IVIV (12): 195-197

[Mark Kohut]

When machines are not so bad, as in these examples, workers lose even their dehumanizong work. 



--- On Tue, 11/3/09, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Subject: RE: IVIV (12): 195-197
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 6:07 AM
> 
> John:
> 
> > I would say that Pynchon displays (or, if yuo prefer,
> portrays)  
> > a strong antipathy to certain aspects of a given
> technology, but 
> > that his approach is too nuanced and complex to be
> one-sided. 
> > There is often a significant counter-argument to be
> made.
>  
> Absolutely. In M&D, for instance, Mason rages against
> the bloody
> Mills (313) which steal the work from the proud British
> workers,
> whereas Dixon points out that Engines can sometimes also
> remove
> the need for slave labor (697).
>  
> The same argument appears in AtD, where Günther von
> Quassel asks
> Frank to help out on his coffee plantation:
>  
> "Some kind of a plantation foreman, keepin 'em unruly
> native 
> Indians in line? I get to carry a whip and so forth? Think
> not,
> Günni."
> Günther laughed [...]. "Of course, as a northamerican you
> must
> be nostalgic for the days of slavery, but in the highly
> competitive
> market which coffee has become, we cannot afford to linger
> in the
> past."
> [There follows a description of the various tasks
> performed].
> Once all done by hand, these jobs were nowadays more
> efficiently
> performed by various sorts of machine. The von Quassel
> plantation
> was in the process of being mechanized" (AtD, 987)
>  
> Machines are bad, but sometimes they're not so bad.
>    
>         
>           
>   
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