MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia

[Paul Nightingale]

Thankyou Paul. Actually I have, on previous occasions over the last couple
of weeks, made clear my views on the 'current crisis'. More recently I have
chosen to stay out of a non-debate that was going nowhere. I suppose I'm
waiting for someone to tell me to fuck off; then I'll know I'm really one of
the guys.

With regard to Mason & Dixon (I believe it's a novel, by a guy called
Pynchon - some people seem to think he's cool) I'm interested in
distinguishing between paranoia as a clinical condition and as a textual
device. We are mistaken if we speak in terms of the author's paranoia or
that of a character. Is Slothrop paranoid? Clearly not. A more pertinent
question to ask is this: what is the purpose of paranoia, when does it
appear, what form does it take? Mason & Dixon is clearly a novel about 'our
times' because it could not have been written in the C18th. What
understanding of paranoia would 'real people' in the C18th have had?
Probably none. Freud's take, which is of course not the only one possible,
is an attempt to deal with a secularising world. One the one hand he
disapproves of progress (ie mass society - see "Group Psychology" as a
critique of the so-called 'herd-instinct' and compare it with, eg Leavis'
Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture). On the other, he seems to have
rather more time was the declining fortunes, as he sees it, of organised
religion. Pynchon has located his novel, however, in the late-C18th: a
hundred years before the Enlightenment Project had started to turn sour
(according to modernist intellectuals like Freud and Nietzsche). If,
therefore, paranoia is a key signifier for Freud, what purpose does it serve
in Mason & Dixon? Hmmm ...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia


> Would it be overstepping to take the Hmmm as having reference to the peace
> movement in the current situation?
> "Reality is too strong for [it]."
>
> Freud is very severe with regard to anything SPIRITUAL which I think the
> peace movement can be said to be.
>
> If I misread you I apologize--haven't read Chapter 5 yet.
> (recently that is)
>         P.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Nightingale" <paulngale at supanet.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 1:29 PM
> Subject: Re: MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia
>
>
> >
> > From Sigmund Freud's Civilisation and its Discontents (Harmondsworth:
> > Penguin, 1991 ed, p269).
> >
> > "The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it.
> But
> > one can do more than that; one can try to recreate the world, to build
up
> in
> > its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are
> eliminated
> > and replaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes. But
> > whoever, in desperate defiance sets out upon this path to happiness will
> as
> > a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a
madman,
> > who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his
> > delusion. It is asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some
one
> > respect like a paranoic, corrects some aspect of the world that is
> > unbearable to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this
> delusion
> > into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this
> > attempt to secure a certainty of happiness and a protection against
> > suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a
> > considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must
be
> > classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say,
> who
> > shares a delusion ever recognises it as such."
> >
> > Hmmm ...
> >
>
>