The Frame-Breakers: Thomas Pynchon’s Post-human Luddites

Abstract

Abstract: Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland depicts an America moving inexorably toward what Gilles Deleuze calls a “control society,” one where intangible power structures enmesh agentless subjects. This article elaborates on the ways radical politics must be met by an equally revolutionary reconceptualization of the body. While, in Vineland, the activist film collective 24fps attempts to resist governmental power, their instrumentalization of their media technology (the film camera) leads to their own appropriation by hegemonic forces. Instead, it is the Thanatoids, liminal creatures inextricably linked with the television, who disrupt the control apparatus and present both a resistant (post)human body and a revolutionary new politics.

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