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One of the many ironies intrinsic to the Oedipus complex is that, although it stands for that structural principle that we know as patriarchy—i.e., the law of the father—the phrase “Oedipus complex” bears the name of the son, Oedipus, not that of the father Laius, whom he unwittingly killed and supplanted. The subjectivity analyzed and immortalized under the aegis of the Oedipus complex is not that of the father —who cares about him? he's dead—but that of the son, left to deal with his insufficient and apparently interminable guilt. While the phrase “le nom au père” designates the paternal anchor that holds down the symbolic order, it is actually le nom du fils, Oedipus, the son's name, which stands for the entire complex of associated psychosexual desires and drives, together with their familiar signifiers, including “le nom du père.”
The father is also notably absent from the social contract that constitutes his legacy, the genealogy of which is narrated, for example, in Totem and Taboo; this contract, according to Freud's narrative requires—is predicated upon—father's absence. The primary legacy of the Oedipal murder is a “group psychology” that forges solidarity through identification and collective guilt—not paternity, in other words, but fraternity (among the primal horde). It is still fraternity, another name for the “male bonding” of the omnipresent boys' club, rather than paternity, that is at the heart of many of our social ills, albeit a fraternity of men who usually end up being fathers too. (The checkered record of American men as fathers—the need to legislate against “deadbeat dads” or otherwise ensure that Father keeps his “promise” to the family—indicates a certain reluctance among American men to be fathers. And who can blame them?) America is run, not by a father or even a father figure, so much as a bureaucratized, corporatized network of interlocking, competitive fraternities—good ol' and not so good, not so ol', boys.
Father is not the point. The