Review: Substance Clad In Shadows - Nietzsche and the Eternal Return

Fanfiction: Substance Clad In Shadows

I've been the prey, praying for a way out of mazes of my own making. Weak, wanton. 

ch 25

He eyes me warily. "You don't know what I want."

But I'm sure I do. Because everyone wants power, but few understand that it isn't titles or speeches or money — it's a whisper in a dark place, a kiss in the corner, a shapeless something in the shadows.

It's in the predatory smile of a young man as he seduces his prey on the cold stone bench of a garden maze. ch 26

I smile at him and inhale, searching for the familiar rush, the beginning of something new, an escape from escape itself:

Freedom. ch 22

He complies, shoving into me hard, hard, hard enough to hurt but it's good, it's the best and I want more. Suddenly I'm moving through the deep, through the dark, through a red haze and an old maze that unfurls like a wrinkled banner and there is no monster here, no blood or victory, there's nothing but release and freedom and up, up, up until I breach the surface of a faraway sun, gasping as I come. The sound is ugly and sharp. ch 22

Is the myth of Daedalus and Icarus well known enough?

King Minos of Knossos had commissioned the Athenian artisan Daedalus to design a labyrinth in which to imprison the monster the Minotaur. Daedalus gave the key of the maze to Minos's daughter Ariadne, who gave it to her lover Theseus so he could enter the labyrinth, slay the Minotaur and find his way out. For this he left her and she became consoled by Bacchus (Dionysius), the god of wine, laughter, excess. For his disobedience Daedalus and his son Icarus are imprisoned in the labyrinth and Daedalus knows the only way out is the sky. He designs wings for them to fly out telling Icarus not to fly too low and be drowned in the sea, nor too high or the sun will melt the wax securing the feathers of his wings. 

In other words, "Take the middle road. Not the road of excess."

Icarus flew too close to the bright hot sun and perished, drowning in the Aegean Sea.

Another variation has Theseus laying a thread down as he enters the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur, so he can find his way out.

And Bella is constantly "following the thread" in her thinking and actions.

But then breathe,

breathe again,

and follow the thread, ch 26

The myth of Daedalus and Icarus

http://www.island-ikaria.com/culture/myth.asp

King Minos and Daedalus had great understanding at first, but their relationships started deteriorating at some point; there are several versions explaining this sudden change, although the most common one is that Daedalus was the one who advised Princess Ariadne to give Theseus the thread that helped him come out from the infamous Labyrinth, after killing the Minotaur.  http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/myth-of-daedalus-and-icarus/

The most important aria in either version is "Großmächtige Prinzessin" / "high and mighty princess", is sung by Zerbinetta. Other important pieces of the opera are the arias of Ariadne "Wo war ich...?" / "Where was I...?", "Ein schönes war es..." / "There was something beautiful..." and "Es gibt ein Reich..." / "There is a realm..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne_auf_Naxos

Bella's beloved Ilse her German Nanny of her childhood, who refuses to drug her and leaves would connect the German language and the music.

Her reply is unintelligible, and then footsteps fade, leaving only Ilse's soft, half-sung German.

"Weißt du, wieviel Mücken spielen

in der heißen Sonnenglut?

Wie viel Fische auch sich kühlen

in der hellen Wasserflut?" ch 24 

Substance Clad In Shadows has a scene near the end at the opera when Turandot is being performed. I would suggest an editing with Ariadne auf Noxos instead. The novel consistently is structured round the metaphor of the labyrinth - the maze - on a real and conceptual level. Ariadne auf Noxos begins with Ariadne in a grief stricken state because Theseus has left her. 

Bella's intention is to free Edward and make him hers. To tear the veil of illusion - maya -  from his being as she has done with the others, who revile her for doing so. She is going to slay the god of her childhood, destroy him as he is now, but she becomes caught in her own maze game, as Daedalus  was caught in his labyrinth. She also tries to fly out but finds there is nowhere to go. She is caught in the Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge/normality/capital, another name for The Maze of mythology. Her only flight is the excessiveness of Eros.

