Another mid-term!!!!11!

this one's for mc25, my intro-level visuality class... guys, I'm sorry for posting this stuff; dern it, I'm just so proud that I actually finished these papers (as opposed to last semester...), this is a nice vindication. feel free to read or ignore - it's some nuanced, but entry-level Foucault on the Panopticon. ps jed, have you read discipline and punish? you should if you haven't. don't take my word for it though. I feel like whenever I recommend something (to anyone) their reaction is somewhere between offense and boredom. I don't want you to be offended or bored - I only recommend this to you out of love and excitement.

According to Foucault, the invention of the architectural design of the Panopticon initiated a process of individualization and automated discipline which spread from the peripheries of society (the prisons, the workhouses, the hospitals, etc.) to both the central structures (the government, the judiciary, etc.) and also, perhaps most importantly, to the minute activities of daily life: this trajectory traces Foucault's use of the terms "Panopticon," "panopticism," and "panopticisms."

Foucault writes that the "Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form."ⁱ A building is a physical structure which, in its function, determines the flow (or arrest) of bodies through space - it thus controls the amount and type of intermingling of those bodies in proportion to the amount and type of their confinement. The design of the Panopticon is characterized by total minimalism according to this architectural function - specifically, that function here is to create an automatic and total asymmetry of power, based on the power of visuality in space: though not entirely on the actual physical act of seeing, but rather more so on the assumption of that seeing. This is enacted on two fronts. On the one hand, there is the absolute physical confinement and fixation of the individual (prisoner, schoolboy, etc.); this allows, furthermore, for the production of a continual uncertainty in the individual as to whether or not he is presently being surveilled - this is symbolized to him by the occluded windows of the central tower, the sole object to which his view is restricted. On the other hand, there is the flowing space of the central tower, in which the view is entirely unrestricted: it not only emanates without and all around at the peripheral multiplicity of confined individuals, but there is also a certain suture, reciprocity, and social awareness of visualities allowed within the central tower itself, according to its flow and mixture. Foucault writes that the Panopticon "enables everyone to come and observe any of the observers... [it is] a transparent building in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole."ⁱⁱ The central tower, therefore, is a place of mixture in society; this mixture allows for a crucial slippage - from the general social supervision of the panoptic function of power as enacted by assigned observers - to the enactment of the panoptic power by society as a whole (that is to say that, upon the very action of entering the tower, the supervisor also becomes an observer). Thus, whereas, in the past, the exercise of physical power was by the few (the sovereign) aimed at the mass, now the function is reversed: power is exercised by society as a whole (symbolized by the occluded windows of the tower), and it is aimed at the individual body, the congregation of which produces a multiplicity (not a mass), ready to be categorized and hierarchicalized. This flow, from the society to the central tower and back again, also allows for the generalization of the Panopticon from its incorporation as architectural form to its figuration as a modality of social empowerment.

It is at this point where the idea of "panopticism" takes root (in Foucault's discourse). Society, having learned the physical implementation of this new form of asymmetrical visual power from its flow through the central tower, begins to draw the figure of the Panopticon upon more and more central institutions, and not only the institutions, but the bodies encircling and composing those institutions - and even - especially - upon their "daily lives." Thus society begins to break apart, to subject itself to individualization (and multiplicities), and through the implementation of the disciplines, to various forms of hierarchicalization. Moreover, this trend belongs to another crucial slippage, which can also be traced back to its place in the original building. The automation of the structure of the Panopticon forces the individual (prisoner, etc.) to actually undertake his own discipline - because of his confinement and uncertainty, he is subjected to and by himself. Foucault writes, "He inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles."ⁱⁱⁱ In this way, the structure of panoptic power internalizes itself within the subjected individual. This is the primary function of the individualization of the design's periphery which allows for the transition of the brick-and-mortar building into its figural embodiment in everyday society (in the same way that the flow of visuality within and through the central tower allows for its figuration as the de-individualization of social power). In other words, this form allows for power to be enacted not only upon the individual within society, but also by the individual upon himself, in a type of self-patrol; this simultaneously permits the automation of power, as if "behind" the occluded windows - where, in the building, there may at times in fact be no-one at all: what matters is the symbol of visuality, and thus the physical uncertainty of the subjected individual, which provides room for the assumptional metonymy that produces his self-discipline. This is especially important when the central tower takes its place in (as) the whole of society: the democratic ideal of "transparency," then, in this case, actually takes on its second meaning of "invisibility" - or rather, the individual "sees-through" the social structuration of power, but only to other individuals. On the other hand, it is only through the social structuration of power that the individual can recognize other individuals - he must transmit his gaze through the automatism of the Panopticon (panopticism), whence he himself becomes the observer that he wishes to see.

