Perversion the Social Relation

28 Dennis FosterChristian control, the pirates exploit the performance aspect of family:they enlist members of their community to become "families to operateas intelligence agents in areas controlled by the enemy" (106). Forfamilies to operate, they must have children. To this end, the piratesgather all the young men and women for a mass dance and insemination:"Juanito announces: 'Rabbit men and rabbit women, prepare tomeet your makers.' He leads the way into a locker room opening off theeast wall. The boys strip off their clothes, giggling and comparing erections,and they dance out into the courtyard in a naked snake-line. Thewomen are also naked now. What follows is not an unconstrained orgybut rather a series of theatrical performances" (108). The more orgiasticand unconstrained sex appears to be, the more it requires the carefulpreparation and control of the governors. What Burroughs displays isnot a more authentic vision of family and sexuality than exists in conventionallife, of course, but a parody that reveals how readily sexualitycan be turned to the service of a state, the pirates' state in this case. AsDon DeLillo reveals in his account of the mass wedding staged by theRev. Moon in Yankee Stadium, the most sublime, mystical events canderive from power and showmanship.Unlike Marxist critics of such cultural issues, Burroughs is less interestedin how institutional power shapes its subjects by instilling an ideologythan in how the staging of enjoyment serves as a means of socialcontrol. Even when Burroughs seems most intent on imagining a way toescape the forces of social control, for example, he tells us more abouthow those forces work than about possibilities for actual liberation.Dink Rivers, one pirate character, demonstrates the utility of staging enjoymentwhen he explains the way a "magical brotherhood" achievestotal bodily control, the ultimate aim of which is to escape all unconscioussymbolic determinants: "At the age of fourteen, when I beganto have dreams that culminated in ejaculation, I decided to learn controlof the sexual energy. If I could achieve orgasm at will in the wakingstate, I could do the same in dreams and control my dreams instead ofbeing controlled by them" (127). The technique requires him deliberatelyto relive a wet dream. " 'I ran through a sex dream like recitingmy ABCS' " (128). His model for "reliving" is the recitation of a child'srhyming lesson, by which he exploits a symbolic form to get at its presymbolicground 12 : "I used the same method of projecting myself intoa time when my mind seemed empty of words. . . . [producing] a ver-