Perversion the Social Relation

Fatal West 377 For a good summary of the relation of fantasy to sexuality, see Teresa de Lauretis,81-85.8 Philip Kuberski's "Hard Copy" has developed the metaphor of viral information inthe late 20 th century to speculate on the relation between computers, ideology, andsubjectivity. Commenting on the film Blade Runner, he notes the murderous rage ofone replicant who destroys his creator: "This scene dramatizes the film's major concern:what precisely does a man do when he learns, as has postmodern man, that hissubjectivity is an artefact of society, and that his body is the accidental product ofmutation and the manifestation, like a computer or a television, of Information" (70).The dilemma is that this man, constituted of information, should be both superiorto "natural" men and yet inhumanly, abjectly inferior.9 Lacan introduces the "lamella" to identify "the relation between the living subjectand that which he loses by having to pass, for his reproduction, through the sexualcycle" (1978:199). Sexual reproduction means that there is something in us that isnot us, that is unconcerned with the fate of the individual subject. The mortal subjectlives with the undead of replication.n10 Compare with Wallace Stevens's "Snowman," who "nothing himself, beholds/ Nothingthat is not there, and the nothing that is." See also Brian Rotman's brilliant analysisof nothing, Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero. In this book, he traces variousways in which nothing has served both a productive and disturbing function inthe Western world.The interpretations other Cities of the Red Night gave to the words are:The city of partisans: "Here, everything is as true as you think it is and everythingyou can get away with is permitted."The university city: "Complete permission derives from complete understanding."The cities of illusion: "Nothing is true and therefore everything is permitted."(158-59)12 This is an idea I develop in chapter 5 of my Sublime Enjoyment.13 See "Introduction" of my Sublime Enjoyment.14 The "cut-in" or "cut-up" in Burroughs^ own work and in that of his character ClemSnide involves assembling information (taped sounds, news clippings, etc.) cut at randomfrom some source. Burroughs describes it:The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by paintersfor fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots frommovie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby and juxtapositioncut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents... writers will tell you the same. The best writing seems to be done almostby accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit—all writing isin fact cut-ups .. .—had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannotwill spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factorwith a pair of scissors. (1982: 35)15 See other chapters of my Sublime Enjoyment, especially chapter 1.