BtZ42/11 - Robot DNA, whose orders?

[Mark Kohut]

I'm resonating before I read again, then reread. Interesting.

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 10:47 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>  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?
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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