ABSTRACT
Darwin’s primal horde, the earliest frame of human sociality, is organized around a paternal despot who holds total control over all females, all life, within the horde, forcing his sons into a life of celibacy. But exclusion from enjoyment provokes violence; brothers band together and, demanding justice, kill the father. As such, the primordial revolt implies an excess, a subtraction, or a flight in relation to existing social determinations. But what happens after the revolt? The Darwinian answer is an endless rivalry and conflict among the sons. Freud, however, suggests another possibility. Being cannibals, the brothers devour the murdered father, whom they hated and envied at once. But now, having satisfied their hatred, another, contradictory affection, hitherto repressed, makes itself felt: they feel guilty. As a figure of guilt, the dead father becomes ‘stronger than the living one had been’ (Freud 1960: 143). The self-imposed repression takes the place of external repression. The sons seek to annul their deed, the revolt, by a twofold solution: prohibiting the killing of the substitute for their father, the totem, and by renouncing their claim to enjoyment, the incest taboo. With time, the totem animal gives birth to the idea of God, while the social structure develops into institutionalized social and political domination, into the state (ibid.: 150).
