File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0310, message 71


From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 19:29:41 -0500
Subject: Re: preterite freedom



Eric/All, 

That whisper to the dock worker about "Ouspenskian nonsense" gets me.  

So, too--in an entirely different way--does anon's SHOUTING.  Jesus!  

whisper, whisper.  

...whisp..."her"...

i think you're right, too, about the "he" pronoun, eric.

whispering (and still snickering over that oh so apt O'Reilly link =),

geof





  



> "More Ouspenskian nonsense," whispers a lady brushing by on the arm of a
> dock worker."
> 
> In order to discuss this passage in the context of the issue of free
> will and within the overall structure of GR, I think it is necessary to
> point out that the novel posits both the deterministic positivism of
> Pointman AND the "Ouspenskian nonsense" of Slothrop.  For Pynchon, this
> all remains profoundly indeterminate. As he describes the dilemma in one
> justly celebrated paragraph:
> 
> "Will the child gaze up from his ground of golden straw then, gaze into
> the eyes of the old king who bends long and unfurling overhead, leans to
> proffer his gift, will the eyes meet, and what message, what possible
> greeting or entente will flow between the king and the infant prince? Is
> the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want to be?" 
> 
> I think while Pynchon remains ambiguous, he is also critical of both
> positions taken independently. He does not really suggest that in the
> absence of the illusion of control, things will just happen and there
> remains nothing we can do. The whole tone of GR is not one of
> resignation, at least in my reading. Instead it often seems to present a
> kind of playful melancholy, however oxymoronic this may seem.
> 
> In a way that seems to foreshadow Lyotard in Libidinal Economy and D&G
> in Anti-Oedipus he seems at various points in the novel to advocate an
> active passivity of creative paranoia with its pursuit of mindless
> pleasures as a counterbalance to the whole Weber-grill rationalization
> of charisma; a Western civilization madly in pursuit of death.   
> 
> "no counterfeit baby, no announcement of the Kingdom, not even a try at
> warming or lighting this terrible night, only, damn us, our scruffy
> obligatory little cry, our maximum reach outward - praise be to God!-
> for you to take back with you to your war-address, your war-identity,
> across the snow's footprints and tire tracks finally to the path you
> must create yourself, alone in the dark. Whether you want it or not,
> whatever seas you have crossed, the way home....."
> 
> Whether or not we 'own' free will, we still have the responsibility to
> act. Therein lies the paradox.
> 
> eric
>    
>   
>  
> 
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