blicero's sexuality.2

[Terrance]

> 
>   good question. since you, i repeat this, have been riding on his ticket for so
>   long,  y o u  may give us the answer. more than once and with quotes from
>   reputated scholars i have been argueing here that voegelin's "concept" (it's
>   more a historical fantasy) of gnosis can be found under www.bullshit.com ...
>   but among intellectual paper-weights "gnosis" has, in the meantime, become
>   some kinda "buzz-word", & so we had all these "conferences such as 'gnosticism
>   and modernity', where they discussed such topics as 'the gnosticism of
>   lincoln's political rhetoric'..." as richard smith writes in "the modern
>   relevance of gnosticism" (in: james m. robinson: the nag hammadi library.
>   revised edition. san francisco 1988: harper, pp. 532-549, here 542f). smith
>   also sez there: "voegelin's writings could be regarded as silly were it not
>   for their strong impact within and beyond his own field of political science".
>   indeed ...
> 
> frontschwester frederieke (playin' with her little natural machine ...)

A very fine essay by Richard Smith. Interesting comments on
Blake, Yeats, and Melville. 
However, your attempts to discredit Vogelin,  and by
extension, Eddins' interpretation of Thomas Pynchon is
unwarranted. Not because your critique of Vogelin or Smith's
critique cannot be substantiated, but because Eddins use of
Vogelin is very specific and a wholesale rejection of his
political-philosophical applications and the broad use of
the term gnosticism (for now I will follow Eddins and use
small g for the general term and capital G for the JC
tradition GP.8, later we will need to add 7 more of these,
at least there are 7 more I plan to use), as in Smith, does
not apply to Eddins use of Vogelin/Jonas, see for example,
page 8 and page 20 of GP. If you re-read the Introduction,
"The Gnostic Matrix" this will be evident. Also, although I
plan to define these terms further,  in that Introduction,
p. 19-20, Eddins begins his study of Blicero and also 
begins to define his terms, "perverse," "unnatural,"
"antinatural," terms I contend you were too quick to
attribute to some homophobic stuffiness.  

Late in GR, as preparations are being made to launch the
00000 Rocket that will carry Blicero's catamite Gottfried to
a sacrificial death, we learn that the young German will be
encased in a "film" of Imipolex G. This notorious plastic
represents, throughout the novel, the apotheosis of a
perverse chemical synthesizing that is not only unnatural
but antinatural, and inextricably associated with
dehumanization in the name of Control. After a coldly
technical discussion of the beam scanning apparatus needed
to render the "Imipoletic Surface...erctile," the Swiftian
projector touches on the question of "What lies just
beneath," only to conclude that we need not dwell here on
the Primary Problem, namely that everything below the
plastic film does after all lie in the Region of
Uncertainty, except to emphasize to beginning students who
may be prone to Schwarmerei, that terms referring to the
Subimipolexity such as 'Core' and 'Center of Internal
Energy' possess, outside the theoretical, no more reality
than do terms such as 'Supersonic Region' or 'Center of
Gravity' in other areas of Science." (p.7000). GP.19-20

It's not easy being green....