MDDM World-as-text

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: "Doug Millison" <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 12:14 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM World-as-text
>
>
> Doug Millison wrote:
> >
> > --- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > > Right, it's the Saussuran difference between
> > > signifier and signified he's
> > > referring to.
> >
> > I don't see Pynchon's specific reference  to Saussure,
> > but P does distinguish between names and the things
> > they stand for. Text and the world aren't the same
> > thing in Pynchon -- his narratives distinguish the two
> > clearly enough -- although some deluded characters
> > (narrators, etc.) seem to get the two mixed up,
> > sometimes with tragic results.
>
> I can't think of how this sentence from GR can be attributed to
> Saussure.  However, I think, if we are talking about GR, the text does
> deal with something like this concept.
> I think the deluded characters (represented as the German sickness and
> the german language and the science of language and the language of
> science-- this is why P notes in his letter to TH that Leibniz was a
> german christian) set name apart from named and not the other way round.
> See GR.391, GR.366, GR.320-322).
>

Good morning,

"setting namer more hopelessly apart from named" (391.9)

"Names by themselves may be empty, but the *act of naming*" (366.15-16)

"names by themselvels may have no magic, but the *act* of naming, the
physical utterance, obeys the pattern." (322.15-16)

You got it, Terrance, where's the problem now?

I think that Charles Russell's essay "Signs, Systems and Subversion" from
1978 (which begins with a Norman O. Brown quote) still is very good in
explaining all this. But I got this text only in German. If someone could
scan it into our virtual & digital world for the discussion I'd be grateful:

"In den Werken von von Burroughs, Gass, Coover, Barth, Nabokov, Barthelme
and Reed, dem *nouveau roman* von Robbe-Grillet, (...) den Erzählungen von
Peter Handke oder einer Myriade südamerikanischer Fabulierer - überall
thematisiert die Literatur unserer Tage eine radikale Kritik der Kunst als
einer Sprache und der Sprache als eine Form sozialen Verhaltens. Die
Fixierung diesr autoren auf die Sprache, vor allem auf die endlose Dialektik
von Bedeutungszuschreibung und Bedeutungsverweigerung - von Schöpfung und
Zerstörung -, bringt jenes selbstkritische linguistische Spiel hervor, das
zur beherrschenden ästhetischen Norm unserer Epoche, der sogenannten
"Postmoderne" geworden ist."
(Ch. Russel at: Ickstadt, H., (hg.), "Zum Romanwerk von Thomas Pynchon,
Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1981, p. 256).

But of course this isn't good enough for Doug who wants it in "our own
words".

"You don't understand (...) You guys, you're like Puritans about the Bible.
So hung up with words, words."
(CL49, p. 53 in my edition)

Otto

__________________________________________________________________

Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
Yahoo! präsentiert als offizieller Sponsor das Fußball-Highlight des
Jahres: - http://www.FIFAworldcup.com