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Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis

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PREFACE

Imported: 2025-06-03 1:41 am

The Ideal Point of Departure

The ideal is to take just enough of what is already known – amelody, a chord-sequence, a harmonic mode or tone-system – as a point of departurefor the shared production and enjoyment of what is radically new. Page 12

The ideal creative process involves starting with something known and using it as a springboard for producing something entirely new and shared.

#on/creativity

Marx, Jazz, and Schizophrenia as a Social Ideal

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Marx describes bourgeois revolution as an occasion on which real social relations could not live up to the expectations created by its own rhetoric (“liberty, equality, fraternity”), as an occasion on which “the phrase went beyond the content”; and he does so in order to contrast that situation with the revolution to come, where “the content wouldgo beyond the phrase.” In a similar way, symphony orchestras can only hope their performances rise to the genius of the composer whose work they are performing:they hope their content lives up to the pre-existing phrase. (Here the past, as Marxput it, weighs like a dead hand upon the living.) In jazz, by contrast, the past enablesrather than constrains the present: the improvised performance always exceeds the pre-existing musical composition or structure in complexity, nuance, and originality:the whole point is that the content go beyond the phrase. As an illustration of theprocess of schizophrenia, then, jazz not only presents to my mind an ideal instance of human relations and interpersonal dynamics but actually suggests a social ideal: the use of accumulated wealth as a basis for the shared production and enjoymentof life in the present rather than the reproduction and reinforcement of powerstructures from the past. Page 12

Using the analogy of Marx's critique of bourgeois revolution and the difference between symphony performance and jazz improvisation, the text presents jazz as an illustration of the schizophrenic process, suggesting it as a model for a social ideal where the content (life in the present) exceeds the phrase (pre-existing structures) and wealth is used for shared production rather than reinforcing the past.

#on/social-ideal #on/schizophrenia

1INTRODUCTION

Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Capitalism fosters schizophrenia, in brief, because the quantitative calculationsof the market replace meaning and belief-systems as the foundation of society. In a first approximation, then, we could define schizophrenia as a form of “unlimited semiosis” – in the psyche as well as throughout society – that emerges when fixed meanings and beliefs are subverted by the cash nexus under capitalism. Page 15

Every extension of capital – both geographical(imperialism) and psychological (marketing) – entails the simultaneous elimination of extant meanings and beliefs, and hence the extension of schizophrenia: “allthat is solid melts into air,” as Marx put it. Page 15

Capitalism promotes schizophrenia by dissolving fixed meanings and belief systems, replacing them with the quantitative calculations of the market ("cash nexus"). This process, seen in both geographical and psychological extensions of capital, leads to "unlimited semiosis" where traditional structures melt away.

#on/capitalism #on/schizophrenia

Schizophrenia vs Paranoia

If we understand schizophrenia(in this first approximation) to designate unlimited semiosis, a radically fluid andextemporaneous form of meaning, paranoia by contrast would designate an absolute system of belief where all meaning was permanently fixed and exhaustively defined by a supreme authority, figure-head, or god. Page 16

And paranoia represents what is archaic incapitalism, the resuscitation of obsolete, or traditional, belief-centered modes of social organization, whereas schizophrenia designates capitalism’s positive potential: freedom, ingenuity, permanent revolution. Page 16

Schizophrenia is characterized as unlimited, fluid meaning (unlimited semiosis), while paranoia represents a fixed, absolute system of belief dictated by authority. Within capitalism, paranoia embodies archaic social organization modes, whereas schizophrenia signifies capitalism's inherent potential for freedom and revolution.

#on/schizophrenia #on/paranoia

The Aim of Schizoanalysis

The primary aim of schizoanalysis is to take this preferable tendency to the limit, and indeed push it through the limits, imposed on it by capitalist paranoia: schizophrenia as revolutionary breakthrough rather than psychologicalbreakdown Page 16

Schizoanalysis aims to harness and amplify the revolutionary potential of schizophrenia, pushing it beyond the constraints imposed by capitalist paranoia, viewing it as a force for breakthrough rather than merely psychological disintegration.

