Perversion the Social Relation

Fatal West 25Burroughs does not suggest, however, that we might evade such socialsubjection by "curing" the virus: as one character suggests, " 'anyattempts to contain Virus B-23 will turn out to be ineffectual becausewe carry this virus with us. . . . Because it is the human virus* " (25).The virus's symptoms (such as uncontrollable sexual desire) are thoseof "love": the human virus ("known as 'the other half ") constitutesour knowledge of our inadequacy, our mortality. We are double, andyet that part of ourselves with which we identify will vanish while theundead within us continues. 9 Conventionally, we deny this knowledgewhen we speak of the soul as the immortal part of each person. The ideaof the soul inverts the relation between body and mind, claiming thatthe physical vanishes while the soul, a representation of consciousnessas unembodied spirit, lives on, untouched by time. In fact, the oppositeis more likely true, since consciousness is usually the first thing to go.The account of the Cities of the Red Night retells the story of the immortalsoul, stripping it of its sublime dimension and linking it to a historyof social power, a practice by which the strong reproduce their kind atthe expense of the weak.The Cities' most distinctive practice involves their refusal of sexualreproduction, of bodies and mortality. The chapter entitled "Cities ofthe Red Night" lays out the system of "transmigration" of spirit, displayingthe interdependence of two classes, Transmigrants and Receptacles:"To show the system in operation: Here is an old Transmigranton his deathbed. He has selected his future Receptacle parents, who aresummoned to the death chamber. The parents then copulate, achievingorgasm just as the old Transmigrant dies so that his spirit enters thewomb to be reborn" (154). The denial of death by elite Transmigrants—those who consider the perpetuation of their spirits more valuable thantheir mere bodies—leads them to appropriate not just the sexuality ofothers, but the orgasm itself, the males' at least, for the purpose of culturalreproduction. This system leads inevitably to "mutters of revolt" bythe women, who see most directly how their enjoyment has been channeledfor social designs: women produce children for the pleasure ofothers (155). In addition, the practice produces "a basic conflict of interestbetween host child and Transmigrant" (158) since the point of beingborn is to serve for a few years as the vessel for another's spirit, at theend of which the host submits his body to orgasmic death, again all inthe interest of maintaining the Cities' power structure. The solution to