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Oedipus and Anti-Oedipus Author(s): Peter L. Rudnytsky Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 56, No. 3, Varia Issue (Summer, 1982), pp. 462-470 Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40137217 . Accessed: 10/04/2011 11:39
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Oedipus and Anti-Oedipus

By PETER L. RUDNYTSKY Although Freud's notion of the "Oedipus " complex has had an incalculable impact upon modern culture, a number of recent studies have sought to dislodge the Oedipus myth from the privileged position accorded to it by psychoanalytic theory. This effort, which has come from several directions, represents an important trend in contemporary criticism. In order to reassert the centrality of the Oedipus myth, I propose to anatomize three challenges to its authority brought by the forces of "anti-Oedipus." The first, the most sweeping in its indictment, is that mounted by the French team of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and militant analyst Felix Guattari. The defiant rejection by Deleuze and Guattariof all that they mean by "Oedipus" serves as a rallying cry for those who would question the psychoanalytic veneration of the Oedipus myth. The complete title of their work, x Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, reveals the scope of their critique and its engagement with social and political issues. Deleuze and Guattari'saim is to effect a complete breakfrom Freud by repudiating the "familialism"of psychoanalysis in favor of a Marxist-oriented "schizoanalysis." Deleuze and Guattarido not, however, pursue their critique of Freud into a detailed reinterpretation of the Oedipus myth. Such is the endeavor of Rene Girardin his influential study, also published originally in French, Violence and the Sacred.2 Girard differs sharply in many ways from Deleuze and Guattari and remains much closer to the position of orthodox psychoanalysis, yet I believe it is justified to see in his work an allied attackon the dominance of the "Oedipus " complex. Girard seeks in essence to abolish the psychoanalyticpostulate of an incest taboo while retaining the emphasis on violence in the Oedipus myth. He writes of the "murdered father" theory in Totem and Taboo: "The error lies in the concept of the father and the application of psychoanalysis; the truth lies in the concept of collective murder and, strange as it may seem, in Freud's ethnology" (VS, 216). Whatever one may conclude about the merits of Girard'shypotheses, it is difficult not to admire the boldness of his thought and his impressive range of reference. As Deleuze and Guattarioppose the Oedipus myth at its most general level, and the revisions of Freud by Girard occupy as it were a middle ground, so the recent essay by Sandor Goodhart, "Air]crT& Ecpaoxe: Oedipus and Laius' Many Murderers,"3 undertakes hand-to-handcombat with the received understanding of Oedipus the King. Proceeding by means of a minute scrutiny of Sophocles' text, Goodhart endorses Girard'sastonishing thesis that Oedipus actually may not have killed Laius after all- that the alibi provided by the rumor that Laius had been killed by "certain wayfarers"may stand up. The implications of this proposition are considerable and, if true, would doubtless " require a rethinking of the "Oedipus complex. Once again, whether or not we are persuaded by Goodhart's analysis, we should be grateful for such a superb example of "deconstructive"criticism, which directs our attention to elements of a text that we might otherwise ignore. I It might be the beginnings of a psychoanalytic rejoinder to draw attention to the fact that considerable energy continues to be expended upon the Oedipus myth, if only to oppose it. Whatever else it may be, the "Oedipus complex" is not a dead issue in our culture. Their own inability to escape Freud's influence attests to the fundamental dilemma in which Deleuze and Guattari are entrapped. As Kenneth Burke has observed concerning the analogousexample of Kierkegaard'sresistance to Hegel, a great deal of Deleuze and Guattari'sthought fails to escape the "sign of Antithesis."4 Nowhere is this "sign of Antithesis" more apparent in their work than in its title, Anti-Oedipus. The limitations of a negative and sheerly destructive purpose are amply displayed throughout the book. As a representative example of the tone in which Deleuze and Guattari conduct their "de-Oedipalizing,"it suffices to instance the following: ._. . in place of the benevolentpseudo neutrality the of Oedipalanalyst,who wantsand understands only daddy andmommy,we mustsubstitute malevolent, openly a an malevolent activity: yourOedipusis a fucking drag,keep it up andthe analysis be stopped,or else we'llapplya will shocktreatmentto you. (AO, 112) Coming from those who object to the alleged dogmatism of psychoanalytic interpretations, such reliance on the intellectual equivalent of "shock treatment" is most disconcerting. So convinced of their righteousness are Deleuze and Guattarithat they do not hesitate to impose a reign of terror from which one can only recoil. But there is a still more subtle and damaging contradiction implied by the title Anti-Oedipus than the "openly malevolent" rhetoric of "schizoanalysis." As Michel Foucault remarksin his laudatorypreface, it is an essential principle of "living counter to all forms of fascism" that one should attempt to escape from "all unitary and totalizing paranoia"(AO, xiii). Foucault's

