A Pervert’s Manifesto
Michael Williams
Preface
A Trip Back to the Future, in Theory
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
— Malcolm X
It is impossible to leave a closed space simply by taking up a position merely outside it, either in its exterior or its profundity; so long as this outside of profundity remains its outside or profundity, they still belong to that circle, so that closed space, as its ‘repetition’ in its other-than-itself. Not the repetition but the non-repetition of this space is the way out of this circle; the sole theoretically sound flight — which is precisely not a flight, which is always committed to what it is fleeing from, but the radical foundation of a new space, a new problematic which allows the real problem to be posed, the problem misrecognized in the recognition structure in which it is ideologically posed.
— Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar
Malcolm X (née Malcolm Little) couples the future to education. The citation suggests that the passage to the future must be authorized by governmental and cultural institutions. Education is a “passport.” A passport is a governmental identification which enables passage between international locales, specifically those which are organized as nation-states and recognized by the international community. Education is not a mere intellectual endowment. Rather, education is conferred as a right to travel through space and time. Qua certification of navigation, Malcolm X considers education a matter of spatial expediency and exploration. Education is permitted preparation for travels to — engagements with — an otherness which cannot be accessed by those who are not privileged to be granted the social authorization to study, in either a formal institutional context or an informal everyday situation. The expedition toward the future must be prepared by the work of study and scholarship in the current moment. But crucial to Malcolm X’s formulation is that this preparation is accorded and permitted by the society. Travel toward the future is not an individual choice or a personal freedom. Rather, the future is contingent not simply on the opportunities of the present but on the social and historical — legal and governmental — authorization of the passport of education for future travels to the otherness of the beyond. Travel in space and time is the prerogative of those who are sanctioned to journey toward this future that Malcolm X promises will be inherited by the intellectual preparation of education. But the key to the voyage between the extant and the future is the passport. The educated may inherit destiny, but the proviso of such benefits is the sanctioned occasion for education. The escape from the ideological present toward the liberated future is contingent on this present to foresee the transformative potential of the extension of education to those whose unexpected voyage toward the future may return the transcendence of the ideological present and its discriminations.
The Marxist critics, Althusser and Balibar, write of a “closed circle.” This enclosure is transcended in order to posit anew questions and problematics. These political issues and concerns are otherwise obviated from this “closed circle” of doxa. The circle is a tautological form of Reason. As such, a conclusion is deduced even before the articulation of the question. Any new question to be posed cannot be expressed from within the circle of ideology. This “closed circle” deters intellectual meditation on new political vexations which are otherwise obscured by the extant ideological system. The methodological strain for Althusser and Balibar’s speculative project is an articulation of the relationship between the ideological space of the “closed circle” and its Outside.
This (Marxist) Outside is an advance space in which political theories and practices can be posed and returned from outside of the coordinates of the dominant system of ideology. The Outside must be a profound exteriorized break from the abstractions, idealizations, and conceptualizations of the closed ideological space from which the critic flees. The Outside nurtures new questions, presumptions, vocabularies, and conclusions. Beyond the “closed circle” is a space in which alternative frameworks for otherwise voiceless passions can be granted grievance. Outside of the “closed space” is a respite from the onerous project of the ontology of Being — “what is?” The sheer craziness of this Outside is intuited as madness from the ideological edifice of the circle of doxa. The Marxist critic enforces a “radical foundation,” as the authors say, for this new space and intellectual meditations on issues which are considered Unreasonable — incoherent as questions, slurred as answers — from the space of doxa.
Like Althusser and Balibar’s project to flee the closed space of ideology and to found an alternative set of theoretical coordinates, The Pervert’s Manifesto destructures the tradition of thought in humanism toward the will of an antihumanist and posthumanist selfhood and sociality. This project is structured by a critical flee from the “closed space” toward an innovative Outside wherein the theorization of alternative problems and issues can be posed with an invented set of vocabulary. The Pervert’s Manifesto considers the work of Marx on capitalism, Freud on sexual difference, and Derrida on the sign in order to forge an Outside. This Outside is the space of the Pervert and his aesthetic of general inequivalence and the singularity of the object. My critique of the “closed circle” enables the world to violently found an Outside within which man’s questions may be posed, troubled, and answered from the attitude of perversity.