The genius of this fanfic is that hollelujah has fictionalized the Panopticon, the surveillance mechanism in the Foucauldian Grid 
of power/knowledge/normality/capital

If I listen closely enough, I can hear the clink of glasses from the rooms inside, the 

chatter of his 

parents' guests, so perfectly groomed, raised to their places by a million petty rules, by 

the 

captivity of caring for reputation, for convention. ch 26

The ubiquitous people. Always asking, always talking.

"

Good of them to notice I was gone," I reply.

If my father

 notices my sarcasm, he does not acknowledge it. "Everyone notices 

everything. Reputations rise and fall on perception, Isabella. Ours 

could be destroyed in a minute." ch 27

"Randolph Bourne said that 'Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue it likes,

and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.'"ch 9

 "There is no choice," I choke out. "There's 

nothing else." ch 26 

"There is no outside," says Vija Kinski quoting 

Foucault.

There is no knowledge that is not power, my father quotes from behind a stately-looking podium. - Emerson  ch 23

She understands that seduction is the only way out to endure the Grid, the Matrix. An endless seduction that raises the ante, that increasingly challenges, challenges increasingly, within Nietzsche's Eternal Return.

Because it can't be love. I don't want poems or well-wishes and I will not sacrifice for his happiness, I want nothing to do with it if it means letting him go. ch 26 (Ayn Rand)

I am not enough — but I will be enough. ch 26

And what we have here is a relationship from the future. A sign of a possibility from the future. A possibility that we can provide space and time around it to nourish it, to bring it into being. A relationship that does not leave a man wanting a prostitute for the kind of sex he cannot get or ask for anywhere else. A relationship that does not leave a woman bored and yearning and longing. An erotic relationship where each is both prey and predator turning around and around, challenging each other, seducing each other, wanting each other, gratifying each other. Two people who do not need to provoke sex from others for variety, because they create their own variety. 

FANFIC Review: Substance Clad In Shadows

Rodin The Kiss Wrapped in 1 Mile of Twine by Cornelia Parker
"Rodin's 'The Kiss,' re-imagined," the curator closest to me explains in reverent tones. "Tate Britain is exhibiting it as a piece by Cornelia Parker. The artist wrapped Rodin's sculpture in one mile of string to represent the 'claustrophobia of relationships.' You'll notice the contrast of the two materials: the high culture of the marble, and the low culture of the twine." 
ch 19
Fanfiction: Substance Clad In Shadows

Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals

Nietzsche: The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

The first time I lay eyes on him that night, I think of the desires of Nietzsche's true man. ch 10

He thinks I don't notice the looks he receives as we make our way to the roof. Women watch him, wistful or lustful or smug, their memories or fantasies playing out in an unsubtle panoply of desire across their features. And then their gazes inevitably catch me walking behind him, after which they occupy themselves either by glaring at me openly or looking down and away.

Look at yourselves, I want to sneer. Waiting for me to leave his side so you can simper at his every word, laugh at his inane jokes as you surreptitiously ask the universe for a way to master your gag reflex so you can suck him off in a back room well enough to warrant a quick fuck and a phone call the next day.

There are blondes and brunettes and redheads of all different shapes and sizes, but the vacancies in their eyes make them all look the same. They part unwillingly for us.

I'm sure their panties are wet already. Small wonder that he's bored.

For now. chapt 9

First, that the burly man does not appreciate Armani-clad barflys attempting to seduce his girl. "He kissed her!" he yells. ch 10

I see him, I think. I see him. ch 10

 This is a man of hidden wants, buried needs, and I'm going to leave him sated, satisfied but first comes the extraction of his longings and I'll dig, god I'll dig right into him until he's free and mine. ch 11

"I see you," I whisper, and his mouth opens to form words he doesn't yet know. ch 11

Mapplethorpe

Akhmotova - Modigliani

"Your women are too easy, Edward Cullen," I whisper in his ear, nipping at the lobe. "They're so happy just to have you look twice at them, do you know why?"ch 11

"Those women take what they can get from you because they don't know their place. They don't know how bland they are, how bored you are." ch 11

 "'We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.'" ch 19

"I am your danger and your play," I hiss. "And I'm going to make you work for it." ch 11

"Bella, Bella, Bella," he breathes, and I'm one fantasy closer to owning him. ch 11

He is everything right now, my prey and my prayer and my captive, my spoils of war, my conquered city and my friendly fire. He is the thief of my skin,

my monster in the maze,

my sun god, grounded.

