This is very much NOT NP. All P.

[Joseph Tracy]

I see a herero erotically attracted to a powerful commanding colonizer with whom he shares an attraction to the darkest kind of rebellion against limits, morality, perhaps life itself.  But there is always a real fascination between powerful minds from clashing peoples. 
  What makes P’s inhabiting of dark characters intriguing and potent is the lack of authorial judgement. You have to think for yourself about the person and pov.

 African spirituality included a very powerful connection to the ancestors, death was a door to another world  and when what you love in this world is destroyed, death is less fearful. In contrast I see the Germanic colonists losing their souls, their capacity for genuine wonder and delight for feeble tokens of power, from the killing of birds to the killing of humans they fail to see or understand a land, its cultures and they have no capacity to know the world they inhabit, but can only destroy. Their sexuality, power and occupation is reduced to something juvenile, masturbatory- an addiction with diminishing pleasure. In pynchons colonizing instances of sex, love appears infrequently and often is  an awakening taking place as the loved one is being destroyed by empty lusts. This image is deeply explored in the GR’s connection between Slothrop’s lust and the missile strikes. In my thinking this is not individual Karma, but deep patterns that saturate colonialism and fuck up individuals without their really understanding why.  

> On Nov 13, 2017, at 1:33 PM, Atticus Pinecone <atticuspinecone at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I don't see why Pynchon gets a "pass" on V. & GR. 
> 
> He presents the Hereros as erotically enjoying their destruction & subjugation—and compares black skin and shit. 
>  
> Alexandra d'Abbadie is down with that? Or did she miss it?
> 
> If you're subscribing to this style of thought, our good friend Tommy not only doesn't get a pass, he's one of the worst, most disgusting offenders. 
> 
> On Nov 13, 2017, at 11:20 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> https://electricliterature.com/thomas-pynchon-shows-us-how-white-writers-can-avoid-appropriation-8902a5563a1c

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