In much of Henry Miller’s autobiographical fictional work, his narrator participates in and reflects on what would traditionally be considered sexual perversities. During his reflections, Miller creates a new dialogue for the experience, for the exposition of the acts; at times he takes on the role of a confessor, condemning himself for his lusts, behaviors, and thoughts. In Tropic of Capricorn, Miller breaks down methods of discourse traditionally used to subordinate one who is confessing, forming a noble, or higher, class by negation. Miller abandons this traditional method and by denying all centers of power he establishes a new discourse, a new locus of power, one that is more appropriate to that of the individual.
In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault outlines the origins of sexuality from the early seventeenth century through the Victorian era. Before the Victorian era, there was little need of repressing sexuality because there was no control or governing of discussing sexuality openly. Reticence was practiced and “one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit” (3). During the Victorian Era emerged a discourse of sexuality moving the discussion of sexual practices from the home to the confessional booth.
Sexuality was quickly became a taboo subject and speaking about sex was rigorously repressed. The motivation of repression was to move the acts of illegitimate sexualities elsewhere, out of sight, out of mind. It was only after implementing the act of speaking of sexual misdeeds in Confession that the church was able to rein in the illicit acts. By reversing the movement of illegitimate sex from the outlying regions of observation to the confession booth, the Church was then able to control the discourse with which the explicit acts are discussed.
The confessor was implicated for the wrong doing, for sexual misdeeds, by the Church and more specifically by the priest. It was a singular critic concerned with the idiosyncratic understanding of doctrine whom then posed as judge and juror. By dictating penance, the listener, the priest, had all authority of discourse and control over what would essentially be deemed “wrong,” or “bad.”
This is precisely how Nietzsche argues the engendering of morals is contrived—by viewing, criticizing the other. Because concepts denoting superiority coincide with the “soul,” the priestly class, when comparing themselves to the other, the “lower,” the plebeian class, concludes that the priestly class is “higher,” above, in both position and spirituality, closer to heaven and, by propinquity, closer to god. From this distinction, a moral system based on distinction is derived, not one based on self-reflection and self-consideration, rather on accusation and self-promoting comparison.
Foucault considers these moralistic contrivances: From the position of the listener the confessor is discussing sexual grievances. From this act the listener becomes a participant in a voyeuristic act, an outsider made privy to the most personal acts, intentions, fetishes, desires, and lusts, of the physical and psychological interior of the confessor. At the inception of discourse, the telling, it was only required that the act itself be explained to the priest. After time, it wasn’t enough that only the sins were revealed as categorical acts—each individual person must be ascribed to the misdeeds. Priests then demanded the acts be personalized, detail be given concerning the physical places that were touched, that did touching, the severity of contact—the force and delicacy. Along with concise physical descriptions of the actions was a psychological profiling of the act necessary to discourse. The confessor was required to give intimate details about the thoughts and lusts that were experienced during the misdeed. The more personal the revelation, the more interesting, arousing, the confession for the priest.
Written shortly after the end of the Victorian Era, in Georges Bataille’s pornographic novel, Story of the Eye, Simone proceeds to a confessional booth in the culminating and most-perverse sexual misdeed in the novel. In the scene, she begins a confession while the narrator waits outside the booth, peeking through a slit in the door, watching her confess, listening to her confession. The priest remains mostly silent, listening, ever listening. She breaks from her standard admission, “Father, I still have not confessed the worst sin of all...The worst sin of all is very simply that I’m tossing off while talking to you” (60). Bataille’s demonstration is perhaps, as hyperbole, the most extreme of a Foucaultian power/pleasure relationship. The priest continues to remain silent, aroused at the very confession he listens to. Simone, being the confessor, the one to sacrifice power, fetishizes the experience, posing the role as the exhibitionist. As long as the priestly class insists the details of confession become more intimate, then the confession will be more arousing for the voyeur and engender a greater desire to arouse the voyeur for the exhibitionist, for the teller.
Because the explicit nature of discourse and sexuality was held primarily in the public space of the confessional booth, and with the proliferation of said discourse, otherwise tacit endeavors were forced to the common, local populous, where the masses could be governed. Population was then something to be guarded, administered and fostered by the state. The idea that there were “public (secular) interests” at stake in human sexuality began the process, which is still ongoing, of constituting new and increasingly explicit discourses for sex, which in turn brought sex into the realm of greater scrutiny, more clearly defined “norms” and forms of legitimization, and conversely, more and more various and articulated forms of “perversion.”
