The Vicissitudes of the Schreber Case
In Anti-OedipusDeleuze and Guattari interpret the paranoia of Judge Schreber as an exhibition of a storehouse of protofascist fantasies. They criticize Freud for neglecting to take into account the ideological social context in his analysis of Schreber’s paranoia. Although they are sympathetic to the transgressiveness of Schreber’s delusions, they do not make him out to be an exemplary case of schizo- analytic practice, which was subversive and resistant to the fascist regime of Nationalist Socialism. Franz Kafka is given exemplary credit for such literary prac- tice. Yet, as Santner (1996) humorously notes in his study of Schreber, “one should not, as they say, try this at home” (144), meaning that the price Schreber paid to come to terms with the fascism of his time was high; it cost him his mental health.
For Santner, it was precisely Schreber’s identification with his symptom as a refusalof the symbolic power and authority of fascism when he was writing his Memoirsthat enabled him to stave off psychological death. While Santner makes his own evaluation of Freud’s interpretation of Schreber (see chapter 2) and examines the myriad of Oedipal connections, he is much more generous in his study in regarding the way Schreber resisted fascism through his paranoia than Deleuze and Guattari are. For all intents and purposes, Schreber’s Memoirsare a form of schizo writing in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms. “What ultimately saved Schreber from psychological death, at least for a short while, was no doubt his residual need and capacity to communicate and transferhis ‘discoveries,’ to inau- gurate a new tradition constructed out of and upon the inconsistencies and impasses of the one he had known and which he had been called upon to repre- sent” (Santner, 2006, 144, original emphasis).
When exactly then isschizoanalysis deemed non-pathological, as a “line of flight” in response to symbolic authority that reveals its obscenity? Being “mad”
certainly suggests an intense experience that goes beyond the Imaginary, skewed to hallucinations as to what is seen and heard, and beyond symbolic thought skewed to the point of delirium. This intense experience pinpoints the molecular
“schizzes and flows” that Deleuze and Guattari refer to as transformative poten- tials. Yet, there ismadness, and then there is madnessthat remains silent, unable to be rendered into language. Where there is no imaginary form of outward
expression, there can be no “talking,” “writing,” or “arting” cure. For Jacques Lacan in his S III Psychosis, this second, “true” madness is the loss of the unconscious sig- nifier, Freud’s einziger Zug, the unary trait as “an insignia of the Other” (Lacan 2002, 253) that keeps the subject invested in the symbolic order. Lacan later reworked this as the sinthome—one’s symptom as a quilting point that gives con- sistency to the subject by knotting the three registers. This is precisely where the subject begins to “fade” (aphanisis), eventually becoming totally unraveled. In his S XXIII,Sinthome, 1975–76, written about the same time as Anti-Oedipus, Lacan argues that James Joyce’s writing was a way to stave off his own psychosis—
the “foreclosure” of the-Name-of-the-Father—by “naming” himself. It could be argued that the Freudian Oedipal concept continues to haunt the sinthome, which has now become post-Oedipal in its formulation, although not entirely anti- Oedipal. That possibility rests with the potential of the posthuman queering the symbolic order.
Post-Oedipal Concerns
This problematic question of Oedipalization bears on the television series dis- cussed, because their plots are so obviously post-Oedipal. Perhaps the answer to this question hinges on the difference between whether the adjectival descriptor used is anti- or post- when it comes to Oedipalization.1Deleuze and Guattari’s account aims at a form of liberal capitalism that institutes the nuclear family where there is an internalization of a subservience and identification with the superegoic Law. Capitalism in its postforms has obviously decentered this nucleus to blur the distinct public/private sites of production and consumption. The inva- sion of television into the private space of the home in the 1950s was just the beginning of such a breakdown. In their book Kafka(1986, 9–15), the existence of Oedipal motifs is granted, but their concern is with a “line of flight” that leads to becoming-other from the blockage of the forces of Oedipalization. “The question of the father isn’t how to become free in relation to him (an Oedipal question) but how to find a path there where he [the father] didn’t find any” (10). If this is what they term schizoanalysis, then post-Oedipalization is a much better descriptor for the televised series that I discuss, where it is precisely the nuclear family and the authority of the Law as represented by Big Daddy capitalism that is so obviously questioned. In Smallville, Lex Luther is caught in an Oedipal struggle that “blocks”
his line of flight. To be “free” would require the outright death of his father, Lionel.
