The Cut For the End of Representation and the Beginning of the Grid and Measurement

Foucault's analysis of Las Meninas (1656) spells the end of representation and the introduction of measurement and the grid. Don Quixote  (1605 vol 1 & 1615 vol 2)initiates the modern novel as language refering to itself, literature is the referent which tears language loose. The architecture of the city of Philadelphia assumes the grid in 1682 and New York, Barcelona, London and Buenos Aires fall in line. These dates are roughly the Foucauldian "cut" for the end of representation in language, art and architecture.

Dating from 1682, the City Plan of Philadelphia has provided a model which has helped mold the development of cities throughout the US. Key features, many of which were firsts in the US, include a gridiron street pattern and open public squares.  

Charles Darwin called Buenos Aires, “the most regular city in the world.” In the New World there was greater freedom to construct cities on regular plans. 4 grid cities

These grids are lovely I think, like Agnes Martin paintings.

Manhatten Grid Map of Packer's Journey to Samarkand

Cervantes Don Quixote 1605&1615 by Dore

Las Meninas 1656 Valezquez

 Las Meninas (Spanish for The Maids of Honour)^[1] is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted. 

Agnes Martin 1960's 1970's

Foucault then proceeds to lay down the grid of power/knowledge. The two are not separate but fused. Each cannot exist without the other. Still today this is not understood as most people think power comes from above to repress and control them. Foucault locates power below, within the interstices of the grid, tightening, crushing and controlling the individual within the family, the educational system, the society in which s/he lives through the Inscription of the Body and with it the mind forcing the person to conform to what is perceived as normal behavior. The way you speak, walk, work, reproduce, everything in your life, must conform within the parameters of normality. Walk outside with green hair and you are going to be noticed, and not favorably, unless you move in slacker or punk sub-culture.

And this is where Eric Packer is this spring day in April 2000 at Eastertime, the same time of year Hansen is following his Gradiva in the simulacrum of Pompeii. The same time of year Jesus is following Isaiah. Packer is crushed within the grid, a hostage in his own limo, surrounded by bodyguards to protect him, make him secure, but who really cannot even as the pie thrower gets him with a whipped creme pie. He is as if in custody.

He is shorting the yen. The yen is going up and up and up above its resistance points and beyond. 

Yen plotted against the dollar

It charts, says Packer. But it only charts within a grid. It only charts within linear time. It only charts within the dialectic of opposites, up and down, true and false, etc. And Packer is not in the dialectic anymore, not in linear time anymore, but interfaced with the screen of globally orbiting numbers, currencies that move asymmetrically. That is they don't chart, not even according to Packer's meditative esoteric rhythms. Charting requires time:past present future and Packer is in real time, cutting it smaller and smaller into infinitesimal particles into zepto seconds, that accelerate asymmetrically with positive and negative charges that collide and go pouf. Packer is being crushed within the interstices of the grid, just as Nina was in Black Swan. 


But Elise-Gradiva is seductively luring him on. She is ahead of him all day and he is following her as she is hiding from him. He is not searching for her, but he keeps finding her. Inside the limo is the Order of Production and outside the limo is the Order of Seduction, and Elise Shifrin keeps shifting as Packer's mind shifts on this day. Death is ahead of him and hiding from him, but Packer unerringly moves towards Samarkand to meet his destiny with death.

Black Swan

 It is the terrorist model to bring about an excess of reality, and have the system collapse beneath that excess. - Baudrillard


And the imploder, the intellectual terrorist, will disappear as his world becomes a different world because of his actions. He will make the leap into death to offer the gift of his life. The world will die when Packer dies.


He's not a self-destructive loser, folks. He is an intellectual terrorist. 


And so was/is Jesus.