Very tangential on CofL49

[alice wellintown]

“Sophocles implies that incest and exile, too much unity and
too much diversity, are not opposites but are, literally,
two sides of the same coin. He also suggests, what the
audience believed, that incest and parricide are acts that
obliterate the distinction between man and beast, inside and
outside, the wild and civilization. What Oedipus lacks (and
Thebes as well) is some middle term, an Aristotelian Polis
that mediates between our divinity and animality, making us
whole in a community constituted by diversity.” 287
So says,  J. Peter Euben in  The Road Home: Pynchon’s The
Crying of Lot 49, the concluding chapter of his The Tragedy
of Political Theory. [1990]

“If there is any hope in the novel, it rests with Oedipa.
She is the only one who does not give up the quest…she is
the middle term….” 302

Is Oedipa the middle term, an Aristotelian polis?

‘tis better to be lord of men than of WASTE: since neither
walled town nor ship is anything, if it is void and no men
dwell with thee therein.”  Priest of Zeus to Oedipus



Mark Kohut wrote:
> I have done a little bit of research for personal reasons
> into Antigone, the play.




> I have learned of all of the commentary on 1) anthropological
> reasons for burying the dead to heal the land   2) Lone person against the State
> 3) Many meanings ascribed to a woman opposing a patriarchy..............



>
> Which led me to simply this re CofL49.
> Oedipa is the female form of classic Oedipus...
> Which Oedipus had to solve the riddle to heal the land
>
> So too his female counterpart, Oedipa, had to solve the mystery/riddle
> in order to heal the patriarchal land which tower was everywhere....
>
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