Derrida and Pynchon

[jbor]

on 13/10/04 10:12 PM, 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.

Seems not. Pity.

    [...] The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant
    whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid
    for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening
    about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns
    probe ancient foetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in
    the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the
    word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor
    then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were:
    inside, safe, or outside, lost. (Lot 49, p. 89)

> 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