guattari and deleuze: a political reordering

order-words• . . . issue commands and arrange bodies in

standardized ways• . . . are machines of social control that

watch over the transformations that bodies undergo as they enter and exit institutional and interpersonal relationships

• . . . restrict becomings• “what was important for us was less our

working together than this strange fact of working between the two of us. we stopped being ‘author.’ and these ‘between-the-twos’ referred back to other people.”

pierre-felix guattari

brief bio

• committed birth on april 30th, 1930• student of lacan in paris• worked at la borde (an experimental

psychiatric clinic) under jean oury• cofounded a number of activist groups • committed heart attack on august 29th,

1992

activist groups

• 1965: f.g.e.r.i. (federation of groups for institutional study and research)

• 1967: o.s.a.r.l.a. (organization of solidarity and aid to the latin american revolution)

• 1970: c.e.r.f.i. (center for the study and research of institutional formation)

• 1977: c.i.n.e.l. (center of initiatives for new spaces of liberty)

“minor” works published in english

• chaos and complexity (2008)• the anti-oedipus papers (2006,2004)• the guattari reader (1996)• soft subversions (1996)• chaosophy (1995)• chaosmosis: an ethico-aesthetic paradigm

(1995,1992)• the three ecologies (1989)• molecular revolution: psychiatry and politics (1984,

1972/7)

• collaborations galore . . .

collaborations

• gilles deleuze . . .• eric alliez • jean oury & francois tosquelles• jacques ardoino, g. lapassade, gerard

mendel, rene lourau• franco berardi & paolo bertetto• antonio negri • suely rolnik • luiz inacio lula da silva

antipsychiatry• challenge to established thought in

psychoanalysis, sociology, and philosophy• questioning of the categories and treatments

of mental illness as well as the social relations involving the politics of mental health and group dynamics throughout the community

• departures from lacan:– fantasy and desire belong NOT to individuals but

to groups– the unconscious is NOT structured like a language;

the semiotics of the unconscious are radically heterogeneous and included but were not limited to linguistics

– castration, sublimation, and lack are NOT eternal features of the human psyche but derived instead from social relations and group dynamics

schizoanalysis

• a critique of conventional psychoanalytic theory

• an attempt to overcome nihilist asceticism and free desire from its debilitating capture by the institutions and codes of capitalism and the nuclear family

• schizoanalytic cartography: mapping the transversality of processual subjectivity

transversality

• origins– louis althusser– jean-paul sartre: “it is consciousness which unifies

itself, concretely, by a play of ‘transversal’ intentionalities which are concrete and real retentions of past consciousness” (the transcendence of the ego, 1957)

• definition– the processual subject’s engendering of an

existential territory and self-transportation beyond it

• representations– overview

• mobility, creativity, self-engendering

– extension– interpretation

ecosophy

• also coined by arne naess (deep ecology)

• extension of the notion of ecology to encompass concern for the construction of subjectivity and sociality as well as the environment

• Both a monistic and a pluralistic approach to the interconnectedness of the false dualism of culture and nature

chaosophy

• expansion of the principles of chaos theory into the realms of axiology: aesthetics, politics, and ethics

• The dynamic between the principles of chaos and order and the necessity of both

micropolitics

• the molecular politics of desire• territorial unionization• working-class and community-based

revolutionary politics

gilles deleuze

brief bio

• committed birth on january 18th, 1925• student of jean hippolyte at the sorbonne• classmate of foucault and derrida at the

ecole normale superieure• professor of philosophy at the university

of paris viii in vincennes (an experimental school)

• committed suicide on november 4th, 1995

“minor” works published in english

• francis bacon: logic of sensation (2003,1981)• difference and repetition (1994,1968)• the fold: leibniz and the baroque (1993,1988)• empiricism and subjectivity (1991,1953)• logic of sense (1990,1969)• expressionism in philosophy: spinoza (1990,1968)• cinema 2: the time-image (1989,1985)• masochism: coldness and cruelty (1989,1967)• foucault (1988,1986)• spinoza: practical philosophy (1988,1970)• bergsonism (1988,1966)• dialogues (1987,1977)• cinema 1: the movement-image (1986,1983)• kant’s critical philosophy (1983,1963)• nietzsche and philosophy (1983,1962)• proust and signs (1973,1964)

collaborations and inspiration• felix guattari . . .

