Perversion the Social Relation

Fatal West 19cost is no reliable guarantee of quality, nevertheless, when I spend moreI feel as if I have the best." Although the consumer is bound to be disappointed(since consumption never removes desire), the advertisementhelps transform the commodity into a fetish, that is, into a thing thatcan provide a perverse enjoyment, despite the lack of satisfaction.Cynical reason returns the reasoner, surprisingly, to the Cartesianposition of stupid obedience: in the absence of certainty, it is better tofollow the rules. However, where Descartes gave his obedience to thelaws of the kingdom, contemporary ideology dictates that reason guideone to pursue wealth and self-interest. The tremendous appeal of sucha position is that merely by following duty, reason, and common sense,one incidentally accrues not only wealth and position but the special rewardsthat come to those who adhere most strictly to duty. Those fortunateenough to escape poverty, for example, often find themselves, asa matter of civic duty, in the position of disciplining the poor. Theirmethods may be doomed to fail (choosing not to feed the children ofthe poor does not usually make such children into productive membersof society), but the experience of inflicting suffering on others can stillmake the job rewarding. It is difficult to subvert those systems (such asthe prison system or the campaigns against imported drugs) that seem toaccept as a working principle that they will be ineffective. Burroughs'swork seems, rather, to celebrate aspects of modern culture that are oftenacknowledged (sadly, hostilely, sardonically) to fail. However, he takesas the motive of cultural activity not its intentions to improve life, butits capacity to produce enjoyment. The evil of the ugly spirit does notlie in its capacity to produce perverse enjoyment but in its failure to recognizethat perversity is what sustains it. Burroughs's achievement is toinvert the terms of Western history, imagining a culture developing notout of its impulses toward spirit or wealth, but out of the impulse towardenjoyment and a denial of the legitimacy of all authority.Retrospective UtopiaCities of the Red Night imagines an alternative history of the Westernworld from one hundred thousand years ago, developing out of the Eurasianplains and reaching into the Americas. This history gives no senseof a Utopian past, however, no moment when life was sweet and from