Today, the working of our society resembles the structure of the analyst’s
discourse. But it is in effect the pervert’s discourse (Žižek, Parallax 299). The agent is the “superego injunction to enjoy” (299) as well as the “masochist pervert (the pervert pas excellence)” (303). This superego addresses the split subject ($), “who is put to work in order to live up to this injunction” (299). The superego is supported by the
“scientific-expert knowledge in its different guises” (299). It takes up the position of
“the object-instrument of the other’s desire, and . . . through serving his (feminine) victim, he posits her as the hystericized / divided subject ‘who doesn’t know what she wants’ — the pervert knows it for her” (303). The pervert pretends to speak from the place of “knowledge (about the other’s desire) which enables him to serve the other;
and, finally, the product of this social link is the [M]aster-[S]ignifier, that is, the hysterical subject elevated in the role of the master (dominatrix) whom the pervert masochist serves” (303). And the goal of the pervert’s discourse is to create (S1), the self-mastery of the subject, and to help the subject deal with the stress of superegoic injunction. The pervert’s discourse does not help the subject to traverse the
ideological fantasies and confront the void of the objet petit a (34).
As Chris felt frustrated in finding freedom and revolution from his political leader and religious teacher, he left Thailand and went back to England in the summer of 1981. From that point on, he had assumed the forged identity of Michael Frame.
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After the end of the Cold War, he witnessed the change of capitalism in its scale from local to global. Although he had a cynical life, he still desired freedom and revolution in his life. His desire for these two things became much stronger and more explicit when he met his friend Miles Bridgeman, who threatened to put him in jail. The appearance of Miles could be regarded as a form of global capitalism that attempted to control Chris in the discourse of perversion.
In 1967, Miles disguised himself as a filmmaker for the revolution, but practically worked as an informer for the capitalist ruling class of the British
government (258). In 1997, he expanded his clients from the local British ruling class to multinational ones. For Chris, “Miles Bridgeman would always be someone’s creature” (92) even if he had his own company. Miles told Chris how he ran his business in 1997:
I own and run a public-affairs consultancy, which has a number of clients, some of whom you no doubt disapprove of. I’ve worked for
multinationals. I’ve worked for various special interest groups. Trade associations, that kind of thing. I help them get what they want from the political system. (166)
At the public-affairs company, Miles was still working for the ruling class of capitalism like he did in 1967. The difference was that the service of his political consultancy was open to multinational clients on a global scale. His career had expanded from a local to a global market, and from local, domestic politicians to multinational clients and special interest groups. When he said that he had some clients Chris would disagree with, he implied that he assisted those whom Chris used to protest. He would accept unjust and illegal assignments. As long as they were willing to offer a price, he would “help them get what they want from the political
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system” (166). For Miles qua a profit-seeking capitalist, he cared only if his clients could offer a price regardless of their differences or nationalities. In 1971, he worked as an undercover agent for the British government. If we compare who Miles worked for between 1971 and 1997, we discover similarities; both the British government in 1971 and Miles’s clients were almost the same kind of “special interest groups” in the ruling class (166).
The development of Miles’s career showed that capitalism had never been changed. Instead, after the Cold War, capitalism had crossed social, cultural, and national boundaries into multinational, global capitalism. From a Žižekian
perspective, we can regard global capitalism represented by Miles as the “discourse of perversion” (Žižek, Parallax 303). The discourse of perversion has the same structure as the analyst’s discourse:
In this graph, the Agent of objet petit a (a) is a masochist pervert that functions as the superegoic injunction to enjoy. It (a) occupies the place of the object instrument of the other’s desire. Through serving his victim ($), it posits the split subject ($) as the split subject ($) who does not know what it ($) wants. The pervert (a) pretends to speak from the neutral place supported by knowledge that enables him to serve the subject ($). It tells the subject what it ($) wants. Finally, this social relationship generates the master signifier. That is, the hysterical subject is elevated into the role of the master whom the pervert serves. Although the pervert seems to serve the subject ($), it in practice serves as the instrument of global capitalism.