Fuck Fuck Fuck — this is a Manifesto. The thesis of The Pervert’s Manifesto is indicated in the title of this preface. The paradigms that this book originally and critically interrogates — manifests as a Manifesto — are deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. As in the film Back to the Future (1985), the “Power of Love,” of Huey Lewis and the News, inherits the earth and her angels: namely, Hegelian absolute knowledge, Marxian communism, Freudian sexual liberation, and Derridean otherness. The “power” of Marx’s labor power, Hegel’s absolute knowledge, Freud’s awesome sex, and grammatology’s otherness is empowered by the power of love into the future. What “will have been” in the futur anteriéur is the return from the destination of the “letter” of communism, absolute knowledge, sex, and otherness to the past — the future will have been in the futur anteriéur of the past — continuity of space-time — in the event of the Becoming of the “power” of labor for communism, sex for Freud, knowledge for Hegel, and otherness for Derrida — and in addition to the Derridean supplemental trace to the abstract dialectic of the three of Hegel’s thesis, antithesis, synthesis, or the linguistic diacritics of the three of Saussure’s signifier, signified, and sign, or the three of the Marxist dialectic of forces, relations, and new mode of production in communism in the development of an embryonic society of the future. These forces of production are the Saussurian semiology of the three of signifier, signified, and sign; the Freudian sexual dialectic of the three of the Oedipus complex of father, mother, and child of the global orgy of the Marxist materialist bodies of the Saussurian signifier; the Hegelian knowledge of the concept — or, the sign as union of materialist Marxism of the Saussurian signifier and the abstract Hegelianism of the Saussurian signified. These threes — the points of electrical charge of Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor — produce the Freudianism of a sign which is the Marxist — The Pervert’s Manifesto — Praxis of Marx’s famed Thesis Eleven (1848): “in various ways, philosophers have always interpreted the world; the point is to change it.” This is the impassioned inspiration of the genre of the manifesto. The Pervert’s Manifesto empowers Hegel’s Reason in History and/or Freud's Desire in History and/or Marx's Labor in History — such that history — will have been — futur anteriéur, the power will have been love — the arrival of the power of love in the future which returns to the past — forever, endlessly — to make history the Power of Love. As Nietzsche reminds us, the Owl of Minerva flies at dusk — hindsight is 20/20 — when we go Back to the Future. The Pervert’s Manifesto returns from the future — 20/20 — to the past of the Becoming of this recalled future.
The Derridean supplement is that the Other is the Outside of the extant symbolic order — beyond the coordinates of space (first dimension) and time (second dimension) so that communism is not the End of History, and absolute knowledge is not the End of History, and the global orgy is not the End of History. Rather, there is always the Other of deconstruction which is beyond and before. History is timeless and spaceless. Doc Brown’s space-time continuum is an infinite universe — an infinity of time and space Becoming each other in the Becoming of — what will have been — Becoming in the third dimension of the power of love. Space is the first dimension, and time is the second dimension. Love — what else? — is the third dimension. The space and time of the love of the three dimensions is the fourth dimension of the unconscious, a space of no knowledge, no negation, and no temporality. The future of The Pervert’s Manifesto of the messianic Other is a space of the Outside of epistemology, negation, and temporality. Futurally, the The Pervert’s Manifesto recalls this future: men without knowledges, languages without binary oppositions, and times without chronologies. The union of the four dimensions is the space and time and love in the unconscious. This synthesis of space, time, and love in the unconscious — plus the constitutive Derridean Other — is the “Power of Love” of Back to the Future. This Other fuels the the power of love — and the Flux Capacitor — from past to future and from future to past in the endless history of Trieb in the unconscious of love and its figural avatars. As Doc Brown would say, “this is what makes time travel possible.” This Other is a time machine made out of a DeLorean, and a political Manifesto made out of a Pervert.