But, that would also mean there would be no restraint on his desire.
This is a master-slave relationship in which jealousies abound. At first, Lex may seemto be neurotically afraid of becoming like Lionel: evil. But as Deleuze and Guattari say, “it’s not Oedipus that produces neurosis; it is neurosis—that is, a desire that is already submissive and searching to communicate its submission—that produces Oedipus” (10, original emphasis). Lex wants his Father to love him, but he knows it’s too late. He thus loathes him and makes him his adversary. This is not neurotic behavior, but a perversely paranoid “game” between them, a game that exhibits a re-Oedipalization as much as a de-Oedipalization as various escape
routes are repeatedly tried throughout the various episodes. Lex is always initiat- ing a diabolical plot against his father, just as Lionel plots against him. Their paranoia is that of capitalism itself. The alliteration of the letter lproduces a sur- plus ofsubtleandminutedifferences between them that keeps the game going.
This alliteration is extended to Lois Lane, Lucy Lane, Lana Lang, and the mer- maid Lori Lemaris, forming an “L-assemblage” that has the specific affective impact of a tightly intertwined ball of intrigue—a shrinking feeling of confine- ment. It is a further pun on Superman’s family name—El. Viewers are positioned as always, wondering whether Lex is to be trusted or not. Is his kindness to the Kents simply an undercover game, or is he truly sincere? Is Lionel as evil as he seems, or is he just demonstrating good business acumen? The trauma between father and son stems from Lionel’s repressed accusation that Lex had strangled his baby brother, Julian. It was, however, his mother, suffering from postpartum depression, who smothered the baby in his crib, an act—not unlike that of Medea—aimed at destroying Lionel Luther’s desire to have yet another son, a child she never wanted, and to put a stop to the competition Lionel was cultivat- ing between his two sons. Furthermore, there is another half brother in the Luther family closet, Lucas (another “L”), the child of an illegitimate relationship Lionel had with a secretary.
Then there is Clark Kent’s line of flight away from his biological father, Jor-El, through his adopted father, Jonathan Clark’s “becoming-human” as his way out from the bind of his superpowers parallels Lex’s desire to “becoming-alien” so that he can supercede his Father. The nuclear family appears to be “boringly dead”
when compared to these televised plots. Post-Oedipal plots, on the other hand, are always proliferating, revealing new aspects of Oedipalization as deterritorializa- tion.2In each and every episode ofanyseries discussed here—life is cracked. In Lacan’s terms, the Real always intrudes into the symbolically organized reality so that a possible becoming-other can take place. This I would call self-refleXion, a concept I develop in the next chapter.3
Deleuze and Guattari dismiss Freud’s limited analysis of Schreber as being too heavily focused on the familial situation, and maintain that economic and polit- ical influences were ignored. Their analysis thus becomes anti- rather than post- Oedipal, since they become preoccupied with finding a way to discredit Freud.
This criticism may well be leveled at Freud, but Lacan had long moved on to articulating the Real when Anti-Oedipusfirst appeared in print. Lacan’s (S III, Psychoses, 319–21) analysis of the Schreber case never reduces the Oedipal com- plex to simply a mommy-daddy-me triangle as Deleuze and Guattari so mock- ingly accuse Freud of doing. “What is it that makes the Freudian conception of the Oedipus complex cohere, it is not a question of a father-mother triangle, but of a triangle (father)-phallus-mother-child” (320). Of course, it is the phallus that concerns Lacan. Without the signifier of “being-a-father,” Schreber remains paranoid—stuck in the Real, unable to move into the Symbolic.4Schreber is mad, yet appears sane only in the sense that his Memoirskeep him that way. This is a different “madness” than the one Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979) explore in their study of nineteenth-century women writers for whom the mad- ness of their women characters is a metaphorical representation of their own
repressed anger at and rebellion against being confined within restricted gender categories by the Symbolic order. The fantasy of madness allows them to stave off their anxiety.