This marks the inception of Scientia Sexualis, or the study of sexuality. The complicating of the terms of perversion marked a new hierarchy in discourse. There was a “sexual norm”, sex for reproduction, and sexual “perversion,” where all other deviations were prescribed. In “The Perverse Implantation” Foucault addresses some of the specific ways these new (medical, scientific, psychiatric, legal) discourses for defining (so as to regulate) sexuality changed the way we think about the individual in relationship to his/her own desire. Where the Church’s ban against “sodomy” constituted a set of non-procreative prohibited acts and condemned them as deeds, the new idea of the “homosexual” constituted the desire for such acts as “inherent to the individual,” and created a whole new class of persons. Instead of a person performing a “perverted” sexual act, the act came to be seen and understood (constituted by the discourse) as a symptom of the innate “nature” or “character” of the individual involved, evidence of (as an early psychiatrist put it) “an hermaphroditism of the soul.”
Henry Miller’s work, Tropic of Capricorn, affirms much of the Victorian practices of confession but also recreates a discourse with which he reveals his confession. Miller’s text breaks down the Foucaultian discourse of Victorian ideology wherein confession leads to subordination, which leads to exhibition, and recreates a discourse more appropriate to that of the individual. Miller demonstrates that confession as discourse, in the form of the autobiographical novel, is congruent with “teaching,” “instructing,” with sacrificing power and also affirming a noble, or higher, status in the public or secular eye.
Miller’s critique of the world around him, his interiority, is the foundation for his confession. By viewing the public, criticizing them, he is able to confess that in the masses of reprehensible people, he is indeed included in the horde. Miller is consumed with these thoughts, consumed with the desire to judge and criticize. Miller becomes obsessively concerned with movement, staying in motion, maintaining a dynamic existence, “I mustn’t think about Pompeii or I’ll be sitting down and writing a book again. Keep moving, Henry. Keep your mind on the music” (Miller, 105). Being stuck in New York City, on Broadway, which Miller refers to so delicately as a “cunt-like cleft,” results in a panic, a need for movement. Stagnancy, for Miller, becomes the only real threat. To stand still would allow Miler time to think, to visually explore, and his mind to wander and criticize. And with that criticism, that fear, Miller deals with “cutthroats, with cannibals, only they are dressed up, shaved, perfumed, but that’s all they are—cutthroats, cannibals” (Miller, 103).
Employing an outward criticism is how Miller begins each of his reoccurring arcs throughout Capricorn. The narrative arc is not one seen in traditional Greek drama of rising action, climax, and denouement. Miller’s arcs are frequent, panicked, resemble more of a wavelength, a constant, ever-fluctuating parabola. This sound-wave-arc begins with a criminalizing reflection on New York City, a movement to acceptance, and finally participation.
Miller’s traverse across Foucault’s Victorian diagnosis is narratively remarkable, from guilty confessor to empowered estranged in less than two pages. It is here, in the perverse where Miller deconstructs Foucault. The strange is no longer strange, the perverse is pursued, and by openly admitting to such, by controlling the language of the discourse, Miller appropriates the taboo discourse and redefines the medium formally owned and administered by church, science, and the law. After stepping off the cunt-like cleft of Broadway, Miller enters the Roseland, where he sees a group of “taxi girls all diaphanously gowned, powdered, perfumed” (Miller, 104). And as he passes, “Into each and every one of them, as I shuffle about, I throw an imaginary fuck. The place is just plastered with cunt and fuck and that’s why I’m reasonably sure to find my old friend MacGregor here” (Miller, 104). Before he ever finds Mac, Miller has confessed a lustful intention, has described in detail what he wishes, intends to do with each woman he passes. He sacrifices power to the reader, the voyeur. He immediately pushes the boundaries of confession into the strange, where the scientific commands the domain of discourse, of perversion, “throwing a fuck into each and every one respectively regardless of age, sex, race, religion, nationality, birth or breeding” (Miller, 106).
Miller’s nominal denouement occurs when he enters the “dance floor” where there is a sign posted “No Improper Dancing Allowed” in a club where prostitution, stripping, and all manor of Victorian perversions are not only occurring but encouraged. What is interesting to note about this small detail, a sign directing those against the desired actions, is Miller’s destruction of Sassure’s sign and the signifier. No longer does the language have a prescribed meaning. “No” may, empirically and apparently, mean “Only”. Both adverbs intended to limit or restrict a verb, but when one is supplanted for the other, that action ensuing is exactly opposite. The distance between the sign and the signifier becomes a grey are, a blurred definition between restriction and desire. It is this attention to destruction and redesign where Miller is disrupting discourse, redefining terms and appropriating a new discourse, one not based on a Victorian ideal, but still centered around confession and transfer of power.
