『피에르, 혹은 모호함』

Pierre: or, The Ambiguities : Beyond Oedipus Complex

Herman Melville’s Pierre: or, The Ambiguities develops the psychological, sexual, and family tension between Pierre, his widowed mother(Mrs. Glendinning), his cousin(Glen), his fiancée(Lucy) and his half-sister(Isabel). One of the main issues Melville deals with in this novel is the incestuous relationship between Pierre and Isabel along with the incestuous familial relation with his mother. While some previous studies have focused on the issue from the Freudian perspective, this paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of the Freudian Oedipal Complex to understand it. Deleuze and Guattari argue that the Oedipal model of the family is a kind of organization that colonizes its members, represses their desires, and gives them complexes. Such psychological repression forms docile individuals. Furthermore, they argue that a capitalist society needs a powerful tool to counteract the explosive force of desire, which has the potential to threaten its structures of exploitation, servitude, and hierarchy; the nuclear family is the powerful tool able to counteract those forces. Pierre subjected to the Oedipal structure resists the “law of the father” when realizing the existence of his illegitimate half-sister, Isabel who he gets married to later. As Isabel, a minoritarian, is not subordinated to the Oedipal structure, her existence itself threatens Mrs. Glendinning who represents a majority and she has a revolutionary power to deconstruct the fictitious organization of Oedipus Complex.