There is nonetheless, however, yet a pyramid of viewpoints in society, defined by physical access to the panoptic gaze (e.g. access to archives, feeds, etc.). This is due to the dual nature of the visuality in the central tower: on the one hand, it de-individualizes society, while on the other hand it categorizes and hierarchicalizes the multiplicity of individuals. In other words, on the one hand, the central tower is democratizing, universalizing in ideal - yet on the other hand, it produces distributions and asymmetries that extend from the tower throughout society, in its function as an unequal multiplicity of individuals. That is, panopticism is not purely an imaginary fiction stemming from the fiction of society-as-a-whole: panopticism is enacted physically as well as psychologically (this is crucial to the uncertainty of the individual) - furthermore, it is an effect of this that some individuals in society be disenfranchised from the central view. The pyramid structure, then, is defined by the disciplines - which exists simultaneously on the level of social institution and also on the level of interpersonal relationships. This brings about the notion of multiple "panopticisms" - no longer formal structures (Panopticons), panopticism embodies itself on all tiers of society through the social partitioning and verticality of the disciplines. Moreover, these disciplines enact themselves on the level of the every-day: "The minute disciplines, the panopticisms of every day may well be below the level of emergence of the great apparatuses and the great political struggles."^iv There is therefore a circulation of multiple panopticisms in society, which continually construct asymmetries and subject individuals to new forms of discipline - in fact, shaping those individuals in new ways, according to the continual structuration of society.

i DP, 223
ii DP, 202
iii DP, 207
iv DP, 205

Theory of the Photographic Image (Doane) Mid-Term Essay

Obtuse Temporality
in Barthes and Kracauer

In his essay The Third Meaning, Barthes chooses to analyze a series of stills from the Eisenstein film, Ivan the Terrible - and in so doing, he points out instances of the "third meaning" - the "obtuse meaning" (what, later, in Camera Lucida, would amount to the punctum). Yet, as Barthes himself even admits, the stills he pulls do not correspond directly with the original film in its form as cinematic experience; in fact, they amount to a second text - in a sort of parallax relation to the first: they are mutually evocative and displaced (Barthes refers to this as a "palimpsest relationship"1 of texts). What's more, his description of the "third meaning" of those stills is one that he believes to be actually impossible to perform - he states that this is because the obtuse meaning exists on an order outside of articulation, and therefore only the location and effect can be described but the actual process is irreducible and incommunicable. To extrapolate on this point, the obtuse meaning exists within a personal relationship between the viewer and the film still, which occurs apart from (though in tandem with) the more communal relations between the viewer and the film-text, the auteur, and the socio-historical contexts of the images at hand. Also, the obtuse meaning is a product of the indexical (and contingent) nature of the image, which struggles with these iconic and symbolic intentions. Barthes' essay, therefore, must be doubly inarticulate: instead of description, he is forced to print the actual stills; and instead of a theoretical analysis, he can only refer the reader to his own personal experiences, which may or may not be generalizable. On the other hand, it is possible to literally "see what he is trying to say," as he prompts the reader to take his place as viewer, and to develop her own relation to the series of stills - perhaps to sympathize with Barthes', or perhaps not: "the reading of it is still hazardous."2

