Pynchon and postmodernism

[p-list at sardonic201.net]

I think there is some confusion here.  I am not Jolly.  I take no responsibility for what he has written.  Indeed, I think much of what he has written is quite juvenile.  Derrida & co. offer very provocative ways to read Pynchon, absolutely.  I am much more open to and interested in poststructuralism than he is.  I do think there are some profound shortcomings to poststructuralism, but to dismiss it as Jolly does is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

You are right in thinking that the more contemporary analytic philosophers have much in common with deconstruction.   (It might be more accurate to say that deconstruction bears some striking similarities to Peircean pragmatism, even though many poststructuralists misread Peirce.)  The problem that I have been trying to point out, however inadequately, is that the way we are all approaching the question is problematic.  We have set up the poststructuralist/analytic debate as a binary.  Frankly, the two compliment and inform each other in very interesting ways.  By opposing them as we do, we make it very difficult to explore these connections--and disconnections.

I think you are right, jbor: Jolly gives problematic accounts of Wittgenstein.  W himself rejected the Tractatus from the 30s on.  The Investigations, the far superior work, announce the failure of the Tractatus.  Whereas the Tractatus was the culmination of logical positivism, the Investigations were the obituary.  W introduced far more interesting questions and problems in the Investigations, pointing towards the full articulation of inferentialism that has been central to contemporary pragmatism.

This is a very important conversation, and one quite relavant to Pynchon studies.  I hope we can continue the discussion.

best,
O.

----- Original Message -----
Granted that there has been shoddy stuff written in its name, but I think
that your characterisations of poststructuralism are a bowdlerisation of the
work done by its main proponents. Further, ample evidence has been provided
to refute the gormless (i.e. \"lacking sense\", OED) assertion that the work
of Derrida, Foucault, Barthes etc does not \"provide an adequate grounding
for an intelligent interpretation of TP\". It does. Whether positivism,
Logical Positivism or any of the various strands of post-positivism can
provide a similar grounding for the discussion and interpretation of
Pynchon\'s work still remains to be seen.

I\'m not sure what a \"weak\" conception of \"objective knowledge\" would look
like in practical terms. I\'m guessing it would look something like the
deconstruction of that binary hierarchy which privileges \"objectivity\" over
\"subjectivity\". (See, perhaps, Heisenberg, Bohrs, Schrödinger et al.) There
seem to be two separate things being put together in the phrase \"objective
knowledge\": that there is an \"objective\" reality, i.e. things \"out there\"
exist; and that we can know objectively what that \"reality\" is. Peirce\'s
fallibilism seems to beg the latter question.

With Wittgenstein you have continually tried to gloss over the fact that the
Tractatus did, and was always meant to, pave the way for the Investigations.

I agree that the challenge is to think about how language mediates between
subject and object.

best