He is mine. ch 25

I sink down even further and stare as he comes apart, panting and chanting my name and fuck, fuck, fuck. ch 11

"Edward," I grind out, the sound trial and triumph. "You have to know… I'm the best you're ever going to have." ch 11

_____________________________________

"The Blacks are being more than accommodating right now, especially in light of this… indiscretion, Isabella," he says sternly. "Make sure you remember that when making new friends." ch 11

"Have you found her?" a man asks nearby.

"I've got her. I think she was stuck in the maze." ch 12

____________________________________

Warm us on his skin, my fingers cry plaintively. We are frozen. ch 12

He blinks. Stares. Breathes in, breathes out, and then: "Who are you?"

"I'm the only one in this building who knows what you are," I answer quietly.

He frowns. "What am I?"

+.+.+.++.+.+.+

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain

stitching her eyes before she made a sound...

Her body flaked into transparent salt,

and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem

too insignificant for our concern?

Yet in my heart I never will deny her,

who suffered death because she chose to turn.

[Anna Akhmatova, "Lot's Wife"]

+.+.+.++.+.+.+

"You already know what you are. I've already told you. You're bored. You're bored and you're lazy and you're mine. You think I don't know what it's like? To be surrounded by people who don't know, who can't know. ch 12

He is stone-still beneath my hand, his eyes hard. "Will you ever want more?"

I am silent for a moment, a series of moving images flashing across my mind's eye: domesticity, predictability, two-sink bathrooms, tragically tight smiles, a home in the

Hamptons, a ring on my finger, a swell in my belly, a staff to clean the penthouse and put a roast in the oven each night. Dinners in the city with his colleagues, his former fucks. Cold brunches spent staring at one another with open resentment. And boredom.

Above all, boredom.

Every bit of that life seems a shackle, another lock to keep me in a different kind of cage.

"Peter Ustinov thought it was true... 'through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.'" ch 18

 I'm not complaining – I have a good life. But it's rare to be around someone real."

"Am I real, then?"

His eyes find mine, unreadable. "I think so. And I think... you may have ruined me for others who aren't," he confesses quietly. ch 16

Hamlet and Ophelia - Louise Bourgeois

This Bella is a Nietzschean strategist. We see her like in Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, a woman who is determined to destroy Howard Roark. Dominique has been interpreted for almost 70 years in the psychological swamp of interpretation as a masochist, rather than a Nietzschean strategist. 

We are married by a French clerk, and I wear red dress. ch 28 

Dominique wore black.

In DeLillo's Cosmopolis the Foucauldian character of Vija Kinski tells Eric Packer in a quote from Foucault, "There is no outside." She adds that money no longer refers to anything at all except itself. Money talks only to money. Foucault in discussing the end of representation in language argues that Cervantes Don Quixote is the first novel in the western world to leave the fetters of representation, Quixote refers only to literature. Substance Clad In Shadows is fanfiction and the first one to make clear that the Edward/Bella/Twilight fanfic refers only to other to itself. SCIS refers to Twilight both the books and the films, to other fanfic, and to Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson in their personal lives and their tabloid lives. All these resonate within SCIS as well as the poetry of Akhmatova whose language has been absorbed by hollelujah along with a multitude of quotes from literature past and present, classic and pop. It is a joy to read, and an erotic joy.

DUSTY A Review: SLOW FADING - Outtake

DUSTY - SLOW FADING - HERE

A long outtake from Dusty's POV

YellowGlue is writing a very fine explanation of Dusty's cocaine addiction that while it may not be universal, certainly explains the addiction of so many young people.

THE TERRIBLE CONFRONTATION WITH DEATH

WITH THE VOID

WITH REALITY WITHOUT THE VEIL OF ILLUSION

A REALITY DUSTY SEES. A HYPER-REALITY DUSTY SEES THAT IS UNBEARABLE

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Dusty is seeing the SCREEN

BAUDRILLARD

DUSTY HAS STOPPED FALLING AND HIT BOTTOM

And then, right there in front of everyone, it finally happens.

