BtZ42/11 - Robot DNA, whose orders?

[Joseph Tracy]

 I was just re-looking at ch11. Sorry to be out of sync. This chapter may be short but it relates to a major theme with comic intensity.

Does the fact that the Beardsley like drawing is on a letterhead from German Command imply the possibility of double agency? Has this been discussed?

Katje- from Katerina-from Greek saint Aikaterinē- Greek name probably from Hecate( Goddess of underworld, death, witchcraft) later Greek adj.  Katharos came to mean pure. 

The word "message' is  key and repeated in chapter. Word  ‘angel' means messenger.  Call to retrieve Katje
" tantamount to an order from the highest level".  In this case the message is decoded via semen. Semen is the male side of biological  coded messaging( DNA, y chromosome). (  In Jewish history Abraham receives message from highest level that his seed will be blessed and fill the earth via Sarah, while household servant and concubine Hagar becomes mother of Arabians ). In this chapter woman is reduced to symbolic image, porn. Egg becomes explicit written orders.  In ancient mythology the gods and  heroes  along with their  stories and troubles almost all proceed from sexual liaisons. Writing and symbolic codes becomes a way to impose order on biology and beliefs, on living inner processes and ways of understanding ourselves and nature.  Preserved codes also offer a route to a kind of immortality and escape from circle of life/death.

The entire process is a cross between reptilian sex and robotically conditioned sex in service of authority plans/orders. The implication seems to map onto ideas like master-race, eugenics, sex as one more mechanism of control.  Is part of apprenticeship as a successful pirate the mastery of sex as mechanism of power/manipulation? 


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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l