Re: M&D: Learnédness (vs. Bornness//as reason for hope?)

[David Morris]

Maybe in relation to this dynamic of being owned is the automaton's
progress.  The duck frees itself and gains agency through accessing
invisibility, another dimension, as did Slothrup in GR.  Vibration, a kind
of physical transformation, is its transcendent path.  I think Pynchon is
enamoured with transcendence, and its opposite, boundedness.

David Morris

On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 4:58 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Smoke!
>
> Great observation.  "Ownership" might be further explored in relation to
> some of its opposites.  GR goes to great lengths with the S&M of the daisy
> chain.  Nietzche's concepts of civilization might be a thread: Is all
> civility born of coercion?
>
> Is the LED owned?  Does his learnedness free him from being owned?
>
> David Morris
>
> On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 11:26 AM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Third time through this book, and I am struck (again) by just how early
>> in the text the LED comes--as if there should be no question about how many
>> questions there will be about the world of the book.
>>
>> But the learnedness is interesting to me. The LED is the most civilized
>> member of most every group of talking mammals he encounters. The LED's
>> learnedness is the most foregrounded part of his identity. His civility is
>> acquired.
>>
>> And this, some time later, p. 92, amid the rainstorms, the young and
>> learning Seductrices Vroom, pursuing their "malicious fun," trying to
>> trigger what we might assume are at least somewhat born-in sexual responses
>> from our Astronomers (mostly M, though even he may be a more acceptable
>> substitute for the African boys ("Babies, rather," as Austra reminds and
>> admonishes the V sisters) they might otherwise be exploiting) as they await
>> the Transit ...
>>
>> "[Austra's] blond Procuresses all begin to expostulate at once, and Mason
>> understands that the vocal assaults of the Vrom Poultry are not inborn, but
>> rather learn'd in this World from their Owners."
>>
>> Does ugliness, just like civility or refinement, descend through great
>> hierarchical chains of ownership?
>>
>> I think some version of this question underlays the book just like so
>> much of the political philosophy that background the novel, the Hobbeses
>> and Lockes and Hamiltons of what is, we are told, the Age of Reason. Isn't
>> it?
>>
>
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