just started reading the order of things. after subsequent sessions of picking up and putting down mm, pv, jr, finally got around to starting tonight. read the famed 'chinese encyclopedia' preface, and was surprised and generally enthused to realize that things made sense, words fucking slid into places and made themselves available, lucid, clear, sharp, snappable.

and then and then there's always the counter-fear I harbor lately: says who, according to what, established on what basis. to what degree have I bought into another discourse arguing for another order?

any which way I look at this it's hard to critique these bases of this basis-challenging discourse; mathematics come in flavors depending on their axioms -- non-euclidean geometry, etc, empirical science established on the basis of repeatability (isn't deduction established on induction?). an argument against these foundations as arbitrary and fluid seems unchallengeable. not that arbitrarity necessarily equals futility, a-utility, or even authority.

and with this sense of unchallengability comes my kneejerk questioning, paranoia of even the certainty of uncertainty. what is it that pushes me towards this miasma? I think I understand more of foucault's definition of a heterotopia -- at least more than explained than his essay: that is, a space in which these pre-established 'thresholds' assumed to be transparent and natural becomes visible and also breaks down, turns opaque and permeable. ranciere's notion of politics and art as harboring specific distributions of the sensible and challenging the pre-eminent distribution probably runs in this same vein, seeing as both foucault and ranciere had althusser as a mentor. this miasmatic, nauseating and "sick" status as described as foucault (although this may be sarcasm/criticism against a system of logic that deems everything outside of its borders alien and chaotic -- we'll see), is this really necessary? I don't mean 'who says there isn't an origin?' but rather 'what force makes us assert that there is no solid origin'? or more importantly, by convincing myself that this is a problem of distributions and segregations and delineations, what proper meta-moral meta-physical meta-logical conclusion was foucault driving himself towards to? "let's find out the truth about how there is no truth"?

I can imagine foucault, surging on the wave of structuralism, writing something entirely anew, being fresh and awake in 1966.

clearly I need to read more, and I will.