MDDM Ch. 70 This Great Invisible Thing

[Otto]

Yes, it could have gone another way but it didn't. No use in spreading tears
about it. The question isn't what M&D has to say about the past (we all know
what Europeans & Americans have done to the world, to natives everywhere)
but what can be drawn out of it for our times.

What are the thoughts Dave's Deleuze-Guattari links (and the other ones)
have provoked in you? It's good that you assert they have, but why don't you
share the results? You still seem to have the idea of the "noble savage"
which is rejected by (for example) Chinua Achebe in his novel "Things Fall
Apart". Have you read the following? I have strong doubts:

"As to the second axiom, D & G refer to the work of Pierre Clastres, who
proposed that so-called 'primitive societies' are not only societies
'without a State' 6 , but have (usually complex) mechanisms for warding off
the formation of a State. Further, that war in primitive societies is the
surest mechanism in preventing the formation of the State. In the words of D
& G, "war maintains the dispersal and segmentarity of groups, and the
warrior himself is caught in a process of accumulating exploits leading him
to solitude and a prestigious but powerless death". This organisational form
is closer to that of bands and packs than to the organs of power in any
State apparatus. Leadership is a volatile relation between pack members, and
does not necessarily promote the strongest but instead inhibits the
installation of stable powers. Thus, instead of an institution of power
structures which pre-exist their occupation, power is a fabric of immanent
relations, constantly undergoing metamorphosis and threatening the
dispersion of the pack. This cannot be seen simply as a mere "unevolved"
system, but is instead a complex assemblage of multiple micro-mechanisms
that prevent the formation of power institutions proper to the State."
http://www.uncarved.demon.co.uk/23texts/warmachine.html

"According to Jameson, this means that we have lost the local contexts that
once defined modernism: "the languages of postmodernity are universal, in
the sense in which they are media languages. They are thus very different
from the solitary obsessions and private thematic hobbies of the great
moderns, which achieved their universalization, indeed their very
socialization, only through a process of collective commentary and
canonization" ("CFC" 257)."
http://www.rhizomes.net/Issue3/marzec%20copy/marziii.html

Why the Hippies and the Left have failed, and why postmodernism *must* fail
too:

"Mattessich argues that the counterculture's rejection
of the dominant culture ultimately became an act of
self-cancellation, a rebellion in which the
counterculture found itself defined by the very order
it sought to escape."
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0205&msg=66914&sort=date

This is inevitable. This is why postmodern novels don't "make sense" in the
usual way but insist that there's no fixed meaning, no universal "truth".

Otto

PS Of course you are right in that Dave always does good work here.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 4:38 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 70 This Great Invisible Thing


>
> M&D does seem to invite us to compare the Line and the
> Lambton Worm, doesn't it. Carrying the parallel a bit
> further, I observe that the Native American attempt
> use violence to stop the colonial invasion turned out
> as tragically as it did in the Lambton Worm story --
> nine generations of woe I think was where that one
> led, more than that for the Native Americans, we're
> still living with the tragic results of the violent
> encounter that began 500 years ago. As horrible as it
> was for the Europeans to come in an do what they did,
> to the land, to the indigenes, with their violence,
> the violent response only created -- surprise! -- more
> violence and suffering.  It could have gone another
> way, of course, back in that subjunctive time before
> the flow was fixed in one rather than another
> direction, the fork in the road that America didn't
> take.
>
> Good notes for this session so far, Dave, thanks.  You
> always manage to pick and juxtapose insightful and
> thought-provoking passages, a real pleasure to reap
> the harvest of your research.
>

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