Subverting the Norm at Drury University: DeLillo's Cosmopolis Reading Eric Packer and Jesus Through Each Other As Intellectual Terrorists

To defy the system with a gift to which it cannot respond save by its own collapse and death. Nothing, not even the system, can avoid the symbolic obligation, and it is in this trap that the only chance of a catastrophe for capital remains. ...For it is summoned to answer, if it is not to lose face, to what can only be death. The system must itself commit suicide in response to the multiplied challenge of death and suicide. (Jean Baudrillard - Symbolic Exchange and Death 37)

Baudrillard following Nietzsche:

Capital stripped bare by Speculation itself, like the bride by her bachelors. What becomes of Capital once the veil of Profit is lifted? What becomes of Labour once the veil of Capital is lifted?(Baudrillard - Cool Memories II 38)

Contrary to the historical slogan which says that the 'emancipation of the workers will be achieved by the workers themselves', we have to accept that Capital will be put to death by Capital itself or (not at all). (CM II 38)

We knowers are unknown to ourselves, and for a good reason: how can we ever 

hope to find what we have never looked for? There is a sound adage which 

runs:"Where a man's treasure lies, there lies his heart." Our treasure lies in the 

beehives of our knowledge. We are perpetually on our way thither, being by 

nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind. The only thing that lies 

close to our heart is the desire to bring something home to the hive. 

(preface The Genealogy of Morals)

Now look. A man in flames. Behind Eric all the screens were pulsing with it. And all action was at a pause, the protesters and riot police milling about and only the cameras jostling. What did this change? Everything, he thought. Kinski had been wrong. The market was not total. It could not claim this man or assimilate his act. Not such starkness and horror. This was a thing outside its reach. (C. pp. 96-98)(Kathy Chang(e) 

This is Eric Packer's Epiphany. The Burning Man is the pivotal point in the novel.

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

http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com/2012/06/cosmopolis-review-delillo-and-ayn-rand.html


DeLillo Cosmopolis Interview with Krasny SUMMARIZED  HERE parts 1.6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEXGqGkMQTE

If you check the summaries parts 1-6 DeLillo discusses narrative transcendence. Foucault and Baudrillard do not believe in transcendence so this is where DeLillo parts with them. DeLillo was raised Catholic and educated by the Jesuits.

DeLillo wanted his character Eric Packer to destroy cyber-capital in one day as the financial world has speeded up our world. He mentions Baudrillard's term "implosion." Packer is borrowing dumbfounding amounts of YEN and in fact wants all the YEN there is.

Yen speculation HERE EXPLAINED.

The problem of the will. Eric Packer cannot even summon the word to turn off his lights. He doesn't know what he wants. THE WILL DISCUSSED HERE by Hannah Arendt and Baudrillard.

He didn't know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut. (C 7)

Eric has a yen. Then he wants all the yen there is. Does that much yen equal wanting, equal desiring? Packer cannot desire because desire is in a relation with lack. Desire/Lack always go together. Packer lacks nothing. He is the man who has everything in excess. Everything. Eric Packer is "packed." So he cannot desire nor want. Just yen. So DeLillo offers a playful pun here on yen as currency and as a weak "want."

Packer is shorting the yen. He wants all the yen he can borrow. Then when it goes down relative to the dollar he will pay it back at a lower rate relative to the dollar and the difference between borrowing yen and paying it back will be his profit. What goes up must come down.

As Eric Packer continues his journey east to west on 47th street by quarter inches in the traffic grid, DeLillo's sentences are short, choppy mirroring the start/stop of the traffic. Packer is in his limo in the Order of Production. As the day goes on to keep his Appointment in Samarra with Death, Destiny is crossing his path with Elise, creating alterity, and Packer keeps losing his clothes, his shirt, his wallet, his money. He ecstatically borrows yen in dumbfounding amounts driving all the other currencies down and depleting Packer Capital and his investors of all their money including his own. He destroys his assets, the assets of his investors and the value of all other currencies relative to the yen. The only currency left is YEN. 

He is disappearing it! He is not losing it. He is ecstatically tossing it away with joy. HE IS DESTROYING THE MONEY CHANGERS IN THE TEMPLE OF FINANCE just as Jesus destroyed the money changers in the Temple by turning over all the tables. 

 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.  HERE

El Greco painted Jesus in the Temple overturning the tables of the money changers for 40 years. HERE

http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com/2011/05/money-changers-in-temple-eric-packer-is.html

Eric: He knew they would figure it out eventually how he'd made it happen, one man, bereaved and tired now. (C 140) HERE 

When Eric Packer sees The Burning Man he thinks Vija is wrong. What has happened is that The Burning Man is of the Symbolic Order of Sacrificial Death. Vija is still thinking in the Order of Production but she is pulling at her mole as she tries to integrate The Burning man in her thinking, but then sums him up as unoriginal. So see my blog lower down of Jesus and his unoriginality, which changed the world BTW in case you hadn't noticed.

And it is exactly at this point that Eric Packer borrows yen in dumbfounding amounts. Switching to Lacan, the more yen Eric wants, the more yen Eric borrows, the more yen Eric experiences for the world. He is exploding with hunger.

Eric Packer's Death: The world is willing it. : The excess of reality must be coupled with sacrifice in the Symbolic Order.

When he died he would not end. The world would end. (C p.6)

Packer will allow himself to be drawn to his assassin to be killed. At this point he is letting the world will him, becoming passive. He shoots himself in the palm of his left hand, creating the stigmata of blood.