MDDM World-as-text

[none none]

kill the guards and walk you stupid fucks.

"like chameleon in the trees, like locust over the suns."



>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: MDDM World-as-text
>Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 10:29:15 -0400
>
>
>
>jbor wrote:
> >
> > And I certainly think that these similarities between the medieval 
>worldview
> > and postmodernism are something which Pynchon is alluding to in the
> > 'Luddite' essay, when he talks about the 18th C. nostalgia for the 
>Gothic,
> > and "magic", and the "Age of Miracles".
>
>
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > The craze for Gothic fiction after 'The Castle of Otranto' was grounded, 
>I
> > suspect, in deep and religious yearnings for that earlier mythical time
> > which had come to be known as the Age of Miracles. In ways more and less
> > literal, folks in the 18th century believed that once upon a time all 
>kinds
> > of things had been possible which were no longer so. Giants, dragons,
> > spells. The laws of nature had not been so strictly formulated back 
>then.
> > What had once been true working magic had, by the Age of Reason, 
>degenerated
> > into mere machinery. Blake's dark Satanic mills represented an old magic
> > that, like Satan, had fallen from grace. As religion was being more and 
>more
> > secularized into Deism and nonbelief, the abiding human hunger for 
>evidence
> > of God and afterlife, for salvation - bodily resurrection, if possible -
> > remained.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~arburke/texts/luddite.html
>
>
>
> > The difference is, of course, that postmodernism doesn't fall back on 
>faith
> > in a Christian God as the ultimate or pre-eminent "truth". There is no 
>such
> > thing as the "final cause" outside human experience/belief/perception, 
>or,
> > more accurately, there is a recognition that different individuals and
> > different cultures have different belief systems and different 
>conceptions
> > of what that "final cause" is, or even of whether there is such a thing 
>as a
> > "final cause" (ontology). It's a healthy thing, I think, to challenge 
>the
> > assumption that the Christian story of the world is the "true" story,
> > Christianity having been responsible for "ev'ry Crusade, Inquisition,
> > Sectarian War, the millions of lives, the seas of blood" (_M&D_ 75-6), 
>as
> > Pynchon's Ethelmer notes.
> >
> > best
>
>
>
>
>In the essay P talks about religion generally. He talks about the human
>yearning for the miraculous. And he discusses secularization. This is
>obviously a major theme of his fictions.
>
>
>
>"As religion was being more and more secularized into Deism
>and nonbelief, the abiding human hunger for evidence of God and
>afterlife , for salvation - bodily resurrection, if possible -
>remained."
>
>
>
>
>"The Methodist movement and the American Great Awakening
>were only two sectors on a broad front of resistance to the Age of
>Reason, a front which included Radicalism and Freemasonry as well as
>Luddites and the Gothic novel."
>
>
>Radicalism, Freemasonry, the Gothic novel, the Luddites.
>
>
>
>Each in its way expressed the same profound unwillingness to give up
>elements of faith, however ''irrational,'' to an emerging
>technopolitical order that might or might not know what it was doing.
>''Gothic'' became code for ''medieval,'' and that has remained code for
>''miraculous,'' on through Pre-Raphaelites, turn-of-the-century tarot
>cards, space opera in the pulps and the comics, down to ''Star Wars''
>and contemporary tales of sword and sorcery.
>
>
>P never mentions postmodernism. But I can understand how a very broad
>definition of postmodernism could be what P is alluding to here.
>However, the philosophical and anti-Christian (more specifically the
>anti-Catholic) argument that is being posted here is not supported by
>what P says in this essay.
>
>The issue that Paul is raising is an intriguing one, but I'm not sure
>that it fits the anti-chrisitan postmodernism that you and Otto are
>talking about.




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