Jerry Aline Flieger (2000) craftily points out that Freud was more Deleuzian than Deleuze had acknowledged; that Freud pointed out Schreber’s situation as a member of Germany’s discriminated-against Jewish minority and that his identity as a paraphrenic man-”woman” was a way to escape fascistic masculin- ity. She maintains that Santner is able to utilize both Oedipal explanations and ideological social conditions to account for Schreber’s paranoia as “a creative (unconscious) solution to fascistic conditions, as well as a symptom of a personal crisis of legitimation” (50). I would further support Flieger’s (2005, especially chapter 4) superb, humorous, and clever efforts to show just how disingenuous Deleuze and Guattari’s efforts were when criticizing the straw figure of Freud that they had erected. That said, as Flieger also contends, there is much promise for an enriched position when Deleuze and Guattari are juxtaposed with Lacan, and this is also the path that I follow in this book when theorizing television paranoia. Flieger rhetorically shows that the Freudian Oedipus triangle, which is problematized by Lacan to reveal an implied fourth term—the fantasy phallus, reflecting the fantasmatic Father as all-powerful that has become “limp”5—is not unlike a Deleuzian desiring machine that is being refigured by the next genera- tion and that is not an agent of repression. Post-Oedipalization would refer to the new circuitry that emerges when phallic power becomes more and more difficult to sustain, as hilariously depicted by Z∨iz∨ek’s (1999) take on Viagra as the mira- cle drug that props up the masculine mystique—namely, to cover up a man’s inability to achieve an erection at will. There is now no excusenotto enjoy sex.
Castration should more accurately be called “wounding, separation, frustration, recognition, socialization, maturation, accommodation, even diversion” (Flieger 2005, 108). Such descriptors point to the identity struggles of youth who have been “orphaned” and abandoned, left to face the anxieties of the age when choice falls on their neoliberal shoulders.
Post 9/11 Paranoia
If the Harry Potter books speak to a generation of preteens who are facing their uncertain world through magic, these televised youth series do the same for ado- lescents and young adults. Castration anxiety has only increased for youth today.
In my two earlier books, my argument was that perversion (père version)—when it came to boyz/bois/boys—and hysteria—when it came to gurlz/girls/grrls—
helped to explain youthful transgressions in the media, with the occasional fall into psychosis (e.g., Kurt Cobain; high school shootings). However, it is schizo- phrenic paranoia in its narrative forms that I maintain is most obvious when it comes to televised youth and some key series such as Buffy,The Vampire Slayer, Smallville,andRoswell. While perversion is a specific way to call authority to task by manipulating it to set limits to jouissance, and while hysteria is a refusal to accept what is offered as the symbolic order of authority by manipulating and
refusing it,6paranoia appears to be more prevalent in a historical moment when leadership is not to be distrusted, since time and time again it shows itself to be corrupt.7 Literature, film, television—the media in general cannot escape this Weltanschauung(world view). When Steven Spielberg, the quintessential director of American fantasy films, offers us the vision of aliens as “sleeper cells” in War of the Worlds(2005), the penetration of paranoia seems complete. Paranoiac behav- ior is driven by inadequate information, which is then combined with an obses- sion with needing to know or with conjuring up an explanation, no matter how magical and seemingly illogical.
In Seminar XI (1979,Four Fundamentals), Lacan says that at the basis of para- noia, which nevertheless seems “to be animated by belief, there reigns the phe- nomenon of the Unglauben. This is not the not believing in it, but the absence of one of the terms of belief, of the term in which is designated the division of the subject” (238, original emphasis). What makes this absence of belief so apparent in dividing the subject in postmodernity is the blurring offact with fiction. Just what is to be believed by our representatives who uphold the symbolic Law, or by the journalists who are trusted to report the “truth” when media-savvy recipients are quite aware of the rhetorical constructions of media “spin”? As Flieger (2005) puts it, “the paranoid looks soawry at reality that she or he sees that the symbolic Other, the guarantor of meaning, does not ‘really’ exist” (82, original emphasis).
“Her ‘know-it-all’ perspective disturbs the uniformity of the ‘normal’ field of view, precisely because her paranoia contains morethan ‘a little piece of the [R]eal’ for her, the alien object . . . becomes dominant, as it expands to determine, skew, and resituate the psychotic field of vision, outside of symbolic consensus” (82, origi- nal emphasis). Just as perversity should not be understood in its usual colloquial terms, paranoia should also notbe dismissed so quickly as a pathology; rather, it may well be a healthy way to retain skepticism, as a symptomatic condition of postmodernity, a position sustained by Slavoj Z∨iz∨ek (1991) and Fredric Jameson (1992) as a desire to locate oneself spatially in the social confusion inherent in the postmodern condition.