This incommunicativeness is also linked to a double self-referentiality in the essay. On the one hand, Barthes refers in his analysis not to the film, but to the series of stills that he himself (re)produces - in other words, the text he is analyzing may be found nowhere other than within his analysis. The second order of self-referentiality stems from Barthes' consequent uncertainty whether the obtuse meaning is universal, or something personal (thus, his constant qualifications of self-invocation3). For this reason, Barthes only mildly attempts to use his essay as the basis of a theoretical construct (that seems to be rather the job of the "future," which he invokes multiple times4); instead, his text is more of a (re)construction of the film-text (or rather a parallactic text), in which the iconic and symbolic levels of the film-text are subverted and de-naturalized. His essay is therefore not an analysis so much as it is the delineation of a second text he has discovered (or created, the difference here is tenuous) in relation to the first. Yet this poses the question: Why must a second text be discovered (or even created) in order to experience the obtuse meaning? In other words, is the obtuse meaning only evident in the text that Barthes produces (the series of film stills, contextualized by Barthes' recounting of his impressions) - or can it be captured in the original film itself? The response to these questions lies within the difference (for Barthes, at least) between the film and the film-still - and it may already be clear that this is a relation of temporalities.

---

Years after writing The Third Meaning, Barthes writes in Camera Lucida that the punctum (what could be considered the signifier of the obtuse meaning) "is an addition: it is what I add to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there."5 It is therefore an excess of meaning: "a signifiance"6 - "a signifier without a signified"7. Moreover, the punctum "is divined"8, much in the same way that Barthes' parallax text in The Third Meaning is both created and discovered. Yet this divination requires, for Barthes, a certain frame of mind in order to be achieved. That is to say that the viewer must exist in a certain relation to the images he interprets; simply, there must be ample time for contemplation, for "pensiveness."9

This mode of being before the photograph is one of (spatial) digression and (temporal) abeyance - these, furthermore, can allow for a sort of existential "latency."10 Barthes claims that "the punctum should be revealed only after the fact, when the photograph is no longer in front of me, and I think back on it"11. He goes on to say, "Absolute subjectivity [which must be taken to mean the condition required for the appearance of the punctum - and thus its obstinance against analysis] is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting your eyes is to make the image speak in silence)."12 The punctum is therefore a kind of subsequent reflection upon the image, yet which is nonetheless latent within it already at first glance (it in fact remains latent even, or especially, under scrutiny, as Barthes notes13).

This may begin to give a faint sense that Barthes' reference to the silent speech of the punctum could conjure more than a poetic paradox; it is also somewhat of an insinuation that each image carries with it a sort of message-laden "soundtrack" (as Robert Bresson writes, "The soundtrack invented silence."14). The soundtrack is a purely temporal aspect of the filmic medium - and thus silence is its equivalent of the photogram (sound technically existing merely as the temporal flow of aural vibrations - and thus silence being the lack thereof, a pause in the flow). In this regard, the reference to silence is a reference to the temporality - or, rather, the de-temporality - of the obtuse meaning. And it is here that we eventually come to Barthes' phenomenological specificity of the (a) photograph, insofar as it is in opposition to the (a) cinema-image.

Do I add to the images in the movies? I don't think so; I don't have time: in front of the screen, I am not free to shut my eyes; otherwise, opening them again, I would not discover the same image; I am constrained to a continuous voracity; a host of other qualities, but not pensiveness; whence the interest, for me, of the photogram.15

For Barthes, the cinema seems to induce a kind of panicked consumption, disallowing any re-registration of the images in the "affective consciousness"16 - because of the continual stream of images and the flood of information that each forces upon the viewer: each frame a framework, packed with denotative and connotative (semiological and mythological) messages. There is practically no time therefore (at best, one forty-eighth of a second) to re-regard each frame before it is replaced by the next. There is barely enough time to interpret the messages of the shot, much less the accidental, obtuse meaning. To look at it another way, during a film the viewer is so absorbed in the horizontal stream of the signified (the narrative - or, at least, the intentional message of the film), that she is unable to reflect on its artifice (or rather, its indexicality - and thus upon the artifice of its symbolic and even iconic significations). To find the punctum is to read the individual images and their articulations vertically17 - in other words, to interrogate the signifier18. Yet it is only by arresting the flow, segmenting it, reconstituting it, indeed re-writing it, that the punctum is given a space to enter the frame.

