Abstract
This essay examines political culture through Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic theory as presented in Anti-Oedipus. It challenges conventional understandings of political socialization found in political science literature. The analysis argues that political culture operates as an Oedipal apparatus reproducing dominant power structures, with the family serving as capitalism’s delegated agent of psychic repression. By analyzing how citizens are conditioned to unconsciously desire their own political constraint, this essay illuminates the mechanisms through which existing power relations are normalized while revolutionary alternatives are delegitimized.
The Blind King and the Citizen: A Story of Political Desire
A king stands before his plague-stricken city, proclaiming his determination to find the source of corruption. “I’ll leave no stone unturned,” Oedipus declares to the suffering Thebans. “The murderer of Laius will be found and punished.” The citizens cheer their leader’s resolve, unaware that he himself is the pollution he seeks to purge.
This punishment is not merely judicial but ritual and religious—the Oracle has revealed that the plague will continue until Laius’s killer is removed from the city. In Greek religious thought, unpunished murder creates miasma (pollution) that angers the gods and brings collective suffering. Only by identifying and expelling this polluting element can social order be restored and the plague lifted. The irony, of course, is that Oedipus’s zealous pursuit of justice will lead to his own downfall when he discovers he is the murderer he seeks.
Like Oedipus, modern citizens search everywhere but within themselves for the source of political dysfunction. Conventional political science tells us that political culture—”the fundamental political values, beliefs, and orientations that are widely held within a political community” (Mintz et al., 2019, p. 75)—is transmitted through neutral socialization processes. But this framework misses a crucial insight: How does political culture actually function in relation to power structures, and what specific role does the family institution play in political socialization and the reproduction of capitalist social relations?
Mintz et al. (2019) define political socialization as “the process whereby individuals acquire values, attitudes, beliefs, and opinions about politics and government” (p. 86). They present this as largely functional, explaining how “political systems maintain themselves over time” (p. 86) through agencies including family, education, peers, mass media, and direct political experience. This approach treats socialization as primarily rational and conscious—citizens learn to value democracy through civic education, they develop partisan identities through family influence, they form policy preferences through reasoned debate.
What this view overlooks is the unconscious dimension of political formation—how desire itself is shaped before conscious political opinions ever form. Just as Oedipus unwittingly fulfilled a prophecy while believing he was escaping it, citizens are channeled into political identities that reproduce power relations while believing they are exercising free choice.
The Prophecy: Deleuze and Guattari’s Revolutionary Vision
When King Laius and Queen Jocasta received the prophecy that their son would kill his father and marry his mother, they attempted to circumvent fate. They pierced the infant’s ankles and abandoned him on Mount Cithaeron. Their desperate action reflects how power structures attempt to control threats before they materialize.
Similarly, when Deleuze and Guattari published Anti-Oedipus in 1972, they challenged the prophecy of political inevitability. Where Freud had seen the Oedipus complex as necessary for civilization, they recognized it as a form of social control—a mechanism for constraining revolutionary desire within familial structures.
“The family is the delegated agent of psychic repression,” they declared, “insofar as it ensures ‘a mass psychological reproduction of the economic system of a society’” (1983, p. 118). This statement overturns conventional wisdom that views families as merely one socializing agent among many. Instead, the family serves as capitalism’s special deputy, tasked with ensuring that children grow up to desire the very systems that exploit them.
The Crossroads: Political Culture at the Intersection
Fleeing what he believed was his fate, Oedipus encountered an older man at a crossroads who demanded he yield the way. A dispute erupted, and Oedipus killed the man—his biological father Laius—thus fulfilling the first part of the prophecy. This pivotal moment at the crossroads parallels how citizens encounter political authority without recognizing their relation to it.
Political culture functions at similar intersections, channeling desire into predetermined pathways through what Deleuze and Guattari call “Oedipalization.” This process creates a triangular structure of desire:
- The Father/State: The paternal authority that establishes laws and threatens punishment
- The Mother/Nation: The nurturing entity providing identity and belonging
- The Child/Citizen: The subject who must internalize these structures to become “politically mature”
“The whole of desiring-production is crushed,” they write, “subjected to the requirements of representation, and to the dreary games of what is representative and represented in representation” (1983, p. 54). Just as Oedipus was channeled toward his predetermined fate despite his resistance, citizens are channeled into political identities that ultimately reinforce existing power structures.
Mintz et al. (2019) acknowledge that early childhood experiences are formative for political identity, noting that “family socialization has its greatest influence before adolescence” and that “many basic values and orientations are acquired at an early age” (p. 86). They cite research showing that “in the United States and in many other Western democracies, by the third grade, children have already acquired positive feelings about ‘their’ political system and some of its core symbols” (p. 86).
