Judging Eye III

[Borque]

The "Who are the Dunyain?" scene at the end of TWP is pretty frightening.

+1

That epilogue was probably the most disturbing passage I've read in epic fantasy. Ever.

[sologdin]

i haven't read the first two threads, so apologies--

but has any ambitious foucauldian here attempted to reconcile "the judging eye" and the judging eye [sic] with the discussion toward the middle of discipline and punish re: hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment?

consider--

These observatories have an almost ideal model: the military camp - the short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at will; the seat of power that must be all the stronger, but also all the more discreet, all the more effective and on the alert in that it is exercised over armed men. In the perfect camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation.

--which describes the great ordeal well enough, and answers kal's complaint that the moving stadium was stupid. that stadium is stupid--except as an illustration of foucauldian panopticism, which it most certainly is.

also--

It is the normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to quantify, to classify, and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them.

--which describes mimara and "the judging eye" well enough, and puts paid to what exactly the objective value of her observations might be--the objective value is irrelevant because the book is an exercise in postmodern left philosophy (we knew that prior to interjecting foucault, though, considering the adorno quotations in prior volumes).

given these bits, it's almost as though RSB wrote TJE after leafing through foucault one afternoon. (not that i consider that a bad thing--quite the contrary; i write by ripping off tropes in deleuze & guattari and turning them into literal elements of my setting, e.g.)

but why the judging eye as a title? given the foucauldian quotations, supra, and others that i don't have time to record at the moment, my bet is that the title of the work is not in reference to mimara's 16th-level class feat, but to something more fundamental. no idea what. need to reread TJE and D&P.

[Happy Ent]

that stadium is stupid--except as an illustration of foucauldian panopticism, which it most certainly is.

Very nice. We can be certain that RSB knows Foucault.

[Red Sun]

/chime in

I have not read the book, but

Are you talking about Eco's book or something larger than that? Your post goes over my head either way so if you have time to elaborate any more that would be cool.

He means Michel Foucault, French philosopher and historian. "Discipline and Punish" is one of his books.

/chime out

[Tears of Lys]

really? do you believe the scenes weren't necessary because rape is such a taboo in our society that the description of such acts made you uncomfortable, or something else? i'd like to know.

/snip

Sorry I haven't responded sooner. I'm horrifically busy with work. (should be doing it right now!)

It's not that I think the scenes are totally unnecessary. It's more that I feel our noses were rubbed in it a bit much. The horror of the Inchoroi's creatures and how they treat humanity is best handled in small doses lest it lose its shock value. Like the scene at the end of TWP ("Who are the Dunyain?") was just right.

And Sologdin, I agree that The Judging Eye doesn't just refer to Mimara's talent, but is tied into a greater viewpoint and plan for the series. I have a vague glimmer of an idea, but not enough yet to explain it cogently.

[Shryke]

Are you talking about Eco's book or something larger than that? Your post goes over my head either way so if you have time to elaborate any more that would be cool.

Solo's posts remind me of reading Wolfe. Half the time, I get it, the other half I've got no fucking idea what's going on, but I'm fairly certain I'm not understanding something really profound.

[Happy Ent]

Sologdin refers, minuscularly, to the Panopticon of Bentham. This architectonical device combines two themes of the book I hadn’t hitherto connected: the objectivity of Mimara’s talent, and Kellhus’s amphitheatre. Both are judging eyes. I should have seen this myself. Thanks again, Solo.

The connection to Foucualt is that he writes about the Bentham’s construction in one of his books.