Miller’s imagery of immediate destruction, a breakdown of body and historical clarity marks his descent, his move from being a critic of the public to a participant. Miller seems preoccupied with Pompeii; he spent time in Europe, read Greek literature, studied modern history. He would have known that the events at Pompeii, the multitude of those that died, were not actually overrun with lava, did not suffocate from the gas. His text insists otherwise, “I’m standing knee deep in lava beds and the gas is choking me. It wasn’t the lava that killed the Pompeiians, it was the poison gas that precipitated the eruption. That’s how the lava caught them in such queer poses” (Miller, 105). It was, in fact, the ash that caught the Pompeiians in their strange pose, that burnt a dry hermetic seal over the dermis, cooked away body leaving only the shell of ash and soot. Miller’s imagery in this section suggests an exacting explosion, a brief millisecond that caught them all in horrific gazes and poses. These descriptions more-so suggest a nuclear blast, a catastrophic explosion that immediately burns away a coterie of souls. No longer is he separate from the slovenly and the sick, he is apart of them. His legs are being burnt from the “lava” right along with them. “If suddenly all of New York were caught that way—what a museum it would make! My friend MacGregor standing at the sink scrubbing his cock...the abortionists caught red-handed...the nuns lying in bed masturbating one another...the auctioneer with an alarm clock in his hand...the telephone girls at the switchboard...J.P. Morganana sitting on the toilet bowl placidly wiping his ass...dicks with rubber hoses giving the third degree...strippers giving the last strip and tease…” (Miller, 105). Miller opts not to omit himself from the crowd of dying Pompeiians, he also chooses factions from every economic strata that will die along with him. It is his inclusion that separates Miller from the Victorians, from the scientists, from those that generate discourse and then prescribe guilt, establish morals based on the other, the strange, and the weird.
Out of destruction, the total annihilation of species, like Pompeii, arises the new. Miller’s text insists on this repetition, that the human experience is always individual, cannot be prescribed or controlled through authoritative discourse, and that the only mode of resistance to Foucault’s repressive theory is to create, and recreate an individual discourse, separate from institutions.
Because the origins of sexual repression are rooted in religiosity and a Victorian ideal, one can assume that Miller’s derivations are examined from a secularist; this, however, is not the case. Miller’s childhood friend, Grover, demonstrates that the impetus to control discourse is neither religious nor secular but singular, personal, based on individual desires and expressions. Given the context of the originations of sexual discourse and the Catholic confessional, one could conclude that to combat the power center of discourse could be to seek a secularist ideology. Foucault would argue that only during the Victorian era, when sexuality was moved from the home to the confessional booth, was the power of discourse held within the Catholic church. Soon after there was the immediate move to a scientific explanation of disorders and perversions, moving the power of discourse to a shared position of the Church and the state. For Miller, it’s important that the denial of power is manifest by a desire to express individuality. Grover Watrous has a revelation of sorts, one not explicitly stated in the text of Capricorn, but a movement from a recalcitrant youth to an exemplary member of the religious community. He never preached loyalty to a congregation, Grover abided by a set of personal standards, an individual discourse, based on the teachings of Christ. Grover was a filthy boy, born with a clubfoot, smoked at a young age, was abused by his father and ignored by his mother; he was also a genius, an immaculate piano player. Grover’s mother tried to get him to quit smoking but “Grover was a genius and a genius had to have a little liberty, particularly when he was also unfortunate enough to have been born with a clubfoot” (Miller, 168).
It is through Grover’s clubfoot that Miller filters his identity. Because Grover is constantly subject to the foot, affecting the way he walks, causing, at times, pain, his discourse of power is manipulative and deceitful. Grover could manipulate others with his impairment, he was able to center his power on the side of the priestly class. By evoking the guilt of others, he becomes the “listener” of the guilt, the receiver of the confession. Sitting at the piano Grover would often pound the keys and curse loudly, “I can’t get the fucking thing right!” (Miller, 169). His mother attributed these fits of rage to his genius, allowing yet another outburst and misbehavior slide. Grover, being a clever boy, “was sly enough to exploit his bad foot; whenever he wanted anything badly he developed pains in the foot” (Miller, 169). Grover’s poor behavior was excusable because of his infliction, exploiting the kindness of others.
The goal for Miller is not to move from the lower, plebeian status to the priestly class; the ambitions of every man, for Miller, is to seek an individual understanding of truth. The transfer of power from the lower to the higher class is just a lateral move, there is no improvement, no greater understanding of capital-t truth. Grover, despite his proclaimed genius and incredible ability, didn’t understand this until he left his neighborhood town, to return later a man of God.