What conventional analysis frames as healthy patriotism, schizoanalysis reveals as an early stage of Oedipalization—children are taught to identify with the nation-state in ways that parallel their identification with parents. Just as the child who defies parental authority feels guilt and anxiety, the citizen who questions national mythology experiences similar discomfort. The socialization that Mintz et al. present as neutral transmission actually encodes specific power relations within the political subject’s desire.
The Sphinx’s Riddle: The Challenge of Alternative Politics
When Oedipus encountered the Sphinx terrorizing Thebes, he faced her famous riddle: “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?” His answer—”Man”—defeated the monster but led him to the Theban throne and his mother’s bed.
Today’s citizens face a similar riddle: “What political system promises freedom yet produces constraint, offers choice yet narrows possibilities, and speaks of democracy while ensuring elite rule?” The conventional answer—liberal democracy—similarly leads to paradoxical outcomes. By accepting the terms of this riddle, we become entangled in what Deleuze and Guattari call “exclusive disjunctions”—binary choices that eliminate more revolutionary possibilities.
Young people’s political engagement illustrates this dynamic. When Mintz et al. (2019) observe that youth “are more likely to engage in issue-oriented groups” but less likely to vote (p. 84), they interpret this as immaturity rather than as resistance to electoral Oedipalization. A schizoanalytic reading suggests young people are experimenting with “desiring-machines”—creating rhizomatic networks that escape triangular structures.
Mintz et al. provide specific data illustrating this pattern: “In the 2011 Canadian federal election, voter turnout in the 18-24 age group was only 38.8 percent… In the 2012 American presidential election, the turnout rate for the 18-29 age group was 45 percent” (p. 84). They explain this through factors like “less integration in the community, weaker partisan attachments, less political information, and greater residential mobility” (p. 84). What they miss is the possibility that youth are not failing to engage politically but are refusing a specific form of political engagement that they recognize (perhaps unconsciously) as inadequate.
The textbook does acknowledge that “younger people in many Western democracies are more likely to become involved in consumer boycotts, demonstrations, and other forms of political participation than their parents” (p. 84). Yet this is still framed as part of an eventual maturation into conventional politics rather than as a legitimate alternative political modality.
As Deleuze and Guattari write, “The revolutionary is the first to have the right to say: ‘Oedipus? Never heard of it’” (1983, p. 96). Like Antigone—Oedipus’s daughter who later defied the state to honor familial bonds—these movements follow ethical codes outside conventional politics.
The Plague: Crisis and Reproduction
Years after becoming king, Oedipus confronts a plague ravaging Thebes. The Oracle reveals the city harbors Laius’s murderer, whose presence pollutes the land. Ironically, Oedipus launches a zealous investigation to find the killer, unwittingly hunting himself.
Contemporary political crises follow a similar pattern. When trust in government declines or economic inequality grows, conventional analysis seeks external causes while missing how these problems emerge from the political system’s internal contradictions. The family plays a crucial role in this blindness.
Mintz et al. (2019) document a “decline in public confidence in government” across established democracies, noting that “the percentage of Americans expressing ‘a great deal of confidence’ in Congress, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court declined by about half between the 1970s and the early 2000s” (p. 92). In Canada, surveys showed that “between 1968 and 2014, the proportion of citizens saying that the government in Ottawa can be trusted to do what is right ‘just about always’ or ‘most of the time’ fell from 61 percent to 36 percent” (p. 93).
The authors attribute this to factors like “rising expectations,” “government performance,” and “negative media coverage” (p. 93). This analysis misses how declining trust reflects a crisis in the Oedipal function of the state—citizens are increasingly unwilling to invest in the paternal function of government, yet lack alternative frameworks for political organization.
“Social production delegates the family to psychic repression,” write Deleuze and Guattari (1983, p. 120). The family teaches:
- Work discipline: Learning obedience to authority through parental expectations
- Consumer desire: Developing wants that capitalism can satisfy
- Hierarchical relationships: Internalizing father/boss, mother/nation, child/worker dynamics
- Private property: Learning individual rather than collective ownership
This training ensures that citizens unconsciously invest in their own constraint. “It is not an ideological problem,” they explain, “a problem of failing to recognize, or of being subject to, an illusion. It is a problem of desire, and desire is part of the infrastructure” (1983, p. 104).
Mintz et al. acknowledge the family’s role in transmitting political values: “Parents influence their children’s party identification and their basic political values, their degree of political interest, their political efficacy, and their level of political participation and activism” (p. 87). However, they present this transmission as primarily conscious and content-focused rather than as a structuring of desire itself.
