SLSL Intro "[In] The Way of Communication"

[Dave Monroe]

Really oughtta be posting new material, but ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> I know what you're saying about the segue, and don't
> entirely disagree. But I still think that "class
> force fields" being "in the way of", meaning
> blocking, "communication", isn't the same thing as
> talking about "the way of communication" or "ways of
> communication" between the two groups. I think
> what Pynchon is saying is that the two groups failed
> to communicate with one another, and to become
> politically-unified, because of the class barriers.

I think he's specifically suggesting this was a
failure on the "new left"'s part, even, not quite
developing a "way of communication" by which "college
kids" (presumably, the "new left") and "blue-collar
workers" to "get together politically," class--"class
force fields," although "educational force fields"
might have been more accurate--being the obstruction
here ...

> Had post-Beat writers (like Pynchon) tried to
> achieve a "synthesis" of the various "possibilities"
> which the Beats, Kerouac et al. opened up for
> them, then perhaps those two factions within the
> "new left" later in the '60s might have had a
> precedent to follow. They didn't, and so they
didn't.
> Which probably isn't so far removed from what you're
> saying either.

Not at all.  I think we might actually be in agreement
here.  Problematic, perhaps naive, utopian, even, but
interesting nonetheless, this idea of experiments in
style, narrative, poetics, whatever, as preparing the
ground for innovations in political discourse as well.
 See, e.g., ...

Miller, Toby.  The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship,
   Culture, and the Postmodern Subject.  Baltimore,
   MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.

http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/books/titles/f93/f93miwe.htm

I THINK that's the one I'm trying to recall here ...

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