And to say that the punctum "enters the frame" is in fact more than a figure of speech. Barthes contends that the frame of a cinema-image, for one, predicates a "blind field" which "constantly doubles our partial vision."19 (This notion, and much of what is discussed here, in fact, echoes Jean-Pierre Oudart's theory of suture in the cinema, which similarly proposes an "absent field."20) This blind field allows the characters in a film to maintain a presence - a liveness - even off-screen, when the viewer is unable to see the movement of their images. In film, it is precisely this blind-field presence that keeps the narrative from collapse, and which furthermore, in its (carefully constructed!) oscillating relation to visible presence, presses the horizontality of the story to the forefront of the viewers attention. The blind field is the endowment of the signified with a sort of absent presence - and therefore it is less linked to a field of space as it is inextricably linked to a present temporality, which functions to aid the diegesis.

As for the photograph, on the other hand, it is precisely here in this unseen presence that the punctum resides (if there happens to be a punctum). Thus, the blind field of the photograph achieves a very different effect from that of the cinema. Barthes writes that the "cinema combines two poses: the actor's 'this-has-been' and the role's."21 There is a slippage in the cinema between the indexicality of the actor and the indexicality of the character: the diegesis takes over, due the overwhelming flow of the images. Yet in the photograph there is the possibility of that silent latency period from which the punctum can emerge.

Furthermore, in the latter half of Camera Lucida, Barthes believes he discovers a different kind of punctum - one which is spurred not so much by the accidental, subversive detail, but by the paradox of Death in the image as evoked by the historical photograph. He writes, "This new punctum, which is no longer of form but of intensity, is Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme ("that-has-been"), its pure representation."22 In fact, however, whether of the detail or otherwise, the punctum was and is always the evocation a temporal presence - that is, an uncanny spectral presence emanating from the blind-field. This presence has the effect of what Barthes refers to as the "that-has-been" - in the form of an unresolvable paradox. It is however, heightened in the historical photograph, as the viewer is faced not only with the death of the photographed moment, but also the physical death of the subject of the photograph. In other words, the historical photograph evokes a presence, but one which is only available in the photograph, as the subject of the photograph no longer exists.

Siegfried Kracauer writes of this very phenomenon in his essay, Photography. He describes the reaction of children (likely Kracauer himself) upon viewing the photograph of their deceased grandmother. At the odd fashion of her dress, "they laugh, and at the same time they shudder... they think they glimpse a moment of time past, a time that passes without return. Although time is not part of the photograph... the photograph itself, so it seems to them, is a representation of time."23 To Kracauer, the effect (the punctum) that these children experience in looking at the photograph of their grandmother is caused by the irresolvable paradox of the memory-image in conjunction with the photograph. As he notes, if it were not for the "oral tradition," there would be no way to know the identity of the subject of the photograph, as "the ur-image has long since decayed."24 Without the personal memory, the "oral tradition," the photograph would not retain its punctum - rather, the indexicality of the photograph merely becomes a kind of archive, a record: the photograph "could be standing with others of its kind in a museum, in a glass case labeled 'Traditional Costumes, 1864'."25

The appearance of the punctum, therefore, relies on a quite personal relationship between the viewer and the photograph (the uncanniness is not just a general sense of Death, but of course also of the viewer's own impending death). Perhaps this personal relationship once again pertains to the phenomenological difference between the photograph and the cinema. Barthes writes: "I am uncomfortable during the private projection of a film (not enough of a public, not enough anonymity), but I need to be alone with the photographs I am looking at."26 The photograph, to Barthes (and also to Kracauer), must first-and-foremost develop a personal relationship with the subject - if that is not achieved, it is just another item in the archive.

