Back to AtD Anti-Semitism

[Matthew Cissell]

I read it pretty much the same way Kai does. And, like you Mark, I found his comment not just informative but laudable for its clarity regarding a complex matter.

"modernity's hypercomplexity"? Hmm, i think some would speak of 'postmoderntiy'. Please don't misunderstand me , I like Kai's use of the term. I'm just curious about it.

mc 


________________________________
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: Back to AtD Anti-Semitism


And not just 'informative"...........................
Kai Frederick Lorentzen writes:
"What's correct is that the actually eliminatoric form of antisemitism was essentially bred in late 19th century Vienna. True also that modern antisemitism reaches a level of abstraction that cannot be found in other types of racism which simply try to reduce the Other to the status of quasi-beasts. When racists say "[Jewish] Wall Street bankers financed the Russian October revolution to bring war over the planet" they always find an ear; with a similar statement regarding people of color they would just make themselves ridiculous. This additional level of abstraction makes antisemitism attractive to those unable to bear modernity's hypercomplexity. When Adorno wrote "antisemitism is the rumor about the Jews" in the 1940s, he was aiming exactly at what Pynchon means when he writes "[h]atred of Jews was sometimes almost beside the point" (AtD, p. 807) and what in nowadays' research is called "secondary antisemitism".    

A brilliant gloss on Pynchon's compressed precision imo.... "those unable to bear modernity's hypercomplexity"....

Did not know Adorno's remark.......only knew,basically, the first sentence....




From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 6:53 AM
Subject: Re: Back to AtD Anti-Semitism



On 14.04.2012 14:54, Mark Kohut wrote:


pp. 807-808....reread and feel how Pynchon captured Anti-Semitism so straightforwardly (in Vienna)
>'it was the air people breathed".....had reached a level of abstraction removed from
>blood.........so now it was "a source of energy, a tremendous dark energy".....that
>could be used in many ways......[check out how those energies are still there feeding
>racial and other hatreds in the US and other countries I'm sure]
>................................and the way this ends......
> 
>(just in case you've wondered about your own anti-semitism or prejudice) we get
>that Pynchon touch wherein after Cyprian makes a joke about Shanghia Jews,even 
>Yashmeen starts to articulate that belief................
> 
You do Yashmeen ("Well, actually ..." she began.", p. 808) wrong here, I think.

"Shanghai's first wave of Jews came in the second half of the 19th century, many being Mizrahi Jews from Iraq. The first Jew who arrived there was Elias David Sassoon, who, about the year 1850, opened a branch in connection with his father's Bombay house. Since that period Jews gradually migrated from India to Shanghai, most of them being engaged from Bombay as clerks by the firm of David Sassoon & Co. The community was composed mainly of "Asian," (Sephardi) German, and Russian Jews, though there were a few of Austrian, French, and Italian origin among them. Jews took a considerable part in developing trade in China, and several served on the municipal councils, among them being Silas Aaron Hardoon, partner in the firm of E. D. Sassoon & Co., who served on the French and English councils at the same time. During the early days of Jewish settlement in Shanghai the trade in opium and Bombay cotton yarn was mainly in Jewish hands." (from Wikipedia)

Of course this didn't make Shanghai "a Jewish city", since the community had about a thousand souls at the time. But in that last line of the paragraph (s.a.) Yashmeen does not call it so. What she says two lines earlier is that "[h]ere they call it [meant is still Trieste.kfl] a Jewish city." Whereupon Cyprian says:
"Oh in Vienna (...) they think Shanghai is a Jewish city." By emphasizing Shanghai, Pynchon makes it, imo, clear that for Cyprian this Chinese city is just a place far far away where he would never go and about which he doesn't know anything. Yashmeen does, and so she starts to explain the facts behind the evil rumor. Not at all the same "belief" (your word) that is articulated as an insult one page earlier.

What's correct is that the actually eliminatoric form of antisemitism was essentially bred in late 19th century
Vienna. True also that modern antisemitism reaches a level of abstraction that cannot be found in other types of racism which simply try to reduce the Other to the status of quasi-beasts. When racists say "[Jewish] Wall Street bankers financed the Russian October revolution to bring war over the planet" they always find an ear; with a similar statement regarding people of color they would just make themselves ridiculous. This additional level of abstraction makes antisemitism attractive to those unable to bear modernity's hypercomplexity. When Adorno wrote "antisemitism is the rumor about the Jews" in the 1940s, he was aiming exactly at what Pynchon means when he writes "[h]atred of Jews was sometimes almost beside the point" (AtD, p. 807) and what in nowadays' research is called "secondary antisemitism".