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10 - Politics

from PART III - ISSUES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2012

Inger H. Dalsgaard
Affiliation:
Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
Luc Herman
Affiliation:
Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
Brian McHale
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Summary

Along with their encyclopedic scope and vast collective commentary upon modern history, Pynchon's novels also share Tyrone Slothrop's preoccupation with America, or, more precisely, two distinct Americas: one that embodies what Pynchon has called a “Christian Capitalist” dominant culture, and the other a subjunctive, communitarian America that could, or should, exist. The politics of his fiction play out in the space between as various forms of resistance, and if (to invert Von Clausewitz) politics is war waged by other means, then the locus of this battle is the individual self. This reading locates Pynchon's politics within, first, a broader Emersonian conversation about the presumption of America's singular dispensation; and, second, an oppositional discourse surrounding “Emersonian self-reliance” characterized either as the rugged individualism of laissez-faire capitalism, or as democratic communitarianism. The stark political differences between these two Emersonian selves, and how each in turn might come to define the nature of America's singularity, stand at the heart of Pynchon's politics.

Yet much of what is characterized as Emerson's politics – his American exceptionalism, resistance to authority, antipathy toward capital, and turn toward self as the seat of cultural rejuvenation – emerges out of an “Emerson” variously re-formulated and re-inscribed. It is thus useful to locate Pynchon's voice in this Emersonian conversation within an appropriate chronological and political context – one filtered through the 1960s American resistance movement whose politics embody ideals associated with that decade's counterculture.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • Politics
  • Edited by Inger H. Dalsgaard, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark, Luc Herman, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, Brian McHale, Ohio State University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon
  • Online publication: 28 March 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521769747.013
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  • Politics
  • Edited by Inger H. Dalsgaard, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark, Luc Herman, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, Brian McHale, Ohio State University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon
  • Online publication: 28 March 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521769747.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Politics
  • Edited by Inger H. Dalsgaard, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark, Luc Herman, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, Brian McHale, Ohio State University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon
  • Online publication: 28 March 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521769747.013
Available formats
×