AtDDtA1: "The Great Bovine City of the World"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and
alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile.  'The
Great Bovine City of the World,' breathed Lindsay in wonder.  Indeed,
the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats.  From this
height it was as if the Chums, who, out on adventures past, had often
witnessed the vast herds of cattle adrift in ever-changing cloudlike
patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped freedom
being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right
angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn
through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."  (AtD, Pt. I,
Ch. 2, p. 10)


"a Cartesian grid"

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/chi1890/

http://memory.loc.gov//cgi-bin/map_item.pl?data=/gmd410/g4104/g4104c/pm001500.sid&itemLink=D?gmd:10:./temp/~ammem_xEgS::&title=The+city+of+Chicago.+

Cartesian grid

>From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see
Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am"
and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first
modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian
coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very
rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's
grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the
two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not
specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at
least, is already at play.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_10


"sketched in sepia"

Cf. ...

Okay, here's where I can't recall various, numerous, even, examples of
Pynchon describing scenes in terms drawn from art, printing,
photography, film, what have you.  And I want to get some notes up
before the library closes.  Help!


"unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines"

Decades prior to the creation of Henry Ford's Model T, Chicago
meatpacking plants pioneered assembly line production. Meatpackers
compartmentalized the work of slaughtering animals so that each
laborer needed to learn only one technique. Hog carcasses were pulled
along an overhead rail from worker to worker, and power lifts helped
move large, heavy cattle carcasses along the assembly line. In
addition, assembly lines also speeded up the canning and packaging
operations, allowing for thousands of animals to be slaughtered and
processed daily.

http://www.chicagohs.org/history/stockyard/stock3.html

RATIONALIZATION This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1)
The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920)
who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which
magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in
a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become
dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized
our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather
patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like
wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc.
In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or
displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is
rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical.
Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social
organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient
means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the
development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These
are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by
calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic
interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of
the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's
actions.

http://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl?term=RATIONALIZATION

"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive
reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that
led to the killing-floor."  From innocent bovines to ...the world?
"Single up all lines"....

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_10

>From Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Captalism
and Schizophrenia (trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota
P, 1987), Ch. 14, "1440: The Smooth and the Striated," pp. 474-500 ...

"Smooth space and striated space – nomad space and sedentary space –
the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted
by the State apparatus – are not of the same nature." (p. 474)

"No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of
space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue
of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide
entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind
ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth
space is constantly being translated, transversed into striated space;
striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth
space. In the first case one organizes even the desert; in the second,
the desert gains and grows."  (pp. 474-5)

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/rbotoole/entry/research_notes_deserts/

SMOOTH SPACE:

"Smooth space" exists in contrast to "striated space"— a partitioned
field of movement which prohibits free motion. Smooth space refers to
an environment, a landscape (vast or microscopic) in which a subject
operates. Deleuze and Guattari explain:

Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by
formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects, more than one
of properties. It is haptic rather than optical perception. Whereas in
striated forms organize a matter, in the smooth materials signal
forces and serve as symptoms for them. It is an intensive rather than
extensive space, one of distances, not of measures and properties.
Intense Spatium instead of Extensio. A Body without Organs instead of
an organism and organization. (479)

Conducive to rhizomatic growth and nomadic movement, smooth space
consists of disorganized matter and tends to provoke a sensual or
tactical response rather than a starkly rational method of operation
or a planned trajectory.

STATE:

One of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over
which it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a means of
communication in the service of striated space. It is a vital concern
of every State not only to vanquish nomadism but to control migrations
and more generally, to establish a zone of rights over an entire
"exterior," over all flows traversing the ecumenon. If it can help it,
the State does not dissociate itself from a process of capture of
flows of all kinds, populations, commodities or commerce, money or
capital, etc. There is still a need for fixed paths in well-defined
directions, which restrict speed, regulate circulation, relativize
movement, and measure in detail the relative movements of subjects and
objects. (D+G 385-85)

In other words, "the State" operates through the capture of movement
and the partition of space. Similarly, the State is also concerned
with striating space or building into it a hierarchical system of
relations which places the occupants of each strata at odds with those
of other strata. As Deleuze and Guattari describe it, the State is
concerned chiefly with creating structures or constructs through which
lines of flight can be harnessed and controlled. The State, thus,
harnesses energy by creating inequalities.

Interestingly, Deleuze and Guattari mention the necessity of "smooth
space as a means of communication" in the service of the State. But,
as information becomes more and more central to the economy and as the
exploding telecommunications market becomes more central not only to
the workings of capital, but to its very creation, it would seem that
the organization of the State itself could be subject to disruption or
deterritorialization. If the "striated space" that "smooth space" is
enlisted to serve is itself being replaced by "smooth space" of an
information-based economy, and freedom to navigate the channels of
communication without inhibition becomes itself a commodity, then "the
State" is in a precarious situation. The State must become nomadic,
and subject itself to deterritorialization.

http://www.rhizomes.net/issue5/poke/glossary.html

smooth/striated

http://www.christianhubert.com/hypertext/smooth_striated.html

ATP14: The Smooth and the Striated

Outline of Chapter 14, "1440: The Smooth and the Striated" in A
Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, by G. Deleuze and F.
Guattari (1987, U Minn P, Minneapolis).

http://www.protevi.com/john/DG/ATP14.html

An early entry for "most quotable passage," by the way, cf. "Does
Britannia, when she sleeps, dream?" et soforthiam (M&D, Ch. 34, p.
345) ...

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_quotes.html