Narrating postmodern spaces in Thomas Pynchon’s novel(s)

Elektronische Version der gedr. Ausg. 199

Ethology. Claims and Limits of a Lost Discipline

When the Werner Reimers Foundation organized a colloquium on Human Ethology in 1977, it was about Claims and Limits of a New Discipline as a bridge between biology and the social sciences and humanities. As a lost discipline, however, the interdisciplinary approach to ethology only takes shape in a dispersed dispositif. This is the framing argument, which derives from the nucleus of ethology, namely that the starting point of all knowledge is the body in its possibilities of movement in time and space to affect and be affected. In their essays (English or German), the contributors to this collection have worked through the heterogeneity of ethological thought – from Spinoza to Jakob von Uexküll, Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Philippe Descola, or Isabelle Stengers – and practice – as, for example in the works of Virginia Woolf or Marcel Beyer – and have taken it as an opportunity to relocate ethology, 1) as an “Immanent Ecology”, with essays by Kerstin Andermann, Hanjo Berressem, and Verena Andermatt Conley; 2) in the discussion of “Anthropological Contrasts”, with essays by Marc Rölli, Mirjam Schaub, and Stefan Rieger, and 3) in “Ethological Interferences and Practices,” with essays by Stephan Zandt, Anthony Uhlmann, and Adrian Robanus. A commentary by Sophia Gräfe concludes the volume

Die Sieben Todsünden

Weshalb faszinieren und inspirieren die Sieben Todsünden bis heute – auch und gerade obwohl theologische Kommentare längst an Verbindlichkeit eingebüßt haben? In exemplarischen Studien widmet sich der Sammelband der Wirkungsgeschichte der Sieben Todsünden in den unterschiedlichen Künsten: Literatur und bildende Kunst, Film und Fernsehen. Der Fokus liegt weniger auf einer Ideengeschichte der Todsünden als auf deren Formelhaftigkeit, die gerade im Verblassen der ursprünglichen Hintergründe ihre Wirkmacht in breiter diskursiver Streuung entfaltet. Dabei reichen die vielfältigen Fortschreibungen und Transformationen weit über das frühe Mittelalter und die klassische Theologie hinaus und zeigen in der Moderne und Postmoderne verstärkt nur noch Allusionen auf die ursprünglich religiöse Ordnungsphantasie. So werden die Todsünden zu einem intermedialen Fundus für ethische und politische Reflexionen, ästhetische Transformationen und künstlerische Experimente. Der Band versammelt Studien, die sich aus literatur-, medien- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive sowohl den einzelnen Todsünden superbia, invidia, ira, acedia, avaritia, gula, luxuria als auch dem Septenar insgesamt widmen

Economies of greed in late Pynchon': America and the logic of capital

On the theoretical backdrop of Mike Davis's Ecology of Fear, Michel Foucault's Of Other Spaces', Felix Guattari's Schizoanalytic Cartographies and Gilles Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control', this essay traces how Pynchon addresses the relentless capitalisation of life and politics. Against the idea that his late work is Pynchon Lite', the essay argues that Pynchon's overall poetics and ethics, have, if anything, become even more strident, with Bleeding Edge the most bitter and angry novel he has written so far; a true late' work, a Jeremiad that, somewhat like Goya's pinturas negras, throws reality into stark and clear relief. At the centre of the discussion is the notion of greed as an obscure compulsion to gather wealth beyond that which is enough'. Of all living creatures, only humans have developed economies of infinite greed. As both greed and economy are time- and site-specific, Pynchon provides carefully researched chronologies and geographies of the two in order to adequately address their interaction in particular historical moments. With his tales of dispossession and betrayal', of which this essay traces in particular Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, Pynchon becomes one of many American writers and filmmakers who have made greed the centre of their concern