Authorships of Manifestos
Truth to power, this project feels like the opposite of a group effort. Indeed, I wrote the entire Manifesto by myself like a neurotic who imagines his expression without any influence or help from any other person on the planet. But admittedly, even a neurotic realizes that other counter-signatures from family, colleagues, and friends animate the signature of this book which is not wholly individual but rather socially mediated with counter-signatures. These counters demonstrate the imbrication of the others’ contributions with my own final signature on the cover of the book. This acknowledged contribution is an insight which is only possible if the neurotic realizes the repressed truth of his text in the unconscious. But if a shift to a perverse love — Trieb — is performed, then what I know “very well,” as Octave Mannoni’s perverse patient would say, is either that I (signature, individuality) wrote the book alone — and enjoy the pleasures and suffer the sores of my responsibility for the text — or that we (and they) authored the project together — and celebrate the happiness and sadness of a collectively shared (ir)responsibility for the text that we (they) share as the burden of social being-in-the-world and being-with-others. Neurotically, I think that there is only my signature throughout the pages of this book and that they are not the ideas of others but rather projective delusions of my own thoughts. If your delusion is that you (many) have signed, whether for legal or amorous reasons, as authors of The Pervert’s Manifesto, then at least ditch the bic for a leaky fountain pen so that you write more like my original thoughts.
That said, if there are exceptional errors in this book, then I will return to my schizophrenic delusions of cultural cooperation with friends, family, and colleagues in order to avoid persecution as the sole authorship of the socially generated and historically developed mistakes in the book. If we (they) return to the perversity of, “I know very well, but nevertheless…,” then we (they) all return to the arche of the trouble with a renewed relief. We (they) do not “know very well” who made the mistakes in the writing of The Pervert’s Manifesto, “but nevertheless” we (they) share enjoyment but also responsibility for our (their) shared theories and practices. Even better, it will be our (their) fortunate gift without return — arrival of the letter at neither departure nor destination — to enjoy the suspension of such a signified in order to defer witness of our (their) final signature, as it is passed, like a sign(ifi)ed letter, beyond and elsewhere. This two-step activity — of the Pervert’s feigned knowledge but simultaneously acknowledged faith in his “I know very well, but nevertheless...” and the madman’s differences and deferrals in the decenterment of différance — and the translation between the Pervert’s symbolized contribution and the psychotic’s performed effort — resolve the problem of a collective ignorance and a deferred tout autre that we know nothing about absolutely and yet. The magical couple of the Pervert and the madman align the feigned knowledge but enjoyed belief of the fetishist with the schizoid gesture toward the postponement of signification — authors, readers, and mediators alike. The guilt and shame for the crime of a delusional yet philosophical individuality and for the unethical persecution of an individual author for a social error in the expression of desire in text — it is forgiven.
But there is a signature which can never in fact be signed, except in the traces of the differences and deferrals of différance. Your ready autograph is nothing less than a garbled series of signifiers which makes your secret critical review of my Manifesto of irrelevance. Such a fetishization of the signature — my autograph or your autograph in a series of extended and unsaturatable events and contexts — betrays some belief in the I-function of a signer — celebrity — and of a signature — of the autograph. The loss of the je in the rapids of the moi transforms belief into a laughter at a series of errors which constitutes the tradition — modernism and humanism — that this Manifesto fiercely contests. I do not take full — or even personal — responsibility for any misstatements in this text. My irresponsibility — beyond good and evil, outside of responsibility for Irma’s mistreatment — is the basis of the ethics of psychoanalysis (from désir to Trieb) rather than the morality (right and wrong, good and evil) of the Enlightenment. Morality is a system of crimes and punishments of right/wrong and good/evil. Ethics is an art of a conducts of the self. The ethics of psychoanalysis imply the imperative to “not give way on your desire.” But if “giving way” on your desire is precisely the definition of desire as it mistakenly miscatches its objet petit a in its grasp, then Lacan’s imperative is also, simultaneously, to “not give way on your Trieb” and the endlessly — courtly love — ecstatic encirclement around an object which is full because it is empty. If désir and Trieb are the same at a certain moment in the the aperture of ethics, then the question of the je of this text is irrelevant. The Pervert’s Manifesto can only be written by the revolutionaries. The firebrands inherit the text.
This group effort of salty queer soldiers and little Dutch boys — my fantasy — has made possible a monstrous and grandiose daydream which will be counter-signed by a series of ”me’s” (objects) whose “I's” (subjects) and “me's” (objects) — and their various artful ethical conducts — are Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) in the Outside of the the transcendence of the tension-release economy of pleasure that capitalism thrives on in its invention of the ideology of scarcity and the tensions of its supply and demand dynamics. Freud invented the sexualized version of capitalism — castration — in his invention of the description of “something is missing” as the apt moniker for the female genitals in a text as early as the 1900 behemoth The Interpretation of Dreams. The “beyond” of this pleasure principle is the Woman's jouissance in a field in excess of the little boy’s fear of castration and toward the communist's dream of a playground outside of private property (what Derrida otherwise refers to as le propre in all of its connotations). Such a society is one in which Eros and Thanatos are united because they are the same as each other but different from themselves.
