BE Group Read. Regarding all the uses of the phrase "late capitalism" in BE

[Neal Fultz]

"Late Capitalism" also has an eschatological connotation. And
apocalypse was big in the late 90s. The corresponding theory from the
conservatives was the "End of History" by Fukuyama. Also the Rapture
was very popular with evangelicals (Left Behind etc), and for the
nerds, the Singularity began to go mainstream.

And then 9/11 challenged those beliefs, because it was an actual
apocalyptic event we all could see on TV.

So I think Pynchon uses "Late Capitalism" with the same wink as he
does with "Y2k" and the other apocalyptic allusions. It's always used
by a character in dialogue IIRC, so I wouldn't necessarily ascribe any
particular beliefs to the author, but it says something about the
characters that use it, and some of those characters are pretty funny
or over-the-top.



On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 3:37 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sam Haselby
> @samhaselby
> <https://twitter.com/samhaselby>
> ·
> 1m <https://twitter.com/samhaselby/status/1470354880107880451>
> The phrase "late capitalism" has been in use for over a century and there's
> never been less evidence during that time that it's near end times for
> capitalism.
>
> This is why I think its use in BE is ironic, is, like so much, a phrase he
> satirizes in this way, so to speak: It is always Late Capitalism. To quote
> his GR line analogously:
> " it has happened before but there is nothing to compare it to now". A way
> of constantly speaking of a patterned (in a way, he says) present.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l