rainbow files~thanatoid technology

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 --- from inger h. daalsgaard: terrifying technology: pynchon's warning myth of 
                               today. pynchon notes 42-43, spring-fall 1998, pp. 
                               91-110, here 101f.


"s n a k e s   a n d   l a d d e r s:  m o l e c u l a r  a n d  dna  t r a p s 

 the imagery of such corporate oders, as of the chemical/biological system, is 
grounded in pynchon's use of the dna, benzene ring and plastics imagery 
mentioned above. here again a type of technological creation myth, the image of 
a concept is subverted or hijacked by pynchon's cautionary preoject. synthetic 
chemistry and with it organic chemistry in the form of dna produce and become 
'structures favoring death' (167) in real and metaphorical relations in the text 
instead of the positive web of life in evidence in pirate's fertile roof-garden 
(5-6, 10). plastics simulate life but compose a ''transparent (...) shroud'' 
(756) of inert, dead matter. rather than promises or ladders to the future, they 
are traps or chains or serpents getting behind your 'true face' and inside your 
head (671). some characters wear synthetic masks of the corporation: gottfried 
is literally trapped inside an imipolex fairing; greta submits to it 
masochistically; and manager zhlubb (''dick, you character!''), who peddles the 
celluloid ladders on screens at the orpheus theatre, dreams of suffocating in 
''a common dry-cleaning bag'' (756).
 the plasticized future envisioned in the rocket city is rooted in death in more 
than one way. the third reich promoted the historical mittelwerke as the 
realization of a progress-oriented, positive technological creation myth; the 
rocket, hitler's great (white) hope and a triumpf of ingenuity, was successfully 
mass-produced in a unique factory. certain high-placed nazis - kammler, speer, 
dornberger and von braun - needed such narratives of technological success to 
justify the extravagant expenditure on development and continued testing of the 
v-2. but if development may have wasted some four million reichsmarks, more 
wasteful still was the actual mass production under berg krohnstein, which cost 
up to twenty thousand prisoners their lives. the number of concentration-camp 
prisoners who died producing the v-2 was far greater than the number of people 
killed by it in antwerp and london together: ten to twenty thousands died 
producing six thousands v-2s, which caused five thousands deaths in antwerp and 
london, or an average of two death per rocket actually lauched (neufeld 264, 
garlinski 231). the dna-shape pynchon detects in the mittelwerke provides the 
genetic justification as well as the symbolic basis for a totalitarian regime's 
desire to exterminate 'subhumans', and the stollen become the real locus of such 
de-selection."         

            
 buy it? i do. and for me this rainbow motif also nourishes the political  
 critique of the bio-tech-euthanasia we're witnessing today.
                           
kai