When he appeared in Chris’s life in 1997, Miles came to warn Chris that he had been followed by the British police and could be charged for his terrorist attack in 1967. But Miles could help him to satisfy his urgent needs if he could falsely accuse
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Pat Ellis, who used to be a member at the Workshop Fourteen in 1968, and who became Minister of State for Police and Security in 1997. Here Miles could be seen as the masochist pervert, who took up the place of the object-instrument of the other’s desire. Although he claimed to be Chris’s “friend” who merely wanted to help him, he in practice served as the instrument of the global capitalist ruling class (Kunzru, My
Revolutions 207). When he told Michael that he worked for someone else, he implied
that he worked for clients of global capitalism. Also, in 1997, having failed to achieve freedom and revolution, Chris became a split and hysterical subject. On the one hand, he was torn apart between his ideal desire in 1967 and his unhappy life as Michael Frame in 1997. The life in 1997 was exactly the one that he would overthrow in 1967.In 1997, his wife was a founder of a successful cosmetic company. He had to cook and prepare a dinner party for his wife and her clients. And he had a stepdaughter who despised him and dreamed of becoming a corporate lawyer after graduation. Although Chris still desired freedom and revolution, he was too old and weak to go back to his revolutionary life of 1967 or leave his family in 1997 (276). Therefore, he was torn between his ideal and his practical life. On the other hand, as the hysterical subject, he did not know what he could do or who he could trust to find freedom and revolution.
In 1997, Chris/Michael could not find anyone else trustworthy enough to teach or guide him about freedom and revolution. With Miles threatening to put him in jail, Chris was made more hysterical. (208). He disbelieved Miles when he claimed to be his friend. In fact, he could hardly believe anyone in his life.
As the pervert, Miles told Chris what Chris wanted. He told Chris that he would do everything for him as long as he cooperated. He even made plans of escape for Chris (207-08). Miles pretended to speak from the place of knowledge about Chris’s desire for freedom and revolution. He claimed that he understood Chris’s situation
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and that everyone wants “a clean slate” (233). He said that he would take care of everything if Chris followed his instructions. On the surface, Miles seemed to make a perfect plan for Chris so that Chris would never get arrested and could be rich and free forever (256). He said he was a successful businessman who knew people in the media and government. He said that he could control the result of Chris/Michael’s destiny. But in fact, Miles received orders from multinational “stakeholders” in the political system (207). Behind Miles, the ruling class of global capitalism manipulated Chris’s destiny. In the pervert’s discourse, the split/hysterical subject is driven to work in order to reach the “injunction of the superego” (Žižek, Parallax 299). If Chris cooperated and did exactly what Miles wanted, he could have his freedom and revolution to get away from the harassment of the media and control of the government:
Look, how about this? Twenty grand and a head start. More cash than that . . . . , you do the interview, you hang around long enough to give the press a taste—until the job’s done, absolute minimum, no more. We’ll help you. Give you some hideout. Someone to handle your calls. Then it’s over and you disappear. By the time the police, or whoever else you’re afraid of, arrive, you can be long gone. I’ll help you. (Kunzru, My
Revolutions 276)
Miles told Chris on the phone that he could offer at least twenty thousand and a good start in life. Miles would use his influence in the government to satisfy Michael’s needs and desires. He could be given more cash than that if he cooperated. All he needed to do was to do an interview and give sufficient information about Pat Ellis’s involvement in the terrorist attack. When the job was done, Chris would be given a new passport, airplane ticket, hideout, and someone to handle his calls. He would
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disappear and enjoy his freedom outside the harassment of the media and prosecution of the government. By the time the police force arrived at his place, Chris would be long gone. Chris would have a “clean slate” and all his sins would be “forgiven”
(276). With Miles’s help, Chris could face minimal “legal consequence” (241). He could even turn his criminal past into a profitable source for his family. As Miranda had just begun a new company, she needed money to expand her business. Miles could use his connections in media and politics to assist Miranda to turn Chris’s past into a book. She would be “doing the rounds of talk shows, lunching with journalists from women’s magazines” (256). She could make a profit out of Chris’s horrible past by publishing a book and attending talk shows.
