It’s not uncommon for people to vote for parties contrary to their social situation,
to work for bosses that treat them horribly, and stick by family members no matter how
hideous they may be.
Instead of rioting, quitting their jobs, or moving out, people may accept more taxes,
request more hours at lesser pay, and continue to live in their mother’s basement.
For French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and militant anti-psychiatric Felix Guattari the
desire for oppression comes from the belief that people should repress their desires.
And through this technique of repression, the masses are primed to accept fascism.
Fascism isn’t just something that happens within governments—fascism is inside every
one of us- it is a fascination with and love of power.
People yearn to be ruled, protected, humiliated, and dominated. They’re aroused by their
unconscious desire to submit to strength—the despot satiates the need for a providing father
and a nurturing mother.
Powerful leaders, spectacle, and shows of force are all… sexy. Which perhaps explains
why so many moms read Fifty Shades of Gray.
We live in a society that produces tremendous amounts of anxiety.
Social pressure proclaims: Keep a good job, exercise, eat healthy, floss and brush regularly,
and don’t take unnecessary risks or you will die—the death instinct is everywhere.
As such, a desire exists for a conflict free existence, a protected and sheltered life
without strife, danger, or struggle. All you have to do is give up your freedom and conform
to the social customs and ideals dictated by a strong leader.
This desire for oppression isn’t just a social function—it is a psychic phenomenon
spread and sustained by traditional Freudian Psychoanalysis and its concept of the nuclear
family- mommy, daddy and me.
Through the heralding of an ideal family unit, people are taught to deny desire—to be ashamed
of their sexual urges, any a-typical fantasies or predilections. To give in to their inclinations
is perverted—and to repress these desires is natural.
To Deleuze and Guattari, traditional psychoanalysis is part of an entire social schema dedicated
to making people feel inferior, scared, and inadequate. Whole professions are dedicated
to making you feel sick—in order to sell a cure.
They attribute this mental conditioning to the Freudian figure of Oedipus. Yes. The guy
that killed his father and ummm… married his mother.
It’s Freud’s Oedipus Complex that oversimplifies the complexity of desire and marginalizes
homosexuals, schizophrenics, and people with autism to name a few. Anything outside of
his model is rejected as deviant or ripe for treatment.
Yes. The guy that killed his father and ummm… married his mother.
The Oedipal ideal is omnipresent: accepted as gospel, ingested in schools, in work, and
in social relations by teaching people to love subjugation, domination, and oppression.
Contra psychoanalysis, Deleuze and Guattari suggest schizoanalysis or analysis that is
not based in normalcy, power, and repression.
Against Oedipus they prefer Anti-Oedipus—a fascist fighting, desiring machine. Against
the sort of church of psychoanalysis that causes people to accept despotism they ask
that we allow desire to be freed from the chains of Oedipus.
So, viewer, what do YOU desire? Wait, was that creepy? It was creepy… wasn’t it?