Globalization and "Globality"

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

The question, if globalization is a "myth" or not, is not easy to answer. In 
deed, there are many hints that "globalization" is a (post-)modern myth, 
created by the "think tanks" of the multinational corporations and right-wing 
political parties (Mr. Huntington and his student Fukuyama f. e. come from 
such "think tanks"). In the seventies there was the expression "New 
International division of labor" (Kreye/Heinrichs/Froebel) which can be seen 
as the forerunner of "globalization". The "new international division of 
labor" described the fact that working-places in the industrialized world 
were substituted by such in "production islands" in the third world because 
of the lower wages there, especially in the clothing industry. 

But I don't want to debate about words. It's a fact that the word 
"globalization" is in everybody's mouth, and we have to handle with it. For 
the most economists and sociologists globalization is only an economic term, 
but it's far more than that. It has also social, cultural and ideological 
implications.

The British sociologist Martin Albrow has written a book with the title: The 
Global Age.State and Society Beyond Modernity, German : Abschied vom 
Nationalstaat. Staat und Gesellschaft im Globalen Zeitalter, Frankfurt, 
Suhrkamp 1998. I think Albrow has an interesting standpoint to that issue. He 
makes a difference between globalization and what he is calling "globality". 
Globalization is the economic part in it and less interesting than the new 
"habitus" and the new behaviour of the people especially living in big cities 
like London. He analyses that the direct "neighbourhood" is now of less 
importance than so called "social landscapes" or "socio-spheres". This means 
that someone has connections worldwide with the help of Internet, telephone 
a. s. o.; at the same time he/she doesn't know what the name of the family is 
which is living next door. So he critisizes communiatarism as a 
pseudo-romantic ideology which - in the last instance - only produces a kind 
of "group egoism". For Albrow globality is not a new ideology of progress, 
like "free trade" or "global village" or similar things, only an option, not 
more, not less. He says that globalization and globality also can fail, but 
this can only show the future.

What has this all to do with Pynchon? Of course, "globalization" was not an 
issue of GR (perhaps a little in Vineland). He "analyses" there the 
forerunner of globalization, the "international division of labo(u)r". And 
the main thing: he analyses the "counterforce in us", THEM as structure and 
its representation in the unconscious of the people. Of course there are real 
powers, real economic interests, real politics a. s. o. But I think this is 
secondary, or better: both sides must be described: the real power and its 
representation in the unconscious. Foucault says that power goes through our 
bodies and our souls. And the combination of both -structure and psychic 
representation - is what Pynchon writes about. You cannot devide it.

Kurt-Werner Pörtner