If we analyze Miles based on the discourse of perversion, Miles aimed to assist Chris to create his own new master signifier (S1), the “self-mastery of the subject”
(Žižek Parallax 229). Miles promised with his professional knowledge of media and public affairs that Chris would be given a new name, flight ticket, passport, hideout, and the full control of his own life after his accusation of Pat Ellis in a press
conference (Kunzru, 276). Chris could not only enjoy absolute freedom with a clean identity, but also make a great profit out of his criminal history. He would have a brand new start and become a wealthy person But the subject who embraced this new master signifier would still live under Miles, which represents the control of global capitalism (S1). When Miles promised money and a complete new start for Chris, he changed the noun from “I” to “we.” (276). He meant that the multinational
stakeholders from the political system whom he had been working for would “help”
Chris. Representing the profit of the multinational stakeholders, he would arrange a new passport, plane ticket, cross-border hideout, and someone to take care of his calls.
He would put Chris under strict control and surveillance. He would give Chris a fake
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freedom provided by the new master signifier of global capitalism. Therefore,
although Chris could shake off his guilty past, he would still be “framed” in a new life under the shadow of the new master signifier of global capitalism.
Through the interaction with Miles, Chris was forced to revisit the memory of his violent past as well as his passionate desire for freedom and revolution. He came to realize that he had been working to satisfy freedom and revolution for others, including Anna in Free Picture, the monks in Thailand, his wife, and now Miles. He thought he could have his own freedom and revolution when he followed other leader-like characters in his life. He had never confronted and asked himself what freedom and revolution actually meant to him. Therefore, in this last part, I’d like to discuss how Chris Carver eventually found his freedom in his revolution when he refused to follow the order from Miles. By re-identifying with his repressed identity of the forced outcast, Chris threw himself into the dangerous revolution and
overthrew the command of Miles qua global capitalism. Through recollecting his traumatic memories, Chris engaged in an analytical reflection on his pursuit of freedom and revolution. He also used his past to re-examine his present predicament.
Ultimately, he discovered that the true freedom and revolution lay neither in Miles’s help nor in escape from Miles’s control. His true freedom and revolution only appeared when he could re-identify with his excluded identity, in which he could confront the truth of his own desire. Due to the re-identification and confrontation, he could overthrow the old master signifier of global capitalism and create a new master signifier.
The novel began with the preparation for Chris’s fiftieth birthday party in 1997.
After being blackmailed by Miles, Chris decided to escape to France to either find Anna Addison or commit suicide. When Chris assumed the new identity of Michael
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Frame in 1971, he started living as a cynical subject under the influence of global capitalism. With the fake identity, Chris thought that he could live as if he had freedom till Miles reappeared to blackmail him. As Michael Frame, he repressed the memory of Chris, and created a kind of objective distance with an attitude of
disavowal. He knew the problem of global capitalism very well:
People think Fascism doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just a cartoon perversion . . . . But the Fascists didn’t go away after the Second World War. I don’t just mean skinheads, though even they’ve burrowed underground, talking about multiculturalism . . . . Internment confirmed what I’d always felt was true: inside the democratic velvet glove there was an iron fist.
(Kunzru, My Revolutions 225-26)
For the public, they thought that Fascism had disappeared following the end of the Second World War. It was merely a fictional perversion. But Chris knew that the Fascists had never disappeared. They had changed into different forms, such as the threatening skinheads and even multiculturalists. The Fascists had gone underground and tried to become non-threatening multiculturalists. They pretended to welcome different cultures and people. But when it came to their own “interests” and the
“interests of the state,” they were “unsentimental about human life” (225). They used Pat Ellis23 as a “temporary occupant of a chair” to acquire their interests (225). Chris knew that they would remove her anytime they wanted.
