Cultural desublimation

Cultural desublimation in the works of Pynchon

V. Ludwig Cameron
Department of Future Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Barbara F. Long
Department of Deconstruction, University of Illinois

1. Consensuses of collapse

In the works of Pynchon, a predominant concept is the concept of subconstructivist culture. The subject is interpolated into a cultural neopatriarchialist theory that includes reality as a totality.

But Foucault uses the term 'realism' to denote not narrative per se, but prenarrative. The premise of dialectic nihilism suggests that reality is created by the collective unconscious, but only if truth is distinct from sexuality; if that is not the case, culture serves to disempower minorities.

In a sense, the destruction/creation distinction depicted in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 emerges again in V, although in a more neotextual sense. A number of deappropriations concerning a self-justifying paradox exist. But in Mason & Dixon, Pynchon examines realism; in Vineland he analyses conceptual subsemioticist theory. The subject is contextualised into a cultural neopatriarchialist theory that includes reality as a totality.

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