• michel foucault

• jean-francois lyotard

transcendental empiricism

• experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking

• plane of immanence vs. plane of transcendence (phenomena vs. noumena, noetic vs. nometic, beings vs. Being, etc.)

ontological univocity

• borrowed from john duns scotus• being is difference• pluralism = monism• reality: a body without organs• there is only an always-differentiating

process, an origami cosmos, always folding/unfolding/refolding

• multiplicity

ethical naturalism

• individuals and their moralities: products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers

• history: a congealing and regimentation of "desiring-production" (a concept combining features of freudian drives and marxist labor) into the modern individual (typically neurotic and repressed), the nation-state (a society of continuous control), and capitalism (an anarchy domesticated into infantilizing commodification).

guattari & deleuze

“minor” works published in english

• what is philosophy? (1996,1991)

• kafka: toward a minor literature (1986,1975)

• a thousand plateaus: capitalism & schizophrenia (1987,1980)

• anti-oedipus: capitalism & schizophrenia (1977,1972)

minor literature et al

• the deterritorializations of a major language through a minor literature written in the major language from a marginalized or minoritarian position

• the thoroughly political nature of a ‘minor literature’

• a ‘minor literature’ is enunciative, collective, revolutionary, and even spatial

deterritorialization• a move away from a rigidly imposed context

that seeks to package things into discrete categorized units with singular coded meanings towards a rhizomatic zone of multiplicity and fluctuant identity, where meanings and operations flow freely between said things, resulting in a dynamic, constantly changing set of interconnected entities with fuzzy individual boundaries.

• a continuum--every actual assemblage (a flexible term alluding to the heterogeneous composition of any complex system, individual, social, geological) is marked by simultaneous movements of territorialization (maintenance) and of deterritorialization (dissipation).

• smooth space vs. striated space

machinic assemblages

• An amalgam of processes artificially kept distinct

• A multiplicity of forces in motion

rhizomatic (vs. arborescent)

rhizome

• the nomadic movement of thought by the intensities of a self in process

• an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system that connects any point to any other point, reducible neither to the One nor the multiple

• arborescence: hierarchical systems of thought

nomadism• physically moving from one place to

another, rather than settling down in one location; existing on the fringe of the state and thus posing a threat to sedentary civilization

• psychically moving from one ideology (moral, religious, political, ethical, etc.) to another, rather than adopting one fully and exclusively; existing on the fringe of hegemony and thus posing a threat to the dogmatic thinking

lines of flight (a.k.a. lines of escape)

• connections of singularities or planes

• a means of deterritorialization

constructivism (a.k.a. constructionism) vs. objectivism• origins: protagoras (“man is the

measure of all things”), vico (“truth is to have made it”), bachelard (“nothing is given, all is constructed”), and piaget (“intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself”)

• meaning or knowledge is always a human construction, and is thus relative

• the power of ideas to inform the material realities of people’s lives—is this not similar to Marx?

percept, affect, concept• art, philosophy, and science as three distinct

disciplines, each analyzing reality in different ways. while philosophy creates concepts, the arts create novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling, and the sciences create quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference. none of these disciplines enjoy primacy over the others: they are different ways of organizing the metaphysical flux, “separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another.” philosophy, science, and art are equally, and essentially, creative and practical.

production of subjectivity

• a process of simultaneously individuating and becoming-other

• the intensive capacity “to affect and be affected”

• gestaltism

plateau

• borrowed from gregory bateson (steps to an ecology of mind) and balinese tantric tradition (a non-climactic orgasmic field)

• A continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end

• method of writing

quantal strife

• some of these drawings are part of a group art show called quantal strife. the show was commissioned by the doris mccarthy gallery in scarborough, ontario, and exhibited january and february of 2006. quantal strife was curated by sally mckay and included the work of crystal mowry, scott carruthers, and marc ngui.