Desire --> Incest
[The next section of Bloodlines I has been posted here.]
"There were two major types of social investment, segregative and nomadic, just as there were two poles of delirium: first, a paranoiac fascisising type or pole that invests the formation of central sovereignity...and second, a schizorevolutionary type or pole that follows the lines of escape of desire; breaches the wall and causes flows to move. [...] Isn't the destiny of American literature that of crossing limits and frontiers, causing deterritorialised flows of desire to circulate, but also always making these flows transport fascisising, moralising, Puritan, and familialist territorialities?" [Pgs 277-8]*
Because I'm an academic masochist, I've been revisiting Anti-Oedipus lately, lugging it around in my handbag and catching five minutes of it at the hairdresser's, ten minutes at church, twenty minutes in the line at Starbucks the other day. Half-cocked ideas about self-application aside, the reason is this: incest.
Yes, I know, we've all seen/read/heard about the wank circling SPN this past month, and we all know what a horrid, terrible, awful thing incest is in its real incarnation. This is my disclaimer: I'm coming at this from the same place as Deleuze and Guattari (hereafter referred to as D&G because I'm a lazy sod), from the standpoint of an academic, or, more narrowly, a literary theorist with interest in Lacanian linguistics, psychoanalysis, and (perhaps Russian) Marxism. Please remember that.
It's not that big a stretch to take this on to Supernatural, not to me, at least, seeing as how if I'm not reading French schizoanalysists, I'm reading fic. Or writing it. Or thinking about the canon its all based on. You get the picture.
Anti-Oedipus deals with incest. That's a foregone conclusion just from reading the title. And it's interesting me as a (Wincest) fic writer, because D&G patently say, and I quote, "We must conclude that, strictly speaking, incest does not and cannot exist" [Pg. 160].
Now, before everyone gets up in arms, let me remind you that this is an academic question and let me expand. D&G say that incest is a "mythical expression" [Pg. 160] wherein the names of the people involved no longer stick to states of alliance, but to people. It is not until incest is 'created' that the people one cannot sleep with are created. "Mother and sister do not exist prior to their prohibition as spouses" [Pg. 160]. Until that moment, until incest has been created, 'mother' and 'sister' exist only as plus or minus signs in a filiative (patriarchal) alliance structure. Its when the pluses and minuses collide that incest creates itself.
They bring in a whole discussion of twinness and bisexuality as well, and I'm not only going to ignore that for now but am also doing a piss-poor job of explaining this. Basically, "the reason [that the mother and sister are prohibited from becoming spouses] is that persons, with the names that now designate them [the 'mother' and 'sister'], do not exist prior to the prohibitions that constitute them" [Pg. 160]. The mere act of prohibiting someone from being a potential spouse or sexual partner makes it impossible to commit incest with them.
D&G go on to say that either one is always on this side of committing incest in a mindset that does not recognise anyone as a prohibited spouse or one is beyond it, in a mindset that recognises prohibited spouses. Either you don't know the names 'mother' and 'sister' and sex with everyone is fine, or you define 'mother' and sister' and make it impossible to have sex with them.
They can that by pre-emptively asking, "But lo, it's TOTALLY possible to sleep with your mum or your sister. What the fuck, no pun intended, are you talking about? Incest has to be possible, because it's illegal." (Except, because they're academics, they use nicer language. Whatever.)
This is where D&G bring in 'persons' and 'names.' Incest would require both, the actual physical person and the name of that person, more like a title: father, brother, mother, sister, son, daughter.
"Now in the incestuous act we can have persons at our disposal, but they lose their names inasmuch as these names are inseparable from the prohibition that inscribes them as partners; or else the names subsist, and designate nothing more than prepersonal intensive states that could just as well 'extend' to other persons, as when one calls his legitimate wife 'mama,' or one's sister his wife...our mothers and sisters melt in our arms. This is because one can never enjoy the person and the name at the same time--yet this would be the condition for incest" [pgs. 161-2].
Like good literary theorists, D&G attack the set-in-stone definitions of words, of language. What is a name, a title, but a word that we can arbitrarily pick and choose when and when to not apply? A word that we can choose how to define? A two-dimensional, easily understood definition of a three-dimensional person who isn't? It's a distinction between the physical and the intellectual, the primitive barbarian who doesn't care about titles and exults in the sensual or civilised men living in a culture with hard-and-fast rules and laws?