RUDNYTSKY admonition go.es far to characterize the goals of Deleuze and Guattari. In their effort "to shatter the iron collar of Oedipus and discover everywhere the force of desiring-production" (AO, 53), they are striving to substitute "anaffirmationthat is irreducible to any sort of unity" (AO, 42) for the "totalizing paranoia"of the "Oedipus complex." Although the attack of Deleuze and Guattarion the values of wholeness and unity is cast in psychological terms, it carries esthetic implications. Whereas Aristotle had advocated that a work of art possess the proportionsof "aliving creature"with "acertain order in the arrangement"5 its parts, Deleuze and Guattari of exhibit a quintessentially modern preference for the fragment. Deleuze and Guattari see in the Kleinian notion of "partial objects" a theoretical support for their rejection of the aspirationto universality found in the Oedipus myth. Partial havea sufficient objectsunquestionably chargein and of themselvesto blow up all of Oedipusand totally demolish its ridiculousclaim to represent the unconthe to the scious,to triangulate unconscious, encompass entireproduction desire. The questionthat thus here of arisesis not at all thatof the relativeimportance what of might be called the pre-oedipalin relationto Oedipus still itself, since "pre-oedipal" has a developmentalor structural to relationship Oedipus.The question,rather, is thatofthe absolutely natureofthe production anoedipal of desire. (AO,44-45) Later in the text the authors expand their discussion of "partialobjects" by asserting that "they are not partial (partiels) in the sense of extensive parts, but rather partial(partiaux)like the intensities under which a unit of matter always fills space in varying degrees" (AO, 309). For Deleuze and Guattari, "partialobjects" are " not "part of any lost unity, but rather "intensities" that know no lack. The contradictionin the enterprise of Anti-Oedipus, however, comes when we stop to consider whether this esthetic of the fragment- this "anoedipal"view of the "productionof desire"- can be consistently maintained. As Geoffrey Hartman has remarked, there is a dilemma inherent in the endeavor to create "a truly iconoclastic art":"The artist has a bad conscience because of the idea that forms, structures, etc. always reconcile or integrate, that they are conservative despite themselves."6 A measure of the same "bad conscience" haunts the iconoclasm of Deleuze and Guattari. In spite of their attempt to remain faithful to the "sign of Antithesis" in their title, they are "conservative despite themselves" in failing to avoid an unwitting compromise with their nemesis "Oedipus." If one takes a close look at the title Anti-Oedipus, it gradually assumes a curiously positive aura, like the term anti-hero. Indeed, as their French title indicates, Deleuze and Guattari are seriously proposing a new cultural anti-hero, a strange being named "the antiOedipus" (VAnti-Oedipe). Although the presence of the definite article might appear to be due simply to

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grammaticalnecessity, it becomes clear that Deleuze and Guattariintend their implicit personification to be taken literally. In "The Process" they explain their view of schizophrenia as a wholly "anoedipal"mode of "desiring-production"and reveal that it is "the schizo" who is the anti-hero of the book's title and Oedipus' opposite. As Deleuze and Guattariwrite in celebration of psychosis: The schizoknowshow to leave: he has made departure intosomething simpleasbeingbornordying.. . . These as men of desire- or do they not yet exist? are like Zarathustra. They know incrediblesufferings,vertigos, andsicknesses.. . . But sucha manproduceshimselfas a free man, irresponsible, solitary,andjoyous, finallyable to sayanddo something his own name,withoutasking in a permission; desirelacking nothing,a fluxthatovercomes barriers codes, a namethatno longerdesignatesany and ego whatever.He has simplyceased being afraidof becomingmad. (AO, 131) The denial of suffering in the description of madnes as "something as simple as being born or dying"- as though these were such simple matters- is reminiscent of the views expressed in recent years by other radical anti-psychiatrists such as R. D. Laing.7 At the very moment when "the schizo" ostensibly declares his freedom "in his own name," Deleuze and Guattari nonetheless invoke the name of Zarathustra.Even the fiction of "a name that no longer designates any ego whatever," we realize, is but another name for ''the anti-Oedipus." "Schizophreniaas a process is the only universal" (AO, 136), Deleuze and Guattariassure us, but to affirmeven one universal is to admit the principle of universality and thus to reimpose "the iron collar of Oedipus." Still more damaging than the authors' "openly malevolent" tone, then, which might be justified on tactical grounds, is the recognition that their anarchic ideal of "anaffirmationthat is irreducible to any sort of unity" proves to be illusory. Even Melanie Klein, as Deleuze and Guattariacknowledge, did not desert the party of Oedipus; on the contrary, she used the idea of ' "partial objects to "water Oedipus down, to miniaturize it, to find it everywhere, to extend it to the very earliest years of life" (AO, 45). The question becomes whether the Kleinian view of "partialobjects," which would broaden ratherthan do awaywith Freud's model of the "Oedipus complex," must not be preferred to that of Deleuze and Guattari. And if we side with Freud and Klein rather than Deleuze and Guattari, must not the concept of a wholly "anoedipal" mode of "desiring-production"be rejected as untenable? The chief value of the study by Deleuze and Guattari lies in its being the most radical critique of psychoanalysis imaginable. As such, it necessarily throws into sharp relief many of the fundamental issues on which psychoanalytic theory must stand or fall. One of the most telling aspects of their critique is its emphasis upon the social and historical data for which the

