antw. re Re: MDDM Gershom's Intervention
lorentzen-nicklaus
lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de
Sat Jul 6 03:01:20 CDT 2002
Paul Mackin schrieb:
> The differences were crucial.
but are they still? or were they still in, say, 1877? pynchon is never writing
from the viewpoint of "historicism"; pynchon is - as you admit in a later
posting - always mixing up the 18th and the 20th century, looking for
connections, trying to find the roots for today's terrible situation ...
(politically the continents are drifting apart: pretty pynchonesque that the
whole idea of united nations and public international law was founded by
progressive us-democrats, eh? today even the straigthest "atlantiker" in the
conservative german cdu do sound like the anti-americanists from the
peace-movement 20 years ago ... and it's understandable). in german-jewish
thinking - take bloch, adorno [btw, check out theodor w. adorno/thomas mann:
briefwechsel 1943-1955, ffm 2002: suhrkamp], or benjamin - you have the idea
that there's "unabgegoltenes" (things which did not come to their proper
right) in the past which can be released by remembering thinking which then
opens up an utopian political horizon. the fork in the road america never took
is called for in jazz (today also hiphop), the cabbala, or indian magic. yet
it is probably too late ...
> The overthrow of the
> monarchy and the power of government were very important 18th Century type
> changes.
nobody denies this. (german readers may also check out - horst dippel: die
amerikanische revolution 1763-1787. ffm 1985: suhrkamp).
>(they did not of course include 19th and 20th Century type changes)
but in the light of these tom's doing his archaeology!
> The
> FFs provided, among other things, the documents that legally separted the
> American colonies from the Crown. This was an important step in freeing up
> thinking sufficiently to enable the social changes that had occured by early
> in
> the 19th Centruy. These social changes were not limited by the ideas and
> wishes
> of the FFs. These rather elite gentlemen rather tended at times to be appalled
> at the demands of the lower orders. It is surely incorrect to assume, as the
> Doug statement seems to do, that the FFs in any encompassing sense were the
> creators or recreators of the society American had become by the beginning of
> the 19th Century.
now, the founding fathers do, in 'm&d', certainly represent the wasp-power-
elites' ways while gershom stands for the utopian social possibilities which -
because of the systemic outdifferentiation of money & power - were not
fulfilled. (me personally, and you know this, is not interested in a
moralistic judgement on the founding fathers as human beings at all). perhaps
one could say that dixon & mason are somehow displaced in this dialectics of
master & slave ... yet didn't lacan say that paranoia is the only state of
mind in which you can check things truly out? the late pynchon is a grown-up
man. marriage, a child, and the closer-coming of death. also for that the
endings of vineland and m&d are of a certain mildness. but only on the
micro-level! one has to make a living, has to accept one's family-background,
has to love and create now, --- although the world is tumbling down ...
peace! kai *
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