VLVL2(4)(ll) summer CAMP

[Dave Monroe]

>From Richard E. Burket, "The State Law Enforcement
Apparatus as America: Authority, Arbitrariness, and
the 'Force of Law' in Vineland," Oklahoma City
University Law Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1999), pp.
727-59 ... 

   "Ideology's function, thus, is not to misrepresent
the real but to produce desire for the real. In
Vineland, the effectiveness of the State in
foreclosing resistance to the law as a viable
possibility is made more effective by the fact that in
the 'War on Drugs,' as in McCarthy's Red hunting, to
which it is paralleled in the novel, evidence of
'crimes' is easily manufactured to create the crimes,
the commission of which can then be used to justify
the arrest of anyone whom the agent of the law wishes
to arrest, as in the planting of a monstrous block of
marijuana in Zoyd's house (a block so big that it
cannot even fit through the doors). But the 'War on
Drugs' has an added advantage over McCarthy because it
is effectively depoliticized. There can be no
organized resistance or appeals to law by 'druggies,'
unlike leftists, because drugs, as inanimate objects,
are an easy 'evil' to construct, not to mention
lacking in constitutional protections, unlike
political beliefs and speech. But Pynchon understands
these two 'wars' to be fundamentally the same. The
'War on Drugs' evolves out of, and is an extension of,
the crackdown on radicals in the 1960s (which in turn
is an extension of similar practices in the 1930s)
because it is an easier 'war' to wage; drug users are
an easier and more pervasive 'Other' to create and
demonize. It is easier to produce generalized
sentiments of hostility toward the 'criminal' than the
political dissident, and thus to produce affirmative
sentiments toward law enforcement and consent for its
escalating use of force to fight this 'war.'" (p. 747)

Burket also cites ...

M. K. Booker, "America and Its Discontents: The
Failure of Leftist Politics in Pynchon's Vineland," 4
Lit: Literature, Interpretation, Theory (1993) ...

"Pynchon suggests that United States drug enforcement
procedures are intended not to eliminate drug use, but
merely to circumscribe drug users as an official Other
against whom they can exercise their official power."
(p. 92)

--- "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder at cycn-phx.com> wrote:
>
> "Wait, easy pardner, now it sounds like CAMP,"
> meaning the infamous federal-state Campaign Against
> Marijuana Production, "but it ain't quite the season
> yet."  (VL, Ch. 4, p. 49)
> 
> Guess Mr. Pynchon is, as normal, working with real
> facts here, as this article attests:
> http://caag.state.ca.us/newsalerts/2001/01-120.htm
> Seems California has had a bit of a CAMP program
> running since 1983 mostly in northern California
> using "an intense, collaborative approach involving
> state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies"
> to weed out the bad guys....

No puns where none intended, of course.  And, on
Pynchon's further use of the similarly, scarily
nonfictional in Vineland, do see as well ...

Thoreen, David.  "The President’s Emergency War Powers
   and the Erosion of Civil Liberties in Pynchon’s
   Vineland."  Oklahoma City University Law Review,
   Vol. 24, No. 3 (1999): 769-98.

http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/thoreen24.htm

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