Well, Pynchon seems to have

[alice wellintown]

These passages from GR and Luddite have been much debated and used to
support contrasting readings of Pynchon. In the recent collection on AGTD a
wonderful essay by Coffman addresses the environmentalism in P. Worth a
look.


On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 4:05 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>wrote:

> A good reading of that good Luddite phrase. It's irony seems to have flown
> right over Monte's head.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Well said as usual...but I have always read the line about " artificial
>> intelligence, molecular biology and robotics ( as) something for all good
>> Luddites to look forward to"...as a statement  that THOSE things will be
>> more things Luddites will be resisting ( if they have the will)...
>>
>> My best differing perspective resides in my short post about the whole (
>> possible) scientific age of modernity which Pynchon savages a lot......and
>> he goes deep enough to indict (with Empsonian ambiguity and a complex view
>> of we human beings' role) ways even the scientific method contributed to
>> that modern world view, in my opinion.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Jun 4, 2013, at 11:49 AM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> No, we don’t disagree. Of course Pynchon does ask very uncomfortable
>> questions about what we make of our technologies and vice versa. He does
>> show us people who impose on others, and embrace for themselves, a variety
>> of dehumanizations. But I don’t see him reifying or ascribing agency to
>> science and technology; in fact,  when he seems to do so, it’s almost
>> always a parodic setup to prove that in fact the agency remains with us:*
>> ***
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all
>> theatre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly, it was
>> being dictated instead by the needs of technology… I need my night’s blood,
>> my funding, funding, ahh more, more…****
>>
>>             …Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument
>> has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the
>> younger Schwarzkommando especially), “All very well to talk about having a
>> monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the Rocket if someone,
>> some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t *wanted* to chuck
>> a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead,
>> capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less
>> responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother…”****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> As for the Luddite essay: NB that the title is a question, not an
>> exhortation (“Join me at the barricades, my fellow Luddites!”) -- a hint,
>> perhaps, that he doesn’t have a pat answer? NB how he emphasizes  that the
>> historical incidents labeled “Luddite” were  in fact good old “open-eyed
>> class war,” directed **not** at a new technology but at machinery that
>> had been around for 200 years. NB that he’s very explicitly ambivalent
>> about whether information technology, the dominant or at least
>> highest-profile technology of our own time, favors the Firm or the
>> Counterforce (it yields Wikileaks and Twitter flash mobs as well as Total
>> Information Awareness). NB that his projected convergence of “the curves of
>> research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and
>> robotics” is – surprise! -- not a coming Dark Age of techno-horror, but
>> instead “certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward to.”**
>> **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> If people want to namecheck Pynchon as validator for a simplistic and
>> ill-informed anxiety about Science and Technology as cosmic forces somehow
>> independent of people with genitals, neuroses, politics, and ideologies, I
>> can’t stop ‘em: a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
>> Me, I like him for his complex and well-informed anxiety – **and**
>> fascinated attraction, **and** wonder, and all his other responses to
>> science and technology. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> * *
>>
>> * *
>>
>> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>]
>> *On Behalf Of *Markekohut
>> *Sent:* Monday, June 03, 2013 6:15 PM
>> *To:* Monte Davis
>> *Cc:* pynchon -l
>> *Subject:* Re: Well, Pynchon seems to have****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> We don't disagree, I think.....complex he is fer sure....one reason I do
>> read and reread...****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> But I did write " some anti-technology and anti-science stuff".......key
>> qualifier for me here****
>>
>> Is " some"......part of that complexity.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Once again, few of his contemporary writers of fiction, near peers,
>> alluded to Ludditism****
>>
>> Favorably in a non-fiction piece, his own opinion,and I have pointed to
>> some perspectives****
>>
>> On math and science in Against the Day this last still-unfinished
>> read.....****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> You're one of the best defenders of science on this list and really
>> illumine Parts where P****
>>
>> Shows his aware-love......****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> But the other side exists too, I aver.  ****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>>
>
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