[sologdin]

one of the key features of panopticism is the "dissymetry of vision" that allows one to watch without being seen in return. bentham's panopticon was designed to maximize this dissymetry such that prisoners never knew when they were under surveillance, and thus had to learn to conform their behavior to prison rules even in the absence of guards. (the principle has many applications outside of prisons and criminal justice.)

the architecture of the great ordeal's stadium invokes the panopticon directly, insofar as kellhus can observe everyone from his central vantage point: the question becomes: how is there a dissymmetry of vision, when kellhus is plainly visible in the middle of an architecture designed to make the central figure visible to all?

the answer is in the curious faciolinguistics of the dunyain, whereby ishualites are trained in the art of reading the text of the face, and whereunder every person literally becomes a literary text--quite unlike the simplistic technique of FBI investigators who attempt to read faces and body language for lies, or the crude totalitarian estimations of "facecrime" in orwell (though both examples are subsumed within kellhus' praxis).

i.e., kellhus' face is visible, but it is not readable by his victims, whereas he is able to surveille the faciolinguistic data in his stadium and execute enemies of the state on the basis of their facial signifiers.

it is not obvious at this point whether the facial signifiers are readable for true signifieds, as conceived by pre-structuralist linguistics, or whether the rules of saussurean linguistics apply to the face, whereby an arbitrary relationship between signifiers and signifieds is acknowledged--leading inexorably to the post-structuralist conclusion that the arbitrary relationship is actually an indeterminable relationship--that whatever the relationship happens to be for one person, it is not known and not knowable whether the same relationship exists for any other person, a basic derridean thesis--and: even the relationship as conceived by a single person, is subject to the process of unending deferral of signification.

i.e., does kellhus intend to stop this process of differance [sic] via faciolinguistics and thereby fix the signifiers to their appropriate signifieds, as is claimed for sorcerous incantations? is this the meaning of the thousandfold thought and the judging eye?

fuck if i know.

[sologdin]

trisk--

i'm sure that RSB is familiar with foucault and bentham, but i have no idea if he consciously intended to allude to either of them. neither detail is terribly important to the conclusion that TJE has some foucauldian/panopticist features, unless we are working under the assumptions of a literary theory that requires evidence of authorial intention in order to find a given meaning "in" the text (where in signifies that the text is a container that can be filled up with meanings by the author, and only by the author).

(and we can't really ever know his intention here, in any event--even if he gives us a draft with notes citing foucault's text by page--that's still another text to unravel by means of the authorial intention argument--we'd need, say, a diary page that authenticates and certifies the draft-with-citation as true, correct, not ironic, timely, and so on--but what about the authenticity of that diary page? &c.)

schools of interpretation that rely on authorial intention have been generally discredited--but authorial intentionism seems to be the main way that popular literary appreciation functions (as opposed to professional literary criticism & theory).

that said, i am certain that unconsciously, the foucauldian and benthamite concepts are in his brains somewhere, and likely found their way out at appropriate times without much reflection on his part. this point is more a freudian interpretation, minus the fucking-your-mother thing--however: he does "kill his father" in the sense that he produces an allusion to and criticism of tolkien with the moria stuff (or, that's how harold bloom would read those scenes).

[Sis Who Swears]

In the prologue of TJE, when the whoever (I believe it's Kellhus related) goes looking for the Scalpers, the date at the top of the chapter says 'Autumn, 19 New Imperial Year (4131 Year of the Tusk), Long Side.

What is up with that? Other MAJOR stuff happens in year 19 before Autumn... but the year is different (4132)... ??? :huh:

[Sis Who Swears]

double

[Jon AS]

In the prologue of TJE, when the whoever (I believe it's Kellhus related) goes looking for the Scalpers, the date at the top of the chapter says 'Autumn, 19 New Imperial Year (4131 Year of the Tusk), Long Side.

What is up with that? Other MAJOR stuff happens in year 19 before Autumn... but the year is different (4132)... ???

I assume that the New Imperial Year and the old Year of the Tusk don't align exactly, i.e. while the Year of the Tusk seems to roughly follow the same as ours (the new year beginning in winter), the New Imperial Year presumably begins on the anniversary of Kellhus' ascension to the throne which was in spring 4112 IIRC.

[Paxter]

I assume that the New Imperial Year and the old Year of the Tusk don't align exactly, i.e. while the Year of the Tusk seems to roughly follow the same as ours (the new year beginning in winter), the New Imperial Year presumably begins on the anniversary of Kellhus' ascension to the throne which was in spring 4112 IIRC.

Yep, you've worked this one out John AS.

