Black Holes in the collective unconscious

[Mark Kohut]

And, in a lesser range of meanings,--maybe I'm repeating myself?--zero
point, from the energy and Cartesian meaning, is when history starts again
(in some way).

When the past is overturned (Colonizers imprisoned).

The Black Hole is mentioned in *Looking Backward
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward>* (1888) by Edward Bellamy
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bellamy> as an example of the
depravity of the past.

On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 6:16 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> The BHoC is brought into the novel in a series of chapters that seem
> to bring special attention to human eyes. Eyes as representative of
> human consciousness in the Age of Reason, on the
> individual/ego-identification level and the
> collective/governmental/panoptic level. The eye as spherical as the
> globe. A white globe with a black pupil at its center--we are
> encouraged to regard Rebekah's, Cornelius's, and Dieter's eyes in such
> a way within relative proximity to the focus on the Black Hole.
>
> White is associated with the hyperactive, obsessively conscious forces
> of government, of hegemonic power, throughout P's work.
>
> The Black Hole is offered as a kind of pupil-like eruption of chaos
> amid the whitened eyes of the conscious-unto-insanity--perhaps this
> chaos contains within it the violent promise of racial retribution.
>
> Violent anyway because it is the collapse of all that is repressed
> into a point of unfathomable density.
>
>
> Thinking about it this way, eyes and spheres and planets, the Black
> Hole seems topographically analogous to the journey toward the center
> of the Earth in AtD.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 5:07 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "He is also not so dedicated to Aglican doctrine or hierarchy  as he
> > is to friendly end equitable human relations and open to any spiritual
> > experience that might explain the loss of his wife"
> >
> > Good thing to emphasize as we follow Mason forward.
> >
> > "Only the Taoists and similarly disposed non-dualists seek to diffuse
> > and neutralize this balance, make it into a circle where death and
> > life, dark and light,  are equally needful to the whole."
> >
> > Is this true beyond the spiritual traditions we've seen depicted in
> > the first ~300pg. of the novel? Are there not any systems of
> > mythistory and iconography that assign special and integral power to
> > the spiritual forces of the night?
> >
> > All the rest of this is really great thinking--I like everything you
> > say about Pynchon's quasi-binary interpretation of the Black Hole of
> > Calcutta.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 1:58 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >> Black Hole
> >>
> >> Black - absence of light,  presence of all pigments,  mysterious,
> unknowable, unseeable, zoroastrian- spiritual darkness/ equivalent of
> evil,  death, unlit underworld,  unillumined space between the stars,  for
> some semitic bible interpreters black skin was the mark of Cain ((cursed
> son of Adam and Eve (Moses married Ethiopian woman and Shulamite of the
> Song of Songs was black skinned so perhaps not so clear)), during colonial
> perod skin color became  the base for a caste system favoring white skin
> and denigrating black, the day night cycle.the pupil of the eye
> >>
> >> This relation of consciousness and life  to the light/dark spectrum is
> more than just cultural. Because of its omnipresent physical importance
> there is practically no way for it not to assume  major cultural
> significance. Only the Taoists and similarly disposed non-dualists seek to
> diffuse and neutralize this balance, make it into a circle where death and
> life, dark and light,  are equally needful to the whole.
> >>
> >>  Interestingly Pynchon actually moves the reader through many
> permutations of culture and direct experience in relation to blackness and
> whiteness. We find that Mason’s original interest in the stars, that
> ultimate field of light and dark was kindled as an avenue into a larger
> scale of being , but also that he is an earthy man with powerful human
> appetites and that he is conflicted by the subservience of astronomic
> inquiry to the political goals of empire and commerce. He is also not so
> dedicated to Aglican doctrine or hierarchy  as he is to friendly end
> equitable human relations and open to any spiritual experience that might
> explain the loss of his wife. The corruption he sees and the corruption he
> suspects fits the doctrine of original sin, but moral and philosophical
> questions are settled in his life as much by the pressures of survival as
> by a free inquiry.  Even the balance of light and dark in the heavens is
> not a neutral refuge, even the self declared freedom of the American
> revolution continues much of the cruelty of the colonial project.
> >>
> >> In my reading Pynchon marks the Black Hole of Calcutta as a combination
> of 2 interconneced  mythic forces. One is the potentially terrifying end of
> the colonial project where all that the white europeans  have done to
> others is visited on them and both individual and culture is forced to see
> that it has created a hell and deserves to inherit that utter dismemberment
> of humanity and biospheric balance that it has pursued. Thus The Black Hole
> comes to haunt  the psyche as the ultimate fear.( This theme of dreadful
> revenge first appears in stories in Slow Learner) The second is an act of
> denial and reversal that is breath-taking in its bold dishonesty and common
> as dirt, the Black Hole becomes a rallying point for for the continuation
> of violence against non-whites.The violence of those who resist subjugation
> is seen as the innate violent nature of the uncivilized and the core
> difference between the fair-skinned and the darker skinned.
> >>   Is there a 3rd option? A zero point of potential recreation from
> dissolution? Is it simply the gracious acceptance of death and a humble
> rebirth as part of a whole rather than the almighty I.  As I read Pynchon,
> the darkest places always contain this seed.
> >>
> >>   As readers we go from the midwinter warmth and safety of  an extended
> egalitarian family, asked to identify with  curious chidren on the brink of
> the adult world,  on a global journey which takes us through the heart of
> the age of enlightenment, from the old world with its many layers through
> the cruel beginnings of corporate capitalism,  sexual adventures, spiritual
> quests,  philosophic questions,  to wilderness and cultural adventures in
> the new world. The entire story is shaped by questions of ownership and
> boundaries, who owns what and how boundaries are made and maintained.
> >>
> >>  This could be grim stuff but it can also be hilarious as we smoke pot
> with George Washington and his black Hebrew plantation manager, catch
> Cherrycoke’s subversive jokes, or consider the passionate lovesick flight
> of the mechanical duck of the future.  And Pychon brings in Taoists and
> children’s questions and native people to   point at a different set of
> boundary making forces: rivers, mountains, kivas, earth serpents and feng
> shui masters suggesting magnetic lines, cultural conversation, regard for
> beauty, balance of power, mutual respect, friendliness.
> >>
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> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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