Talk:Anti-Oedipus

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The article doesn't mention, confirm or deny the existence of, actual clinical schizoanalysis. Are there any persons who self-identify as schizoanalysts? -Peter


 * I suppose we could say Guattari was one when he was working with patients at La Borde. But I don't think the point of schizoanalysis is really to be practiced clinically in the same way as Freudian analysis. 2601:642:C481:4640:A580:7153:5936:E118 (talk) 06:41, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Definition?
"The most precise definition however is given in Felix Guattari's untranslated work Cartographies Schizoanalytiques as "the analysis of the incidence of Dispositions [agencements] of enunciation upon semiotic and subjective productions, in a given problematic context". Put in other terms, it is the practice of meta-modelization of endo- and exo-referentialities,  and the modelization of the transformation of such referencialities."

Both "definitions" are more than 50% jargon, meaningless to any casual reader and with no clues as to context. A better definition is badly needed.

English translation
When was the English translation published? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mewmewmew (talk • contribs) 04:43, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Published in French in 1972. English translation appeared in 1977. DionysosProteus (talk) 12:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Desire machine
While stub sorting, I came across Desire machine in the Lit-stub category. I transferred it to Psych-stub and fixed a link to this page (capitalization error). However, there is no information about "desire machines" on this page. I'm suggesting a merge, but cannot do it myself, since I have absolutely no knowledge of this subject. BonsaiViking 17:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe
I created the page. I dont know much about Wikipedia organization. I created the page because it is a term used frequently in Anti-Oedipus. My hestation in merging the two would be that one is the name of a Book, and the other is a concept that is explored in the book.

I think so
To my understanding, "desire machines" are rarely talked about anywhere outside Anti-Oedipus, so I think it would be a good idea to merge the articles. Desire machines are a key concept of Anti-Oedipus, so it is only sensible to list information on desire machines under the 'key concepts' section in the Anti-Oedipus article.

Not even the right title
The Hurley/Seem/Lane translation of Anti-Oedipus uses the term desiring machines, not desire machines. But concerning merging: it really depends how much we can expand on the topic. The article has no content and should really be a redirect for now. But if the subsection in the article becomes long enough, it could get its own article.

Alternately - and I'd say preferably - we could finally get to writing an article on desire in psychoanalysis and use Deleuze and Guattari's concept (in fact it was Guattari who coined the term - see Dialogues, p. 13) of the desiring machine as a counter- or re-conceptualization of desire in Lacan. - yeah that would be my vote: redirect to new article desire (psychoanalysis) and merge 'content'. Pteron 01:47, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Deleuze & Guattari's terminology
Reading the above discussion regarding the merging of the 'desiring machine' page with that of generic 'desire' as a psychological drive got me thinking....

One of the most important (and confusing) things about the authors is the amount of neologistic terms they coined, and the extent to which their definitions of these terms (including 'desire') differs from traditional meanings. So, my suggestion for Capitalism and Schizophrenia, ie. the books AO and ATP, would be to have a parent category 'Capitalism and Schizophrenia' which, to the extent that it is possible, contains a section for each term, ie. desiring machines, assemblages, Body without Organs, etc., and also contains links to seperate pages for each of the two books. These pages would then, ideally, be broken into abstracts and (optimistically ) chapter descriptions (especially in the case of ATP, which is in part a collection of disparate, previously published essays). Reference in these pages to the aforementioned terms would then link back to the parent category, ie. Cap and Sch.

Too ambitious? And, while I'm at it, is this even the right discussion page for my proposal?

Is this really a neo-marxist work?
I'll qualify my statements by saying that I am a relative new to D&G but I read this book not as neo-marxist work, but as a neo-anarchist work. The overarching thesis of the book is anti-teleological. That's its whole point. It uses capitalism, psychoanalysis and the Oedipus myth as its straw men, but the implication is that any theory with a telos in its supposition is equally open to critique from their vantage point. How can the work be neo-marxist given their basic premise?


 * the purpose of linking Anti-Oedipus to the "neo-marxist" wiki entry is to help the reader understand that the book uses a great deal of marxist terminology in a modern way, the term "neo-marxist" is very broad and does not refer to a particular reading, slant, or school (although sometimes it does for some people who can't think up specific words to use, but I don't see why that narrow usage should prevent the broader term from being used.


 * Calling it "neo-anarchist" would not convey the importance of Marx as a foundation to their thesis. I suppose then calling it "marxist" would be a better, do you agree? About it's anti-teleological aspect - well that is a good point and it is debatable. But because of the works narrative rhetoric it can be read differently by dfferent folks.


 * I suggest that it should be understood both as a marxist and anarchist work. While some marxism, particularly in its DIAMAT versions, is teleological, Marx himself is more "open" than that, and it's this aspect of his work that D&G develop (in a similar vein to Negri's reading of Marx in Marx Beyond Marx (1979)). DionysosProteus (talk) 12:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Deterritorialisation
I've started to clean up the article a little, but I note that the section on deterritorialisation is especially in need of attention, which I'm not sure I'm going to have time to give it right now. D is not about a movement from arborescent to rhizomatic... The move from primitive to despotic, for example, is accomplished via D, as is the subsequent move from despotic to capitalist. And there are three terms - I've adjusted the section header to reflect this - territorialisation (as in Guattari's later "existential refrains"), deterritorialisation (leaving the territory), and re-territorialisation (not just a return to the territory). Deterritorialisation is the process that Marx and Engels describe with the phrase "all that is solid melts into air" in the Manifesto. We also need to draw a better distinction between "decoding" (in the collective assemblage of enunciation) and "deterritorialisation" (in the machinic assemblage of bodies). Anyhow, I won't delete for now, but thought it was worth giving a heads up here. DionysosProteus (talk) 12:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Most-browsed Deleuze and Guattari articles
I wanted to find out which of the D&G articles garners the most traffic on this site. I thought this might be of interest to other editors interested in the D&G articles. All stats for June 2010:


 * Gilles Deleuze 11,862
 * Rhizome (philosophy) 2,887
 * Félix Guattari 2,623
 * A Thousand Plateaus 2,341
 * Anti-Oedipus 2,191
 * Deterritorialization 1,326
 * Capitalism and Schizophrenia 1,208
 * Haecceity 1,173
 * Body without organs 1,130
 * Plane of immanence 1,057
 * Affect (philosophy) 647
 * Arborescent 545
 * Multiplicity (philosophy) 823
 * Desiring-production 402
 * Minority (philosophy) 388
 * Schizoanalysis 369 (though article had been deleted to a redirect)
 * Immanent evaluation 344
 * Subjectivation 330
 * Reterritorialization 319
 * Line of flight 317
 * Difference (philosophy) 300
 * La Borde clinic 282
 * L'Abécédaire_de_Gilles_Deleuze 224
 * A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity 184

Also related are: But neither article has any substantial treatment of D&G
 * Noosphere 5,896
 * Individuation 3,658

DionysosProteus (talk) 14:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Cool. It surprises me that here A Thousand Plateaus is more researched than Anti-Oedipus. I think among intellectuals is the other way around. --Sum (talk) 11:36, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, AO certainly generated a far greater furore at the time. It's possible this is because it's subject was more "traditional", whereas, I would argue, TP is the more radical work. These days the language of TP is everywhere (I was at a talk at the Tate Modern recently in which all the participants were talking Deleuzeoguattarian, though without saying so; I even heard "rhizome" used in the DG sense on Channel 4 news here a little while ago), whereas AO is more difficult to find. The AO critique is very frequently misrepresented and misunderstood too, in my experience. Certainly, most psychoanalytically-informed criticism in the arts remains Lacanian rather than anti-Oedipal. DionysosProteus (talk) 18:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits and expansion
I've added a couple of non-free images for identification and commentary and fleshed out the schizoanalysis section--though it's just a start and at the moment still needs further work to become fully comprehensible. I'm working on the basis of the four theses of schizoanalysis from the fourth section of the book. I've also gone through the other sections, providing references where I can and tidying up the text to make it clearer. It's not a fresh, from the ground up, edit of these sections, however, so the jumps in the logic of the exposition are still a little abrupt at times. I'm correcting all page references to the widely-available continuum edition, which is also the one available on google books preview. I'm using the MLA author-date citation system throughout (as in Hamlet and elsewhere). I don't have many secondary sources to hand--when I first read AO, there weren't any available really, so I've gotten used to working without them--but Holland's book is previewable on google books and I have a copy of Buchanan's book on its way to me. I hope to have the time to flesh out the references with citations from them at some stage.

I've removed this:
 * In the family, Foucault explains, the young develop in a "perverse" relationship, insofar as they learn to love the same person that beats and oppresses them. The family therefore constitutes the first cell of the fascist society, as the child will carry this love for oppressive figures into his or her adult life.

because it isn't sourced (the citation pointing to the Preface is clearly wrong, as Foucault doesn't make this argument there). I've also removed this:
 * Deleuze and Guattari say that in a society there is a flow of forces that start from the broadest social structures, descend trough the nuclear family (mummy-daddy-me), and finally invest the individual's unconscious libido, his deepest desires. The unconscious libido of an individual it's the strongest force that conditions him, what really drives him and his behaviour, even contrary to his rational interest.

because it mis-represents their argument--there is no starting from the social structures, nor descent through the family, towards the individual. That's a Freudo-Marxist scheme. I've also adjusted, when not quoting directly from AO, the term "psychic repression" to psychological repression and "social repression" to oppression, in line with the Wikipedia articles and for clarity's sake. Didn't want anyone to get the impression that there's anything supernatural involved, nor that "social repression" is all in the mind (it is, of course, but not only there).

I'm also adjusting the use of "perverse" throughout. It is true that on a few occasions D&G describe the Oedipal mechanisms and psychoanalytic operations as "peverse". In this sense, the word "perverse" is used as a pejorative term. This is because it is a re-territorializing operation on the de-coded flows of desire, for which perversion is the general model (346-347). However, they also draw a further distinction between the neurotic, narcissistic mechanisms of the family (familial neurosis) and psychoanalysis (which re-territorialises on the couch - artificial neurosis of transference (353)), and perversion proper, whose "artificial territories" may resemble families but are not (the masochist, the homosexual, the fetishist, etc.). Perversion as the general model of re-territorialisation comprises Oedipal, familial neurotic instances, as well as "exotic, archaic, residual, private, etc." ones (347). Hence the distinction: "Oedipal, familial lands of neurosis, artificial lands of perversion, clinical lands of psychosis" (350). In this sense, perversion is far from being a pejorative term for them. On the contrary, they declare: "More perversion! More artifice!--to a point where the earth becomes so artificial that the movement of deterritorialization creates of necessity and by itself a new earth" (353). (It is interesting to note in passing that this is an idea that Slavoj Žižek has pinched in his attacks on the ideology of environmentalism, without attributing it--interesting given Zizek's hostility to Deleuze's collaborations with Guattari; though, of course, if he were to accept the anti-Oedipal critique, vast swathes of his published work would be rendered obsolete.)

''Taking a break for the moment, but have added the edits I've done so far... more to come shortly.'' DionysosProteus (talk) 18:01, 24 August 2010 (UTC)