I'm not falling anymore.

I fall all the way down.

And the bottom?

The bottom is just dark.

Just alone, with chains and weights and locks you had every chance to shrug off and never did.

The bottom is keeping up appearances through a group picture with eight people who have no idea you just died so that the mother of your murderer can have a pretty picture to hang in her living room.

The bottom is feeling the person you thought for so long was love and home and heart and soul to you, looking right at you without any hint of an idea what she's just done.

The bottom is knowing she doesn't see you.

And if it's better this way, it doesn't even matter, because she never did.

If she had, I'd be walking to the Continental next to her instead of Petey.

I'd have her hand in mine instead of my phone.

I'd be kissing the pulse point I squeezed too tightly, instead of deleting her number and dialing his.

Edward has seen through the SPECTACLE of  graduation porno disguising the emptiness of the ritual. And he sees the horror of the ritual to be continued with marriage, children, your own children graduating, finding something you tell yourself you want to do, and all the while just  waiting for death. It is the awareness of DEATH in life that Malabou writes about. Is this what Jesus meant when he said, "Let the dead bury the dead?" Edward knows he is dead on his side of the window/screen, but so are they, only they are not aware that they are dead. So they do not require drugs giving the deadening of awareness. 

This is the theme of:

DUSTY Chapter 35

I try to remember the last time I looked at my girl through unaddicted eyes.

It's been years. I've been lit, guilty, spun, drunk-wasted the entire time. Every day. Through each I love you, through 

each touch, through each don't ever leave me. All the affection I have ever showed this girl has been habit-stained. 

It's never just been me. Ever. Cocaine has always been there. And before coke, it was bud or E, or shots of Jameson 

on my bedroom floor.

I've been dragging her though my bullshit for years, doing what I need to do to keep her, saying what I need to say to 

make sure she's always around. I dump all of my misuses on Bella because she's the only one who can carry them and still love me the same.

After everything I've done, she forever loves me back.

I take another drag from my smoke and pull at the front of my hair.

Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.

I love her too hard.

I love her unsafe.

I love her to the brink.

Dope sick and tipped, I'm looking at her, and she's so small. She's a seventeen-year-old girl, cluttered with scars, manipulated into loving me. My stigma is all over her. I'm all over her. She never even had a chance against a monster like me.

I influenced her.

I sought and took.

I tricked her into loving me, because I did love her first.

I took advantage.

I've hurt her.

I just made her bleed.

That's not the first time. Cocaine smiles.

I've been with other girls, and I've chosen drugs—

I can make this go away, Dusty.

"Bliss,"I whisper with a throat lodged full of regret. I shake my head in an attempt to clear too many thoughts. I can think straight. I haven't had to think with a straight mind in so long.

"Hey," she says soothingly, brushing my too long hair away from my eyes. Baby smiles and my insides constrict. "Tell me," she says.

I clear my throat. "Princess," I say, brimming with anxiety and regret and self-disgust and how could she let me do this to her?

"Fuck," I moan into B's stomach.

Baby rubs my back and speaks quietly. "Tell me, Edward. Tell me..."

She turns my head with her hands on the side of my face, forcing me to be still, giving me no other choice but to look at her.

"I'm clean. I'm clean," I cry.

Looking at her is too hard. It's all there, on every part of her—our whole relationship. It's in the guilt behind her eyes, and in the purple below them. It's explained in her bitten-too-low fingernails, and in the dark bruises I kissed on her neck. It's in her cut lip and tangled hair. It's her sleeping in the back of this car when she should be at home in her bed. It's how she knows how to talk to me, a drug addict on a week long comedown. It's in the way she touches me, just right. It's in the life she's thrown away for this. It's in her uncertain future. It's in her broken friendship with Alice. It's in every lie she keeps.

It's in her beating-for-me heart.

It's in me, able to ignore all of it because I've been too fucked up to care.

And now I'm clean.

But I don't know how I can stay this way.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

For Edward to tolerate then access his power to be, to be an ubermensch (Nietzsche) this is his task in becoming "clean."

