Guardian publishes edited version of P's 1984 intro

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/3/2003 5:55:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
isread at btopenworld.com writes:


> And just as importantly, he's asking us to consider how we construct
> ourselves as readers/rewriters.
> 
> 

Or maybe, how we- each of us- come to accept "the final draft." 
Which suggests, of course, that originally room 101 is vacant.

Interestingly, the major schools of psychology on both sides of
the totalitarian divide- Pavlov and Skinner (supplanted by Chomsky)
were predisposed to the notion that language, if not the self/soul,
were constructs of conditioning- and differed only in the sequence
of the conditioned stimulus- either before (Pavlov) or after (Skinner)
the initial response. I can't remember how many white rats in psych
lab were nicknamed "Winston" or "Julia," by the students, but it
was almost a ritual with each new group. Maybe they were on to
something.

These days psychology has become "evolutionary" or re-named-
"cognitive neuroscience," but it's the same game- control:

       What has steadily, insidiously improved since then,
       of course, making humanist arguments almost irrelevant,
       is technology. (xvi)

The other standard joke was that "Winston" and "Julia" were
the ones doing the conditioning/controlling, and the grad
students (O'Briens?) were the ones being controlled. Maybe that's
what Orwell was really thinking when he was bouncing Richard
on his knee, instead of sharing a pint with his mates, or at the
football match.

respectfully
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030503/772540b1/attachment.html>