Pynchon and postmodernism

[jbor]

Apologies for any confusion caused, and I am in agreement with much in what
you've written. I'm not sure who is guilty of setting up a binary opposition
between poststructuralism and analytic philosophy. I think that in
critiquing structuralism the poststructuralists were also very cognisant of
the fact that they were advancing the structuralist project, knocking it
down in order to build on it (cf. also Wittgenstein, postmodernism).

I think part of the problem is that categories like "analytic philosophy"
and "poststructuralism" are very broad, and that they can always be
construed as incorporating a variety of evils, many of which we would want
to dissociate ourselves from. I agree with you that they are not (always?
inevitably?) mutually exclusive, however, that is not to say that they are
always or inevitably equivalent either. I think that designating the former
as responsible for "epistemological advances" and relegating the latter to
"political arguments" illustrates a perceived hierarchy, or bias (and
perhaps exemplifies how the sort of charged polemical divide you identify
begins to get in the way of the discussion). Framing it in terms of trying
to pull together two apparently separate lines of philosophy, recognising
the artificiality in the division etc, is a way of proceeding which is less
likely to cause antagonism. (By the way, I'm not sure how pleased some of
your modern-day analytic philosophers would be for it to be Kant doing the
synthesising, however, though I do acknowledge that you wrote "someone like
Kant".)

Anyway, those are some of the reasons why I'm more interested in specific
examples than in generalities or categoricals.

The cite from the Tractatus in V. is not unproblematic in terms of
interpretation (which is probably part of the point), and it's worth
remembering that there's a (fairly unironic, in my opinion) paraphrase of
Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle in 'Low-lands' as well (SL p. 69).

Thanks, have enjoyed the discussion.

best

on 17/10/04 1:55 PM, p-list at sardonic201.net wrote:

> 
> I think there is a bit of confusion here.  I am not Jolly.  I do think that
> Derrida & co.  provide grounding for some very provocative readings of
> Pynchon.  Please do not hold me accountable to what Jolly claims, for I find
> them quite juvenile.  I am, from what I can glean from his posts, far more
> interested in and accepting of poststructuralism.  (Though I do think it has
> some some profound shortcomings.)
> 
> I think the problem is the way poststructuralism and analytic philosophy have
> been set up in the dreaded binary.  As you say, much of what the more
> contemporary pragmatists argue for has much in common with deconstruction
> (although, it may be more accurate to say that Derrida\'s notion of
> deconstruction looks a lot like the original pragmatists).  For too long the
> analytic-continental divide has served to do nothing but stop discourse.  I am
> suggesting, probably in very awkward ways, that the project that now faces us
> is to face up to the epistemological advances of analytic philosophy and the
> political arguments of poststructuralism and realize that, far from being
> opposed, they actually compliment each other.
> 
> What we need, I think, is a Kant to come along and pull together and
> synthesize the two apparently separate lines of philosophy.  At the very
> least, we need to recognize the artificial division between the two.
> 
> And you are right, jbor: Jolly, I think, misrepresents Wittgenstein is
> problematic ways.  Wittgenstein himself rejected the Tractatus at the end of
> his life--and, although there are some similiarities between the Tractatus and
> the Investigations, the difference is far more importannt.  The Tractatus was
> the culmination of logical positivism; the Investigations was the seminal work
> in inferential pragmatic philosophy of language.  The latter work announces
> the failure of the former and begins an entirely new philosophy.  Frankly, the
> Investigations are far more interesting.  (By the way, Wittgenstein is every
> bit as applicable to Pynchon as Derrida.  P actually quotes Wittgenstein in V.
> I also think much of what Derrida gets credit for in America first saw light
> of day in Wittgenstein\'s writings.)
> 
> 
> 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
> 
>