V-2 -Chapter 9 - Anti-Oedipus

[Robin Landseadel]

Randomly selected pages from "Anti-Oedipus" by Deleuze and Guittari  
that for some reason seem to relate to Sarah's Story. I'm seeing Foppl  
being the Abraham of this story, the "Father" of his tribe, the leader  
among those who would make a living out of mass extermination. So  
Foppl's "Sarah" is the Mother of this long line of victims, these pre- 
echos of Auschwitz and the first explorers into the wilderness, these  
out of town try-outs for mass exterminations to come. There is no  
doubt concerning the despotic nature of Foppl in these scenes.

In the Biblical story of Sarah, Abraham claims that Sarah is his  
sister. On some level this unfolds before us the topic of incest.

G & F? Take it away!:

		. . . Hence it is by no means a question of knowing if the despot
	marries his "true" sister and his true mother. For in any case his true
	sister is the sister of the wilderness, just as his true mother is the
	mother of the tribe. Once incest is possible, it matters little  
whether it
	is simulated or not, since in any case something else again is
	simulated through incest. And in accordance with the
	complementarity of simulation and identity that we encountered
	earlier, if the identification is that of the object on high, the  
simulation
	is indeed the writing that corresponds to it, the flux that flows from
	this object, the graphic flux that flows from the voice. Simulation  
does
	not replace reality, it is not an equivalent that stands for reality,  
but
	rather it appropriates reality in the operation of despotic overcoding,
	it produces reality on the new full body that replaces the earth. It
	expresses the appropriation and production of the real by a quasi
	cause. In incest it is the signifier that makes love with its  
signifieds.
	System of simulation is the other name for signification and
	subordination. And what is simulated and therefore produced,
	through the incest that is itself simulated and therefore produced-all
	the more real for being simulated, and vice versa-is something very
	much like the extreme states of a reconstituted, re-created intensity.
	With his sister the despot simulates "a zero state from which the
	phallic force will arise," like a promise "whose hidden presence in the
	very interior of the body must be situated at the extreme limit"; and
	with his mother the despot simulates a superforce where the two
	sexes would be "at the maximum [degree of externalization] of their
	specific natures": the B-A Ba of the phallus as voice.

		Hence something else is always at issue in royal incest:
	bisexuality, homosexuality, castration, transvestism, as so many
	gradients and passages in the cycle of intensities. This is because
	the despotic signifier aims at the reconstitution of the full body of  
the
	intense earth that the primitive machine had repressed, but on new
	foundations or under new conditions present in the deterritorialized
	full body of the despot himself. This is the reason that incest changes
	its meaning or locus, and becomes the repressing representation.
	For what is at stake in the overcoding effected by incest is the
	following: that all the organs oftall the subjects, all the eyes, all  
the
	mouths, all the penises, all the vaginas, all the ears, and all the
	anuses become attached to the full body of the despot, as though to
	the peacock's tail of a royal train, and that they have in this body  
their
	own intensive representatives. Royal incest is inseparable from the
	intense multiplication of organs and their inscription on the new full
	body. (Sade saw clearly this always royal role of incest.) The
	apparatus of social repression-psychic repression-i.e., the repressing
	representation-now finds itself defined in terms of a supreme danger
	that expresses the representative on which it bears: the danger that
	a single organ might flow outside the despotic body, that it might
	break away or escape. Suddenly the despot sees rising up before
	him, against him, the enemy who brings death-an eye with too
	steady a look, a mouth with too unfamiliar a smile; each organ is a
	possible protest. . . .

Deleuze and Guittari: "Anti-Oedipus", pages 210/211