Derrida and Pynchon

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 08:12, jbor wrote:
> on 13/10/04 8:22 AM, jbor wrote:
> 
> > It's quite clear, then, that the ideas of Derrida, amongst other
> > poststructuralists, do provide ample ground for intelligent discussion and
> > interpretation of Pynchon's work. Not so Chomsky's Language Acquisition
> > Device theory, behaviourist linguistics, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I'm
> > afraid, which were dead in the water thirty, forty and fifty years ago
> > respectively.
> 
> If someone is game to try to exhume and resuscitate these long-defunct
> dogmas, or to demonstrate where and how Pynchon's work embraces positivism
> or behaviourism or objectivism, by all means go for it. As the bishop said
> to the showgirl (paraphrasing), "I'm all ears." Boom-tish.
> 
> Same goes for one or other of the current fashions in the "cognitive
> science" arena. That is, if The Interlocutor is up to the task.
> 
> The point does remain, of course, gormless assertions to the contrary
> notwithstanding, that there has been much discussion and interpretation
> of Pynchon's work -- intelligent and worthwhile too -- which takes
> poststructuralism and/or deconstruction as its primary frame of reference.
> 
> best
> 

Why doesn't this ever happen on the p-list.

It's quite plain to me that biochemistry is the most promising theory or
tool we presently have available to try to account for the myriad
instances of paranoia we have presented to us in Gravity's Rainbow?

Such things as

the belief that the rocket's arc is a "clear allusion to certain secret
lusts that drive the planet" 

the idea that a man, the hero of this book, could have been twinned with
a rocket in his childhood, sexually conditioned by electronics so that a
map of his sexual adventures in London would turn out to predict the
scatter of V-2s as they fell there in the autumn of 1944 

the idea that the dead return, or that angels appear to the dying or
that you and I were meant for each other

that a man could take on the fantasies of others, dream their dreams,
thereby freeing them for serious government work 

that World War II was just a shuffling of markets, the killing of so
many people merely a distraction, a sideshow for innocents, providing
vivid material for schoolbooks

that the world is run by a cluster of large chemical companies 

that the secret, real history of the world is a conspiracy of
rocket-makers

that Death's reign is at hand 

that America is Europe's colony of Death, heir to the old world's
ugliest dreams and technologies

(after Wood)

Guess I'm a neo-behaviorist.
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