What *did* Bakunin say?

[Joseph Tracy]

 Another relevant Bakunin quote :"There exists, finally, a somewhat numerous class of honest but timid souls who, too intelligent to take the Christian dogmas seriously, reject them in detail, but have neither the courage nor the strength nor the necessary resolution to summarily renounce them altogether. They abandon to your criticism all the special absurdities of religion, they turn up their noses at all the miracles, but they cling desperately to the principal absurdity; the source of all the others, to the miracle that explains and justifies all the other miracles, the existence of God. Their God is not the vigorous and powerful being, the brutally positive God of theology. It is a nebulous, diaphanous, illusory being that vanishes into nothing at the first attempt to grasp it; it is a mirage, an ignis fatugs; that neither warms nor illuminates. And yet they hold fast to it, and believe that, were it to disappear, all would disappear with it. They are uncertain, sickly souls, who have lost their reckoning in the present civilisation, belonging to neither the present nor the future, pale phantoms eternally suspended between heaven and earth, and occupying exactly the same position between the politics of the bourgeois and the Socialism of the proletariat."

One doubts how hard Bakunin actually grasped at any God, let alone this straw God of his own devising.  No possibility considered that mind is not divisible between spiritual and material, that such distinctions may be as much of a mirage as a particular picture of God. Anyway, not my main point. 

I would like to know if someone can give a reference for Oedipa's  embrace of Bakunin. 

I find your last sentence about her challenging and clearly identifying my own sense of her state of mind.  The challenging part is the discord  between what she sees with her own eyes and what she feels because of that. She sees the interconnectedness of things, and because of that new sight, another preterite world which is material but formerly unknown.  Sh feels estranged both from her past life and from the world she has entered. Irony is the right word. It's as though the truth that should make her free is an expensive ticket into a funhouse hall of mirrors.  But my own feeling for Pynchon's approach to forks in the road is that he is inclusive. intrusion of another world --- plus--- underground material communication system which implies alternative power arrangements= fork in the road taken.

Seems to me like the preterite at OWS or many other places a person might actually go hang out with a given preterite is livelier than the preterite  in Lot 49. The 49 ers are too ghostly to be much more real to this reader than echoes of Oedipa's own mental state. She has seen another reality but has not yet embraced it.   Later in Vineland we encounter a preterite which is more like a family; there is music, conversation, dumb jokes, difficult family histories, and binding love, sometimes deeper than blood; not sentimentalized but exhibiting  heat, life.  I remember times when I felt like Oedipa, numbly confused as my road map was revealed as a fantasy and only a confusing array of actual roads remained.  
 So taking the fork, more on OWS.  OWS is fascinating in that it is secular but also displays aspects of early Christianity or tribal communities- sharing food, inclusive healing relations, honoring others stories, letting those of traditionally lower status lead in discussions of justice, communal chanting of shared messages. It is also Bakunin-like in the general assembly and secular political pragmatism, opposition to hierarchy. Chris Hedges( war correspondent and ex-divinity student), in a recent article about his experiences at OWS, referred heavily to Bakunin. 
On Nov 27, 2011, at 8:24 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Oedipa at Driblette's wake, the "younger brother's stricken, helpless
> eulogy" does, now that I think about it, bring JFK to mind...
> 
> but, to grab a less ambitious handhold, "You know what a miracle is?
> Not what Bakunin said....' (this of course is when Oedipa is talking
> with Arrabal)
> 
> well, what *did* Bakunin say?
> 
> I found something here: http://amandaenuchols.wordpress.com/
> 
> her paper is interesting in its own right and I'm going to loaf at my
> ease and invite my leisure while reading it, but there's a relevant
> passage goodsearch.com turned up (goodsearch.com if you sign up with
> them donates a penny per search you make to the charity of your
> choice) -- which is this ----
> 
> es from two references in the novel to Mikhail Bakunin, the commonly
> held “father” of Anarchist thought.  Bakunin is first mentioned in The
> Crying of Lot 49  in chapter five, in reference to Bakunin’s miracle:
> “You know what a miracle is.  Not what Bakunin said.”  (97)  The final
> reference is in chapter six, where he is referred to as the conclusion
> of the Tristero organization, “now reduced to handling anarchist
> correspondence; . . . preparing them for the coming of M. Bakunin.”
> (142-143)  The Bakunin “miracle” is best stated in the words of
> Bakunin himself:
> 
> “And there this poor Divinity, degraded and half annihilated by its
> fall, lies some thousands of centuries in this swoon, then awakens
> slowly, in vain endeavouring (sic) to grasp some vague memory of
> itself, and every move that it makes in this direction upon matter
> becomes a creation, a new formation, a new miracle.” (God and the
> State)
> 
> There is much, much more to Bakunin’s “miracle” than is stated in this
> simple quote.  He states that history is a continuous fall, and that
> Divinity, as history, is also continuously falling; therefore, the
> rise from the fall creates new miracles simply by the action of its
> rise from inert matter to active.  Pynchon’s narrative states that
> Jesús Arrabal’s miracle is “another world’s intrusion into this one”
> (97), whereas Bakunin’s miracle is ever-present in a single reality.
> This is an interesting comparison in relation to Pynchon’s “false
> leads” because Oedipa spends the vast majority of the novel pursuing
> miracles that are ever-present in her own reality by trying to find
> and connect meaning and purpose to everything she encounters.  She
> ultimately disregards Arrabal’s “miracle” in favor of the “miracle” of
> an Anarchist philosopher.  It then becomes ironic that Oedipa’s own
> life and mental processes begin to be overrun with anarchy when they
> become so overwhelmed with the interconnectedness of the world around
> her.