#on/schizoanalysis

How it works (1): the materialisms of Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche

Critiquing Freud and Marcuse on Scarcity

While Deleuze and Guattari agree that Freud must be historicized, they disagreeon the status of scarcity: according to schizoanalysis, scarcity is not merely socially managed, but is socially fabricated in order to found and secure social organization in various forms. Following Bataille, Deleuze and Guattari insist that societies havealways produced a surplus, no matter how dire the circumstances may have appeared and however minimal that surplus may have been: social organizationrevolves around the determination of how and by whom that surplus will be expended or distributed. Scarcity never had to be overcome by the development of productive forces, since it was already a fabrication from the start: the performanceprinciple could not have become irrational when productive forces became sufficient,for it was never rational to begin with. Page 18

Contra Freud (and Marcuse), D&G argue that scarcity is not a natural condition overcome by productive forces, but a social fabrication used to organize societies around the distribution of an inherent surplus. Thus, the performance principle linked to overcoming scarcity was never truly rational.

#on/critique #on/scarcity

Social vs Psychic Repression and Reich

Oppressive–repressive authority first extends outwardfrom family to society, from father to chief, priest, or boss, in Marcuse’s mythicalhistorical schema, only to be eclipsed by the overwhelming and all-encompassing power of rationalized social authority (in post-Enlightenment bourgeois society).But this schema reverses the real direction of determination, according to Deleuzeand Guattari: for schizoanalysis, social oppression– repression in society at large is always primary with respect to psychic repression in the individual. Moreover Page 18

the form of social oppression determines the form of psychic repression, and sincethe former varies historically (as Marcuse also insists), the latter does not remainconstant, and thus does not always take the form of the Oedipus complex. Taking the Oedipus as the model – even only as a “symbolic” model – for repression endsup thwarting Marcuse’s own effort to historicize Freudian theory Page 19

Reich’s position is categorical: psychic repression depends onsocial oppression. That is why Deleuze and Guattari consider him the “true founder of a materialist psychiatry”: “Reich was the first to raise the problem of the relationship between desire and the social field (and went further than Marcuse)” (118/141). In particular, Reich raised the problem of fascism in terms of how it was infact desired by the masses, rather than as a matter of ideology or deception; for“[according to Reich] the masses were not deceived, they desired fascism, and that is what has to be explained” (257/306).14 Any explanation that grants psychicrepression even an autonomy from, much less a precedence over, social oppressionrepression risks becoming an apology for the latter Page 19

Against Marcuse's view, D&G assert that social oppression is primary and determines psychic repression, arguing that using the Oedipus complex as a universal model hinders historicization. They credit Reich as the founder of materialist psychiatry for insisting on this dependency and for analyzing how desire is linked to the social field, even in the context of desiring fascism, arguing that explanations granting psychic repression autonomy risk excusing social oppression.

#on/repression #on/reich #on/marx

Schizoanalysis and the Death Instinct

schizoanalysis will show how death becomes an instinct in the course of historical developments leading up to the contemporary society that Freud’s theory reflects Page 19

The supposed “progress” of Western civilization entails an endlessly increasingburden of guilt: modern society, Freud and Nietzsche agree, is “neurotic” or “sick,” and at the root of the illness, Brown insists, lies the inability to face death. According to Nietzsche, whoever affirms life must thereby affirm death; indeed, only thosestrong enough to affirm death can truly affirm life. As Brown puts it, the inability to face death amounts to a repression of the death instinct; his rewriting of Freudinsists on matching the analysis of the repression of sexuality, or Eros, about whichpsychoanalysis has had a lot to say, with analysis of the avoidance of death, therepression of the death instinct, or Thanatos, about which it has said all too little. Page 21