To quote Foucault on curiosity: it evokes "a concern", it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; an acute sense of real which, however, never becomes fixed; a readiness to find our surroundings strange and singular; a certain restlessness in ridding ourselves of our familiarities and looking at things otherwise; a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is passing away; a lack of respect for traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential.

Eric Packer cannot reinvent himself either; find the "restless identities stirring":

Maybe he didn't want that life after all, starting over broke, hailing a cab in a busy intersection filled with jockeying junior executives, arms aloft, bodies smartly spinning to cover every compass point. What did he want that was not posthumous? He stared into space. He understood what was missing, the predatory impulse, the sense of large excitation that drove him through his days, the sheer and reeling need to be. (C. 209)

Dusty has decided to leave Bliss knowing she will suffer and knowing what she will realize from it. To become herself. To free her of himself. As Badiou says:

At the heart of love à la française lies the idea of 

freedom. To love truly is to want the other free, and this 

includes the freedom to walk away. Love is not about 

possession or property. Love is no prison where two 

people are each other’s slaves. Love is not a commodity, 

either. Love is not capitalist, it is revolutionary. If 

anything, true love shows you the way to selflessness.

In his recent book, “In Praise of Love,” the French 

philosopher Alain Badiou 

reminds us that love implies 

constant risk. There is no safe, 

everlasting love. The idea 

that you can lock two people’s 

love once and for all, and toss 

the key, is a puerile fantasy. 

For Mr. Badiou, love is 

inherently hazardous, always 

on the brink of failure and 

above all vulnerable. Embrace its fragility, wish your 

beloved 

to be free and you might just, only just, have a chance to 

retain his or her undying gratitude, and love

Now Dusty is out as a book - Innocents

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19214578-innocents

REVIEW: DUSTY by yellowbella:The Mesh of Power - Foucault

DUSTY By yellowbella

The Mesh of Power - Foucault

LINK

Chapt. 14

"She said she didn't teach me to talk that way," I 

mumble, feeling embarrassed. I mean, I was just 

reprimanded by my mother in front of all of my 

friends. She's making me wear this dress and these 

flats. I have more guidelines and rules than I can 

remember. I feel suffocated, like my mom and dad 

are always watching me.

Let me be my own person!

My parents still enforce a bedtime, and I'm not 

allowed to be on the phone after eight. Mom gives 

me crap about how much make-up I wear, or how 

short my skirt is. She doesn't let me eat sugar or 

drink soda. Anytime I ask to spend time with Alice, 

they complain about me never being home. And 

now I can't speak freely without being censored.

Their restraints are too tight, and I'm 

claustrophobic. I can feel myself protesting against 

their hold. It's a pressure in my chest and tension in 

my jaw. It's the anger that runs cold through my 

veins every time I'm told what to do, or left feeling 

untrusted. It's in the pity in Carlisle and Esme's 

eyes, and in every curse word Alice and Edward are 

allowed to say.

It makes me want to scream.

But I don't.

I have a part to play.  

chapt 17

What would her reaction be if I said no instead of 

doing as she asked? Their hold on me is already so 

constricting, I don't even want to think about how 

tight it would get if I started acting out.

"Bella, wash your face or you're not going 

anywhere." Mom drops her purse and keys on the 

coffee table and sits down, showing me how serious 

she is.

I feel claustrophobic. Their rules and expectations 

are strangling me. She wants me to remain a little 

girl forever, but here I am, fifteen ready to be 

eighteen. Ready to get out of here.

It's why I need the Cullens so badly. I need the 

margin they offer, even if it's only for the weekend. 

They supply me with room to breathe, where my 

parents are watching my every move. Alice and 

Edward might make some wrong decisions, but at 

least they're allowed to make their own mistakes. I 

still get crap about listening to music with curse 

words in the lyrics. My mother gives me 

unfavorable 

looks if I wear something she doesn't approve of. 

My dad flashes his stupid badge every time he 

drops 

me off at school. I'm not allowed in the car with 

Edward, I'm not allowed to be on the phone after 

eight, and I'm apparently not allowed to wear 

eyeshadow.

This is just another reason why Edward and I need 

to remain a secret.