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WORLD LITERATURE TODAY contrast between Deleuze and Guattariexpress the " and "schizoanalysis most starkly in psychoanalysis their insistence that the unconscious be viewed, not as a theatre, but as afactory (AO, 55). They are, of course, entirely right to point out the extent to which Freud's "Oedipalism"commits him to a notion of the unconscious which is profoundlytheatrical. But Deleuze and Guattarido not recognize the degree to which Freud's "theatrical" conception of the unconscious is tied to the psychoanalytic preoccupation with memory. Alluding to the predominance of visual images in dreams, Freud writes in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life: Visualmemoryaccordingly preservesthe type of infantile memories In myowncasethe earliestchildhood memory. are the only ones of a visualcharacter: they are regular scenes workedout in plasticform, comparable only to representations upon the stage.9 Thus do Deleuze and Guattari seek to eliminate not only Freud's theory of a dynamic unconscious, but his exploration of the workings of memory as well. But is it in fact necessary to set up a dichotomy between the views of the unconscious as a theatre and a factory? For surely Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of the unconscious in terms of the "production of desire" also has considerable merit. When, for example, they speak of the schizophrenic as one who "deliberately seeks out the very limit of capitalism . . . its inherent tendency brought to fulfillment, its surplus product, its proletariat, its exterminating angel" (AO, 35), there is a profound truth in the diagnosis. In analogous fashion, Anti-Oedipus might be thought of as the "exterminating angel" of psychoanalysis, "its inherent tendency brought to fulfillment." Deleuze and Guattari, indeed, acknowledge their dialectical relationship to Oedipus in a rare moment of illumination. of Yes, Oedipusis neverthelessthe universal desire, the which of product universal history buton one condition, is not met by Freud:thatOedipusbe capable,at leastto a certainpoint, of conducting autocritique. its (AO,271) Rather than seeing "schizoanalysis"as incompatible with psychoanalysis, then, it seems preferable to regard it as offering a contribution to the "autocritique" of the Oedipus myth. By taking psychoanalysis to task for its "familialism" and disposition to regard the unconscious as a "theatre of representation," Deleuze and Guattarished critical light on the genesis of Freud's reliance on Oedipal explanations. In an attempt to free both paranoiaand schizophrenia from "all familial pseudo etiologies," they write: Whatwe meanis thatOedipusis bornof anapplication or reductionto personalized images, which presupposesa socialinvestment a paranoiac - whichexplains of type why Freud first discoversthe familialromanceand Oedipus while reflectingon paranoia. (AO,278)

"familialism" of psychoanalysis purportedly fails to account. Concerning Freud's analysis of Schreber, for example, Deleuze and Guattari remark, "From the enormous political, social, and historical context of Schreber's delirium, not one word is retained, as though the libido did not bother itself with such things. Freud invokes only a sexual argument" (AO, 57). Although it is possible to exaggerate the ahistorical nature of psychoanalysis, there is an element of justice in this accusation. Deleuze and Guattari generalize " their indictment of Freud's "Oedipalism in a memorable aphorism: "History is like physics: a Joan of Arc effect, a Heliogabalus effect- all the names of history, " and not the name of the father (AO, 56). Vulnerable though psychoanalysis may be to the " charge of "reductionism, however, it is not without a reply to it. Deleuze and Guattarithemselves point the way when they drawattention to an apparentlysurprising fact- the congruence between their own views and those of Jung. They instance the "modest and practical point of disagreement" that precipitated the break between Freud and Jung: "Jun& remarked that in the process of transference the psychoanalyst frequently appeared in the guise of a devil, a god, or a sorcerer, and that the roles he assumed in the patient's eyes " went far beyond any sort of parental images (AO, 46). Like Jung, in other words, Deleuze and Guattariinsist upon the evident variety in human dreams and fantasies. Deleuze and Guattari, however, regrettably also follow Jung in failing to take into account the psychoanalytic principle of repression, which requires that one make a distinction between the latent and manifest content of psychical products. The difference between Jung and Freud is not that Jung was attentive to dream-contents or transference roles of which Freud was unaware. It is ratherthat Freud viewed this diversity of content with a suspicion that Jung altogether lacked. Jung himself was explicit about his rejection of this cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory. I was never able to agreewith Freudthatthe dreamis a "facade" behindwhichmeaninglies hidden a meaning known maliciously, to speak,withheldfrom but so already consciousness. me dreamsare a partof nature,which To harbors intentionto deceive, but expressessomething no as best it can,just as a plantgrowsor an animalseeks its food as best it can.8 The weakness of Jung is evident in this view of dreams as "a part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive." For Freud, on the other hand, dreams belong to the category of language and display all the ambiguity and evasion that we are accustomed to find in human discourse. Deleuze and Guattari's preference for Jung over Freud is consistent with their retreat from the psychoanalytic postulate of a dynamic unconscious. If for Freud the delusions of Judge Schreber could be reduced to "the name of the father," that is because the innumerable "names of history" were not to be taken at face value.

RUDNYTSKY As a glance at Freud's classic letter to Fliess of 15 October 1897 shows, Deleuze and Guattari are perfectly correct in their observation that "Oedipus is born of . . . a reduction to personalized images." After referringto the "love of the mother and jealousy of the father"that he has found in himself and now believes to be "ageneral phenomenon of early childhood," Freud adds this parenthetical comment: in of with (Similarly the "romanticizationorigins" the case If of of paranoiacs heroes,founders religions.) thatis the case, the grippingpower of OedipusRex . . . becomes why later fate dramas intelligible,and one understands were such failures.10 Clearly, Freud has anticipated the critique of Deleuze and Guattari. It is only to take their commentary one step further to suggest that Freud's own discovery of the "Oedipus complex" is a quintessential example of the "familialromance"or "romanticizationof origins." For inasmuch as Freud is himself a "hero" and a "founder of religion," he must here be admitting his own streak of paranoia as well. The link between "personalized images" in "familial romance" and paranoia that is hinted at in Freud's letter- and leveled as a reproach by Deleuze and Guattari is elevated to the status of psychoanalytic orthodoxyin Otto Rank'sseminal 1909 study The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. In this work Rank explicitly concludes that myth displays a "paranoid structure" and that there exists an "intimaterelationship between the hero myth and the delusional structures of "n paranoiacs. With a slight shift in perspective, therefore, we may readily accommodate the remarks of Deleuze and Guattari within a psychoanalytic frameworkand come to regard the presence of "personalized images" in the Oedipus myth as inevitable and no cause for reproach. The attackof Deleuze and Guattariagainst "familial pseudo etiologies" rejoins their earlier critique of the "totalizingparanoia"of the Oedipus myth. Once more they seek to replace the "territorially" of a paranoiac investment of the social field with the "depersonalized partial objects" (AO, 278) of a schizophrenic investment. I should like to stress, however, the extent to which the argument of Deleuze and Guattariis carried through rhetorical innuendo. For them, there is no ' "familial etiology," only "pseudo etiology, and no attempt to think holistically that does not entail "totalizing paranoia." But even granting the connection between the concepts of totality and paranoia, is " there any way that this "paranoidstructure in human fantasiescan be avoided? Or must we not rather affirm, with Freud and Rank, that there is an incurable "familialism"of the imagination and that the human mind cannot dispense with "personalized images"? If this is so, then the Oedipus myth justifies its central place in Western culture as the paradigmaticexample " of a "familialromance.

