Herero latest

Wed May 24 06:12:10 CDT 2017

Fine reader-response yet historical perspective in real writing.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That's the locus classicus. As Weisenburger & Herman document in many
> ways, GR richly expresses and extends the critique of American
> exceptionalism and triumphalism -- especially their post-WWII flavor --
> that was spreading in the years of its composition. The U.S. phase of the
> war in Viet Nam, the civil rights and free speech movements, the ongoing
> nuclear arms race and the sterile culmination of the moon race (thanks,
> Wernher!) convinced a lot of people, not just Pynchon's readers, that We
> hadn't been the unambiguous good guys in WWII... that both European and
> American imperialism had brought at least as much Bad Shit as Christianity
> and progress to the "lesser breeds without the law"... that the Atomic Age
> and Space Age (don't those sound quaint now?) might not be as brightly
> benign as Disney's TV programs and subtropical Zwolfkinders had suggested.
> Slothrop is (among many other things) Candide on sodium amytal, stumbling
> on uncomfortable questions about this "best of all possible worlds.".      .
>
> Those were my late teens and early twenties. I embraced (and inhaled) that
> critique, and much of it remains part of my world view. But even when GR
> was new, I also thought that its uses of mythology (including original sin,
> a doctrine far from unique to Christianity), sexuality, and depth
> psychology pushed the critique to older times and wider regions than the
> 500 years of European expansion.
>
> It's in the later books, too: in Mason & Dixon, those aren't just French
> and Spanish tendrils out there beyond the frontier. The Chinese presence
> and advanced communications technology sketch an alternate history in which
> Asian empire reached across the Pacific. Whatever Captain Zhang may be,
> he's not your basic innocent Confucian or Taoist victim of British opium
> wars, Shanghai concessions, and multinational reprisals for the Boxer
> rebellion.
>
> Pynchon, like most writers, "writes what he knows" -- which is a hell of a
> lot more than me or thee, but still expanded outward from the experience of
> an American born in 1937, maturing with the late Beats and then the
> California 1960s. He gets an amazing amount of the world and world history
> into his books, but he's not a disembodied _weltgeist_ or a xenobiologist
> from Mars.
>
> It's safe to say that when he wrote "the savages of other continents,
> corrupted but still resisting
> in the name of life
> ," he wasn't thinking about Thutmose III or Mansa Musa or Shaka Zulu,
> Ch'ing Shi Huang or Genghis Khan or Asoka or Timur Leng, the bloody-handed
> empire builders of El Mirador or Teotihuacan or Cuzco. But I doubt very
> much that means he would (or would expect us to) classify them as
> exceptions or aberrations. The world is big, history is long, and
>
> "
> the impulse to empire, the mission to propagate death
> ," did not enter them with Calvin and calculus and conquistadors.
>
> On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 6:31 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "In Africa, Asia, Amerindia, Oceania, Europe came and established its
>> order of Analysis and Death. What it could not use, it killed or
>> altered. In time the death-colonies grew strong enough to break away.
>> But the impulse to empire, the mission to propagate death, the
>> structure of it, kept on. Now we are in the last phase. American Death
>> has come to occupy Europe. It has learned empire from its old
>> metropolis. But now we have only the structure left us, none of the
>> great rainbow plumes, no fittings of gold, no epic marches over alkali
>> seas. The savages of other continents, corrupted but still resisting
>> in the name of life, have gone on despite everything...while Death and
>> Europe are separate as ever, their love still unconsummated. Death
>> only rules here. [...]'" 722-23
>>
>> "hopeless as the one-way flow of European time" 724
>>
>>
>> http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?
>> title=Europe_in_Gravity%27s_Rainbow
>>
>> On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 3:04 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> > The systems of colonial exploitation, including the efficiencies of
>> slave classes and the technologies of militarism seem to know little ethnic
>> favoritism. In the words of the Marx brothers “All god’s children got guns”
>> . In this I agree with Monte. But cultures can root themseves in mythos,
>> values and practices that are ruthlessly competitive or they can grow out
>> of and retain humane, inclusive values .  I see examples of this, too,
>> throughout human history and where nasty habits like caste get established
>> there is usually a resistance ( Buddhism, Gandhi, abolitionism). Humane
>> values are actually very resilient  locally but are often overthrown by
>> militarized imperial ambition or people with too much power. Still, abuses
>> of power breed resistance.  Many revolutions are fueled by an attempt to
>> restore or start over with better, more fair, laws and values.  Still we
>> can all see that the cycle of mass violence and exploitaion is too much
>> with us and combned with abused and reckless technology threatens
>> catastrophe.
