BtZ42 Back to some basics: White Visitation

[Joseph Tracy]

My 2 cents

> On Jun 11, 2016, at 10:14 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> ST> Do you think there are non-parodic instances (endorsements?) [of] rationalism in the book?
rationalism |ˈraSHənlˌizəm, ˈraSHnəˌlizəm| 
noun
a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response:scientific rationalism.
• Philosophy the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge.
• Theology the practice of treating reason as the ultimate authority in religion.

Rationalism is not as common a term these days as it once was. I had to look it up to see if I was close. It is striking the difference between  the Philosophic and Religious meaning on one hand and the scientific use on the other. In science knowledge is based on experience designed to yield reliably repeatable information- experimental data. It is a way of sorting good reasoning( logical hypothetical guesses) from bad reasoning. It may be better at dispensing with faulty premises than producing sound premises. 

I have a hard time seeing Pychon as a rationalist unless you would describe ethical consistency as a form of rationalism, but again P is always more descriptive than prescriptive, his ethics revealed mostly through where he points his interest.
    
> I distinguish between "rationalism" and "rationality" (or just "reason"). The former, with the "-ism" suffix, is an ideology or an implicit, hegemonic program: that everything knowable is knowable through reason, that the empire of reason is boundless, that every other candidate way of knowing will/should be explained or explained away. The latter is a method or collection of methods -- often animated with a faith that it can take us very far, but without imperial certainty. Think "scientism" vs. "science," or Roger's rejection of Pointsman's insistence that there must be something more than statistics to say -- more importantly, to *do* -- about the scatter of V-2 impacts 
> 
> With Schaub still at my elbow, I'm inclined to say that P "endorses" nothing beyond person-to-person animal warmth, kindness and compassion, with everything else organized in overlapping and cross-cutting ambiguities.
Inclined to agree but to add that P also rejects nothing with the exception of  an implicit rejection of cruelty and imperialist colonialism.
> 
>  https://lorenzduberry.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/joseph-cornell-copy.jpg
> 
> "His examiner...said severely: 'Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature.'
> 'The aim of literature,' Baskerville replied grandly, 'is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.'"
> 
> 
>    
> 
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 3:10 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you think there are non-parodic instances (endorsements?) rationalism in the book? 
> 
> On Jun 10, 2016, at 11:26 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Thomas Schaub, Pynchon: The Voice of Ambiguity (1981), pp. 50-51:
>> 
>> :The dreams and spiritualist visitations of the characters Feldspath, Rathenau, Blobadjian, and Bland are part of Pynchon's design to create a ubiquitous present which undermines the rationalist enterprises of Pointsman and the men above him. The imagery of their determinist schemes in Gravity's Rainbow -- ice, whiteness, now, gray skies, and pearl-colored London fog -- is embodied in Pointsman (whose place of work is 'The White Visitation') and his trained gray octopus Grigori, sent to the Riviera to do battle with the gaudy Tyrone in his Hawaiian shirt."
>> 
>> [with the usual Davis caveat that while "determinist schemes" is fair enough, "rationalist enterprises" glosses over the important point that these enterprises -- however methodically conducted -- are parodies of rationalism. As previously noted,
>> 
>> 1) the V-weapons were, per their German nickname, for vengeance rather than strategically or economically rational military effect
>> 
>> 2) the belief in Slothrop's map (and the inference from it that understanding more about Slothrop might lead to a defense against the V-2) is based at least as much on faith and wishful thinking as on rational weighing of evidence
I personally think that P goes to lengths to show that there is plenty of evidence that there are good rational reasons to think Slotrop’s map to be phenomenologically predictive. My feeling is that P is purposefully asserting a moral right to be left alone even if those with the power to decide have  an overwhelming scientific rationale to subject you to their search for knowledge. I feel he is deliberately isolating that issue.  I am not saying that there is no wishful thinking, nor that there is no personal ambition tainting Pointsman’s desire; logically, Pointsman and the others might might indeed be dead wrong, and the whole thing a set of remarkable convergent coincidences. What I am saying is that the case for a predictive pheomena is strong but pursuing it without Slothrop’s consent is clearly an immoral violation of his rights which has deep implications.  I believe P has structured the story to isolate that issue along with others that have parallel implications.
   
>> 
>> 3) The actual state of Pointsman's Pavlovian neuroscience and psychology -- while adequate for manipulating a dog's salivation (or allegedly, an octopus' appetite and hunting behavior) -- falls absurdly short of the control of human behavior that's tossed about in the book's conversations. That extrapolation is, again, wishful thinking in excelsis.]
Not so sure. The degree of manipulation of public opinion while tolerating a free press is rather impressive, and many of the techniques were pioneered at this time. At one point polls showed 70% of US believed Saddam had some responsibility for 9/11 attacks.
>> 
>> On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 11:18 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The way I understand Pynchon's cosmology, white exists on an end of the spectrum in the opposite direction of black. But really the spectrum is an Ouroboric cycle. Perfect whiteness or blackness then are not only realizations of the end of one direction of the spectrum, but are the conditions of passage between. When the conscious mind glimpses something powerful in the unconscious mind. When we approach death, er, transformation. 
>> 
>> Perfect whiteness obviously the unification of all light--light before it scatters into the differentiated colors of a rainbow, say. 
>> 
>> As whiteness approaches infinity, Slothrop's personal density approaches zero. Or vice versa. I forgot which. 
>> 
>> On Jun 9, 2016, at 5:52 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> First, after we've just gone thru the 'race' chapter, the White means whites, in its major meaning, right? 
>>> 
>>> vis·it·a·tion
>>> ˌvizəˈtāSH(ə)n/
>>> noun
>>> 	• 1. 
>>> an official or formal visit, in particular.
>>> 	• 2. 
>>> a disaster or difficulty regarded as a divine punishment.
>>> "a visitation of the plague"
>>> synonyms:	affliction, scourge, bane, curse, plague, blight, disaster, tragedy, catastrophe; More
>>> 
>>> And, in Catholicism at least, the visitation is what some call the invitation and fact of visiting the family w the newly-deceased body in a funeral home.  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Acts of Visitation: The Narrative of J.M. Coetzee
>>> https://books.google.com/books?isbn=9401206945
>>> María J. López - 2011 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
>>> The seminal dimension of the categories of penetration and visitation is highlighted, as these are shown to operate not only on a spatial level but also on an epistemological, physical, psychological, hermeneutic, metafictional and ethical ...
>> 
> 

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