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What is urgently needed, though Deleuze and Guattari do not provide it, is a mode of thinking that encompasses both "Oedipus" and "anti-Oedipus," a dialectical resolution that has passed beyond the "sign of Antithesis." I share with Deleuze and Guattari the belief that the Oedipus myth must be reappraised if it is to retain its standing as a "universal of desire." May one not accept their notion of the "production of desire" and still acknowledge the claims of Oedipus to "triangulatethe unconscious "?This is, of course, precisely what Deleuze and Guattari do not allow and what constitutes their inability to sustain a truly dialectical outlook. Indeed, they go so far as to assert: "There is no Oedipal triangle: Oedipus is always open in an open social field. Oedipus opens to the four winds, to the four corners of the social field (not even 3 + 1, but 4 + n)" (AO, 96). I have suggested that the benefit of Deleuze and Guattari's critique lies in its clarification of the decisive issues upon which psychoanalytic theory must stand or fall. The authors of Anti-Oedipus force us to ask: is not the according of a privileged place to the Oedipus myth the function of the ontological priority of triangulation itself? II The claim of Deleuze and Guattarithat there is "no " Oedipal triangle prompts a comparisonbetween their radicalattack on psychoanalysis and the very different response of Rene Girard to the Oedipus myth. As I have indicated, Girardremains much closer to classical psychoanalysis than do Deleuze and Guattari;and it is possible to read Violence and the Sacred in part as a critique of Anti-Oedipus, for in his work Girard presents a compelling argument that triangulation is inherent in human experience.12 One of the most useful concepts introduced in Vio" lence and the Sacred is that of "mimetic rivalry. It is a concept that is evidently allied to Freud's "Oedipus complex" and may be regarded as a more general version of the latter. The essence of Girard'shypothesis derives from his observation that, in all conceivable "varietiesof desire," there may be found "not only a subject and an object, but a third presence as well: the rival. It is the rival who should be accorded the dominant role" (VS, 145). As in his earlier book Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, desire for Girardis necessarily "mediated," triangulatedby the structure of "mimetic rivalry." In this view, rivalry never arises "because of the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it. In desiring an object the rival alerts the subject to the desirability of the object" (VS, 145). Girard further connects the experience of desire with violence in his theory of "mimetism":"By making one man's desire into a replica of another man's desire, [mimetism] invariably leads to rivalry; and rivalry in " turn transforms desire into violence (VS, 145).

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WORLD LITERATURE TODAY conclusion when he argues that "All episodes of the Oedipus myth are repetitions of one another. Once we recognize this fact it becomes apparent that all the figures in various episodes are monsters and that their resemblance is far closer than appearance alone might suggest" (VS, 252). For Girard, in other words, it is the structure of violence itself, and not any of its specific manifestations, that is at the core of the myth. Concerning the encounter in which Oedipus slays Laius, for example, Girardmakes the telling observation that "It is Laius who, at the crossroads, first raised his hand against his son. The patricide thus takes its part in a reciprocal exchange of murderous gestures" (VS, 48). The irony of Girard'sintellectual position is that he is at his strongest in those respects in which he agrees with Freud and becomes progressively less compelling as he insists on the uniqueness of his own point of view. 13At his worst moments, moreover, Girardgives the impression of a man who believes he is the sole possessor of revealed truth, who is truly in the grip of what Deleuze and Guattariwould call "totalizingparanoia." derivesfromthe Theendlessdiversity mythsandrituals of fact that they all seek to recollectand reproducesomeThereis only thingtheyneversucceedin comprehending. one generative event, onlyone wayto graspthe truth: by means of my hypothesis.On the other hand, there are of innumerable waysof missingit; hence the multiplicity religioussystems.(VS, 316) In place of Freud's tentativeness in defining the ontological status of his "primalscenes"- his uncertainty as to whether traumas are precipitated by fantasies or actual occurrences- Girard dogmatically insists on branding as "fact"his daring speculations and maintains that his hypothesis is the "only . . . way to grasp the truth." Girard'seagerness to establish the concept of "generative violence" leads him to venture the dismissive statement that "Psychoanalysisis wrong ... to attribute to young children a knowledge of parental sexuality" (VS, 220). As in his desire to sever the bonds of incest and patricide in the Oedipus myth, Girardmistakenly believes that there is an incompatibility between his theory and Freud's postulate of infantile sexuality. The all-encompassing hypothesis Girard propounds to explain "the endless diversity of myths and rituals"is, as has been noted, essentially Freud's idea of the "primalmurder" in Totem and Taboo, but stripped of any connection with the father. Ifwe hope to get to the rootof the matterwe mustput the father ofourmindsandconcentrate the factthatthe out on enormousimpressionmade on the communityby the collectivemurder notdueto the victim's is identityperse, but to his role as unifyingagent. (VS, 214) Against Girard'sattempt to eliminate the psychoana" lytic emphasis upon the "primal patricide in Totem and Taboo, . however, I would quote the avowal of Lacan that "Freud's construction may well be the sole