After betraying his revolutionary group, Chris became a forced outcast. He had to change his identity from Chris Carver to Michael Frame to get away from the condemned and excluded identity. As he learned from the Buddhist lessons in
23 In 1960s, Pat Ellis was Chris Carver’s friend and comrade in the revolutionary group. She and her husband, Gavin, were “new qualified lawyers” who tried to use “the system for progressive ends”
(Kunzru, My Revolutions 141-42). In 1997, Pat Ellis became the “Right Honorable Patricia Ellis MP, Minister of State for Police and Security” (141). But for Miles, he said, “There are some people it’s just not appropriate for the Home Secretary to know” (206).
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Thailand to “reject impulse to act on the world,” he created a kind of objective distance with an attitude of disavowal (270). He adopted a cynical attitude to avoid the burden of retaking his excluded identity. He acted “as if” there were no problem with his past identity as long as he disavowed it:
In the old cartoons . . . . Wile E. Coyote would frequently run off a cliff.
When this happened, he’d stop moving forward, his legs windmilling in the air, but it was only when he looked down that gravity started to work and he fell. Until then he was magically suspended, held aloft by his conviction that there was still ground beneath his feet . . . . (Kunzru, My
Revolutions 21)
Michael talked about the character he used to watch as a child: Wile E. Coyote. The coyote who, while trying to catch his prey, would look down and discover that he had run off the edge of a cliff. When this occurred, he could not move any further.
Supported in the air by his conviction of his former reality, the coyote nosedived to the ground only after he sensed the change in reality. Before he detected the problem, he was magically suspended by his belief that there was the ground beneath his feet.
And this was what happened to Michael in 1997. Before the appearance of Anna and Miles, Michael lived with his wife, Miranda, and stepdaughter, Sam. Both Miranda and Sam had no idea about Michael’s past and true identity. To find a quiet place of his own, Michael found a job at Godfrey Kerr’s used bookstore and hid himself in the basement (26). Like the coyote whose legs windmill in the air, Michael kept himself busy with his family, and he worked so that he could forget his excluded identity. By so doing, he did not need to remember that there was no solid support in his real identity. As Chris Carver, he was hated, hunted, and prosecuted by his own
revolutionary group and the British government. If Chris continued to show up with
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the same identity, he would put his life in danger under the threat of his friends and the British legal system. Mentally, if Chris continued to carry the past memories in his mind, he would throw himself into abyssal guilt and end up committing suicide.
Therefore, he had to assume the fake identity and forget about Chris. Yet, there was no solid legal ground for the fake identity of Michael. Therefore, he had to live his life as if there were “still ground beneath his feet” (21). He knew that “there would be someone” to signal “the changes” (27). Once someone reminded Michael of his true identity, he was certain to either go to jail or fall back into the abyssal gulf of guilt. To avoid these things, Chris carefully buried the documents about his past deep in the basement of Godfrey Kerr, who was “busy drinking himself to death in his parlor”
(26), and who was “a great respecter of the private pain of others” (211). Living with this cynical attitude, he thought he could be free in his secret hideout.
But after Anna and Miles’s appearance in 1997, Chris could no longer suppress his painful memories. He could no longer maintain his cynical attitude and live as if he had freedom. Anna reminded him of his betrayal while Miles threatened him with serious legal consequences if he did not follow Miles’s instruction. Before his birthday party in 1997, Chris fled to France to escape Miles’s threat and to ask Anna if he could find freedom and revolution. The journey in France became Chris’s second exile, in which he became an international refugee once again. In this trip, he oscillated between past and present, Michael Frame and Chris Carver. Chris’s
But after Anna and Miles’s appearance in 1997, Chris could no longer suppress his painful memories. He could no longer maintain his cynical attitude and live as if he had freedom. Anna reminded him of his betrayal while Miles threatened him with serious legal consequences if he did not follow Miles’s instruction. Before his birthday party in 1997, Chris fled to France to escape Miles’s threat and to ask Anna if he could find freedom and revolution. The journey in France became Chris’s second exile, in which he became an international refugee once again. In this trip, he oscillated between past and present, Michael Frame and Chris Carver. Chris’s