Pynchon and fascism

[Paul Nightingale]

jbor wrote:
> on 31/5/03 11:59 PM, Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
> > One asks what it means to juxtapose
> > the signifier "Churchill" to the signifier "fascist".
> 
> To be more precise, the signifier is "Churchill's war cabinet", and
the
> juxtaposition between it and the other signifier, "a fascist regime",
is
> couched as a very weak modality ("could be argued", "had behaved no
> differently than").

However, it is "Churchill" that qualifies ie identifies "war cabinet";
just as "fascist" qualifies ie identifies the kind of regime juxtaposed
to the war cabinet. Those qualifications are what make the sentence
significant.

> Tracking the connection of these signifiers into the
> next paragraph we see that the original signifier, "Churchill's war
> cabinet", was operating metonymically within the ongoing discussion of
the
> British Labour Party in this section of the Foreword. The elaboration
in
> the
> second paragraph reveals that it is the Labour Party's "acquiescence
to,
> and
> participation in, a repressive Tory-led government", and Orwell's
attitude
> to this, which was the primary context. Thus, "Churchill's war
cabinet"
> stands in a synonymic relationship to the "British Labour Party", as
does
> "a
> fascist regime" with "a repressive, Tory-led government."

A slight quibble. Can Labour here acquiesce and participate, as P very
precisely puts it, in something with which it is synonymous (even if the
end result, to the casual viewer, remains the same)? More to the point,
perhaps, Labour's "acquiescence" is qualified by "wartime", which itself
signifies the past tense, given that P is now writing about O's postwar
attitude, when "the party [might] confront its contradictions".
Furthermore, it is Labour's election that confirms, in the text, O as a
"perpetual dissident", as one who is always dissenting.

Similarly, the "repressive ... govt" corresponds, within the narrative,
not to "fascist regime", but to the earlier juxtaposition of war cabinet
to fascist regime, which juxtaposition (including P's careful
qualification, "behaved no differently than" + examples) is what now
informs our understanding of what's said to be repressive about the
govt. Hence, to say that one is synonymous with the other doesn't do
full justice to the careful way P has constructed the paragraph.

> Modality is
> absent
> from the reiteration, because it is a far less exaggerated,
controversial,
> inflammatory assertion than the one which has come before.
> 
What you describe as "weak modality" above is P writing in the present
tense for the first time in the Foreword. I said before that this is
what allows him to generalise, and the reader to speculate, about
people's changing attitudes at times of war etc. Hence my view
previously that "altering the landscape" (whether or not it refers to
9/11 - fear not, I have no wish to bring that up here) might also
signify changing perceptions.

Consequently, the absence of such "weak modality" signifies P's return
to the past tense, to O and the situation post-45. Your detailed
elaboration (as "exaggerated, controversial, inflammatory") of the
earlier juxtaposition of one signifier to another is a value-judgement,
of course. The point isn't whether or not I agree with you. Rather, the
question to ask is why P has chosen that particular textual strategy
when he is writing in the present tense in order to generalise, to open
out his frame of references from WW2, ie to address the reader ("one
could certainly argue" as opposed to "one might have argued" or a
similar formulation in the past tense) rather than report, in however
convoluted a fashion, where O's mind was at.

> Your "analysis" leads one to conclude - or to ask the question at
least -
> that Orwell thought of or wrote of Churchill as a fascist.

I think not, as what I've written above indicates. Indeed, my attempt at
an analysis began when I was avoiding the question that Paul Mackin had
put: I was explaining precisely why I didn't want to discuss such
questions, or to discuss the Foreword in such a way that it took us away
from what P wrote.

> He didn't, and
> it's not what Pynchon is addressing here.

However, your "exaggerated, controversial, inflammatory" might lead one
to conclude that it is what you're addressing here.

> Orwell's criticisms were
> directed
> towards the British Labour Party, which is the topic Pynchon has
focused
> on
> throughout the section of text. (Note that "Orwell's critique of
England's
> official Left" is placed in theme position in the second paragraph on
p.
> x.
> That _The Guardian_ chose to erase this paragraph entirely in its
> bowdlerised edit of the Foreword, and thus to obscure the lexical
cohesion
> of this section of Pynchon's text, is itself significant.)
>
 
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