1 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 67
2 IMT, 54
3 e.g. IMT, 53, 57, 60, 65
4 e.g. IMT, 60, 63, 66, 67
5 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 55
6 IMT, 54
7 IMT, 61
8 CL, 57
9 CL, 55
10 CL, 53
11 CL, 53
12 CL, 53
13 CL, 53, 100
14 Robert Bresson, Notes sur le cinematographe, 1975, 48
15 CL, 55
16 CL, 55
17 IMT, 67
18 IMT, 53
19 CL, 57
20 Jean-Pierre Oudart, "La Suture," Cahiers du Cinema, April 1969
21 CL, 79
22 CL, 96
23 Siegfried Kracauer, Photography, p.49
24 Photography, 48
25 Photography, 48
26 CL, 97

Some rare good articles in the Times:

"Pig Out" - Scary op-ed about the pig farming industry.

"Movie Download Services" - Article about how the cinema-film, the DVD, and cable t.v. for that matter are slated in the next few months to become residual technologies, with the dawn of internet television and film downloads (with apple.tv the shining example, a cable-box like device which syncs your television wirelessly with your iTunes music and video catalog - which in turn can be updated automatically with subscriptions: for instance totally revolutionizing and replacing the idea of channels). This is going to create an overwhelming shift in film and television production within the next couple of years, as big or bigger than the advent of the VCR.

{ Here's an old essay I wrote (and posted to this blog) last year on television technologies. }

2 poems separated by a page

1.

the expression the eyes
rather than my or your or our
as if we had only to open
two each morning

I awoke alone
terror slips absurd
now it is empty
drowsy and uneasy


2.

"I want to remember quotes not themes" she said
"Yeah" I said echoing
a yawning chasm

A last pass at Rimbaud

"General, if an old cannon remains on your ruined ramparts, bombard us with lumps of dried earth. In the mirrors of luxurious stores! in parlors! Make the city eat its own dust. Oxidize the gargoyles. Fill bedrooms with the burning powder of rubies…”

Oh! the drunken gnat in the inn’s urinal, in love with diuretic borage and dissolved by a sunbeam! --A Season in Hell

and then, a few months later, he stopped writing. Wandered. Not because he burned out, but in order to escape the fate of that gnat. To live. And what are we doing here?

poem in progress

so, i'm working on this poem
and i really care about the chunks in it but can't seem to get past this
what i've got here (blurted, not quite reading)
would love any reactions/comments/help
to glue it together
or unzip it

(also the linebreaks and spacing got a mess)

Emma taught me the word
onomotopeia, she said, woof,
she said through chewed lips
streaked in horizontal teeth marks
like there was something to be held
before the chap

the small breath of the o’s from her lips
sending flurries in small tufts
of the curve of her hair, wet
segments orange estranged
from one another,
falling in front of her chin
the last two inches a wave
before her jaw bone

meow, Emma said, her small bones closer
to the animal than the sound

Emma taught me how
to make sounds with lexis,
dictionary in hand at twelve years
and yesterday announced she was a lesbian
her mother called long-distance on a landline

meow, Emma said, ring, ring
I am still not sure if my seventeen year old cousin
is suddenly sexual or if her lips smack when she kisses,
if she is gentle in sound, unlike an animal
and wants to hear the future, birth wise

in the female minds of this family theories ripen long in gossip
duplicity of hearing in which you can thank

and hear a wedding
over Chinese dumplings,
still remember
to pass the
granulated

the female minds here reach horizontal for sound
perhaps because we live too long, outlast our spouses
and our singing voices, though I can’t point quite
to when I fell behind
on that

