Ex- “out” + spect “look” — To expect means to be able to look out into the future and know what will happen. For the powerful, to have and to voice expectations means that people will try to understand what is expected of them, and they in turn will actively fulfill those expectations, being who they should be, doing what they should do, and doing their part to bring about the expected result.

In power, prediction and command blend together to create a deducible world. From what is seen, standing at one’s own stand-point, looking out on the world from one’s own point-of-view, everything is viewed in correct perspective, and known by one’s own logic — but everything is looking back, discreetly and respectfully (re- “back” + specting “looking”), calculating vanishing points, tracing the lines radiating from these points, and plotting out a perspectival grid, aligning, squeezing, angling, distorting to fit neatly inside precisely projected trapezoidal cells. The perspective that looks so natural and inevitable is in fact crushed into simplicity by innumerable actors performing parts cast by the radiant gaze of the visionary’s power.

Oh — you think this is a bad thing that ought to be changed? I don’t. I may speak words drawn from the language of critical theory but I accept only a few of its goals. In the end, my goal is pluralism and my means are hermeneutic, but both my ends and means rest on worlds, and worlds are held together by power. I want multiple powers, multiple worlds, multiple visions — something to move between, something to produce the churning chrome blindness between — my aether, my element, which has gone by the name perplexity.

)O+