huh.
>
>I have a simple question for the two pooh-poohers. In the novel, is "V"
>signifier, signified, or sign? As it's the title of the novel (and taking
>into account that important illustration on p. 7 of the text), I think it's
>a pretty important question to be asking.
>
>Further the full stop which follows the "V" (sometimes it's there, sometimes
>not) is also a signifier. But what is its "signified"?
>
> > I don't know what the hell Postmodern means (yes, yes, yes - I looked it
> > up)... but I think jbor makes a good point and the Collado-Rodrigueza essay
> > also... Doug, I like so much of what you say, but don't let this hatred you
> > have for jbor force you
>
>He certainly gives the Christian virtues a bad name!
>
> > ... ah hell, bartender... pour me another.
>
>Make mine a double.
>
>best