V.V. (12) Pynchon's letter to Thomas F. Hirsch

[Dave Monroe]

As I noted when I posted my own Pynchon Digest
Condensed Version, my own stencilization, my own
rathouse of that letter to Thomas F. Hirsch here some
time back, there are (at least) a few problematic
notions there.  His "finding" of some variant of that
"race suicide" notion vis a vis the Herero "perfectly
plausible," for example.  Note the argument ... 

"... their cattle had souls, the same souls as their
own and possible [sic] part of a universal soul,
though you'd better check that out.  But they had no
hangup sacrificing cattle, it was part of their
universal scheme, and so it's doubtful if they'd have
any hangups sacrificing themselves, either, given a
unified concept of creation ..." (p. 242)

Not exactly ironclad reasoning.  But then again,
Pynchon isn't quite writing an ethnography, much less
a philosophical treatise, nor, more importantly,
making policy, so ... 

But, of course, that Literate/preliterate binary
Pynchon deploys hear can't help but catch my
(invaginated) deconstructionist ear (of the other or
otherwise ...).  Certainly, this binary was
"background noise," "in the air," "given," whatever,
at the time.  Pynchon mentions Marshall McLuhan here
(The Gutenberg Galaxy would be the key text here, but,
certainly, Understanding Media would most widely
disseminate McLuhan), but Eric Havelock's Preface to
Plato and Jack Goody and Ian Watt's "The Consequences
of Literacy" might be relevant intertexts as well.  

See, later, in particular,  Walter J. Ong (Ramus,
Method and the Decay of Dialogue; The Presence of the
Word; Orality and Literacy) and Jack Goody (The
Domestication of the Savage Mind et al.).  But--and
I've mentioned this before--see as well Jacques
Derrida's Of Grammatology, in particular, his
deconstruction of Claude Levi-Strauss' Tristes
Tropiques (which might be another intertext here, or
CL-S's The Savage Mind, though apparently Jane Jacobs'
The Death and Life of Great American Cities might be
immediately relevant [Seed, p. 263, n. 10]).

Note that, even as Pynchon names the Herero as
"preliterate"--vs. "literate, Western, Christian
biases"--he writes that ...

"It is impossible, I think, to consider the
pre-colonial Herero apart from his religion, which in
turn governed [sic?] his [obligatory anti-sexist sic]
social organization.  Their villages were circular,
set up like the ancient yin/yang [obligatory
cultural-specific sic] diagram, women living on the
north half, men on the south, the whole thing oriented
like a mandala on the points of the compass, each
direction having a special meaning.  Their god
embodied male and female, creation and destruction,
life and death.  The missionaries came in and set up
dichotomies, busted up that unity, created categories
..." (p. 241)

Derrida deconstructs analogous statements of
Levi-Strauss' vis a vis the South American Nambikwara
and claims about the "introduction" of "writing"--inc.
"dichotomies," "categories"--by "missionaries"
("literate, Western, Christian"), not to mention
resultant "violence" (from "busted unities" right up
on to phyiscal) by noting that the Nambikwara were
(always) already "literate," had "writing,"
"categories," "dichotomies," in much the same way that
Pynchon's Herero do, "diagrams," "social
organization," "madalas," "points," "compasses,"
"special meanings," and so forth.  Don't have the ol'
Derrida on hand, but did find this online ...

"If writing is no longer understood in the narrow
sense of linear and phonetic notation, it should be
possible to say that all societies capable of
producing  ... and of bringing classificatory
difference
into play practice writing in general." (Derrida, Of
Grammatology, p. 109)

And don't get me started on that New Turkic Alphabet
...

Pynchon also, as I've noted before, makes some
noteworthy generalizations about the Germans as well,
"historically nobody has been better at this than the
Germans," "German Christianity being perhaps the most
perfect expression of the whole
Western/analytic/'linear'/alienated shtick," and so
forth.  So, again, thanks for the caveat there, jody
...

--- Richard Fiero <rfiero at pophost.com> wrote:
> jbor wrote:
> 
> >Seeing as we're upon the chapter where Pynchon uses
> the Herero research
> >  . .  .
> 
> 
> >Q. When Pynchon refers to "the literate (McLuhan),
> Western, Christian biases
> >of European reporters, usually missionaries", is he
> is making a pejorative
> >comment?
> 
> No, he is not. Cultures may be literate or they may
> be oral. 
> This is distinctly McLuhan territory. The term
> "preliterate" 
> may be a bit suspect however.
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. 
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/