Pynchon and fascism

[Terrance]

Paul Nightingale wrote:

> The 'thing' in question might be a concept like fascism, or the kind of
> behaviour we label fascist, or the way the term is used, or the way
> behaviour/usage changes etc. I think P writes in such a way as to
> highlight, not so much the way such meanings come about, but rather that
> 'we' are always implicated in such processes ... what I mean when I say
> he's asking how we know what we know.


Why would P ask such philosophical and universal questions in a Foreword
to Orwell's Classic _1984_? 

Has P been caught up in the epistemological turn of the machine? 

I can just see him now, like Charlie Chaplin caught in the post-modern
machinery in the basement of some ivory tower factory turning
indefinitely. 

One could argue that what P is talking about is not how we know what we
know, but Being or Meaning for that matter (or not). 

the illusory hopes that have accompanied the Turn of the machine arise
from the fact that the change is observed, but not the fact that the
change is only a change in an uninterrupted and indeterminate subject
matter admitting of multiple interpretations.