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PARTISAN REVIEW
is a defensive attitude, which I cannot help . But I think that
nothing will stop "progress" and that, as you say , this will be the
case some day . Assuming that, the question to ask ourselves is,
"How will sexual roles be distributed? What will fathers do and
what will mothers do when the child is no longer carried in the
uterus?"
Here we are in the face of a humanity whose character is
completely unforeseeable. In the present state of things, one at–
titude one might have , a defensive one , would consist of saying,
"There must be preserved, along a straight Freudian line , the
distribution of the paternal function, on the one side , and the
maternal function , on the other, so that the speaking subjects who
are constructed, psychically and not just biologically, can have
the "normality" which we think of as theirs . And what is this nor–
mality?
It
is that which succeeds in getting along, surviving, in
the Oedipal triangle." This position seems to me more and more
untenable. I think that we will not be able to hold on for very long
to this position - the fathers on one side, the mothers on the other.
There will be mixtures of these two functions, which will give rise
to a very different psychic map of humanity . One will no longer
have the good neurotic caught between Daddy and Mommy . One
will have a psychic structure much closer to what is seen now as
borderline, I suppose, which does not necessarily mean that it will
be outside the social order.
EHB:
Without going so far as reproduction
ex utero,
what do you
think the future of the family will be like? What changes do you
see occurring?
JK:
This is difficult to say. I think that you are asking me what is, in
the end, a social question. Now, I take very seriously the threat of
a crisis - an economic crisis affecting the whole world. There are
two solutions to this . I think that this threat of a crisis, which is
real, stems from the entrance of the Third World on the scene,
from the lack of resources, and , of course, from the way these
problems are handled. Either, then, this crisis will be resolved
through a war of extermination , or- and I am inclined personally
to believe the second alternative - it will find a solution in, to put
it brutally, sovietization.
If
we are lucky, our ruling groups will
find reformist solutions to the internal conflicts of the Western
countries, which will move the Western world in a social-
