Gorman ("The Specter") Takeshi & Neo-Freudian Revisionist Quackery

[Ghetta Life]

>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Gorman ("The Specter")  Takeshi &  Neo-Freudian Revisionist 
>Quackery Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 15:41:30 -0500
> > The illness theme is interesting and to my mind, not least of which is 
>the use of "illness" as a form of control and enforced dependence, aka, as 
>used against Zoyd.   It dovetails with some of the feminist issues in the 
>novel, which are also simmering on the back burner.

In Pynchon’s novels this illness is the default state of being, and 
Gnosticism is but one model of explanation for this default state that 
Pynchon flirts with.  Freud’s explanations are also flirted with.  But 
EVERYBODY is sick, and living in an inescapably sick world.  Some, however, 
seek ways out, escape or redemption comes in small doses.  But these are not 
cures, only palliatives.

Ghetta

>Freud's hypothesis of the death instinct and its role in civilized
>aggression shed light on one of the neglected enigmas of civilization;
>it revealed the hidden unconscious tie which binds the oppressed to
>their oppressor, the soldiers to their generals, the individuals to
>their masters. The wholesale destruction marking the progress of
>civilization within the framework of domination has been perpetuated, in
>the face of its possible abolition, by the instinctual agreement with
>their executioners on the part of the human instruments and victims.
>Freud wrote, during the First World War:
>
>Think of the colossal brutality, cruelty and mendacity which is now
>allowed to spread itself over the civilized world. Do you really believe
>that a handful of unprincipled placehunters and corrupters of men would
>have succeeded in letting loose all this latent evil, if the millions of
>their followers were not also guilty.
>
>But the impulses which this hypothesis assumes are not compatible with
>the moralistic philosophy of progress espoused by the revisionists.
>
>"Death, in Modern Karmic Adjustment, got removed from the process."
>VL.175

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