This is a very easy way to sweep aside the issue, but it's compelling, especially in the light of postmodern cultural relativism. Can words objectively mean anything, at their core? Isn't that what this centres around, even in the periphery?
D&G footnote Derrida ["Freud et la scene de l'ecriture," 1967]: "Before the feast there was no incest because there was no prohibition of incest. After the feast there is no longer any incest because it is prohibited" [Pg. 161]. I'm not sure that helps. Is he being serious, there's no incest because it's against the law or is there "no incest," wink wink, look the other way? Who knows what he means, he's friggin' Derrida, but D&G write "the law proves nothing about a functional reality of the law because it is itself derisory in relation to what the law prohibits in reality" [Pg. 161]. Which I think means that looking at the law is a lost cause, because the law isn't reality, it merely mocks it. Or something.
"Incest is a pure limit...a boundary line...always crossed already or not yet crossed. For incest is like this motion, it is impossible" [Pg. 161]. So we're back to prohibitions and boundaries and constitutions. Either we've already gone beyond it, or we'll never get to it. A real limit, unlike the speed limit, with the nice curves they used to teach us about in maths.
"There is only desire and the social" [Pg. 183]. Which brings me to another prong of the same issue. D&G say that society represses desire, represses and twists and...does all sorts of other nasty things to desire. Imperialism [here we start to bring in the Marxist stuff, if the Lacanian Freudian mindfuck wasn't bad enough by itself already] is bad. Just agree for now, 'kay?
Imperialism. Hail, conquering hero. I'm going to sum up a few sections like this: the conquering despot conquers, has sex with the mother of the conquered tribe, then marries the sister/daughter. Boom, incest, thanks to some discussion about graphism you really don't want to hear about. Suffice to say, the conquering despot inscribes the mother and the sister/daughter with their titles and rapes them.
"In the imperial formation, incest has ceased being the displaced represented of desire to become the repressing representation itself" [Pg. 201]. Now, thanks to the creation of a new society based around the despot, incest is no longer this form of desire that people prohibit themselves from acting on, but a way to repress the native culture and produce a new culture and new prohibitions. Instead of incest as a misnomer, this limit no one can actually touch, it becomes law. Desire becomes twisted, unnatural, and the ebb and flow of desire is warped.
So, a quick condensed version of certain sections of part of Chapter 3. What does this have to do with Supernatural, you might ask?
The show is about three men, a father and his two sons, who live outside of society in a world that is, for the most part, only theirs; who drive across the country, who live as nomads, who follow these escaped lines of (a supernaturally-charged) desire. And, also, members of the fandom write incredibly hot porn where all sorts of incest take place. A demon kills the only two women that the men of the Winchester tribe were allied with--the wife of the father and the girlfriend of the younger son--thus forcing them to make new alliances or to turn inward to the tribe. Greater society doesn't understand them, the law mocks their work by disbelieving in it (with certain exceptions), and while tentative outreaches are made to women outside, none solidify (as of yet) into a permanent alliance.
I've been trying to draw connections between D&G and Supernatural for a few weeks now, not for any fictive purposes, but just to satisfy this academic need of mine. Incest was a good starting point, especially because I'm one of those pesky Wincest people, but the more D&G I read, the more I see other connections. Society. Nomadism. Isolationism. Capitalism and class. The journey towards 'becoming.' The actuality of reality. Displacement and repression.
There's a discussion readily available for each one of those topics, sometimes more than one, and as I keep re-reading Anti-Oedipus, I'm going to find them, think about them, and then post about what I think about them. I'm not promising to make sense [because I don't, ever] and I'm not promising to do full justice to D&G [because I can't, ever], but I'm sort of looking forward to it.
Anti-Oedipus is about Oedipus. It's about incest and desire and society's reaction to both of those scary things. Supernatural is about family. It's about sacrifice and love and saving people from things that don't exist. The combination, to me, seems natural. More than that, it seems fun. Still, if "a schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch," [Pg. 2] where does a fan fit?
Right here, apparently.
*[Text: Anti-Oedipus, Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. University of Minnesota Press reprint edition, 1983.]
