ahab as luddite

[jbor]

on 4/2/02 4:13 AM, Thomas Eckhardt at thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de wrote:

snip
 
> My point was that perhaps it is something in between. Ahab's power over his
> crew
> results from his ability to address a spiritual malaise everybody is suffering
> from.
> Yet, the members of the crew would not have chosen to attempt to fill the
> void/break
> through the mask/kill the white whale all by themselves. They needed a purpose
> and a
> leader. Given both, they choose to go on the "fiery hunt". Is this a free
> choice?
> Yes, I guess. They could have said no, after all. The whole thing is uncannily
> close
> to the situation in Germany at the beginning of the Thirties.

In some ways yes, although I don't think that the German people at the
beginning of the 30s were as aware of what would happen, or even of what
might happen, as the Pequod's crew are. But this is the nub of it, I agree.

snip
> Ahab is mainly a self-styled demon. But, given the fact that mythological
> demons are
> nowadays rarely encountered outside the headlines of tabloids, these are the
> dangerous ones. See Charles Manson or that "satanic" couple in Germany, now
> before
> court, who brutally murdered a friend. The world-view and the motives of these
> people are silly and ridiculous, their acts are not.
 
Though one obvious difference between that Satanist-vampire couple and the
Manson family and, say, Ahab and Blicero, is that the sacrificial victims of
the latter are given a choice, and freely enter into the contract, into
*voluntary co-operation* with the plan, whereas the victims of the former
were simply murdered in cold blood.

> I don't think so. Was there ever a fascist regime that deliberately set out to
> destroy machines?

The Taliban? The Khmer Rouge? Communist China?

> Luddism from the beginning was directed against capitalism,
> no? 

Was it directed against the economic system or the machines? I think that
this is one of the questions implicit in the opening part of Pynchon's
Luddite essay. And insofar as capitalism and "progress" (i.e. technology)
are interdependent in this regard, I think that a Luddite *regime* could
easily devolve into fascism.

I think anarchism is a paradox. By definition it cannot become a system of
governance, which gives blowhards like Chomsky an easy out because there has
never existed a long-standing anarchist "nation" in order that its potential
merit as a socio-political system can be evaluated. And thus, there is no
scorecard on which it might be damned by its dissenters either.

I think that although _GR_ critiques a or the romantic worldview(s) such are
also endorsed quite often as well, in Slothrop's Orphic apotheosis, in the
witch's magic which prevents the brothers' bloodshed, and so forth. And I
don't think you can overlook the vision and sentiments in Blicero's final
confession to Gottfried either. I don't believe any one worldview or system
is totally condemned or totally approved in Pynchon's fiction. Foppl's is a
more extreme case, I agree, and his actions are certainly horrific and
repulsive, however, his humanity is still made vividly apparent even in that
much earlier text.

best

> It
> is much closer to anarchism than to fascism, I believe. On the other hand, I
> am
> inclined to think that both MD and GR contain a devastating critique of the
> romantic
> world view, to which Luddism seems to belong more or less. Ahab and Blicero
> are both
> romanticists - searching for original harmony, longing for the mystical
> experience
> of everything falling into place, of everything being connected. They may
> reach this
> kind of epiphany (though Ahab doesn't get quite as far), but it is a wholly
> subjective experience: It is what Foppl experiences in V. while slaughtering
> the
> Herero and raping their women.
snip