The writers or the readers — or the booksellers or the editors — wrote this text and its errors, but such mistakes of The Pervert’s Manifesto are beyond reproach because it is our ethical Trieb to encircle the failed symbolization of and in the Real. Il n'y a pas de hors texte — why? — because there is nothing inside the text, either. There is no text in this text. The question of various signatures and counter-signatures is an irrelevant bore. Such abject critical confusion between inside and outside — hipster and lamester — is a question not of morality and responsibility. Rather, the question must be posed: is The Pervert’s Manifesto and its authorships ethical? Lacan says that it does not matter whether the book is good or bad in the beginning; what matters, he riffs, is what happens after the book has been eaten. Ethics is not a matter of the punctual now. Rather, ethics is the moment of the deferred future of the manifestation of The Pervert’s Manifesto itself. The relentless deferral of the ethical injunction of ethics as Trieb implies that ethics never arrives in the presence of Being. Instead, ethics is always a futural and messianic tout autre of and from the future — of a back to and from the future. As Nietzsche would say, the “gay” horizon is a sensibility which is the beyond of good and evil — and the Outside of the moral debtor-creditor relationship of the je m’acccuse and the je t’accuse — and beyond the wound of phallocentric castration and the economy of private property.
If so — who — we and they Perverts, then — we and they — authors and readers — salty queer soldiers and little Dutch boys — we and they — are neither close nor distant from such an objet petit a — but in the event that — we and they — are in and out of space and time and — we and they — are all driving rather than desiring, and — we and they — find ourselves run off the road, with our desires in the driver’s seat about to hit many especially handsome and tall and thick and gorgeous banana trees and their peeled and unpeeled bananas and — we and they — are about to hit many especially beautiful and short and thin and hunky cocoons and their silks from caterpillars and — we and they — transform in a reversed drive and even an obverse drive and — we and they — become creative and — we and they — do not be ashamed — it’s natural and cultural and even if — we and — enjoy it in culture and nature and — we and they — and him and her and you and I too!
If tragedy is born secondarily as farce by your text which responds to my own, then the writer has massaged your phallus. If the phallus is absent, if the phallus is hidden in occlusion beyond its indexical function in relationship to the object-cause of desire, then where are we to look for intellectual pata-pata? The deconstruction of psychoanalysis is the revelation that the transference (the cathexis invested toward the analyst as sujet supposé savoir and object-cause of the analysand's desire) is the obverse of the counter-transference because each is different from itself. The repeated question of Lacan’s — “Who is speaking?” — is freakishly undecidable because both the hysteric (who speaks) and the analyst (who listens) are positioned such that their orientations can be easily swapped between and exchanged for each other, like the labile objects of the mediation of the general equivalent. The reader of The Pervert’s Manifesto listens, but I can only imagine the style of his attunement. The reader writes in the margins of The Pervert’s Manifesto, but I can only imagine the judgment that she makes of those notes. I write The Pervert’s Manifesto, but the reader can only imagine the intent of my speech. This parallactic gap is the condition of the two desires — yours and mine — themselves. What's more — the analyst and the hysteric swap positions in a quick oscillation which is worthy of the particle-wave entanglement in quantum physics. The analyst is the hysteric — and vice-a-versa — at a certain moment in their expensive engagement. Freud and Lacan disavowed this structure because they were locked in a perspectivalism that Nietzsche understood as the army of metaphors for truth. A perverse decentered subject in an infinite galaxy intuits that there is no such thing as perspective. The signature and the counter-signature merely authorize a joy trip to Jupiter. Schizophrenically, “there is no such thing” as a sexual perspective because the psychotic cannot conceive of the cut between latent and manifest, between unconscious and conscious, and between all of the pairs of binary oppositions. Neither do any of us occupy subject positions or situated perspectives because the myth of the real world, as Nietzsche said, must be destroyed, both the real and the apparent dimensions. The only subject position or situated perspective in psychoanalysis — the gaze of the gaze of the gaze, and so on — is the phallic mother qua qua qua — incoherent — the Woman qua the Outside of the symbolic order. We (they) are all the Woman — from a certain disperspective — and we (they) all suffer in the Real in a desperate attempt to symbolize the droll dolor.