When discussing Dawson’s Creek in chapters 3 and 4, I maintain that the hyper-self-reflexivity of dialogue between the characters is precisely a healing narrative that tries to come to terms with “the real illness, the breakdown of the symbolic universe, the end of the world, the breakdown of the [R]eal, reality barrier” (Z∨iz∨ek 1991, 19) that youth encounter so much in their lives.Dawson’s Creekdoes not appear at first to be a paranoid melodrama of any sort. It is, how- ever, the unique speech acts between its principal characters that stave off the uncertain future that all the characters face.Dawson’s Creek illustrates Lacan’s general claim that human knowledge is necessarilyparanoid, insofar as it requires projecting one’s own view on the outside world and identifying with the views of others through fantasy. Or, as Paul Smith (1988) put it, “In paranoia, the libido is turned upon the ego itself so that, in a loose sense, the paranoiac’s object- choice is his/her own ego” (95). Knowledge becomes an intersubjective “duel”
that must be deciphered, since one’s subject position is always informed through the Other, making it always relative, perceived, and interactive. The subject receives his or her message from others always in an inverted form. “All human
knowledge stems from the dialectic of jealousy, which is a primordial manifesta- tion of communication” (Lacan S III, Psychoses 39, added emphasis), a form of
“fundamental transitivism”; that is, a form of inverted speech where the subject attributes to the other what comes from him- or herself, just the opposite of sub- jective identification.Dawson’s Creekis riddled with such exchanges of jealousy between Pace and Dawson, Joey and Jen;butthey are staged to undo and defuse these jelousies. Given that there is an inherent uncertainty in all acts of intersub- jective communication, this underscores the fact that paranoia is very much a part of everyday life, especially when trust has been lost. Yet,Dawson’s Creekis an extraordinary anomaly in the way it represses paranoia through the various tri- angulated friendships and love interests that become established only to be resig- nified into new relationships at a later time. In chapter 4, I specifically question the hyper-self-reflexivity ofDawson’s Creek, wondering why the unconscious has been erased through self-therapeutic dialogue.
There is a fine line between a “healthy” paranoid response and a “prophylactic”
one. In the age of fiber-optic technology, the latter characterizes the national secu- rity initiative when it comes to information processing; a search for seemingly irrelevant terms that can generate possible plots of terrorist activity or ways to prevent hacking into secured archived zones of digitally stored information. Such a logic of “prevention” leads to such (paranoid) initiatives as racial profiling where key terms generate the composite profile of a possible intruder. Exemplifying CIA terrorist paranoia was the case of Steve Kurtz, the cofounder of the radical per- formance cell known as Critical Art Ensemble, who was arrested for biological ter- rorism on the grounds that he had bought vaccine over the Internet illegally (Hirsch, 2005). The issuing of national identity (ID) cards, the new iris check recognition stations at border crossings, and the installation of face-recognition technologies at airports for non-U.S. citizens fall in line under this paranoid pro- phylactic logic. Inhuman technologies become the new master signifiers of a fail- safe system to achieve the pretense of security. Instrumentalized hypervision now supplants human vision, which paradoxically is said to be blind or inaccurate.
The paranoid structure emerges when there is a “lackof belief in the sym- bolic order and in the Other as its guarantor, the site of the Law” (Flieger 2005, 84). Lacan (S III,Psychoses) explains this through his “distinction between the Other with a big O, that is, the Other insofar as it is notknown, and the other with a small o, that is, the other who is me, the source of all knowledge. . . . It’s in this gap, it’s in the angle opened up between these two relations, that the entire dialectic of delusion has to be situated” (40). This gap between the other and the Other has widened to such a point to where the distrust of authority has affected all walks of life on the global planet—leading to the obvious manifes- tations of cynicism, conspiracy theories, and the return to postmodern twists of fundamentalism.8
This also means that the small other takes on a new dimensionin such a climate of paranoia. Subjectivity as formulated by Beck, Giddens, and Lash’s (1994) gen- eral thesis of self-reflexion needs attention, as I discuss in the next chapter. The cli- mate of paranoia that manifests itself on television can be understood only against the broader backdrop of a delusional democracy spearheaded by the