Foucault in ÂDiscipline and Punish discusses the
panopticon as an architectural feature established
first in the prison as a method of control by
observation. With its diffusion into other spaces
(air traffic control towers, surveillance cameras,
software that tracks the number of keystrokes), the
panopticon is no longer a feature limited to its
prison origins. Or if it is still within the realm of
its prison origins, it has been because of its
transformation of the world as a prison. The prison
has transcended its physical embodiment and entered
the hyperspace of our hyperreality.
As a list that sets out to study the Voynich
manuscript, the hyperreal panopticon comes to rest in
the realm of cryptography. This is the age of
postmodern cryptography. Nothing challenges authority
and control more than that which is concealed. The
white, male, CAPITAList, heterosexist gaze of
modernity is refracted by writings over 400 years old.
These are the writings of a different spirit than the
one that embodies this age. The Faustian spirit of
modernity, with its restless drive to control through
measurement and observation, is dying. And on its way
to the grave, the impulse to observe and control comes
to rest on one of its few indomitable foes.
Just like any other text (Madonna, Survivor, or OJ
Simpson), the Voynich MS is a text that can be read.
Or rather, it is a text that turns the gaze of the
reader. Like a mirror, it gives off more information
on the reader than on itself. In one age, the text
reads: I am of interest to religious mystics. In
anOther age, the text reads: I am of interest to
CAPITALists, to collectors of rare books as if they
were butterflies or baseball cards to be collected.
And in our hyperreal age of control and measurement,
the text reads: I am a danger to national security,
the potential weapon to an invisible enemy.
As Jean Baudrillard stated, reality is a bitch. And
as Machiavelli wrote, fortune is a woman. From
Renaissance Florence to Postmodern Paris, the thread
of masculine domination over feminine pliability
connects the two philosophers. The Voynich text is
the indomitable bitch that has survived the strikes
and blows of modernity and the enlightenment. She is
a text that refuses to be dominated. Jorge Luis
Borges wrote that one day the mirror people would no
longer imitate us; they would revolt. The day of the
mirror people will come when they will no longer obey
their orders. And on that day, the books of the
mirror people will also revolt. No longer texts to be
dominated, they will come to have power over us.
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