Lacan/Zizek

"The paronomaiacal paranoia of Pynchons paradoxes: purpotrated paragraphlessly." Tyrone Slothrop, the aforementioned protagonist of Gravitys Rainbow, is a prime example of the average Lacanian patient. Slothrop is an admitted paranoid with delusions of mediocrity and unimportance. He doesnt seem to be the central connection in all the various convoluted plots surrounding the end of World War II, so much as he is their connection. As a child he was given over to Dr. Jamf, a Pavlovian behaviorist and organic chemist, by his father for use in bizarre experiments. While still in an infantile (in-fans, silent) state, he was given sexual stimuli while the sounds of rockets dropping was played in reverseor something very close to it, the novel is never quiet clear, on this or any other subject. These stimuli gave him a bizarre variation of the mirror stage in which he connected himself to the rocket. For him, then, the rocket becomes an objet petit a, while the Other is the mysterious Them operating throughout his life and through his life. The real is completely inaccessible, and accepted as such, though there is at the heart of the novel a search for self. The rocket becomes not just objet petit a, but symptom and synthome as well. The rocket becomes symptom as that which, "confers on existing phenomena their consistency (Zizek, 72)." The rocket becomes a link for everyone in the novel, something that is searched out and believed in. Yet along the way, each character stops for jouis-sense. Slothrop especially finds this jouis-sense in not only the various sexual encounters, but in the symbolism of them as well. One of the most memorable of these is the circular orgy-scene in which as the narrator guides us through each of the participants we are brought finally back to the beginning. This symbolism, "of sexuality implies the lack of a signifier in the sexual relationship, it implies that there is no sexual relationship, that the sexual relationship cannot be signified (Zizek, 73);" whereas the symptom itself is, "formed with an eye to interpretation." It (Es, Id, the rocket, the symptom, the sexual relationships???) then becomes synthome as it is permeated with enjoyment. Slothrop wants to figure it out and laugh at his own Freudian slips. He wants so badly for a clear-cut Wo Es war, soll Ich werden: "where the relationships were, so the rocket must become;" which would explain so well the fact that all the locations for his sexual couplings become bombed. As his specular I is turned into a social I, Slothrop gets increasingly paranoid. Yet all of this (probably including this paper) is a méconnaissance of the traumatic Thing. It is this méconnaissance which allows the self to exist (Zizek 68), and as Slothrop becomes closer and closer to the Real, and a cure, he slowly dissipates, unable to maintain his hold on this misrecognized reality. Stepping out one more level we see the méconnaissance inherent in the novel as film. Pynchon creates a sense of haste, and a narrative style so complex it is difficult to gather even superficial plot development, not to mention any symbolism (which is ubiquitous and deluding) modeled after film. Benjamin wrote that, "The painting invites the spectator to contemplation: before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed (Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction")." This confusion leads to a sick comedy, an irony that is more than beautiful, for "the triumph over beauty is celebrated by humourthe Schadenfreude that every successful deprivation calls forth. There is laughter because there is nothing to laugh at (Adorno and Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry")." Schadenfreude, one of Pynchons favorite words, is the principle humor enjoyed by man: laughing at anothers (an Others?) expense. Thus the méconnaissance leads to a better representation of the Real than a clarity of speech would. The méconnaissance is in fact the Real, and to step back one step further I must ask the question: is this Real which we perceive, which is hopelessly marred by méconnaissance, not only not the way things were supposed to be, but rather is it the very dissonance that this makes within us that causes us to laugh at méconnaissance and wish for simpler times, when we should see, not specularly, but face-to-face?