"There were two major types of social investment, segregative and nomadic, just as there were two poles of delirium: first, a paranoiac fascisising type or pole that invests the formation of central sovereignity...and second, a schizorevolutionary type or pole that follows the lines of escape of desire; breaches the wall and causes flows to move. [...] Isn't the destiny of American literature that of crossing limits and frontiers, causing deterritorialised flows of desire to circulate, but also always making these flows transport fascisising, moralising, Puritan, and familialist territorialities?" [Pgs 277-8]*
Because I'm an academic masochist, I've been revisiting Anti-Oedipus lately, lugging it around in my handbag and catching five minutes of it at the hairdresser's, ten minutes at church, twenty minutes in the line at Starbucks the other day. Half-cocked ideas about self-application aside, the reason is this: incest.
Yes, I know, we've all seen/read/heard about the wank circling SPN this past month, and we all know what a horrid, terrible, awful thing incest is in its real incarnation. This is my disclaimer: I'm coming at this from the same place as Deleuze and Guattari (hereafter referred to as D&G because I'm a lazy sod), from the standpoint of an academic, or, more narrowly, a literary theorist with interest in Lacanian linguistics, psychoanalysis, and (perhaps Russian) Marxism. Please remember that.
It's not that big a stretch to take this on to Supernatural, not to me, at least, seeing as how if I'm not reading French schizoanalysists, I'm reading fic. Or writing it. Or thinking about the canon its all based on. You get the picture.
Anti-Oedipus deals with incest. That's a foregone conclusion just from reading the title. And it's interesting me as a (Wincest) fic writer, because D&G patently say, and I quote, "We must conclude that, strictly speaking, incest does not and cannot exist" [Pg. 160].
Now, before everyone gets up in arms, let me remind you that this is an academic question and let me expand. D&G say that incest is a "mythical expression" [Pg. 160] wherein the names of the people involved no longer stick to states of alliance, but to people. It is not until incest is 'created' that the people one cannot sleep with are created. "Mother and sister do not exist prior to their prohibition as spouses" [Pg. 160]. Until that moment, until incest has been created, 'mother' and 'sister' exist only as plus or minus signs in a filiative (patriarchal) alliance structure. Its when the pluses and minuses collide that incest creates itself.
They bring in a whole discussion of twinness and bisexuality as well, and I'm not only going to ignore that for now but am also doing a piss-poor job of explaining this. Basically, "the reason [that the mother and sister are prohibited from becoming spouses] is that persons, with the names that now designate them [the 'mother' and 'sister'], do not exist prior to the prohibitions that constitute them" [Pg. 160]. The mere act of prohibiting someone from being a potential spouse or sexual partner makes it impossible to commit incest with them.
D&G go on to say that either one is always on this side of committing incest in a mindset that does not recognise anyone as a prohibited spouse or one is beyond it, in a mindset that recognises prohibited spouses. Either you don't know the names 'mother' and 'sister' and sex with everyone is fine, or you define 'mother' and sister' and make it impossible to have sex with them.
They can that by pre-emptively asking, "But lo, it's TOTALLY possible to sleep with your mum or your sister. What the fuck, no pun intended, are you talking about? Incest has to be possible, because it's illegal." (Except, because they're academics, they use nicer language. Whatever.)
This is where D&G bring in 'persons' and 'names.' Incest would require both, the actual physical person and the name of that person, more like a title: father, brother, mother, sister, son, daughter.
"Now in the incestuous act we can have persons at our disposal, but they lose their names inasmuch as these names are inseparable from the prohibition that inscribes them as partners; or else the names subsist, and designate nothing more than prepersonal intensive states that could just as well 'extend' to other persons, as when one calls his legitimate wife 'mama,' or one's sister his wife...our mothers and sisters melt in our arms. This is because one can never enjoy the person and the name at the same time--yet this would be the condition for incest" [pgs. 161-2].
Like good literary theorists, D&G attack the set-in-stone definitions of words, of language. What is a name, a title, but a word that we can arbitrarily pick and choose when and when to not apply? A word that we can choose how to define? A two-dimensional, easily understood definition of a three-dimensional person who isn't? It's a distinction between the physical and the intellectual, the primitive barbarian who doesn't care about titles and exults in the sensual or civilised men living in a culture with hard-and-fast rules and laws?