It is apparent to what extent Girard's assumption that desire is always entangled in triangular conflict diverges from Deleuze and Guattari'sanarchic notion " of "desiring-production. But so similar does Girard's " thesis appear to the "Oedipus complex that it might be doubted whether he differs from Freud at all. Girard himself specifies his dispute with Freud as centering on the choice between his own "mimetic " concept and Freud's "full-blown patricide-incest drive." The mimetic process detaches desire from any predeterminedobject, whereasthe Oedipuscomplexfixes desireon the maternal object.The mimeticconceptelimand inates all consciousknowledgeof patricide-incest, even all desireforit as such;the Freudian proposition, by of contrast,is basedentirelyon a consciousness this desire. (VS, 180) Girard seems curiously confused in saying that psychoanalysis presupposes a "consciousness"of the wish for "patricide-incest"; surely, it is rather the unconsciousness of our desires for the crimes of Oedipus that Freud established. Even so, however, one cannot dispute the correctness of Girard'sassertion that psychoanalytic theory"accords priority to desire for the "maternal object. In his attempt to disengage his notion of "mimetic rivalry" from parental figures, therefore, Girard in his own way pursues an attack on the "familialism"of psychoanalysis. Girard accomplishes his removal of the Oedipal struggle from the familial terrain through a displacement of psychoanalytic terminology. In place of the Oedipal triangle of son, mother and father, Girard proposes the mimetic triangle of "the model, the disciple, and the object that is disputed by both because the model's desire has made the object desirable to the disciple" (VS, 181). As I have suggested, the effect of Girard'sreformulation is to eliminate the sexual content of the "Oedipus complex" and to place exclusive emphasis upon the mechanism of "mimetic rivalry" disclosed by the myth. The most convincing refutation of Girard'sposition comes from the evidence supplied by Oedipus the King itself. Sophocles' treatment of the fate of Oedipus unquestionably links the twin deeds of incest and patricide. Indeed, the two may be said to take place at a single crossroads the marriagebed of Jocasta. Here, where three generations meet, is the true locus of the struggle between fatherand son. In ignoring the sexual and familial aspects of Oedipus' destiny, therefore, Girard only impoverishes our understanding of the myth. Nevertheless, despite the imbalance in his interpretation, Girard'sfocus upon what he terms "reciprocal violence" throws into sharp relief certain essential features of Oedipus the King. By directing attention away from familial themes, Girard is able to underscore the extent to which, in the Oedipus myth, "all masculine relationships are based on reciprocal acts of violence" (VS, 48). Girardtakes his thesis to its

RUDNYTSKY example of a full-fledged myth to have emerged in our historical age."14 Not only does Girard again elevate " his theories to the status of "fact, but his own myths are also less powerful than those of Freud. Still, to the extent that Girard'seccentricities can be pared away and the valuable core of his thought reintegrated with psychoanalysis, he does highlight crucial mechanisms at work in the Oedipus myth. Allied to his conviction that "all the episodes . . . are repetitions of one another" is his insight into the interchangeability of various occurrences of doubling. If violence is the great leveler of men and everybody becomesthe double,or "twin," his antagonist, seems of it to followthatallthe doublesareidentical thatanyone and can at any given momentbecome the double of all the obsessionand others;thatis, the sole objectof universal hatred.(VS, 77) Girard'sclaim that "allthe doubles are identical" is the logical culmination of the premise that in the Oedipus myth "all masculine relationships are based on reciprocal acts of violence." According to Girard, it is ultimately impossible to differentiate among the fraternal conflict of Eteocles and Polyneices, the father-son conflict of Oedipus and Laius and the gnostic conflict of Oedipus and Teiresias: "The rivalryof the two prophets is indistinguishable from the rivalry between brothers" (VS, 65). Violence itself, for Girard, entails the loss of differentiation;hence it is the lesson of the Oedipus myth that beneath the multiplicity of discrete encounters between enemies there lies "a single tragic antagonism." Nowhere is the simultaneous brilliance and perversity of Girard'smethod more evident than in his concept of the arbitrariness of the choice of a "surrogate victim" in a "redemptive process" (VS, 257). Freud, as so often, anticipates Girard by suggesting in The Interpretation of Dreams that Oedipus' fate "moves us only because it might have been ours- because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him" (IV, 262). Freud's idea that Oedipus' fate is ' "arbitrary in the sense that it could have been imposed upon anyone is already implicit in Sophocles' drama. In a moment of bravado before learning the truth of his birth, Oedipus boasts that he is "a child of Fortune,"15and this account of his parentage is perhaps more accurate than any other. In Girard'shands, however, the concept of arbitrariness is twisted to mean that Oedipus may in fact be mistakenly accused of guilt in the play. This bold notion forms the culmination of Girard's resistance to Freud's theory of the "Oedipus complex." According to Girard, the "burden of guilt" that "oscillates freely among the three protagonists" Oedipus, Teiresias - finally settles upon Oedipus only because and Creon he is the victim of a successful conspiracy by his two rivals. The attribution guilt thathenceforth of passesfor "true" differsin no wayfromthose attributions will hencethat forthbe regarded "false," as exceptthatin the caseof the

