MDDM Washington

[Otto]

An opinion:

NORMAN FISCHER: CIVIC REPUBLICAN POLITICAL/LEGAL ETHICS AND ECHOES OF THE
CLASSICAL HISTORICAL NOVEL IN THOMAS PYNCHON'S MASON & DIXON
"Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, expresses civic republican political and
legal ethics. This claim may sound perverse, partly because to many readers
the multiculturalism and attack on the founding fathers that pervades Mason
& Dixon stands at the opposite of civic republicanism. Indeed, Mason & Dixon
is anti-republican if one sees civic republican ethics as requiring unitary
ideals of society, state and law, many of which Mason & Dixon seeks to
deconstruct. But such unitary ideals are neither necessary nor sufficient
for civic republicanism. Mason & Dixon expresses civic republicanism for
three reasons. First, civic republican ethics is in some ways more open to
including seemingly maverick forms of itself than other parts of republican
theory. The Author will argue that the key necessary condition for civic
republican ethics is public spiritedness, and that commitment to unity is
not a necessary condition. Mason & Dixon is anti-republican in its
deconstruction of ideals of a unitary American political and legal ethics
traditionally associated with Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, all of
whom are ridiculed in the book. Mason & Dixon deconstructs the unity
associated with the American founding fathers. In doing so, Mason & Dixon
sides more with deconstructive legal theory than traditional republicanism.
But Mason & Dixon does present a public spirited republican ethic, albeit a
dissident one. Second, Mason & Dixon is in the literary tradition of the
historical novel, a tradition which inherently inclines to civic republican
ethical themes. Third, even when Mason & Dixon is most at odds with the
traditional historical novel and the inevitable republican political and
legal ethics that clings to it, Pynchon's novel still unavoidably evokes
both traditions.
(...)
Attended by a black slave who seems much smarter than he is, and of whose
exploitation Washington seems completely unaware, Pynchon's Washington is at
best ridiculous and at worst ominous."
http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/fischer24.htm

and another one:
DAVID W. LAWRENCE
COUNTERFEITING AMERICA IN MASON & DIXON
"Included in those conditions is, of course, slavery, and Pynchon's humanely
satiric portrayal of Washington places him in a peculiar relation to that
institution as well. Washington's farcical mimicking of black dialect as he
gives orders to his slave, Gershom, shrinks the distance between the
"Virginia gentleman" and the oppression that sustained his privileged
position. That Gershom doubles as a Jewish comedian playfully invokes the
African-American adaptation of the Old Testament narrative of enslavement
and deliverance, which casts Washington as a kind of unwitting, good-natured
pharaoh. Further, in also playing the role of razor-sharp court jester--he
reels off King George jokes in smoky taverns--Gershom, like Pynchon, unmasks
the ideological pretensions of power."
http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/lawrence24.htm

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2002 7:22 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM Washington


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