No boys until I'm seventeen. That's the house rule. 

My dad thinks boys are a distraction, and my mom 

believes they're only after one thing. They can't 

believe that Carlisle and Esme allow Alice to be in 

such a serious relationship. My mom appreciates my 

friendship with Garrett. But no, no boyfriends. Not 

even Garrett. Even though I'm sure he's who she 

would choose for me. Who knows, if I came to them 

with Garrett, they might 

even make an exception 

to 

this seventeen rule.

But if my mom and dad 

were to learn about me 

and 

Edward, everything would be taken away. My 

weekends and school vacations out of this house 

would be gone, and I'd be stuck here, under their 

microscope.

And maybe that would 

be okay if they'd let me 

keep 

Edward, but they 

wouldn't. I don't know 

what my 

dad would do. I don't really know if Edward would 

get in any kind of trouble or not, but I wouldn't be 

surprised if they made me switch schools. My phone 

would be gone, and the little independence I do 

have. I'd never be allowed back over to Alice's. I 

don't even know if they'd let me be her friend.

All of that is not something I can risk. Not 

yet. 

Not 

at fifteen.

So I wash my face.

chapt 23

Pete and Ben start to give me a hard time. But they 

don't know, and neither does Alice, really. No one 

has parents like mine. They're constantly looking 

for 

change in me … any little imperfection will set them 

off, and all of this will be taken away.

Mom and Esme watch us from the bar. Esme is all 

smiles, happy to see us happy, but Mom's face is a 

little different. Her eyes are looking a little harder … 

deeper. If I dance the wrong way she might say 

something. Or maybe she can tell that Alice has 

been drinking. I don't know, but I hate being under 

her microscope.

As I scope my surroundings, I notice she isn't the 

only one looking. Edward, who has his hands in his 

pockets and his Ray Bans on his face, even though 

it's after twilight, is looking in my direction, too. So 

is Garrett. I'm on this dance floor with my girl, but I 

feel like their stares are pulling me in three 

different 

directions. They all want something different: the 

uncorrupted daughter; a told secret; more than 

friends.

All at once, at a place like this, it's almost too much 

to handle.

Esme puts her arms around me, hugging me tight. 

"Oh, let her stay, Renee. This party is almost over 

anyway."

Mom looks to Dad, and Dad looks at me. It's like 

he's checking me for a crack … an imperfection, a 

sign that he can't trust me. I have many reasons 

they shouldn't trust me, but never have I given him 

one. He's leery, though. Maybe he can't help it. I'm 

his daughter, but it's his job to seek untruth in 

people.

I resent him for it, even though I shouldn't. Even 

though I am a liar; I detest him for knowing what 

to 

look for—for making my life harder than I've 

already 

made it myself.

I can hardly contain my smile, but I do. I don't 

want 

to look too relieved in their decision to let me stay. 

My dad might get suspicious. He might wonder why 

I care so much. He might find the crack.

The Gaze of Surveillance

chapt 28

"How late did you girls stay 

up? " Mom asks. She's 

helping us fold up our fort, 

one blanket at a time.

Mom's pitch is too high. Her 

eyes are too weary. 

What she's really asking is, what were you doing 

that I need to know about? Why did you sleep until 

three in the afternoon?

chapt 37

Until Dad pulls the car into the driveway and asks, 

"What the hell was that, Isabella?"

I hear him clearly.

Settling back into my role is seamless, but not 

facile. With years of practice and the help of my 

body, I sit up straight, I smile, and I force my voice 

out. My eyes light up, my cheeks redden, my 

dimples dip. Everything clicks into place, and I'm 

no 

longer the girl with the underworking heart, but the 

daughter they're used to me being. I'm Isabella 

Bliss.

I play stupid. "What?"

Charlie meets my gaze through the rear-view 

mirror. 

"Edward," he says.

I roll my backed-up-with-tears eyes and smirk. 

"Dad, nothing. It's just Edward."

"We don't like it," Mom chimes in, with so much 

implication behind her tone.

With my hand on the door handle and my stare on 

the back of my mother's head, I say with a little 

more spit than I should, "You don't have to like it."

