Bleeding Edge: "The Trade Center towers were religious too" (p. 338)

Tue Nov 19 15:08:37 CST 2013

Homoerotic phalli, I still maintain. Replaced with a good ol' hetero one now.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
>Sent: Nov 19, 2013 3:33 PM
>To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: Bleeding Edge: "The Trade Center towers were religious too"	(p. 338)
>
>
>Thanks for the well-deserved lesson David.
>
>Still, regardless of how they stood in relation to each other and  
>their surroundings, I'm inclined to think that the twinness of the WTC  
>buildings had something to do with their symbolic power. But I clearly  
>will have to come up with something better.
>
>
>Heikki
>
>David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>:
>
>> So many things in this brief analysis of WTC towers is incorrect and
>> exposing his ignorance of architecture:
>>
>> 1.  The towers didn't turn their backs on anything.  They had no backs. All
>> their faces were identical.  And they were no more faceless than any other
>> of their contemporaries.  Most modernist towers of that era and before were
>> grids, by nature uniform and and faceless.
>>
>> 2. Neither did they face each other.  They were offset from each other on a
>> diagonal.  Thus they maximized the number of faces sent outward, not at
>> each other.  In other words they didn't block each other's views.
>>
>> 3.  He is correct to point out that they did all they could to stand out
>> and dominate.  That is one of the central features of early and later
>> (pre-Pomo) modernist architecture, which was notoriously anti-urban and
>> ant-street.  Modernism hated facades lining streets or plazas or squares,
>> all the devices of pre-modern architecture to define urban SPACE.  Pre
>> modern urban architecture worked in a collective manner to define public
>> spaces.  Modern architecture hated urbanism, seeking to demolish vast areas
>> of urban fabric in order to provide an open limitless field in which to
>> display mega objects.  The WTC did its best to do just that in lower
>> Manhattan.  This is just plain vanilla modern architecture at a scale that
>> allowed it to achieve standard modernist goals.
>>
>> BTW, most architects thought they were crappy architecture.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Monday, November 18, 2013, Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I never appreciated Baudrillard much to begin with, and his writings on
>>> 9/11 made me appreciate him less, but some parts of his analysis may hold
>>> true, like the following points paraphrased by Margaret McNally:
>>>
>>> "The aesthetic twinness and symmetry of the Twin Towers, and their
>>> dominant height above other skyscrapers in the New York City skyline,
>>> signified that the WTC no longer represented competition of corporate
>>> capital among these modern symbols of capitalism in New York City or,
>>> indeed, the world. Rather, it represented western global capital
>>> dominance (Baudrillard, Spirit 38-39). The Towers' faceless facades stood
>>> isolated, turning their back on other skyscrapers, and facing one another
>>> in a playful, yet somewhat arrogant gesture that both defied modernism,
>>> and signified their self-contained supremacy of global power (40)."
>>>
>>>
>>> http://tinyurl.com/p9hghuz (Please note that clicking this link will
>>> prompt a download of a Word document to your computer.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Heikki
>>>
>>> On Mon, 18 Nov 2013, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>>
>>> > Also, it's the media--TV, radio, and print--that creates that "instant
>>> > history," telling us what we now think even before we think it, or
>>> > might never have thought it. It sells newspapers, as the saying goes.
>>> >
>>> > In a similar case, there's a story-heading this morning in either the
>>> > Times or the Post that reads "America still haunted by JFK
>>> > assassination."  Well, speaking for myself, the things haunting me
>>> > have nothing to do with that 50 year ago sad event.  I suspect it's
>>> > the same for many of the rest of you as well.
>>> >
>>> > P
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > > I agree with both of you. As a matter of prosaic fact, most of the
>>> corporate
>>> > > tenants of the WTC were insurance companies (the largest by square
>>> footage a
>>> > > Blue Cross HMO) and a slew of import/export firms and financial
>>> > > intermediaries few of us had ever heard of. They were landmarks and
>>> > > sightseeing attractions, but certainly hadn't replaced the literal or
>>> > > synecdochal Wall Street, or the Chase Manhattan or Citibank towers, or
>>> the
>>> > > Federal Reserve bank, as first-to-mind symbols of finance or US
>>> economic
>>> > > hegemony.
>>> > >
>>> > > UNTIL the week after September 11, 2001. It was the spectacle of their
>>> > > destruction, *in combination* with the attack on the Pentagon and the
>>> > > aborted attack on the White House (both unquestionably first-to-mind
>>> symbols
>>> > > in their own domains), that retroactively made them "the symbolic
>>> center of
>>> > > Western capitalism."
>>> > >
>>> > > IOW: if our enemies had chosen them (twice!) as symbolic targets, by
>>> god
>>> > > they'd better have been important symbols. FWIW, I think the hasty
>>> neatness
>>> > > of that "instant history" in the wake of the attack is a significant
>>> source
>>> > > of TRP's animus that's been discussed in another thread.
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>> > > <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>> > >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >> I agree with you.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> But as representative building - and here the W in WTC is of
>>> relevance -
>>> > >> the Twin Towers were  functioning as the master icon of Western
>>> capitalism.
>>> > >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >> On 18.11.2013 16:49, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> I always thought 11 Wall street (NYSE) was the symbolic and religious
>>> > >>> center of American (Western) capitalism,  with its opening and
>>> closing
>>> > >>> (church) bells ringing away.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> P
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>> > >>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>> > >>>>
>>> > >>>> Shawn, as a fake Zen therapist, might not be the novel's most
>>> > >>>> trustworthy
>>> > >>>> voice, but here he is on to something. Discussions about the
>>> symbolic
>>> > >>>> dimension of the Twin Towers tend, also on this list, to reduce it
>>> to
>>> > >>>> its
>>> > >>>> phallic element. This is there, no doubt, but if this was all there
>>> is,
>>> > >>>> it
>>> > >>>> could have been just any skyscraper. Yet the Trade Center Towers
>>> were
>>> > >>>> not
>>> > >>>> just any skyscraper. Artists like Philippe Petit or Wim Wenders
>>> ("Der
>>> > >>>> Amerikanische Freund", 1977) realized this right away. The Twin
>>> Towers
>>> > >>>> were
>>> > >>>> the symbolic center of Western capitalism. And when they were
>>> destroyed,
>>> > >>>> Western people in general and US people in particular perceived
>>> this as
>>> > >>>> an
>>> > >>>> attack on "our way of life", as chancellor Schröder put it back
>>> then.
>>> > >>>> Shawn's comparison of the WTC attacks to the blowing up of the
>>> Buddha
>>> > >>>> statues in Afghanistan makes this symbolic dimension clear.
>>> > >>>> The shock and the confusion afterwards (including the belittling of
>>> the
>>> > >>>> terrorists' courage) have to do with the -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>
>
>
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>Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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