The Vineland Guide to Contemporary Rebellion

This essay argues that a shift occurs in Thomas Pynchon’s oeuvre with the novel Vineland, specifically with respect to power systems and resistance. Previous novels by Pynchon represented power structures as abstract, nearly supernatural systems that the characters could hardly conceive of, much less oppose. Vineland, on the other hand, brings power structures down to earth, representing them as a network of national governments, multinational corporations, and supragovernmental agencies. This is very much in line with what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri define as Empire. In response to these power structures, Pynchon constructs a resistance movement that arises spontaneously, much in the same fashion as what Karl Polanyi describes in The Great Transformation as a double movement or countermovement. Tracing both the power structure as it is presented in the novel and the movement of resistance to it elucidates a political philosophy that Pynchon continues through his four most recent novels. This outline appears in Vineland first by presenting Empire as engaged in a series of civil wars as a means of restricting civil rights, second by examining the multitude’s complicity in perpetuating Empire, third by analyzing the failure of violent revolution, and finally, by providing a positive site for resistance.