Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 20:48:32 -0600
Subject: Re: The cracked looking glass of a servant/NB


Orpheus wrote:
> 
>         Oooh I cld. be erring. It was Finnegans in WW2 and Ulysses
>         in WW1 but one returns the same. the vico readroad


Yes, actually if you turn to the footnote on page 510 of Ellman's bio on
Joyce (revised paperback edition) you will find the reference. It
appears Ellman was relying on the testimony of Ezra Pound for this
information. 

Ah, Ezra, I hate his racism and anti-semitism, but still feel he has
managed to write some of the best damn poetry of the last century. I
also think some of his writings on economics aren't really as half-baked
as they are touted to be. Pound's ideas about the national dividend and
usury may yet come into play in some form or other once mass automation
hits and global capitalization experiences its hangover of boom and
bust! 

By the way, I was alluding to Lacan when I used the phrase "the
rear-mirror stage". Good catch.  I definitely see a correspondence here
between MM and JL.  

MM also writes that new innovations in technology change the ratio of
our perceptions and as a result a numbness occurs.  (I often feel as
thought MM was secretly cribbing Benjamin here and his concept of
"shock".)

Anyway, its interesting, isn't it, the way there seems to be an
isomorphism between sexuality and technology in its impact upon the
"human". Both engender libidinal intensities from which the organism
recoils defensively in a mode of contraction as though the "human"
instinctually knew that to embrace joy was to risk death.  The cyborg
may be sexy, but she still scares us. We fear the big bang.