Tiresias and Truth: Challenging Political Blindness
When the blind prophet Tiresias arrives to help identify Laius’s killer, he initially refuses to speak. Provoked by Oedipus, he finally reveals the truth: “You are the murderer you seek.” Oedipus rejects this revelation, accusing Tiresias of conspiracy with Creon.
This scene perfectly illustrates how power responds to fundamental critique. When movements challenge capitalism’s foundations, they’re dismissed as extremist, unrealistic, or dangerous—just as Oedipus dismissed Tiresias. The physically blind prophet who sees truth represents critical voices that expose political reality while being marginalized by those with institutional power.
Postmaterialist values and new social movements represent such challenges. Conventional analysis interprets these as “healthy adaptations” within existing frameworks. Deleuze and Guattari see them as moments when “flows ooze, they traverse the triangle, breaking apart its vertices. The Oedipal wad does not absorb these flows” (1983, p. 67). Environmental consciousness, gender fluidity, and participatory democracy represent desires that exceed the triangular structure of nation-state-citizen.
Mintz et al. (2019) acknowledge this shift, noting that “new values, often referred to as ‘postmaterialist,’ are emerging” that prioritize “freedom of expression, participation, and appreciation of a more beautiful environment” (p. 89). They cite data showing that “by 2006, 31.2 percent of Canadians were postmaterialist, compared to only 10.2 percent who were materialist” (p. 89). However, they interpret this as a natural evolution within liberal democracy rather than as a potentially revolutionary challenge to its foundations.
Similarly, the authors describe a “new style of citizen politics” characterized by “less deference to authority” and “greater emphasis on direct action” (p. 89), but frame this as “a more critical, assertive, informed citizenry” (p. 89) rather than as a challenge to representative democracy itself.
Self-Blinding: The Paradox of Political Insight
When Oedipus finally discovers the truth—that he has killed his father and married his mother—the revelation is unbearable. Finding Jocasta hanged, he takes the pins from her dress and blinds himself. This self-blinding represents the paradoxical nature of political insight: true understanding often comes at the cost of one’s place within the system.
Mintz et al. (2019) describe a conventional view of political maturation where citizens develop increasingly sophisticated understandings of politics as they age: “Younger voters, with less interest in and knowledge about politics, tend to be more influenced by candidates’ personal qualities and short-term factors” while older voters “have more fully developed political attitudes and are more attentive to party platforms and ideological considerations” (p. 84). This linear model misses how deeper political insight might involve rejecting rather than refining conventional frameworks.
Deleuze and Guattari identify three common modes of political subjectivity that parallel Oedipus’s journey:
- Neurotic politics: Conventional participation that accepts the given political framework
- Perverse politics: Transgressive politics that ultimately reinforces existing structures
- Psychotic politics: Complete withdrawal from political engagement
But they propose a fourth option—”revolutionary schizophrenia” that breaks through Oedipal constraints:
“The schizo knows how to leave: he has made departure into something as simple as being born or dying. But at the same time his journey is strangely stationary, in place” (1983, p. 131).
Unlike Oedipus, who remained trapped within the system even after recognizing its corruption, revolutionary politics creates new forms of collective life through:
- Prefigurative politics that embodies the change it seeks
- Rhizomatic organizing that spreads horizontally rather than hierarchically
- Experimental communities that create alternatives to capitalist social relations
Wandering Toward Redemption: Beyond Oedipal Politics
In Sophocles’ later play Oedipus at Colonus, the blind ex-king wanders with his daughter Antigone until finding redemption outside Thebes. This journey suggests possibilities for political transformation beyond existing structures.
Mintz et al. (2019) conclude their discussion of political culture with a conventional reassurance that “political institutions and processes have exhibited considerable resilience and adaptability” despite challenges and that “democratic systems have been able to adjust to changing circumstances” (p. 94). This view assumes the desirability of system preservation rather than transformation.
The task ahead is not to restore political culture to some imagined golden age of civic engagement, but to support emerging experiments in post-Oedipal political life. Understanding how citizens are conditioned to desire their own constraint is the first step toward creating genuinely democratic alternatives.
Rather than lamenting declining trust in government or youth disengagement from conventional politics, we might recognize these as productive ruptures in the Oedipal machinery—openings toward forms of collective desire that escape triangulation. The family’s role as capitalism’s delegated agent of psychic repression must be recognized before it can be transformed.
Like Oedipus at Colonus, who finally found peace by stepping outside the city’s boundaries, genuine political transformation requires moving beyond the triangular structures that constrain democratic imagination. Only then might we create forms of collective life that fulfill the revolutionary potential Deleuze and Guattari glimpsed beyond Oedipus.
Bibliography
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
Mintz, E., Close, D., & Croci, O. (2019). Politics, power, and the common good: An introduction to political science (6th ed.). Pearson Canada Inc.
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