MDDM Ch. 78

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "cathy ramirez" <cathyramirez69 at yahoo.com>
To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>; "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>;
"jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 78


>
> --- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
> >
> > What is remarkable again (see 136.17-19) is the fact
> > that Astronomy and
> > Astrology aren't divided yet into science and, what
> > science and
> > enlightenment have made of Astrology later, a
> > superstition.
> >
> > Otto
>
>
> Is that how it happened? Did science and enlightenment
> make of astrology a superstition? What the line
> divides, I suspect, is no more or less important that
> what it unites or what it merges and blends and
> commercializes on technical and political
> sacred/profane ground.
>

"this society is irrational as a whole -- the rational character of its
irrationality"

Well, this novel presents it to readers who may have the same doubt when it
comes to the scientist's promise to explain everything, as modern science
meets Astrology. We are reminded that paradigmata can/will change.

>
> Ambiguities, metamorphoses, flux.
>

Indeed. No eternal Truth but a constant flow of signifiers.

>
> In Pynchon's fiction we don't see science and
> enligtenment, despite the reasoned attempt to dismiss
> these (astology etc),  making a superstition of
> astrology and the ancient arts and sciences. What we
> see is integration, assimilation, amalgamation. From a
> negative POV, what we get is profane and secular
> abuses and grotesque travesty of the sacred and
> ancient arts and sciences. The Gnostics of GR. The
> holy grail, the cup and blood are platics. But eh
> grail is not dismissed as superstition, it is
> transmogrified.
>

Yes, but doesn't dismiss this transmogrification it by making it profane and
a travesty?

Aren't both poles (science vs. belief) dismissed for their exaggerated claim
to be able to tell something definite?

>
> We see that "one dimentional thinking", dispite its
> attempts to dismiss the ancient arts and sciences does
> not reason astrology and the sacred out of existence.
> Science is mixed with magic, religion with
> psychoanalysis, the rocket&gallows with the cross.
>
>
>
> "The formally antagonistic realms merge on technical
> and political grounds ---magic and science, life and
> death....
>
>  Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
>

"The advancing one-dimensional society alters the relation between the
rational and the irrational. Contrasted with the fantastic and insane
aspects of its rationality, the realm of the irrational becomes the home of
the really rational- of the ideas which may "promote the art of life." If
the established society manages all normal communication, validating or
invalidating it in accordance with social requirements, then the values
alien to these requirements may perhaps have no other medium of
communication than the abnormal one of fiction. The aesthetic dimension
still retains a freedom of expression which enables the writer and artist to
call men and things by their name-to name the otherwise unnameable.

The real face of our time shows in Samuel Beckett's novels; its real history
is written in Rolf Hochhut's play Der Stellvertreter. It is no longer
imagination which speaks here, but Reason, in a reality which justifies
everything and absolves everything-except the sin against its spirit.
Imagination is abdicating to this reality, which is catching up with and
overtaking imagination. Auschwitz continues to haunt, not the memory but the
accomplishments of man-the space Bights; the rockets and missiles; the
"labyrinthine basement under the Snack Bar"; too pretty electronic plants,
clean, hygienic and with flower beds; the poison gas which is not really
harmful to people; the secrecy in which we all participate. This is the
setting in which the great human achievements of science, medicine,
technology take place; the efforts to save and ameliorate life are the sole
promise in the disaster. The willful play with fantastic possibilities, the
ability to act with good conscience contra naturam to experiment with men
and things, to convert illusion into reality and fiction into truth, testify
to the extent to which Imagination has become an instrument of progress. And
it is one which,' like others in the established societies, is methodically
abused. Setting the pace and style of politics, the power of imagination far
exceeds Alice in Wonderland in the manipulation of words, turning sense into
nonsense and nonsense into sense.

The formerly antagonistic realms merge on technical and political
grounds-magic and science, life and death, joy and misery. Beauty reveals
its terror as highly classified nuclear plants and laboratories become
"Industrial Parks" in pleasing surroundings; Civil Defense Headquarters
display a "deluxe fallout-shelter" with wall-to-wall carpeting ("soft.'),
lounge chairs, television, and Scrabble, "designed as a combination family
room during peacetime (sic!) and family fallout shelter should war break
out."[1] If the horror of such realizations does not penetrate into
consciousness, if it is readily taken for granted, it is because these
achievements are (a) perfectly rational in terms of the existing order, (b)
tokens of human ingenuity and power beyond the traditional limits of
imagination."
10: Conclusion
http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/marcuse/odm10.html

>
> Life and death. And there are other forces working on
> these marriages and divorces.
>
>   see Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
>

"Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human
race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger? The
efforts to prevent such a catastrophe overshadow the search for its
potential causes in contemporary industrial society. These causes remain
unidentified, unexposed, unattacked by the public because they recede before
the all too obvious threat from without-to the West from the East, to the
East from the West. Equally obvious is the need for being prepared, for
living on the blink, for facing the challenge. We submit to the peaceful
production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being
educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they
defend.
(...)
And yet this society is irrational as a whole. Its productivity is
destructive of the free development of human needs and faculties, its peace
maintained by the constant threat of war, its growth dependent on the
repression of the real possibilities for pacifying the struggle for
existence-"
Introduction to the First Edition
The Paralysis of Criticism: Society Without Opposition
http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/marcuse/odmi.html

"We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced
industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its
productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts,
to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to
which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of
man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable."
One-Dimensional Society
1: The New Forms of Control
http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/marcuse/odm1.html

I agree.

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