____________________________________

____________________________________

Quotes from the Mesh of Power - Michel 

Foucault

In their work, they still continue to regard the 

signified of power, the central point, that in which 

power consists, as prohibition, law, the act of 

saying 

no, and above all, the figure or expression: “You 

must not.” Power is essentially those who say, “You 

must not.”

What was the problem that always reappeared, that 

was perpetually re-elaborated? The problem of 

prohibition, essentially the prohibition of incest. 

And, 

from this matrix, from this kernel that would be the 

prohibition of incest, one attempted to understand 

the general functioning of the system

...with the work of Clastres4, for example, a whole 

new conceptualization of power as technology,...

In other words, the West never had another system of representation, expression 

or analysis of power aside from that of rights.....

elementary, fundamental, etc. ideas which are those of law, rule, sovereign, 

commission, etc. 

I believe that we must now free ourselves from this juridical 

conception of power – this conception of power derived from the law and 

sovereign, from the rule and prohibition – if we wish to proceed towards 

an 

analysis of the real functioning of power, rather than its mere 

representation

I will attempt, with regard to sexuality, not to 

conceive of power from the juridical point of view, 

but from the technological...

Consequently, economic processes, diverse 

mechanisms, which in a certain way remained 

outside control, required the establishment of a 

continuous, minute power, in a certain atomizing 

fashion; from a lacunal, global power to a 

continuous, atomic, and individualizing power: that 

everyone, each individual in and of himself, in his 

body, in his movements, could be controlled, in the 

place of total and mass controls.

...this second necessity: finding a power mechanism 

such that, at the same time that it controlled things 

and persons right down to the most minute detail, 

it 

would neither be expensive nor essentially 

predatory 

on society, that it would, on the contrary, be 

exercised through the economic processes 

themselves...(and this became the family).

On the one hand, there was this technology that I 

will call “discipline.” Discipline is basically the 

mechanism of power by which we come to exert 

control in the social body right down to the finest 

elements, by which we succeed in grabbing hold of 

the social atoms themselves, which is to say 

individuals. Techniques for the individualization of 

power. How to monitor [surveiller] someone, how to 

control his conduct, his behavior, his aptitudes, how 

to intensify his performance, multiply his capacities, 

how to put him in a place where he will be most 

useful: this is what I mean by discipline.

what I will name the individualizing technology of 

power, a technology that basically targets 

individuals right down to their bodies, their 

behaviors; it is grosso modo a kind of political 

anatomy, an anatomo-politics, an anatomy that 

targets individuals to the point of anatomizing them.

...but, rather, power must be exercised over 

individuals insofar as they constitute a kind of 

biological entity that must be taken into 

consideration if we actually want to use this 

population as a machine for producing, for 

producing 

wealth and goods, for producing other individuals...

...sex is situated very precisely at the point of 

articulation between the individual disciplines of the 

body and the regulations of population. Sex is that 

through which one can assure the surveillance of 

individuals, and we understand why in the 18th 

century, and precisely in secondary schools, 

adolescent sexuality became a medical problem, a 

moral problem, nearly a political problem of the 

highest importance, because, through – and under 

the pretext of – this control of sexuality, one could 

monitor high schoolers, adolescents, over the 

course 

of their lives, at each instant, even during their 

sleep

Sex is the lever between anatomo-politics and bio-

politics; it is at the juncture of disciplines and 

regulations, and it is in this function that it became, 

at the end of the 19th century, a political 

component of the utmost importance for making 

society into a machine of production.

...whereas, using the concept of the forbidden – 

which, in a certain sense, is more or less isomorphic 

to every society – we couldn’t do a history of 

sexuality. 

...we live in a society which is in the process of no 

longer being a juridical society. Juridical society was 

the monarchical society. From the 19th century 

onward, in societies which appear as societies of 

rights, with parliaments, legislatures, codes, courts, 

an entirely different mechanism of power was 

beginning to seep in, which did not follow juridical 

forms and which did not have the law as its 

fundamental principle, but instead had the principle 

of the norm, but instead, medicine, social controls, 

psychiatry, psychology. We are therefore in a 

disciplinary world.

