Gravity's Rainbow

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Americans who characterize WWII primarily as an American war of aggression against Germany and Japan are one of my favourite breeds of crank, I think.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
luka said:
the zone

"The most consequential event in recent history resulting in a provisional abstract space was WWII. Long encumbered with ideological myths and historical fabrications, it's important to understand how this war, for the victors, was an operation of modernisation achieved through unparalleled devastation. For global capitalism, it accomplished the essential dissolution of obsolete borders, languages, forms of sovereignty and finance or anything else that impeded the remaking of the planet for domination by mega-cartels and a permanent warfare state. It was the final clearing away of the residual shards of a pre-modern Europe.

The savagery of the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo, all without military necessity, were demonstrations of the irrelevance and disposability of a lifeworld and its inhabiatants according to the imperatives that were to shape the post-war Pax Americana. As many have shown, the war and its immediate aftermath gave birth to the National Security State, abetted by the emerging nexus of chemical, aerospace and microelectronics industries.

The famed ENIAC computer was completed in 1946 and immeidately used by the US military for calculations to predict trajectories of artillery and rockets; in the same year, it played a decisive role in the development of the first hydrogen bomb. Even in the years immediately after the war, some wanted to use atomic weapons to guarantee the unchallenged permanence of the new order. John von Neumann, advocated for a massive pre-emptive nuclear strike on all the major cities and industrial centres of the Soviet Union.

Chemical cartels began the industrialisation of agriculture with pesticides and herbicides alongside the continued development of chemical weapons for use on civilian populations. Life, whether of the body, of ecological rhythms, or of social resilience, became not just an object to be controlled and exploited but to be made into a potential object of extermination."

Jonathan Crary. Scorched Earth.
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no idea what tea is on about but this is a very good summation of gravitys rainbow. if it departs from it at all its at the level of agency, what drove the process. in pynchon it's perhaps quasi-mystical, technology having a will of its own, or a drive
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
So as far as I know, the jury is still out on whether or not he has read it. I may still have an opportunity to bully him.
 
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Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
One of the primary reasons I managed to garner the strength to persist through GR, was the power it would give me over others. I could imbue a gaze with smugness, and reveal the feeling with the slightest of smirks.
 
V

version

Well-known member
I think he finished it, although I wouldn't be surprised if he couldn't be bothered and just pretended to.
 
V

version

Well-known member
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