antw. re Re: MDDM Gershom's Intervention

[Paul Mackin]

lorentzen-nicklaus wrote:

> Paul Mackin schrieb:
>
> > The differences were crucial.
>
>   but are they still? or were they still in, say, 1877?

Exceeding , kai, just as the French and English Revolutions were important. The
monarch societies were vastly different from what succeeded them. The American
Revolution was a social revolution as well as a legal one. ( hope it's no longer
necessary to keep reiterating that the subject is an 18th Century revolution rather
than a 19th or 20th Century one.) I can't urge strongly enough that p-listers read
some competent history of the American revolutionary and post revolutionary period.
The Gordon S. Wood book wouldn't be a bad place to start.

> 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

Not "admit" it, insist upon it. It may be a fine literary device that  should of
course not be confused with historical analysis but  best fits  under the rubric of
visionary, or Unabgegoltenes as you say below.

> 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).

Yes.


>
>
> >(they did not of course include 19th and 20th Century type changes)
>
>      but in the light of these tom's doing his archaeology!

Don't know if I'd use the word "archaeology."  No one asks why the Egyptians didn't
abolish slavery. As Monte said yesterday P is exploring strange relationships and
quite unhistorically sometimes.

>
>
> >  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.

Hadn't quite thought of it that way but very possibly you are onto somethings Will
give it thought.

> (me personally, and you know this, is not interested in a
>   moralistic judgement on the founding fathers as human beings at all).

Glad you emphasixe this point.

> 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 *

P.

>
>