Segregation-machines

It has always been known that the first order of the world was a male order, that men dictated over women and the normal dictated over the queer. But I often don’t find that the case any more – apart from the occasional dickwit who says ‘No way could a bird ever be prime minister’ I think that largely the view of people and the world has become a lot more liberal.

But looking at cultural texts I think, is our world still run by a misogynistic hetero-machine? Largely, yes. As Guattari writes in Becoming-Woman, the opposition of things reduces them to an either-or, always contains an ulterior motive of one-over-the-other (1996:43). This reduction enforces the operation of power. The opposition of adult and adolescent creates an even more powerful divide between people than that of adult and child, and it is when adolescents are put into this ‘other’ category by institutions that the anxiety of entering “normal adulthood”, that Guattari mentions, is onset (1996:67). To go from a space of being an adolescent to approaching adulthood is pretty daunting, as we see when Chris is put in the situation of taking the ‘adult’ responsibility of looking after his mother’s house in Skins. Instead of becoming responsible he reacts toward what people expect of him, his microworld opposing the approaching adult macrocosm. His lack of care for his (impressive) tropical fish tank is a little bit of opposition to the sophisticated world of responsibility. Guattari writes,

I think that adolescence, as far as i can recognize it, constitutes a real micro-revolution, involving multiple components, some of which threaten the world of adults. (1996:64)

Chris reacts against the adult-machine by playing to, and at the same time, subverting their expectations. In Secretary (Stephen Shainberg, 2002) Lee does a similar thing – becoming a secretary to re-place herself into society as a regular, dull office worker. But to her that act is just the means by which she gets into the machine of the everyday worker, it doesn’t provide any real life sensation. Her subjectivity exists outside of this assemblage of the normal, and she serves this by choosing a (mutual) relationship of sexual subjection. Her participation in these acts of bdsm marks the remaking of her ‘existential territories with dopings’ (Guattari 1996:104) – she participates in the ‘process’ but uses it as an outlet for her own subjective desires.