>> >
>> > My main argument in this discussion is the danger of the mindset and
>> ingrained abuses that accompanies economic, cultural and military
>> colonialism. Here I tend to have feelings similar to jody boy that
>> westerners too easily make exceptions for themselves to ignore the savagery
>> of western history and current hegemony. The main problem being the
>> presumption that answers and positive changes lie with the powerful.( this
>> presumption is basic to colonialism) .  One of the best things that is
>> happening globally is the awareness of an interdependence that can only
>> work if everyone is treated respectfully and has a stake in where we direct
>> our wealth, intelligence and work.  We are also returning to a more humble
>> reationship the biosphere. Environmentalism was not invented in western
>> academia and is an increasingly global value. Nonviolent conflict
>> resolution, introduced on a global scale as a foundational principle of
>> sane community by people like Buddha, Jesus, Martin L King, Gandhi
>> feminism, and many others may be disorganized and still weak in dealing
>> with the major purveyors of violence but most protestors and fighters for
>> justice follow those precepts.
>> >          Caste?
>> > I just saw a really inspiring French made movie called ‘Tomorrow’ which
>> shows existing projects from non-chemical agriculture, to alternative
>> banking, to active ground-up democracy, and renewable energy- existing
>> models of new ways of living..  One segment was a look at a small
>> agricultural village in India. The newly elected mayor turned out to really
>> believe in democracy and got the whole village involed in making decisions
>> and setting priorities. They started businesses, fixed the water system,
>> started regular cleanup days  and then they took on the serious issue of
>> untouchables, first they  funded a new sewer and water system for the
>> untouchable area mostly with labor by the untouchables. Then they decided
>> that there would be no more separation of castes. Many started living in
>> shared houses( imagine a plaster duplex), even Brahmins and former
>> untouchables lived in the same building and quickly came to see that they
>> were all much the same.  Couldn't race in America have a similar solution?
>> The big question for those of good will is whether humans are doomed by bad
>> habits or whether the dynamics that created the peaceful heroes of
>> history,from Buddha to kind wise mothers, can lead us from a colonizing,
>> controlling, dominating mindset to a a friendlier shared community of life.
>> >
>> > Enough words, I’m going out to plant asparagus, strawberries and
>> potatoes.
>> >
>> >> On May 21, 2017, at 12:52 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Agreed. There *are* deep connections between the European rise(s) of
>> capitalism, of imperial expansion, of technology, and of organizational
>> complexity. That's the brilliance of GR's use of the Hereros (onstage) and
>> the Holocaust (offstage): it's "bringing the colonial war home," not
>> chasing victims across the Kalahari but using the the careful parsing of
>> ancestry and tIfe efficient train system and the triplicate Zyklon B
>> procurement contracts to feed the ovens at Belsen. It's making us smell in
>> in Dresden and Weimar and Gottingen the death-stink of what were supposed
>> to be far-away outhouses.
>> >> Of *course* the West, because it had an edge in wealth and geographic
>> reach and technology for 500 years, was able to "modernize" and
>> industrialize domination and exploitation both abroad and at home. We
>> should understand that; we should feel the shame of that; we should be wary
>> of its continuation in new guises.
>> >>
>> >> But we should also be wary of "virtue Othering," aka the flip side of
>> Said's Orientalism. For example: I'm no scholar of South Asian religion and
>> history, but I do know enough about the 2000- to 3000-year-old caste
>> systems, from reading and from many conversations with South Asians over
>> the years, to believe they have been a titanic human tragedy. They have
>> constrained literally billions of lives -- marriage, occupation, status,
>> social interaction -- and crushed countless "untouchables" (a Hindu
>> innovation, AFAIK) and shudras from birth to death.
>> >> It's fine with me if my Western peers want to idealize Eastern
>> spirituality; I've long had some Buddhist leanings and practices myself.
>> But I'm damned if I'll see the evil of caste handwaved away -- 'hey, it's
>> all OK because knowing your place in life is so much better  than
>> materialistic status-seeking, and because reincarnation anyway.' Fuck that:
>> I thank the Trimurti that brahmins and kshatriyas in the 1400s didn't take
>> the lead with banking and joint-stock companies, galleons and cannons, and
>> plant *their* banners around the shores of the world ocean. Because as
>> badly as we've fucked up, things could have been a lot worse.
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 11:35 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> This is a fascinating discussion, with interesting viewpoints
>> contributed by all. I'm listening to the GR audio, and just heard, "the
>> real business of the war is buying and selling". What struck me, Monte, is
>> the distinction between colonialism and the tribalism (?) displayed by the
>> native North Americans after their acquisition (re-acquisition?) of horses.
>> >> It seems to me that, though the impulses may be traced to the same
>> source, what is different is the degree of complexity, and the distance
>> traveled from one to the other. The level of technology involved in
>> colonialism, the self-justification, the duplicity...