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"true" guiltno voice is raisedto protestanyaspectof the versionof events succeedsin imposcharge.A particular ing itself; it loses its polemicalnaturein becomingthe basis of the myth, in becomingthe myth acknowledged itself. (VS, 78) It is not difficult to understand how Girard finds himself compelled to adopt such extreme views. The idea of Oedipus' possible innocence is an outgrowth of Girard's insight into the "identity of doubles" in the Oedipus myth. As in the novels of Dostoevsky, where everyone is a murderer in his unconscious, so, in a figurative sense, we may agree that Creon and Teiresias share the guilt of Oedipus. But Girard allows his dogmatic fervor to distracthim from the evident meaning of Sophocles' work. Is it not possible to profit from Girard's meditation upon the workings of "reciprocal violence" and to fix the blame for the twin crimes of incest and patricide squarely, so to speak, upon the ' "Swollen Foot of Oedipus? The consequences of Girard'sattempt to minimize the importance of incest in Oedipus' fate become apparent in his assertion that Oedipus' incrimination as the murderer of Laius is no more than "a particular version of events" that "succeeds in imposing itself." Would Girard have us believe that this is true also of our knowledge of Oedipus' incest with Jocasta?The conclusion seems irresistible that, in his endeavor to replace the psychoanalytic shibboleth of the "Oedipus complex" with his own heretical doctrine of "mimetic rivalry,"Girardhas disregarded the evidence of the plot , which Aristotle held to be "the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of tragedy" (1450b). Ill Before closing the book on Girard'sinterpretation of Sophocles, however, one must come to terms with the third member of the unholy trinity of "anti-Oedipus." For in "A-nora^EcpaaKe:Oedipus and Laius' Many Murderers" Sandor Goodhart actually takes seriously Girard's thesis that Oedipus is convicted only by a frame-up and offers a close reading in the original Greek of Oedipus the King in support of his case. Just as Deleuze and Guattariare important for their uncompromising political attack on Freud, so Goodhart deserves to be respected for his willingness to press a subversive reading of the most canonical literary text in psychoanalysis. The crux of Goodhart's contention is that, "Rather than an illustration of the myth, the play is a critique of mythogenesis, an examination of the process by which one arbitraryfiction comes to assume the value of truth" ("LMM," 67). Goodhart's view that Oedipus the King is concerned with the exposure of the concept of truth itself as an "arbitrary fiction" clearly builds upon the work of Girard, but he is even more severe in his indictment of the psychoanalytic "idolatry of the Oedipal perspective" ("LMM," 64). The difference between Freud's and Goodhart'sunderstanding of Oedipus the King illustrates the contrast between a "demystifying"and a "deconstructive"

468

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY ("LMM,"61). When the old Herdsman, the sole surviving witness of the murder of Laius, is summoned to give his testimony, he never places Oedipus at the scene of the crime. The reason is that the Herdsman is also the one who had taken the baby Oedipus from Jocasta;hence he instead reveals to Oedipus the secret of his parentage. Upon hearing this news, Oedipus immediately convicts himself of the murder of Laius. As Goodhart puts it: skirtsthe issue of the Phocal It is not thatthe Herdsman murder thatit nevercomesup. Onthe issueforwhich but he is summoned,the issue on which the solutionof the play'smysterydepends, he is simplynever questioned. ("LMM," 56) Thus, in Goodhart'sview, Oedipus' own assumption of his "Oedipal"guilt is the paradigmaticinstance of the imposition of a "mythicpattern"that Sophocles' drama "deconstructs." and he Oedipusdiscovers is guiltyof parricide incest he doestell himintothe mythwhatthe Herdsman translates ic fulfillment- less by uncovering certain hitherto factsthanby voluntarily obscureempirical appropriating an oracular logic which assumeshe has alwaysalready been guilty. ("LMM," 67) " Having established the "circumstantiality of the Herdsman's testimony against Oedipus, Goodhart connects this detail to the alternative hypothesis circulatingwithin the play, itself derived from Creon's consultation of Apollo's oracle, that Laius was killed not by one but by many murderers: "The God commanded clearly: Let some one / punish with force this " dead man's murderers (106-107). Goodhart's mustering of the evidence concerning the "oracular logic" by which Oedipus is convicted and the report that Laius' murderers were plural in number bolsters Girard'scontention that the "attributionof guilt" comes to rest upon Oedipus only because "a particular version of events succeeds in imposing itself." How may these observations be accommodated within a psychoanalytic "Oedipal perspective"? To Goodhart'sargument regardingthe "circumstantiality" in the Herdsman's testimony, a direct rejoinder is available. The lacuna in the Herdsman's evidence may be justified solely by the demands of dramaticeconomy. By the law of "Ockham'srazor,"no complicated theory- such as Goodhart's interpretation of Oedipus the King as a "critique of mythogenesis"- is needed when a simpler explanation is available. The "oracular logic" to which Goodhart calls attention is thus & function of Sophocles' assumption of and does not stand in contradiction to Oedipus' guilt that assumption. Indeed, there are additional objections to Goodhart's reading. Not only does it make perfect sense that Sophocles should have wanted Oedipus' moment of self-recognition to be one of speechless insight- an inference rather than an explicit statement- but it is also true that a collapse of the distinction between present and past pervades Oedi-

