Custody of the Eyes

Custody of the Eyes by Eltit, Diamela. Paperback edition. ISBN: 9780930829568.

From St. Augustines Rule, charging monks to keep custody of their eyes so as to avoid shame, down to Benthams and Foucaults secular Panopticon, imposing custody through surveillance, vigilance is an ever-present, threatening condition of our society. The individual "is very much seen, even by those he thinks do not see him," cautioned Augustine, with satisfaction. Diamela Eltits new novel remarkably concentrates this oppression from without in the double-voiced narrative of a woman and child whose home becomes their prison, subject to the command of order, as in Pinochets Chile - shattered by insidious laughter, consumed in an ultimate conflagration.