10 February, 2008

• Filling out my blackberry rebate form! #
• Fixing to enjoy some breakfast tacos and some coffee from WholeFoods! #
• on my way to the gym, then panera to write, then target, then the L word! #
• @ panera for some lunch & writing #

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As I consider my own locus in life, I also consider the larger implications of it. As I consider my vocational goals, PhD applications, and articles that I’m writing, I also consider the reality of privilege that accompanies all of this. And so, I offer the following from Jean Baudrillard, a voice who has beckoned me to consider the structures of life/power/privilege/order.

All great world powers have at some time or another created their monumental avenues which provided, as one looked down them, a miniature representation of the infinitude of empire. But the Aztecs at Teotihuacan, the Egyptians in the Valley of Kings, and Louis XIV at Versailles all created these syntheses in an architecture that was their own. Here in Washington, the vast panorama that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol is made up of a series of museums encapsulating our entire universe from Stone Age to Space Age. This gives the whole thing a science-fiction feel, as if an attempt had been made to gather all the marks of earthly endeavour and culture together here for the benefit of a visitor from outer space. And the White House, standing just alongside, watching discreetly over the whole, itself comes to look like a museum, the museum of world power, with an air of remoteness and prophylactic whiteness.

– Jean Baudrillard