Brown also invokes Nietzsche in his revision of the Freudian analysis of money.The primary and original function of money, Brown agrees with Nietzsche, is not to facilitate trade but to create and pay debts and thereby both foster and assuageguilt. In archaic society, Brown argues, such debts were owed primarily to the gods, and they were in principle dischargeable. Indeed they were discharged periodically,giving rise to and reflecting a finite cyclical view of time, as contrasted with the infinite linear time of modernity.18 Ironically, it is when the debt comes to be owedprimarily to other people rather than to a deity (with the secularization ofProtestantism and the emergence of capitalism), that it becomes infinite and impossible to discharge: unlike the gods, no one person or persons can be taken tobe responsible for everyone, so all the debt-payments in the world cannot expunge the lasting sense of guilt. Despite or even because of the centrality of money in modern society, the burden of guilt assumes historically unprecedented proportions:no degree of material acquisition, no amount of compulsory work can balance the accounts. Only a complete refusal of the Protestant–capitalist culture of guilt and debt, Brown suggests, will free us from history, understood in this way as a form of neurosis. Page 22

Schizoanalysis intends to show how death becomes an instinct historically. The text discusses how Western civilization's "progress" leads to increased guilt and an inability to face death (Thanatos), seen by Brown as a repression of the death instinct. It then explores Brown's argument, shared with Nietzsche, that money's primary role is to create debt and guilt. Modern capitalism, unlike archaic societies, makes debt infinite and inescapable, leading to pervasive guilt that material acquisition cannot resolve, suggesting that freedom comes from rejecting this culture of guilt and debt.

#on/death-instinct #on/guilt #on/money

Political vs Libidinal Economy

Deleuze and Guattari will refuse to separate political and libidinaleconomy, and will in effect combine them, instead. Yet, at the same time, it is one oftheir primary objects of investigation, capitalism, that first created and still maintains the split between the two. Page 20

Deleuze and Guattari aim to unite political and libidinal economy, two domains split apart by capitalism, which is a key focus of their analysis.

#on/political-economy #on/libidinal-economy

Critiquing Brown on the Family

“whereas neither the state nor the antinomy of Master and Slave can be grantedto be given by nature,” Brown wants to suggest, “the institution of the family can.” Page 23

Deleuze and Guattari would disagree: theinstitution of the family cannot be taken for granted. Page 23

The text presents Brown's view that the family institution is natural, immediately followed by Deleuze and Guattari's disagreement, asserting that the family cannot be assumed as a given.

#on/family #on/critique

Schizoanalytic Model: Social Organization and Psychic Repression

Their solution will be not to subordinate socio-historical explanation to universalizing psychology, but to propose an apparentlyparadoxical model of the psyche, as we’ll see, wherein the mechanisms that carry out repression at the same time free the human organism from instinctualdetermination, so that it is the form of social organization that determines whetherpsychic repression serves social oppression or escapes it. Page 23

Schizoanalysis proposes a model where psychic repression, while enacting constraint, simultaneously liberates the organism from instinctual determination. Crucially, the social organization dictates whether this psychic process reinforces social oppression or provides an avenue of escape.

#on/schizoanalysis #on/repression

Anxiety, Repression, and Repetition

For Deleuze and Guattari (followingReich), repression causes anxiety, and eliminating social oppression and the kindsof psychic repression that stem from it is the key to reducing anxiety and therebyfreeing the human organism from death-inspired and deadening repetition.According to Deleuze, repetition is not in and of itself compulsive: it only becomesso when death gets converted into an instinct. Page 23

Drawing on Reich, D&G link anxiety to repression, arguing that reducing anxiety and escaping compulsive repetition requires eliminating social oppression and the psychic repression it produces. Repetition itself is only compulsive when death is transformed into an instinct.

