Description

“The unconscious is not a theatre, but a factory,” wrote Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1972), instigating one of the most daring intellectual adventures of the last half-century. Together, the well-known philosopher and the activist-psychiatrist were updating both psychoanalysis and Marxism in light of a more radical and “constructivist” vision of capitalism: “Capitalism is the exterior limit of all societies because it has no exterior limit itself. It works well as long as it keeps breaking down.”

Few people at the time believed, as they wrote in the often-quoted opening sentence of Rhizome, that “the two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together.” They added, “Since each of us was several, that became quite a crowd.” These notes, addressed to Deleuze by Guattari in preparation for Anti-Oedipus, and annotated by Deleuze, substantiate their claim, finally bringing out the factory behind the theatre. They reveal Guattari as an inventive, highly analytical, mathematically-minded “conceptor,” arguably one of the most prolific and enigmatic figures in philosophy and sociopolitical theory today. The Anti-Oedipus Papers (1969–1973) are supplemented by substantial journal entries in which Guattari describes his turbulent relationship with his analyst and teacher Jacques Lacan, his apprehensions about the publication of Anti-Oedipus and accounts of his personal and professional life as a private analyst and codirector with Jean Oury of the experimental clinic Laborde (created in the 1950s).

Félix Guattari (1930–1992), political activist and anti-psychiatrist, met Gilles Deleuze in Paris in May 1969. They coauthored landmark works including the infamous Anti-Oedipus (1972), A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1975), and What Is Philosophy? (1991).
ContentsIntroduction: Love Story between an Orchid and a Wasp 11
Note on the present edition 23
I Texts for Anti-Oedipus 25
1 All Objects Should Be Set in Relation to 27
2 Of the Third Articulation 30
3 Of the Sign, with an Interlude on Faust 38
4 Desire and the Sign 43
5 On What Is to Come 53
6 Infinitives 58
7 Thoughts in No Particular Order 62
8 Notes from 11/14/1970 68
9 Psychoanalysis and Polyvocality 70
10 On How the Audiovisual Realm Is Called upon 79
II Psychoanalysis and Schizo-Analysis 83
1 Full Body without Organs and Infinitivation 85
2 What is Psychoanalysis? 89
3 Instructions for a New Psychoanalysis 94
4 Psychoanalysis and Polyvocality 101
5 Of Anxiety, the Phallic Object and Interpretation 103
6 Before Answering your Questions 107
7 Of Sexuality as the Resultant of Bi-Univocality 118
8 Who Wrote…? 123
9 Really in Lacan the A Plays the Part of 128
10 Miscellaneous Passages from Freud 133
11 Of the Narcissistic Machine 135
12 Of Schizo-Analysis 143
13 Of a Machine Interpretation of Lacan’s “a” 152
III Militant Incidences 159
1 On the Question of “Primordial Bureaucratic States” 161
2 Capitalism is a Kind of Humanism 166
3 The Bourgeoisie is the Overcoding Class 170
4 The Workers’ Movement 173
5 Militant Incidences 176
6 Icons and Class Struggle 188
7 Class Interests and Group Desire 196
IV Pragmatic Linguistics 199
1 Hjelmslev and Immanence 201
2 Power Signs 224
3 On the Problem of the Power Sign 230
4 Power Sign and the Plane of Consistency 246
5 Of Both Types of Break 254
V Planes of Consistency 281
1 Planes of Consistency (1971) 283
2 Journal 1971 299
3 Journal 1971, Continues 330
4 Notes and Journal Entries (February-March 1972) 354
5 Planes of Consistency (1972) 378
6 Notes and Journal Entries (September-October 1972) 396
VI Corrections Made to Anti-Oedipus 409
Glossary of Schizo-Analysis 415
Notes 423