Perversion the Social Relation

36 Dennis Fosterbrings both the vampire's glamorous seduction and the virus's infectionto our vision of American culture, adding a touch of abject enjoymentto the icons of the West.Can anyone doubt that Burroughs did the athletic shoe commercialfor any reason other than money? But given that motive, could anyonewho has read Burroughs, who has seen Burroughs in Drugstore Cowboy,who even got a good look at the pale face and hooded eyes on the tinyTV screen, watch the commercial without deriving a peculiar enjoymentinappropriate to simple consumption? What kinds of enjoyment doesBurroughs add to the enactment of a ritual purchase that improves thebody and drives the economy?NotesThis essay originally appeared as chapter 7 of my Sublime Enjoyment (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997), 130-52. It is reprinted here with the permissionof Cambridge University Press.1 Frederick Dolan convincingly demolishes any hope that Burroughs would lead us outof the wilderness, demonstrating how clearly he remains within a romantic metaphysics.2 See, for example, "Women's Time," 187-213. Kristeva argues that a rejection of thesymbolic is "lived as the rejection of the paternal function and ultimately generates]psychoses" (199), but by the end of even this early essay, she is proposing the highlysuspect category of "guiltless maternity" (20e) as a way of evading the impasse ofthe law. If there is a solution to the problem of patriarchy here, she does not find itthrough the Aristotelian construct.3 For a discussion of sinthome, see my discussion in chapter 1 of Sublime Enjoyment,4 "Stoicism" is a position Hegel describes dialectically, wherein one has moved beyonda slavish belief in authority, but has achieved freedom by becoming "indifferent tonatural existence ..., lacking the fullness of life" (122). For Lacan, this faith in thepower of the individual mind, the cogito, to think itself to the truth becomes the delusionof those whose faith in the "name of the father," the "nom du père" displayshow the "non-duped err." The cynical reasoner accepts the contradictions implicit inhis position and yet still continues to assert its validity.5 See Slavoj 2izek (1989), 29-33. 2izek develops this formulation out of Peter Sloterdijk'sbook Critique of Cynical Reason (1983).6 Chomsky recounts St. Augustine's story of a pirate, putting it in the context of internationalterrorism by the democratic Western nations: "[A] pirate [was] captured byAlexander the Great, who asked him *how he dares molest the sea.' *How dare youmolest the whole world?' the pirate replied: 'Because I do it with a little ship only, Iam called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor' " (1).