This is because we live in a society where crime is 

no longer simply and essentially a transgression of 

the law, but rather a deviation in relation to a norm.

I  believe that the way in which the sexuality of 

children was made into a fundamental problem for 

the bourgeois family during the 19th century 

provoked and made possible a great number of 

controls over the family, over parents, over 

children, 

and created at the same time a whole series of new 

pleasures: the pleasure of parents in monitoring 

children, the pleasure of children in playing with 

their own sexuality, against their parents and with 

their parents, an entirely new economy of pleasure 

around the body of the child. We needn’t 

necessarily 

say that parents, out of some sort of masochism, 

self-identify with the law…

___________________________________

DUSTY has fictionalized the essential work of 

Foucault on this subject, allowing us to more deeply 

understand continental philosophy upon which the 

thought of the western world rests on today. Bella's 

dilemma is that she is tightly caught in a very fine 

mesh of the disciplinary judicial  Discourse of 

power, 

while 

Alice 

and Edward are caught in a very loose mesh of 

power based on norms. Bella understands their 

position but they 

cannot understand how tightly she is trapped by 

the 

law of 18 as legal enfranchisement. 

When the secret is exposed Alice and Edward 

discuss how Bella/Bliss has lied to them both and 

their judgement is based on morality and trust 

issues. They are completely unaware of the 

Foucauldian Grid of 

power/knowledge/capital/normality while Bliss is 

acutely aware of them. Bliss is forced to "split" to 

experience a double self. She feels her true self is 

the self she experiences with Edward, but Dusty

has her in his own mesh of power which she is 

unaware of, simply replicating the one from her 

family. 

Her assumed highly controlled alternative self, 

Isabella Bliss, is a LIE. She must keep the secret,

the LIE, to experience what she believes is her 

TRUE 

self, so the lies she must tell to protect "her true 

self" must negate the LIE of her "pretend" self, 

which is a LIE, 

involving her 

in a double negation to establish her own truth, 

which threatens 

to break her and melt her down.


To quote Jean Baudrillard on this:"Children 

play a double game. They are in fact children, 

but they do not BELIEVE they are children 

and 

so they play a double-game," which is what 

we see Bella doing in DUSTY.

Edward is in a different situation. Since the secret is 

forbidden in a more surface awareness of incest, he 

experiences guilt, because the constraints are his 

own based primarily in the beginning on her tender 

age and the incest taboo. He begins to wish for an 

open relationship with 

Bella as she is now old enough that he feels  it will 

be perceived as normal.

The two parental strategies are diametrically 

opposed and they mirror the reality of this in our 

present culture. Extreme control leads to 

transgression and seduction and no or little control 

leads to trying to find limits where there are none 

and 

guilt. But the transgressor has the advantage of 

awareness and consciousness of existential choice, 

but Edward, who has been seduced by "his little 

sister" can only experience guilt and secrecy which 

he tries to 

alleviate with cocaine.

This is a complex fanfiction  with exceptionally 

sophisticated themes, and shocking implications 

that are arousing unconscious fantasies among 

readers who are responding with rage, unconscious 

rage. Many prefer the innocuous fanfics that follow 

the easy template of plot turns and superficial 

understanding that are easy to grasp and require

no serious emotional probing of self.

The neo-liberalism of Esme and Carlisle leaves this 

loosely constructed mesh which does not prepare 

their children for the constraints they will meet,  

while Charlie and Renee bind their daughter and 

doom her to a restricted, disciplined future life.

And this may be the reason for the polarizing 

response to this story. The psychological incest is 

revealed and concealed by the fact that Edward and 

Bella are not blood relatives, but is that really the 

issue in incest taboo. A genealogy of the incest  

taboo reveals that it arose when woman were  

considered as objects to be exchanged for affiliation 

with another group, so the original incest taboo was 

between brother and sister NOT father/mother and 

children. And this has morphed into criminal  

abnormal behavior when no exchange is the 

issue anymore. I am sure the parental  modes of 

parenting are arousing  deeply disturbing feelings.  

This is good. This is what reading is supposed to do  

for the reader.

Now Dusty is out as a book - Innocents

Dusty's Cover for Publication

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19214578-innocents