criticism.16 In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud writes that the action of Oedipus the King "consists in nothing other than the process of revealing . . . that " Oedipus himself is the murderer of Laius and that "he " is the son of the murdered man and Jocasta (IV," 262). From Freud's perspective of "demystification, the action of Oedipus the King entails the discovery of a hidden but nonetheless decisive truth; the essence of Goodhart's "deconstructive" reading is precisely that there is no absolute or final truth to be found. Goodhart is on the whole laudably explicit about recognizing the consequences of following his line of argument. He admits, for example, that the exculpation of Oedipus depends upon the incrimination of Teiresias, upon showing that the position of the blind prophet is not divinely sanctioned: "Unless we privilege Teiresias a priori as spokesman for the mythic pattern, we may have no confidence that the knowledge of the practicing mantic is other than professional" ("LMM," 60). The question of the authority of Teiresias, however, immediately presents a problem completely avoided in Goodhart'sdiscussion: this is the matter of the possible interconnection among Sophocles' three Theban plays. For when in Antigone Teiresias accuses Creon of " having "confused the upper and lower worlds (1068), would Goodhart have us believe that his knowledge is merely "professional"?By the same token, when the blind and aged Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus, whose prophetic role resembles that of Teiresias in the other two plays, denounces the hypocrisy of Creon and Polyneices, would Goodhart maintain that his point of view is not endorsed by the play? The probability that Teiresias in Oedipus the King is indeed Sophocles' " "spokesman for the mythic pattern is greatly increased by these analogies, and Goodhart's disregard of the evidence offered by the other plays in the Oedipus cycle contributes to the implausibility of his entire argument. But it is not necessary to look to Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus to raise doubts about Goodhart's "de" constructive reading of Oedipus the King. If, as Goodhart would have it, Sophocles' purpose is to put " into question the "value of truth, why would Jocasta part from Oedipus with the lament, "O Oedipus, God help you! / God keep you from the knowledge of who you are!"(1068-69)? And if Oedipus is not the murderer of Laius, what explanationwould Goodhart offer for such punning remarks as Creon's statement that the Thebans were distracted from seeking Laius' killer by "troubles at our feet" (132)? Like Girard's attempt to exclude incest from the Oedipus myth, Goodhart's treatment of Oedipus the King as a "critique of mythogenesis" neglects much of the meaning and dramatic irony of Sophocles' text. What Goodhart does do, however, is focus with tenacity upon one crucial point in Sophocles' drama, and that is that Oedipus is actually exposed as the murderer of Laius by "circumstantial" evidence

RUDNYTSKY pus the King. Just as the old Herdsman is both the sole survivorof the murder of Laius and the agent who took Oedipus as an infant from Jocasta, so the Messenger from Corinth who brings the news of the death of Polybus- Oedipus' purported father- is himself also the one who received the baby Oedipus from the old Herdsman. This "condensation"between present and past is attributable ultimately to the double role of Jocasta as wife and mother of Oedipus. "She was so hard its mother?" (1175), Oedipus asks the Herdsman as he traces his lifeline back to its source; and in this convergence of present and past, first person and third person, his identity is established. If one is willing to range beyond Oedipus the King, as done here in examining the role of Teiresias, further explanations for the elision in the Herdsman's testimony present themselves. Both at the beginning and at the end of Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles deliberately frustratesthe desire of the Chorus- and, by implication, the desire of the audience- to behold the truth directly. At the outset of the drama, when the members of the Chorus are seeking Oedipus after he has wandered into the grove of the Eumenides, they exhort each other, "Use your eyes, search him out! / Cover the ground and uncover him" (121-22). At the same time, however, that the Chorus looks for Oedipus, its members are compelled to acknowledge, "When we pass we avert our eyes - / Close our eyes!" (128-29). Like Oedipus in Oedipus the King, the Chorus in Oedipus at Colonus is in the position of being sighted yet blind, at once seeking and avoiding the truth. At the close of Oedipus at Colonus, moreover, Oedipus imposes upon Theseus, as a condition for bestowing his benediction upon the city of Athens, the requirement that he never reveal the secret of his place and manner of burial. Both Sophocles' deliberate withholding of the "empiricalfacts"of Oedipus' death and his manipulation of the Chorus's inability to behold Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus directly recapitulate the Herdsman's omission of any direct testimony concerning the "Phocal murder" that occurs in Oedipus the King. What, then, is one to make of Goodhart's final point- the persistent rumor, instigated not only by the old Herdsman but also by the oracle consulted by Creon, that Laius was killed by several "murderers"? Given the nature of literary criticism, perhaps it is fitting that no definitive answer is possible. But it seems likely that this alternative version of events is included by Sophocles simply to heighten the dramatic irony. All language in Oedipus the King possesses a "double striking" (427) quality, and it repeatedly occurs that the news which at first seems favorable to Oedipus- such as that of the death of Polybus- proves ultimately to contribute to his downfall. The audience, which knows from the outset that Oedipus is guilty, experiences at the mention of "murderers"the pleasure of its superior awareness as it watches the transformationof Oedipus' hope into despair. IV

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In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche describes Sophocles' "entire conception" in Oedipus the King as "nothing more nor less than the luminous afterimage which kind nature provides our eyes after a look into the abyss."17Just such a "luminous afterimage" remains following our attempt to reassert the psychoanalytic paradigm of the "Oedipus complex" through gazing into the abyss represented by the forces of "antiOedipus." This serenity is derived from the confidence that the standing of Sophocles' drama as a cultural touchstone- whether, for Aristotle, as a specimen of tragedy or, for Freud, as a "universal of desire"- is likely to be little affected by the recent attacks and revisions of Deleuze and Guattari, Girard and Goodhart. The Oedipus myth, according to Roland Barthes, is destined to endure as long as people need to tell stories. Deathofthe Father woulddepriveliterature manyofits of pleasures.If thereis no longera Father,whytell stories? Doesn't every narrativelead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytellingalwaysa way of searchingfor one's origin, speakingone's conflictswith the Law, enteringinto the dialecticof tendernessand hatred?18 Against those who would deprive us of the pleasures of narrative, let us admit that our fate continues to be inscribed in that of Oedipus. Columbia University

