Quasi-Immortal Germ-Plasm
“The individual himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends; whereas from another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm …. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance.” Freud, On Narcissism
Something impersonal lives us. But what is it? It’s the quasi-immortal germ-plasm! At least according to the proto-genetic science of late 19th century. Think of a transparent squishy packet, crammed with information, invisible to the naked eye, and just waiting to explode. Think of a cellular bomb; the bomb goes off when sperm and egg collide (lighting up, literally so) and the cells begin to divide to become the appendage, the mortal vehicle known as the human. The sole purpose of the germ-plasm is to produce (via the appendage) another germ-plasm and so continue the flow of generation from one eon to the next. It is quasi-immortal because as long as humans keep reproducing, the germ-plasm will not end. The mortal vehicle that erupts from the germ-plasm to ambulate upon the surface of the earth is the means by which the germ-plasm travels—you, for example, are the lithe and mobile appendage, propelled to cavort through the forest by your own personal germ-plasm (like a biological version of Depeche Mode’s hit song, Your Own Personal Jesus, 1990) and that would assure its own squishy immortality by coercing you join another appendage in the act of reproducing the germ-plasm according to the will of the species.
I say “would” for not all is going according to the immortal germ-plasm’s plan. The reservoir of libido—that mythical force of desire by which the germ-plasm drives you to hanky panky—has been, curiously enough, diverted into a fantasy. The very particularity of that which you desire (whether fuel or fire, if I may please quote Metallica) reveals the fantasy in outline. It is one of the defining features of humanity that, by imagining the future (through the medium of language), we may decide not to reproduce the germ-plasm (a cultural imperative once known as the monastic, but now known as Planned Parenthood). So the germ-plasm‘s force of generation becomes instead a culture; queer-culture or straight, makes little difference in the end, for we all are held in thrall to the enchantment of our own fantasy (though it is only focus-on-the-family straight-culture, claiming fealty to the germ-plasm, that denies there is one).
The germ plasm’s dynamic energy, diverted from gross reproduction to animate your fantasy, now becomes an excess, a daimon, a surplus of psychical force by which you, the mortal vehicle, may wander your own circuitous path to death; wandering, not in service to the development of the immortal species, but rather according to you own strange desire. Please excuse this very technical phrase, but the notion that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (that is: individual development repeats the development of the society/species—the path from primitive to modern), an idea fundamental to Freud’s entire theory and social-Darwinists alike, is here overthrown (by Freud no less, in his great science-fiction work, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920); the four-billion-year command of the quasi-immortal germ-plasm has been countermanded by the death drive (a rather confusing and gloomy name, I’ll admit, like some kind of demolition derby, all those mortal vehicles tearing down the autobahn)—but that is in fact a life drive; one in which “life” may finally be defined, in the face of impending death, according to the occult flows of your own fantasy (beyond satisfaction), and never mind the germ-plasm.
Description of Capricious Forms, 1937, Vassily Kandinsky
