206THE ALLURE OF THE VENEERthe patient, leading Freud to conclude that the wolves represented his fa-
ther and thus the menace of castration he posed. Freud’s interpretations
of the unconscious and sexuality, and the tendency of the Viennese psy-
chologist to reduce the human experience to the Oedipal cycle with its
centrality of the phallus as symbol, proposed transcendental politics of
the One. In opposition, Deleuze and Guattari focus on the multiplicities
that congregate, like packs and swarms: bodies of intensities bearing the
potential for becoming. From this vantage point, the taxidermy wolf of
Inert emerges as an iconic representation of the incongruity of Freud’s
operation, which imposes a metaphorical domestication of the wolf in or-
der to grant its figural functioning as a psychoanalytic figure. Deleuze
and Guattari argued that “Freud only knows the Oedipalized wolf or dog,
the castrated-castrating daddy wolf, the dog in the kennel, the analyst
bow-wow.”^43 This reduction of the animal is doubly performed in Inert by
the representational trope combined with the medium of taxidermy that
castrates the castrating daddy-wolf figure with its lower part of the body
flattened in the shape of a rug (covering the floor, underneath which might
be a hole)—thus it appears clear that this wolf has been biologically and
metaphorically rendered inert on multiple registers. To a certain degree,
this interpretation of Inert has moved further afield from the surface of
the work than I would normally contemplate in this context. However, it
is one nonetheless linked to the unconscious dimension of hunting prac-
tices that reaffirmed patriarchal values in society and upon nature. Inert’s
allure, its proneness to lean toward the symbolic register, is rich with nar-
ratives rooted in far too real conflictual human/animal relations. Thus
far, I have argued that the use of materiality in art should be anchoring
something of the human/animal relationship and its transhistorical be-
coming, which led to the materialization of the art object. Yet, in opposition
to the general mistrust for symbolism that has pervaded art historical
analysis in human/animal studies, this piece requires a more careful con-
sideration of the problematics at stake.
Galanin was born in Sitka, in southeastern Alaska, and his work is
openly concerned with the traditional crafts that have shaped the history
of Native Americans. The artist’s statements about the piece point toward
different interpretations. “Mainstream society often looks at indigenous
or Native American art through a romantic lens, not allowing a culture
like my Tlingit community room for creative sovereign growth. The