This is a very easy way to sweep aside the issue, but it's compelling, especially in the light of postmodern cultural relativism. Can words objectively mean anything, at their core? Isn't that what this centres around, even in the periphery?
D&G footnote Derrida ["Freud et la scene de l'ecriture," 1967]: "Before the feast there was no incest because there was no prohibition of incest. After the feast there is no longer any incest because it is prohibited" [Pg. 161]. I'm not sure that helps. Is he being serious, there's no incest because it's against the law or is there "no incest," wink wink, look the other way? Who knows what he means, he's friggin' Derrida, but D&G write "the law proves nothing about a functional reality of the law because it is itself derisory in relation to what the law prohibits in reality" [Pg. 161]. Which I think means that looking at the law is a lost cause, because the law isn't reality, it merely mocks it. Or something.
"Incest is a pure limit...a boundary line...always crossed already or not yet crossed. For incest is like this motion, it is impossible" [Pg. 161]. So we're back to prohibitions and boundaries and constitutions. Either we've already gone beyond it, or we'll never get to it. A real limit, unlike the speed limit, with the nice curves they used to teach us about in maths.
"There is only desire and the social" [Pg. 183]. Which brings me to another prong of the same issue. D&G say that society represses desire, represses and twists and...does all sorts of other nasty things to desire. Imperialism [here we start to bring in the Marxist stuff, if the Lacanian Freudian mindfuck wasn't bad enough by itself already] is bad. Just agree for now, 'kay?
Imperialism. Hail, conquering hero. I'm going to sum up a few sections like this: the conquering despot conquers, has sex with the mother of the conquered tribe, then marries the sister/daughter. Boom, incest, thanks to some discussion about graphism you really don't want to hear about. Suffice to say, the conquering despot inscribes the mother and the sister/daughter with their titles and rapes them.
"In the imperial formation, incest has ceased being the displaced represented of desire to become the repressing representation itself" [Pg. 201]. Now, thanks to the creation of a new society based around the despot, incest is no longer this form of desire that people prohibit themselves from acting on, but a way to repress the native culture and produce a new culture and new prohibitions. Instead of incest as a misnomer, this limit no one can actually touch, it becomes law. Desire becomes twisted, unnatural, and the ebb and flow of desire is warped.
So, a quick condensed version of certain sections of part of Chapter 3. What does this have to do with Supernatural, you might ask?
The show is about three men, a father and his two sons, who live outside of society in a world that is, for the most part, only theirs; who drive across the country, who live as nomads, who follow these escaped lines of (a supernaturally-charged) desire. And, also, members of the fandom write incredibly hot porn where all sorts of incest take place. A demon kills the only two women that the men of the Winchester tribe were allied with--the wife of the father and the girlfriend of the younger son--thus forcing them to make new alliances or to turn inward to the tribe. Greater society doesn't understand them, the law mocks their work by disbelieving in it (with certain exceptions), and while tentative outreaches are made to women outside, none solidify (as of yet) into a permanent alliance.
I've been trying to draw connections between D&G and Supernatural for a few weeks now, not for any fictive purposes, but just to satisfy this academic need of mine. Incest was a good starting point, especially because I'm one of those pesky Wincest people, but the more D&G I read, the more I see other connections. Society. Nomadism. Isolationism. Capitalism and class. The journey towards 'becoming.' The actuality of reality. Displacement and repression.
There's a discussion readily available for each one of those topics, sometimes more than one, and as I keep re-reading Anti-Oedipus, I'm going to find them, think about them, and then post about what I think about them. I'm not promising to make sense [because I don't, ever] and I'm not promising to do full justice to D&G [because I can't, ever], but I'm sort of looking forward to it.
Anti-Oedipus is about Oedipus. It's about incest and desire and society's reaction to both of those scary things. Supernatural is about family. It's about sacrifice and love and saving people from things that don't exist. The combination, to me, seems natural. More than that, it seems fun. Still, if "a schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch," [Pg. 2] where does a fan fit?
Right here, apparently.
*[Text: Anti-Oedipus, Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. University of Minnesota Press reprint edition, 1983.]