>> >>
>> >> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>> >>
>> >> On May 21, 2017, at 10:40 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>> And, of course, why should we confine ourselves to genocide
>> perpetrated against humans?
>> >>>
>> >>> Why, indeed? Do you know why the Europeans' horses were so startling
>> to Native Americans in the early 1500s? Because their fucking ancestors --
>> not a Protestant among them -- had spent millennia hunting and eating and
>> driving to extinction the horses that had EVOLVED in North America (some of
>> whom had earlier migrated across the land bridge to Eurasia).
>> >>>
>> >>> Once the Spaniards' horses had spread northward tribe by tribe, they
>> transformed the Southwest and Great Plains. The sedentary tribes of the
>> 17th to 19th century, from pueblo-dwellers to the Chippewa near the Great
>> Lakes, saw and suffered what the Comanche and Kiowa and Lakota Sioux
>> became: not just mounted buffalo hunters but mounted raiders (very much
>> like Aryans and Dorians, Scythians and Mongols had been in Eurasia),
>> descending bloodily on their villages, departing with food stores and
>> scalps, captive women and children.
>> >>>
>> >>> I'm sure it must have been that malign European influence. As you've
>> just provided a fine example of the "all Africa's problems trace to
>> colonialism" view I cited, no doubt you can connect the dots.
>> >>>
>> >>> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 9:02 AM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>> Your sarcasm aside, an argument can be made, and I think with some
>> >>> merit, that Western colonialism set the stages for those tragic
>> >>> examples you've listed, especially their magnitude, by directly or
>> >>> indirectly disrupting those cultures.
>> >>>
>> >>> Let's not forget the role of slavery and capitalism, symbolized by the
>> >>> "twin gallows" in M&D, silhouetted in the clear freshening breeze of
>> >>> St. Helena, as it wafted over from the African coast.
>> >>>
>> >>> Nor the role of Western science and technology, among which I- perhaps
>> >>> uniquely- include Protestantism, as a form of social engineering, all
>> >>> of which dovetailed with slavery and capitalism to engender a new and
>> >>> exponentially more efficient means of chronic genocide, at
>> >>> controllable rates and with predictable rates of return.
>> >>>
>> >>> And, of course, why should we confine ourselves to genocide
>> >>> perpetrated against humans? The extinction of the Dodo as portrayed in
>> >>> GR, seems to me more than just a metaphor for man's inhumanity to man,
>> >>> but against the totality of nature and the environment we all depend
>> >>> on.
>> >>>
>> >>> How does it go, the opening of GR?   "It's happened before, but
>> >>> nothing like this..."  something to that effect.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 9:40 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>>> I think the uniqueness of the European (Western) example is unique
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Can't argue with that
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> Scale matters, and so does the belief system that undergirds and
>> justifies
>> >>>>> the implementation of
>> >>>> systematic genocide.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I
>> >>>> t was doubtless a great comfort to 2 million Hindus, Muslims and
>> Sikhs in
>> >>>> 1947, 30 million Chinese in 1959-61, 1 million Indonesian Chinese in
>> >>>> 1965-66, 2 million Cambodians in 1975-1979, 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi in
>> 1994,
>> >>>> and 5 million Congolese in 2003-2008 that their deaths were
>> small-scale,
>> >>>> unsystematic, non-genocidal, and not in the service of the Western
>> belief
>> >>>> system.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 6:17 PM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Couple, three points:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> I am not in competition with you to cite evidence of "the
>> overwhelming
>> >>>>> edge in power and organized aggression of the European expansion
>> over
>> >>>>> nearly all the indigenous people it encountered in Africa, Asia, and
>> >>>>> the New World." I don't claim to be an historian.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Secondly, I am not convinced that all human cultures are
>> equivalently
>> >>>>> predisposed to "eat the apple," etc. I think the uniqueness of the
>> >>>>> European (Western) example is unique and it is precisely that
>> >>>>> uniqueness that Pynchon is concerned with. Scale matters, and so
>> does
>> >>>>> the belief system that undergirds and justifies the implementation
>> of
>> >>>>> systematic genocide.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Lastly, it seems obvious to point out, that all human societies are
>> >>>>> capable, push to shove, of atrocity, but that gives short shrift to
>> >>>>> the uniqueness of the Western version. There are hints in the texts
>> of
>> >>>>> another type of uniqueness- perhaps the flip side of the same coin,
>> >>>>> that there is something special- especially good- about "us," that
>> we
>> >>>>> have something unique to offer the rest of the planet that may yet
>> >>>>> turn out to be decisive. In order for that to happen, "we" need to
>> be
>> >>>>> especially honest.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Monte Davis <
>> montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> >>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>>> "False equivalence"? I don't question for one second -- and
>> venture that
>> >>>>>> I
>> >>>>>> could cite a lot more evidence than you could for -- the
>> overwhelming
>> >>>>>> edge
>> >>>>>> in power and organized aggression of the European expansion over
>> nearly
>> >>>>>> all
>> >>>>>> the indigenous people it encountered in Africa, Asia, and the New
>> World.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> But I don't agree that it "rubs salt in the wounds of the victims"
>> to
>> >>>>>> acknowledge that there *were* many indigenous, warlike,
>> expansionist,
>> >>>>>> slave-taking empires -- Chinese, Indian, Mongol, Central and West
>> >>>>>> African,
>> >>>>>> Mexica (Aztec), Inca, Five Nations -- before the Europeans
>> arrived. Or
>> >>>>>> that
>> >>>>>> their interactions with Europeans got complicated:
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> - the Huron and Mohicans playing English and French for guns in
>> their
>> >>>>>> own
>> >>>>>> immemorial war, while the English and French were playing them
>> >>>>>> - Indian rajahs and sultans doing the same against each other with
>> --
>> >>>>>> and
>> >>>>>> typically marching with -- troops of the British East India
>> Company,
>> >>>>>> French,
>> >>>>>> and Portuguese
>> >>>>>> - Cortes taking Tenochtitlan with 750 Spaniards -- and 80,000 or
>> more
>> >>>>>> Tlaxcalan and other allies he'd recruited, who cheerfully
>> slaughtered
>> >>>>>> their
>> >>>>>> erstwhile Mexica overlords
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> You call these "unique"; I call them ubiquitous. It's the Herero
>> "war,"
>> >>>>>> the
>> >>>>>> Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, that are more nearly unique
>> precisely
>> >>>>>> because they were so one-sided; the victims had *no* state, allies
>> or
>> >>>>>> organized military power of their own. That doesn't mean
>> everything that
>> >>>>>> happened from 1450 to 1950 was the same story writ large.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Nor does it mean that other, less helplessly "pure" victims,
>> deserved or
>> >>>>>> asked for what imperialism/colonialism did to them. It doesn't
>> exculpate
>> >>>>>> Europeans from any of their bloody 500-year spree. It just means
>> that
>> >>>>>> *all*
>> >>>>>> humans are liable to eat the apple (drink the Kool-aid?) of power
>> and
>> >>>>>> domination when they can.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Pynchon spends a lot of time exploring the specifically European
>> and
>> >>>>>> USAn
>> >>>>>> expressions of that, and it leaves a mark -- as it should. But he
>> also
>> >>>>>> dips
>> >>>>>> via Calvinism to Adam's fall and other mythologies, visits ancient
>> ruins
>> >>>>>> and
>> >>>>>> legends, zooms out to millennia rather than centuries -- and those
>> are
>> >>>>>> reminders (I think deliberate) that it's not *all* about us.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 9:55 AM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> I think it is pretty clear, and that bringing up the divisions,
>> >>>>>>> infighting and betrayal among the Herero amounts to a false
>> >>>>>>> equivalence.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> I'm not insinuating that you endorse or excuse the genocide in any
>> >>>>>>> way, but each of those examples you listed are unique. Lumping
>> them
>> >>>>>>> together rubs salt in the wounds of the victims.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 7:29 AM, Monte Davis <
>> montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> >>>>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>>>>> Gotcha. All clear now.
>> >>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>> On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 8:42 PM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com
>> >
>> >>>>>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>> This is an example of white European Christians travelling
>> thousands
>> >>>>>>>>> of miles to the homeland of native Africans, colonizing it, and
>> then
>> >>>>>>>>> rounding up the natives and systematically exterminating them.
>> The
>> >>>>>>>>> only complexity about this is the twisted, convoluted arguments
>> >>>>>>>>> about
>> >>>>>>>>> why they did it, and why they should not be held accountable.
>> >>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>> "Oh, but it's more complicated than that..."  I'm reminded of
>> >>>>>>>>> Archduke Ferdinand playing the dozens. Oh, and his trophy's- if
>> he
>> >>>>>>>>> even bothered to have the carcasses stuffed- littering the
>> plains.
>> >>>>>>>>> Or,
>> >>>>>>>>> those brave "souls" riding along
>> >>>>>>>>> on the first transcontinental railroad shooting the buffalo
>> until
>> >>>>>>>>> their fingers got tired.
>> >>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>> Let's get real here, and not obfuscate like the ink of a white
>> >>>>>>>>> octopus.
>> >>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 9:55 AM, e tb <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>>>>>>> Salt in old wounds: What Germany owes Namibia | The Economist
>> >>>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>>>>
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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