Miller continues to maintain that the power center of individuality is based in language and more importantly discourse. When Grover was child, he developed a discourse in order to manipulate those around him, also to express his inability to complete and perform complex and difficult sonatas on the piano. But years after the piano playing, after Grover left the neighborhood, he retuned, and Miller carefully recounts the time.
Grover was clean, there was “almost a perfume emanating rom him” (Miller, 170). He appearance was immaculate and his disposition staid. Grover had acquired for himself a new discourse, and with a new understanding of individuality. Miller notices this most poignantly when Miller’s sister inquires about his new faith, telling him about the new preacher at the local Episcopalian services. “Grover had just slipped in something about having seen a new heaven and a new earth...for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, he said, mumbling the words in a sort of hysteric glissando in order to unburden himself of an oracular message” (Miller, 171). The “oracular message” was Miller’s sister telling Grover about the new bowling alley in the basement of the the church. Grover continues on with these rote phrases, “He that overcometh shall inheret all things,” and “and I will be his God, and he shall be my son” (Miller, 171, 172). For Grover, these teachings became individual. He separated himself from the congregation, didn’t attend any particular church or abide by any religious dogma other than what he interpreted the teachings of God to be.
Miller finds joy, a sense of peace in the rote phrases of Grover’s beliefs. In the small parabola of the narrative arc this particular story takes, during the moment when Miller delights in Grover’s language, is the climax. “Grover’s bright new language always caught me in the midriff and through inordinate laughter cleansed me of the dross accumulated by the sluggish sanity about me” (Miller, 173). This seems unreasonable that a man who previously referred to Broadway Avenue as a “cunt-like cleft” and the people of the city as “cut-throats, cannibals.” Why then would Miller be intrigued by someone spouting generic religious jargon in a mantra-like chant? It is precisely because of the conviction and individuality that Grover possesses. He now believes, absolutely believes in the words he’s saying.
When Grover first returns to Miller’s home to see Miller’s sick father, all of the family members, save Henry, think him to be crazy. The insanity that Grover displayed was an absolute dedication to truth, perhaps even to the point of unreason—but unreason or reason is not important, only individual discourse and relocating the locus of power to the self is what’s important. Grover often puzzled on the existential matters of life. Given his self-derived knowledge about God and His teachings, Grover was wholly concerned to address issues such as mortality. “[Death] puzzled Grover because nobody could convince him that death was not a certainty, whereas anybody could convince anybody else that any other destination was an uncertainty. Convinced of the dead certainty of death Grover suddenly became tremendously and overwhelmingly alive” (Miller, 175). This passage works for Miller in two ways: there is a backhanded criticism of societies lack of conviction, while also reaffirming Grover’s desire to live, and to make his existence personal.
For Miller, inside everyone is a small insanity, and in that insanity there is where truth lies. Miller’s admiration of Grover is his absolute insanity of conviction. Miller notes that every man who has learned any bit of truth was a little cracked, crazy (Miller, 175). But these other men only paled in comparison to Grover. “Other men, other great men, have destroyed a little here and there, but these few whom I speak of, and among whom I include Grover Watrous, were capable of destroying everything in order that the truth might live” (Miller, 175). The individual was destroy the confines implemented by the Organization. Miller has accepted, become a participant, of Grover. Grover’s insanity reveals to Miller the concise location of the power of discourse within each individual.
As insane as Miller purports the the world to be and as insane as his family thought Grover was, there is a locus of power within the individual, otherwise, the power is just a form of manipulation and control. For Miller, it is the method of confession, a creation of his own discourse used in order to shift the centers of control. For Grover, it is a kind of Christian mantra frequently repeated in order to keep his mind from being tempted to disbelief. Miller may not personally agree with Grover, thinks “It is a pity that he had to use Christ as a crutch, but then what does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?” (Miller, 176).
Miller’s work inhabits the recurring narrative arc in order to display the repetition of personal discourse. For Miller, it’s absolutely necessary to constantly be recreating discourse and understanding the transfers power and its location. His overarching structure resembles Foucault’s work in History of Sexuality, based on a Nietzschean genealogy: the stories and references come without time markers, move between space and time with no linear model to guide the reader. Because the progression and death of languages is an ebb and flow relationship, so will the locus of power be ever-changing. Miller’s work suggests that there should never be one organization to maintain control of discourse in order to police intentions, desires, lust, sex, and individuality. It is the responsibility of the person to be ever vigilant when defining and redefining a personal discourse.
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