1 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Robert Hurley, MarkSeem and Helen R. Lane, trs., New York, Viking, 1972 (reprinted 1977). Page references included parenthetically in the text will be indicated by the abbreviation AO. 2 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Patrick Gregory, tr., Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972 (reprinted 1977). Page references will be indicated by the abbreviation VS. 3 Sandor Goodheart, "At]ctt&EcpacrKt: Oedipus and Laius' Many Murderers," Diacritics, March 1978, pp. 55-71. Page references will be indicated by the abbreviation "LMM." (This issue of Diacritics is, appropriately, dedicated to the work of Girard; Goodhart himself studied with Girard.) 4 Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1970, p. 30. 5 Poetics, in The Rasic Works of Aristotle, RichardMcKeon, ed. , New York, Random House, 1941, p. 1451a. Further references will be to this edition. 6 Geoffrey Hartman, "TowardLiterary History," in his Reyond Formalism:Literary Essays 1958-1970, New Haven, Ct. , Yale University Press, 1970, p. 367. 7 See the passionate denunciation of Laing by Lionel Trilling in Sincerity and Authenticity, London, Oxford University Press, 1971 (reprinted 1974): "His theory of mental pathology rules out the possibility of pain being inherent in the process of the mind" (160). 8 C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Aniela Jaffe, rec. & ed., Richard and Clara Winston, trs., New York, Vintage, 1961 (reprinted 1965), pp. 161-62. 9 Standard Edition the Complete Psychological Works ofSigof mund Freud, James Strachey, ed. & tr., London, Hogarth, 1960 (reprinted 1971), vol. 6, p. 47. Unless noted, further references to Freud will be to this edition.

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must therefore fail to recognize his own strenuous efforts at selfdistinction- must decline to reckon with the significanceof this very gesture in the elaboration of his own thesis" (60). 14 Jacques Lacan, "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet," James Hulbert, tr. , in Literature and Psychoanalysis:The Question of Reading- Otherwise, Shoshana Felman, ed., Yale French Studies, no. 55/56, p. 42. 15 Oedipus the King, David Grene, tr. , in Sophocles 1, David Grene and Richard Lattimore, eds, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1954 (reprinted 1970), 1. 1080. Further quotations from Sophocles will be to this edition, with line numbers included parenthetically in the text. Oedipus at Colonus is translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Antigone by Elizabeth Wyckoff. 16 I borrow this distinction from a lecture given by Eugene Goodheart to the Yale University Comparative Literature Colloquium in October 1978, "The Myths of Roland (Barthes)." 17 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Francis Golffing, tr., Garden City, N.Y., Anchor, 1956, p. 61. 18 Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, Richard Miller, tr., New York, Hill & Wang, 1973 (reprinted 1975), p. 47.

10 Sigmund Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes 1887-1902, Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud and Ernst Kris, eds., Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey, trs., New York, Basic, 1954, p. 223. 11 Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero and Other Writings, Philip Freund, ed., F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jellife, trs., New York, Vintage, 1932 (reprinted 1964), p. 94. 12 Rene Girard, "Delirium as System," in his "To Double Business Bound": Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, pp. 84^120. Girard presents his own appraisal of Anti-Oedipus. As might be expected, Girard claims that he, and not Deleuze and Guattari, offers a genuine alternative to Freud: "In my opinion, we must regret not the attackon psychoanalysisbut the positions justifying it and making impossible any real confrontation with the essential Freud, any profound criticism of the fundamental psychoanalytic myth, the Oedipus complex" (86). 13 For an analysis of Girard'spredicament similar to that offered here, see Cynthia Chase, "Oedipal Textuality: Reading Freud's Reading of Oedipus," in Diacritics, Spring 1979, pp. 54-68: "He

COMMENTARIES Eugenio Montale: A Critical Edition of His Poetry

By MICHAEL RICCIARDELLI The definitive edition of his
poems, L'opera in versi, edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Gianfrarico Contini,1 kept Eugenio Montale in close collaboration with his editors, in a deep attachment to his opera omnia and to an anxiety to see, before his death, its completion. In fact, wrote Bettarini, Montale told her: " "Workfast, I want to see this book before . . . sailing. About ten months after its release, Montale died as modestly as he had lived, in the Milanese clinic Pio X, on 12 September 1981. His funeral, not the humble affair for which he had hoped, attracted widespread attention, testimony to the admirationin which he had been held. To borrow Contini's phrase, those who participated evidently needed to demonstrate their "long fidelity"2 to the man whose poetry had been a vade mecum in their lives. As early as 1936 an American critic, Irma Brandeis, wrote the first seminal essay in a foreign tongue on Montale, and the essay, after so much later study, still gives a valid portraitof his art and humanity. Brandeis, lamenting that "recent Italian art [under Fascism] is expressive neither of contemporary life nor of strong individual reality," speaks of "those exceptional artists whose convictions have remained alive, whose hands have retained authenticity," adding: "There are such men in Italy today. One of them is the poet, Eugenio Montale."3 Montale has alwaysbeen an "authentic"poet, and in reading his work one may be misled into thinking he is merely contradictory: a collision of pessimism and hope, irony and faith. For this apparent contradiction, taken in the human context of his opera omnia, is a further proof of his vision of life as he lived it, with spontaneity and uprightness. It is exactly in his poetic concordia discors that we find the Herof an existential life without illusion. For Montale, poetry is not "political engagement but moralengagement, takinga stance towardhumanity, towardthe world. It is the search for a reason for living." "The artist," he continues, . . . mustbe a manlikeanyotherman,but one whohasin addition giftof song, the aptitudefordiscovering the and creatingbeauty. ... I have chosen to be a man . . . [because]I am willingto workfor a betterworld;I have alwaysworkedin this direction;I even believe that to workin this directionis the primary duty of every man worthyof the name of man.4 One of his aims, says Montale, has been to communicate his fraternalregard for his fellow men: "We have tried, for us, for all" ("Rebecca,"403), and "Allin all, I believe that in the depth of my work, there is a faith."5On the occasion of his Nobel Prize in 1975 (see BA 50:1, pp. 7-15) Montale said: "Mine is not a message but an invitation to hope." Montale's identification with his reader is suggested by his remarks to Silvio Guarnieri about his famous