re Re: Negative Liberties

[Doug Millison]

Thanks for passing that along, Dave.

>From Cyrus R.K. Patell, Negative Liberties: Morrisson,
>Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal Ideology (Durham,
>NC: Duke UP, 2001), Ch. 1, "Narrating Individualism,"
>pp. 1-33 ...
>
>[...]  By the
>novel's end, Dixon understands that slavery is 'the
>Element common to all' the adventurs on which they
>have been sent by England's Royal Society and that
>they are implicated in it: 'Didn't we take the King;s
>money ... whilst Slaves wait upon us [?]  Where does
>it end?'  Dixon asks Mason: 'No matter where in it we
>go, shall we find all the World Tyrants and Slaves?
>America was the one place we should not have found
>them,' (692-93).  Mason & Dixon is thus a revisionist
>narrative that uses the historical novel to expose the
>underside of European and American history." (pp. 4-5)


Of course M&D shows the universal nature of "slavery"; I don't have
Patell's command of the lingo, but do trust a simple understanding of human
relations to guide me; I said:

"The common denominator of all those relationships is
inequality, a one-down hierarchy, where one person has the final say in
imposing the conditions for the other person.  That's nothing like freedom
- -- it's enslavement by the structure and terms of a relationship that is
unfair and inhumane from the start.  (Gershom can sing and dance and tell
jokes, but at any moment he's liable to be shipped off to dig that Great
Dismal Swamp Canal.) Pynchon's showing us that humans can somehow muddle
through and perhaps even lighten the load somewhat, but remain crippled,
less than human, by the institutions that they construct and then blindly
uphold."


And,

"The final
image of 'Modaugen's Story' shows us the mutilated
Bondel singting a song 'in Hottentot dialect,' which
Mondaugen can't understand; the opening lines of the
next chpater focus on the African American jazz
musician McClintic Sphere 'half listening' to his
'horn man ... soloing' but actually thinking about the
racism of the white people in his audience: [see V.,
pp. 280-1].  Joined by the text across gulfs of time
and space, these two moments each picture a black man
whose music is an assertion of identity that cannot be
understood by the whites who hear it.  Paradoxiacally,
the ostensibly bleak image of a mutilated black man
and a debilitated white man crossing a devasatated
lanbdscape conveys a feeling of hopefullness and
possible harmony after the racial hatred that has been
described to us, but the feeling is short-lived;
McClintic Sphere's thoughts indicate that any apparent
harmony between the races masks an abiding
difference." (p. 91)

Doug:
"Pynchon puts these historical facts in a context that pulls us right into
the racial politics of the 20th century, with Gershom bringing into play
all of the complex baggage of black-face minstrel shows and Jim Crow, the
role of black entertainers in contemporary markets dominated by global
capital, the American hankering to believe that slavery and slave masters
weren't as bad as we must, if we are to be realistic, believe them to have
been, the tendency to just want to get stoned (literally and figuratively
- -- Sammy Davis Jr. as part of the Rat Pack on 1960's TV is pretty
hypnotizing, too) and joke about it to defuse the anger and resentment that
might otherwise lead to a real revolt."

Patell:
"The transformation of people into things is one of
Pynchon's abiding subjects...." (pp. 92-3)

Doug,
"Technology is generally neutral in Pynchon's fiction, albeit with a
propensity to lead people away from treating each other as humans.  What's
really harmful are human attitudes and institutions -- like slavery in M&D,
or the factory system that winds up using people like Pokler and co-opting
him in the abuse of the Dora slaves --  that seduce human beings away from
treating each other authentically, with love, kindness, and respect.
Pynchon's Washington is far more dangerous than Franklin because he manages
to delude himself into ignoring the fact that he has made of another human
being an object -- that's the "Folly" that Pynchon demonstrates."

Thanks again, Dave. It's nice to see that I'm not completely alone out here
in left field as I use my common sense and life experience to try to read
and understand Pynchon.

This one's not even in the ballpark:

"Ben Franklin may well have believed "that Africans, if free and given
opportunities to advance, could have become the intellectual equals of
whites" - which is an extremely arrogant and patronising attitude, to be
sure - but _M&D_'s George Washington has already acknowledged and accepted
the fact that they *are* the "intellectual equals" of whites, the *human*
"equals" of whites, in fact, which is why (and how) Pynchon accords him far
greater acclaim and respect in his text."

And the sun rises in the west.  Not in M&D -- where does Pynchon show
Washington "acknowledged and accepted the fact that they *are* the
"intellectual equals" of whites, the *human* "equals" of whites"? (this is
your chance, jbor, I'm willing to learn from you here, although I expect
you'll just dance around it with obfuscating jargon) --  and not in the
historical record, to which Pynchon rather insistently leads us:


"Although both Jefferson and Washington were lifelong slaveholders, as were
the previous generations of Washingtons in Virginia, the master of Mount
Vernon has scarcely received a fraction of the criticism on the subject
that has fallen on Jefferson since the 1960s. Jefferson spoke eloquently on
the evils of the peculiar institution, especially in his Notes on the State
of Virginia, his only book. Washington said less about slavery, and what he
said was expressed privately. There is no reason to think that either man
thought that Africans, if free and given opportunities to advance, could
have become the intellectual equals of whites. "
from:
"That Species of Property"
Washington's Role in the Controversy Over Slavery
by Dorothy Twohig
in
The Papers of George Washington
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery/index.html



"The Papers of George Washington, a grant-funded project, was established
in 1969 at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the
University and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, to
publish a complete edition of Washington's correspondence.  [...]
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