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In this article the author analyses issues of identity with the help of a revised version of the actantial schema, a semiotic tool invented by A.J. Geimas. This model presupposes that mastery is natural, that it is part of the human condition, and only becomes pathological, abusive, or perverse when it supports transgressions. It can thus be seen that the object of Oedipus’ desire, in Sophocle’s play, is not Jocasta but rather to find a remedy for the plague that has struck Thebes, and that this desire motivates a quest for identity at the end of which Oedipus discovers that he is the fetishistic object of the anti-subject Jocasta. A second example of actantial analysis concerns sectarian indoctrination, and shows that the sect is the collective fetishistic object of the anti-subject guru. Where the libidinal universe of subjects is organised around a logic of linking, the narcissistic universe of anti-subjects is organised around a logic of splitting.