THE PRIESTLY APPARATUS: DUMÉZIL, DELEUZE AND GUATTARI, AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION OF DESIRE

Abstract

This paper examines the structural and theoretical connections between Georges Dumézil’s comparative mythology and the critical philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, with particular focus on the Indo-European organisation of desire. Beginning with the enigmatic passage about the priest and the cardinal directions in A Thousand Plateaus, the paper demonstrates that Deleuze and Guattari establish a profound structural resonance with Dumézil’s documentation of tripartite functional ideology. Through analysis of the Indian legend of King Yayāti and its Indo-Iranian parallels, the paper traces two generational transformations of power: first, the capture of desire through cursing and peripheral exile; and second, its deepened captivity through a transcendental apparatus of redemption. The central argument is that Deleuze and Guattari do not reject Dumézil’s structural analyses but rather overturn them: they identify Indo- European ideological structures not merely as principles of social organisation, but as apparatuses of capture that organise desire, mutilate the subject, and produce dependency on state mediation. The figure of Mādhavī, the virginal matrix of the functional apparatus, serves as a key illustration of this operation. The paper concludes that Indo-European structure is not an archaic relic but continues to organise modern forms of subjectivity.