1. After having read it, I couldn’t help but think how interesting it would have been to see you develop Foucault’s notion of ‘panopiticon’ vis-à-vis the detective (as an instrument of governmentality) at greater length.

2. There is a fantastic article that I came across while researching–and thereafter writing–my paper on death and representation of dead american soldiers. The article is entitled: "Evidence, Truth and Order: A Means of Surveillance" from John Tagg’s book ‘The Burden of Representation.’

3. Though Jameson might provide a notion of detachment that is uniquely American with respect to literature, Baudrillard echoes this concept–especially vis-a-vis capitalism and culture–in much of his work. When you use deliver phrases like: "what remains is a ghost of a memory," I cannot help but think of simulation and simulacra and this might provide interesting tangents to those elements that which you have alluded to.

4. Lastly, after having recently seen Farenheit 9/11 it is interesting to think of Michael Moore through this figure of the postmodern detective. Of course, your arguments about conspiracy resound well in this doc.

From the perspective of the detective figure as an ethical individual, I wonder, with the myriad changes that distinguish the modern figure from the postmodern one, whether or not it could be said that the new (hence postmodern) figure of the detective is also marked by an ethical change. For instance, with Michael Moore we have a documentary film who has created a diatribe against Bush and his administration. The detective figure is not far behind. The promotional poster features Moore holding an envelop, that suggests that he has done some important and intriguing sleuthing of his own and now wants to share it the public. This ethical change, however, comes in the form of the detective/filmmakers’ representation of their findings. Even though I think one would be hard-pressed to find
anyone of us who would defend the Bush administration against falsehoods, we know that Moore has a tendency to bend the truth, play with the chronology of events, etc. Though, considering both the danger of Bush and the important political role this film could play, I see nothing wrong with Moore fighting fire with fire–that is with fibbing or fudging while (re)presenting of an administration that has countlessly done the same to the American people. Nevertheless, this infidelity for the sake of justice is an interesting idea, one that broaches the notion of complicity, detachment, etc. In short, I wonder whether it could be said that the postmodern figure of the detective is one that is also an ethical maverick of sorts, a schizophrenic law figure if you will.

"The conspiracy text inherits the ideological connection between the seeker of knowledge and the camera. But the idea of an otherness, an interiority that could be brought meaningfully to light has past and what remains is a ghost of a memory."

What I want to say about the enfolding of surfaces, and the increasing incorporation of camera logic into our lives, is that it has the potential to adapt the modern/postmodern agnst of un-know-ablity and isolation – the "nobody gets me" wail- to managable dimensions by providing an awareness of relativity. The ghost of a memory is the trace that is left- the this-ness that is all our uniqueness- once we see ourselves reflected everywhere. And when it has been reduced in size and imporance, it can take a proportionally relevant place in the ongoing, pragmatic reality of truth discovery and construction.

First off, something keeps me coming back to this essay: ‘Just when I thought I was out–they pulled me back in!"
Second–and more importantly–I think that, while this essay is a useful map in many ways, it is nevertheless important for us to draw greater attention to the analogy between the detective and theorist. Though the analogy can work on many levels, in the end there is nevertheless a salient and decisive difference between the two. I couldn’t put my finger on until I came across an article written by Massimo Bonfantino and Giampaolo Proni appositely entitled "To Guess or Not to Guess?" They zero on this distinction by reminding us that:

[b]"A detective is a riddle-solver [Holmes being the best example of this], not an interpreter of "opaque" facts. His art of abduction must thus belong to [i]puzzle-solving,[/i] not to [i]hermeneutics.[/i] Puzzle-solving, like detective work; calls for keen observation and encyclopedic knowledge in order to have at one’s fingertips [i]the finite and predetermined set of immediate and clue-fitting possible hypothetical solutions.[/i]"[/b]

Whereas the process of abduction–that which is the difficult task of the theorist who creates (i.e.: contributes by dint of an interpretative leap an new conclusion to that which, prior to the theorist’s labour, was not understood)–:

[b]"[…] consists in the attribution to the subject of the investigation, identified in the premise expressing the "result," [(that which is the result of whatever action, event or process and which serves as the evidence the theorist has to work with)] of the characteristics expressed in the protasis or antecedent of the major premise or rule. […] [thus], the degree of novelty of an abductive conclusion depends on the tenor of the major premise, then clearly the inventiveness, discovery potential, or creativity of abductive reasoning lies not in the inference but in the [i]interpretation[/i] of the datum or "result," which is regarded as a particular occurence of the typical consequence of a law or general principle. In other words, the heuristic process that gives rise to abduction has the datum as its starting point."[/b]

Therefore, when you say that "the detective is a liminal figure whose gaze has both a witnessing and an ordering power," I found it useful, to delve into and flesh out the particularity of this ‘ordering’ and the salient distinction of this process when enacted by the detective on the one hand and by the theorist on the other.

Bonfantino, Massimo, and Giampaolo Proni. "To Guess or Not to Guess?" The Sign of Three. Eds. Umberto Eco and Thomas Sebeok. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. pp. 119-34.

and .. so what? i guess i’m interested in the evolution of complex tools- in how, whether they are conceptual or concrete, the development of useful complex tools is always distributed across space and time, always directed by personal choice and interest. there is always a core of people who spent time together thinking and working and who then continued that work for themselves, on their own. and there are always people who connect with those ideas in some later time, who pick them up and pass them around and rediscover and rework them from their own starting point. this is open source collaboration.

hammering out this idea in response to your (very interesting and challenging) insertion has produced a new piece of my thesis argument. these pieces are induced by dialogue- and there are earlier pieces of this dialogue in the ccp blog from when we read a piece by nielsen about theory and poetry- there are pieces of evidence produced by exchange, and later i’ll come along as detective-self to find the crucial bits and to order them.

"Logic and semantics explain why we cannot proceed from observable trajectories to laws (inverse problem), but must proceed the other way round (direct problem). The logical reason is that valid (deductive) reasoning goes from the general to the particular, not the other way around. The semantic reason is that the high-level concepts occuring in the high-level laws – such as those of mass, energy, anomie, price elasticity, and popular participation- do not occur in the data relevant to them, or even in the low-level generalizations related to them.
The hermeneutist does not seem to realize this elementary methodological point. indeed he believes he can jump safely from observable behavior to the wishes or intentions behind it. By contrast, the rational-choice theorist seems to realize that point, since he claims to be able to deduce behavior from the alleged universal law about maximizing expected utilities. In other words, whereas the hermeneutist claims to be able to discover causes from their effects, the rational choice theorist claims that he knows a priori the putative mother of all effects, namely self-interest.
(…) Neither the rational choice theorist nor the hermeneuticist succeeds in explaining the behavior of social wholes (systems) on the basis of imagined individual proclivities (or preferences) and intentions (or goals). They fail in this task because they refuse to admit the very existence of social systems and are therefore bound to overlook the social mechanisms (processes) that make a system tick."
emergence and convergence p208