AtdTDA: [38] p. 1071 A Certain Word

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: AtdTDA: [38] p. 1071 A Certain Word


> Robin,
>
> Another terrific post......I want to be "just askin":
>
> Yes, the case that that certain word not yet spoken is "Fascism" is 
> strong, as some wiki poster has posited.
>
> But is it what TRP meant?.....any other possible words?

Fascist is ok (Italian word, political, eagles, etc.), but what Kit was also 
having a precognition of was Modern Warfare  (two words)

As opposed to soon-to-be outmoded trench warfare, for example

If you're askin' for other possibilities.

P.



>
> Mark
>
>
> --- On Sat, 8/9/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net 
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>> Subject: AtdTDA: [38] p. 1071  A Certain Word
>> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008, 11:11 AM
>> "Hold on Cowboy!" leaning gleefully on the stick
>> as they
>>           went into a steep, stomach-lifting dive.
>>
>>           Monte Davis: Kinda describes the advent of the
>> dear old
>>           20th century, doesn't it?
>>
>> Mos Def, MD as we collectively rush headlong into the next
>> thought, Futurism:
>>
>>           They were soon going so fast that something
>> happened to time,
>>           and maybe they'd slipped for a short interval
>> into the Future, the
>>           Future known to Italian Futurists, with events
>> superimposed on
>>           one another, and geometry straining irrationally
>> away in all
>>           directions including a couple of extra dimensions
>> as they
>>           continued hellward, a Hell that could never
>> contain Kit's
>>           abducted young wife. . . .
>>
>> From the Wikipedia article on Futurism:
>>
>>           Futurism was an art movement that originated in
>> Italy in the
>>           early 20th century. It was largely an Italian
>> phenomenon, though
>>           there were parallel movements in Russia, England
>> and elsewhere.
>>           The Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was
>> its founder and
>>           most influential personality. He launched the
>> movement in his
>>           Futurist Manifesto, which he published in the
>> French daily
>>           newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. In it
>> Marinetti
>>           expressed a passionate loathing of everything
>> old, especially
>>           political and artistic tradition. "We want
>> no part of it, the past,"
>>           he wrote, "we the young and strong
>> Futurists!" The Futurists
>>           admired speed, technology, youth and violence,
>> the car, the
>>           plane and the industrial city, all that
>> represented the technological
>>           triumph of humanity over nature, and they were
>> passionate
>>           nationalists.
>>           The Futurists practiced in every medium of art,
>> including painting,
>>           sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial
>> design, interior design,
>>           theatre, fashion, textiles, literature, music,
>> architecture and even
>>           gastronomy.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism_(art)
>>
>> And after a "shuddering prop-to-tail assault on
>> airframe integrity",
>> Kit is turned on by "the incorporation of death into
>> what otherwise
>> would only be a carnival ride."
>>
>> This leads to another silly song. I'd look it up in the
>> "Italian Wedding
>> Fake Book by Deleuze & Guattari."
>>
>> The Pynchon wiki is worth quoting here:
>>
>>           If this book isn't real, it oughtta be. Fake
>> books are collections
>>           of songs that provide basic chord changes for
>> working
>>           musicians who need to play said tunes in a hurry
>> — like on a
>>           gig. The auteurial attribution is a very sly
>> academic joke.
>>           Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and Felix Guattari
>> (1930-1992)
>>           were post-modernist philosophers best known for
>> two esoteric
>>           volumes on capitalism and schizophrenia,
>> originally written
>>           in French. Volume one was Anti-Oedipus; volume
>> two was
>>           A Thousand Plateaus.
>>
>> http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1063-1085#Page_1
>> 070
>>
>> From "Postmodern Theory, Critical Interrogations"
>> by Steven Best and Douglas
>> Kelner:
>>
>>           Chapter 3: Deleuze and Guattari: Schizos, Nomads,
>> Rhizomes
>>           [excerpt]
>>
>>           Their most influential book to date, Anti-Oedipus
>> (1983; orig. 1972)
>>           is a provocative critique of modernity's
>> discourses and institutions
>>           which repress desire and proliferate fascists
>> subjectivities that
>>           haunt even revolutionary movements. Deleuze and
>> Guattari have
>>           been political militants and perhaps the most
>> enthusiastic of
>>           proponents of a micropolitics of desire that to
>> precipitate radical
>>           change through a liberation of desire. Hence they
>> anticipate the
>>           possibility of a new postmodern mode of existence
>> where
>>           individuals overcome repressive modern forms of
>> identity and
>>           stasis to become desiring nomads in a constant
>> process of
>>           becoming and transformation.
>>
>> http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/pomo/ch3.html
>>
>> Remember that the Grand Cohen found Clive useful as the
>> only friend
>> of the devil? There's another Orphic echo what with the
>> abduction thing
>> and all, and Kit is being seduced by the blandishments of
>> Fascism,
>> envy, jealousy and desire turned, tempered and corrupted
>> into the
>> working tools of the plutonian spheres of influence.
>>
>> From the quarterly journal "International
>> Socialism",
>> "Gramsci: the Turin years" by Megan Trudell :
>>
>>           In August 1917 a general strike began in Turin
>> after police killed
>>           two people during a protest over bread shortages.
>> It quickly
>>           became a powerful expression of a potentially
>> revolutionary
>>           anti-war movement. According to Marc Ferro,
>> ‘The strikes…were
>>           reminiscent in many ways of those in Petrograd in
>> February.
>>           Women and youth had a vital part in them, trying
>> to fraternise
>>           with the carabinieri [armed police] and shouting,
>> “Don’t fire at
>>           your brothers”.’ The Turin rising was
>> brutally repressed. Troops
>>           armed with machine guns killed over 50 people and
>> wounded 800.
>>           Over 1,000 demonstrators, mainly Fiat workers,
>> were sent
>>           to the front, and the war zone in north east
>> Italy was extended
>>           to include the provinces of Genoa and Turin, and
>> as far south
>>           as Sicily.
>>
>> More at:
>>
>> http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=306&issue=114
>>
>> Kit's value system has been turned inside out by now,
>> like taking off
>> a glove or a complex problem in topology. He's got
>> Webb's urge to
>> blow stuff up, but he also has developed some sense of
>> karma in his
>> travels. But Renzo has already stopped wearing civilian
>> clothes, lotsa
>> eagles, very, very Vineland.
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