I haven’t heard Emma’s voice since she could meow
and qualify as a child
but now she is a lesbian who
creaks slightly over the phone
in sweatered winter celebrations
older than when Emma shoved
her face in puppy flesh,
the brave cousin
that had us all barking
down the stairwell feet first

Emma taught me the word
onomotopeia, her high pitched voice
skinny legs, she leaned into the “meow”
shrill, firm-mouthed

I worried her calves would snap
cracking staggered midbone
if they got too close to
a right angle with her thighs

I saw Emma last screeching sounds
and now she is talking sex talk in my mind
I wonder if there are animals in it

if she chirps or maybe ahs silently
or whispers fuck me into the snow
like a puppy or a cousin who stubbed her toe
three seconds before turkey in 1992

they say Emma may love women or sound, or both
they say she’s down to monosyllables
so perhaps she loves the clarity of line

shadow, plop, sucking sounds
a stone into a pond

where the last three words
complete, fold her body inward
and wait for a frog

onomatopoeia, Emma licks haiku

Letter to Zhane

(Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007;
I wrote this poem in the wee hours of March 6th - as I read, finally, his Simulations book which I bought in Prague a year ago;
strangely enough, he died later in the day)

Either/Or: An Ecstatic Discourse (Kierkegaard)

Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way. Whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it. Laugh at the stupidities of the world or weep over them, you will regret it either way. Whether you laugh at the stupidities of the world or you weep over them, you will regret it either way. Trust a girl, and you will regret it. Do not trust her, and you will also regret it. Trust a girl or do not trust her, you will regret it either way. Whether you trust a girl or do not trust her, you will regret it either way. Hang yourself, and you will regret it. Do not hang yourself, and you will also regret it. Hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. Whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. This, gentlemen, is the quintessence of all the wisdom of life. It is not merely in isolated moments that I, as Spinoza says, view everything aeterno modo [in the mode of eternity], but I am continually aeterno modo. Many believe they, too, are this when after doing one thing or another they unite or mediate these opposites. But this is a misunderstanding, for the true eternity does not lie behind either/or but before it. Their eternity will therefore also be a painful temporal sequence, since they will have a double regret on which to live. My wisdom is easy to grasp, for I have only one maxim, and even that is not a point of departure for me. One must differentiate between the subsequent dialectic in either/or and the eternal one suggested here. So when I say that my maxim is not a point of departure for me, this does not have the opposite of being a point of departure but is merely the negative expression of my maxim, that by which it comprehends itself in contrast to being a point of departure or not being a point of departure. My maxim is not a point of departure for me, because if I made it a point of departure, I would regret it, and if I did not make it a point of departure, I would also regret it. If one or another of my esteemed listeners thinks there is anything to what I have said, he merely demonstrates that he has no head for philosophy. If he thinks there is any movement in what has been said, this demonstrates the same thing. But for those listeners who are able to follow me, although I do not move, I shall now elucidate the eternal truth by which this philosophy is self-contained and does not concede anything higher [sound like Heidegger, PMWers?]. That is, if I made my maxim a point of departure, then I would be unable to stop, for if I did not stop, I would regret it, and if I did stop, I would also regret it, etc. But if I never start, then I can always stop, for my eternal starting is my eternal stopping. Experience shows that it is not at all difficult for philosophy to begin. Far from it. It begins, in fact, with nothing and therefore can always begin. But it is always difficult for philosophy and philosophers to stop. This difficulty, too, I have avoided, for if anyone thinks that I, in stopping now, actually stop, he demonstrates that he does not have speculative comprehension. The point is that I do not stop now, but I stopped when I began. My philosophy, therefore, has the advantageous characteristic of being brief and of being irrefutable, for if anyone disputes me, I daresay I have the right to declare him mad. The philosopher, then, is continually aeterno modo and does not have, as did the blessed Sintenis, only specific hours that are lived for eternity.