VV(11): History Unfolds

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Dave Monroe schrieb:

> "Material wealth and getting laid strolled arm-in-arm in the midway of
> Profane's mind.  If he'd been the type who evolves theories of history
> for his own amusement, he might have said all political events: wars,
> governments and uprisings, have the desire to get laid as their roots;
> because history unfolds according to economic forces and the only reason
> anybody wants to get rich is so he can get laid steadily, with whomever
> he chooses."  (V., Ch. 8, sec i, p. 214) Note, of course, how material
> impoverishment and getting laid just previously "strolled arm-in-arm in
> the midway of Profane's mind" as well: "You're jobless, I'm jobless,
> here we are both out of work, let' screw" (p. 213).  Regardless of who
> or what it is strolling with, getting laid is obviously the main
> attraction in (that Baudelairean/Surrealist arcade, that Carnival, that
> Street that is) "the midway of Profane's mind."  But also note that
> libidinal theories of history and economics have of course become
> commonplace, e.g. ... Freud, Sigmund.  Civilization and Its
> Discontents.   Trans. James Strachey.  New York: W.W. Norton, 1961
> [1930]. Marcuse, Herbert.  Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical
> Inquiry   into Freud.  Boston: Beacon Press, 1966 [1955]. Brown, Norman
> O.  Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning   of History.
> Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1985 [1959]. All of which are of no small
> import to those Pynchonian texts, and see more recently ... Goux,
> Jean-Joseph.  Symbolic Economies: After Marx and Freud.   Trans.
> Jennifer C. Gage.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990. But note what happens
> in Pynchon's novel ...    "He'd thought himself into an erection.  He
> covered it with the Times classified and waited for it to subside....
> "He happened to look down.  His erection had produced in the newspaper a
> crosswise fold, which moved line by line down the page as the swelling
> gradually diminished.  It was a list of employment agencies.  OK, though
> Profane, just for the heck of it I will close my eyes, count three and
> open them and whatever agency listing that fold is on I will go to
> them.  It will be like flipping a coin: inanimate schmuck, inanimate
> paper, pure chance." (pp. 214-5) Without necessarily having "evolved a
> theory of history," "for his own amusement" or otherwise, Benny has
> nonetheless enacted, and will nonetheless take action as the result of,
> such a theory.  Benny's "history" does indeed "unfold," "line by line,"
> as it were, as indeed the result of "economic forces" with "the desire
> to get laid at their roots."  "Pure chance"?  Maybe, maybe not.  But
> "agency" ... well, note that "inanimate schmuck."  Nonetheless, Benny
> does exercise agency in abnegating any agency in choosing, or, at any
> rate, determining, which agency to go to.  And cf. questions of, quests
> regarding, causality, chance, agency, determinism, theories of history,
> vis a vis Gravity's Rainbow's Tyrone Slothrop and his own "inanimate
> schmuck" (J. Kerry Grant, in his recent A Companion to V., glosses this
> as if "schmuck" = "penis" exclusively, though I read it as referring to
> Benny as a whole.  See Grant p. 110) ...


 on "libidinal theories of history and economics" see especially wilhelm reich's 
 "the mass psychology of fascism" [first german edition: 1933] and theodor 
 adorno's  "zum verhältnis von soziologie und psychologie" [1955]. &, of 
 course "l'anti-oedipe" [1972] by our vineland-songwriters gilles deleuze and 
 félix guattari. perhaps also the "psycho-historians" loyd de mause & klaus  
 theweleit as well as the "ethno-psychoanalysts" of zürich: fritz morgenthaler, 
 paul parin, & mario erdheim. & if the late reich is not too far out for you,  
 "ether, god, and devil" [1949] and "the murder of christ" [1953] are very 
 instructive, too.

kfl //:: ps: right, old siggi wrote some pioneer stuff in this direction; most 
         of it can be found in volume ix of the freud-studienausgabe (fragen der 
         gesellschaft/ursprünge der religion, ffm 1994: s. fischer). see 
         especially "die kulturelle sexualmoral und die moderne nervosität" 
         [1908], "massenpsychologie und ich-analyse" [1921], and, as noted by   
         dave, "das unbehagen in der kultur" [1930].  

         pps: "reich was the first to ask for the relationship of wish and 
         the sphere of society (in this he went further than marcuse who        
         deals with the question more laxly). reich is the real founder of a 
         materialistic psychiatry" (deleuze/guattari: l'anti-oedipe, chapter 
         two, own translation from the german edition, page 153).