unwanted consonance

Begin re-reading Discipline and Punish (out of guilt) while waiting for the train. Now that I’m on board, and have to stand, I can no longer read because I have too many things to carry. My free hand is keeping me stable, and my other hand is holding a mint green umbrella, which is an exact match for the back cover of Discipline and Punish, also mint green. I’m just staring at the train window in front of me, so I should put my book in my bag, but I am feeling too lazy to complete another motion; however, the realization that I am accessorizing with Foucault just bums me out. I know this is the L, but this is too much. I put the book in my bag and take turns between staring at the guy sleeping in front of the window and examining the back of my hand.

Postmodernism 42: “...and this is a dialectical intensification of the autoreferentiality of all modern culture, which tends to turn upon itself and designate its own cultural production as its content.”

Me: How can postmodern adolescence not be fundamentally different from its modern incarnations? How does adolescence attempt to consume itself? How is this understood as creation/production? What does this have to do with stages? What kinds of innovation are refused when modern forms are (un) self-consciously used in postmodern storytelling?

Complete one small thing each day (cross something off your things-to-do list on the day it was intended to be completed, finally mail all of those past-due birthday presents, take vitamins, clean the toilet, whatever). This will remind you of what finishing something feels like.

Need a copy of Paterson.

From the little mint book: "Real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations... He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects: it is a perpetual victory that avoids any physical confrontation and which is always decided in advance."