Year-of-the-Tusk follows the Northern Hemisphere's pattern: the new year starts during Winter (e.g. in TWP, there is Winter 4111, followed by Late Winter in 4112).

Also, Kellhus ascended to the throne during the Spring of 4112, which would make that the start of the New Imperial Year. This makes sense in the context of TJE, in which the New Imperial Year changes from 19 during Early Spring (in Chapter 12) to 20 during Spring (in Chapter 13).

Therefore:

Y-o-t-T: Winter - Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter

NIY: Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter - Spring

This explains why, in TJE, Spring came after Autumn even though the NIY year did not change.

[Sis Who Swears]

Ahhh thanks you Smarty-Smarterson! :cheers:

[Wik]

Alright guys I just found this thread and wanted to ask some questions about TJE. This may have been covered already, and if it has my apologies BUT;

In regards to Kelmomas, wtf is he doing through the entire book, and specifically in chapter 12 (page 263 to start)? In a thread I made someone briefly mentioned there is some ideas/opinions that he is either Consult or the White Luck Warrior.

To me it seems that he has almost a Fruedian complex where he dislikes and even hates his father and sees him as his main competition and covets his mother's attention even though he feels he dominates her. Does anyone else see this? I guess that doesn't explain his "motivation" other then screw his father over, but who knows. Normally I am pretty creative on my own, but I just can't seem to figure this out. Granted I have not completed the book yet but this confusion has been building up since the start of TJE and I just had to ask about this as I read on.

I have to admit, i'm still kinda iffy on liking this character or not. I have enjoyed almost every person throughout the first trilogy but Kelmomas still has the jury out for me.

[Maithanet]

I'd finish the book before venturing into this thread. The final hundred pages are the best part anyway.

As for Kelmomas, his motivations are not entirely known. This isn't exactly new in the Bakker books, its actually quite common that no one knows what is driving a certain character. He does seem to have a strange Oedipal thing going on, and definitely is power hungry. There's been some discussion about who the inner monologue in his head actually is, but no one knows for sure. I think the Consult theory is pretty dependent on that monologue being from one of their agents, who is leading him to undermine the Kellhus empire:

SPOILER: I'm not sure if you've gotten to this

(push Esmenet closer to the edge, undermine Maithanet's position, etc).

I personally do not subscribe to this theory. I think the problem is just that when you have so many Anasurimbors running around, only marginally checked/trained by their father, then you have problems. Just too many Alpha dogs trying to become powerful, and power is a zero sum game. Since Kelmo is the youngest, I think he's getting the least attention from Kellhus, the most attention from Esmenet, and the result is someone who is incredibly powerful but also extremely unbalanced.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Okay, a spoiler question from

SPOILER: TJE

I got the impression that Kelomomas's inner voice was the voice of his twin. The particular line I remember was during his twin's death scene the inner voice saying "Why did you take so long to kill me." I know it isn't conclusive but it seems to indicate that somehow his twins active mind was residing in Kelomomas's body. Anyone agree?

[Shryke]

Okay, a spoiler question from

SPOILER: TJE

I got the impression that Kelomomas's inner voice was the voice of his twin. The particular line I remember was during his twin's death scene the inner voice saying "Why did you take so long to kill me." I know it isn't conclusive but it seems to indicate that somehow his twins active mind was somehow residing in Kelomomas's body. Anyone agree?

There's something going on in that respect.

[Maithanet]

There's something going on in that respect.

I agree, that quote leads you in that direction, but the rest of the time, the voice really doesn't match what his twin seems likely to be thinking. Unless the twin was stunted in some way, and thus also had those self-serving anasurimbor-type thoughts are actually his, and he was unable to express them in his previous body. I feel like that's getting pretty out there though.

Also, board etiquette question: this is a spoiler thread, correct? I put my quote in spoilers because it was aimed specifically at Bigpop, who has said he hasn't finished the books. But this is more in response to Scot's question, and hence no spoiler text. I can put this in spoilertext too, but it seems kind of crazy to start spoilering everything now.

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Umm...what's Judging Eye about?