#on/anxiety #on/repression #on/repetition

Nietzsche: Will-to-Power and Repetition as Variation

Deleuze, however, by placing the concept of will-to-power at the center Page 23

of his reading of Nietzsche, thereby construes repetition not as compulsion but as variation, innovation, and creation – as the exercise of life-force which naturally aims always at its own continued health and expansion.25 Brown, in a word, wants to end history as neurosis, so that humankind might “enter that state of Beingwhich was the goal of his Becoming;”26 for Deleuze and Guattari, Being is a delusion which traps desire in the snare of representation and thereby represses it: their goal is to release desire from Being so it can enter more freely into Becoming. Far from being a neurosis, history for Deleuze and Guattari is the chance that the development of productive forces beyond capitalism and the expansion of will-topower beyond nihilism will lead to greater freedom rather than enduring servitude. Page 24

Through Nietzsche's concept of will-to-power, repetition is reinterpreted not as compulsion but as variation and creation, an expression of life-force. Unlike interpretations that seek a state of Being, D&G aim to release desire into Becoming, viewing history as a potential path towards greater freedom beyond capitalism and nihilism.

#on/nietzsche #on/will-to-power #on/repetition #on/becoming

Capitalism and Axiomatization

Capitalist society, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is distinct from all othersin that it is based on the “cash nexus” of impersonal market relations. Capitalistsociety, they agree with Horkheimer and Adorno, “is ruled by equivalence [and] makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities.”31 Such rendering-equivalent is performed via the market, according to Deleuze and Guattari, by the basic mechanism of the capitalist economy: what they call the process of “axiomatization,” Page 24

Deleuze and Guattari consider axiomatization to be ambivalent: it spawns recoding, which is its negative moment as we’ll see, but also fosters decoding, which Deleuze and Guattari consider a positive result. Page 25

Capitalism is characterized by the impersonal "cash nexus" and the process of "axiomatization," which reduces diverse elements to abstract, comparable quantities via the market. This process is seen as ambivalent, generating both negative recoding and positive decoding.

#on/capitalism #on/axiomatization

General Historical Materialism: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and the Family

Although Marx and Nietzsche are both acutely critical ofcontemporary society, their objects of analysis are quite different – psychology and culture for Nietzsche, economics for Marx – and their conclusions are practicallyopposite: emancipation from capitalism is to be sought through collective social transformation for Marx, while emancipation from nihilism is to be sought throughpersonal self-transformation for Nietzsche. If they nevertheless can be brought together in Anti-Oedipus, it is because of their approach rather than their objectsor conclusions: both, I would argue, are – in the most general sense of the term historical materialists.32 Both, that is to say, take as their starting points the body, on one hand – its productive force, its will-to-power – and the historical expansion of “what the body can do” (in Spinoza’s phrase), on the other. Moreover, both see history critically in terms of developing human forces whose further development is hampered by the very structures – of belief, of social organization – that untilrecently have spurred their development. Capitalism and asceticism have contributed immensely to what human beings can do, but now stand in the way of all that theycould do – and must therefore be done away with, superseded. Page 25

Deleuze and Guattari take the development of a general historical materialism one step further, by adding psychoanalysis into the mix as well: it is not just Protestant Christianity in Northern Europe but the nuclear family itself, as the strictly capitalist form of human reproduction, that produces asceticism. Withits focus on the dynamics of the nuclear family, psychoanalysis is thus crucial tounderstanding how ascetic psychology gets produced under, and in turncontributes to, capitalist social organization – even though Freud mistook the capitalist family-form for a universal form of human reproduction, and therefore requires historicizing himself. Page 26

money is no longer conceived solely as a means of exchange andaccumulation, but also as a means of imposing debt and guilt. Consequently, justas there are distinct modes of production for Marx, so are there distinct modes ofguilt-formation, linked to what Deleuze and Guattari will call modes of “antiproduction”; what psychoanalysis is able to show in this connection is that thenuclear family imposes a modern form of guilt that is neither truly political nor economic in nature. Page 26

the projects of ending asceticism andnihilism through politico-cultural change and ending exploitation and alienation through socio-economic change both need to take libido and the crushing of desireby the nuclear family into account. Page 26

D&G unite Marx and Nietzsche as historical materialists who start from the body's capacity, seeing history critically where past structures now impede potential. They extend this by adding psychoanalysis to show how the nuclear family, a capitalist form, produces asceticism and a unique form of guilt linked to debt and anti-production. They argue that overcoming asceticism, nihilism, exploitation, and alienation requires understanding how the family crushes desire.

#on/historical-materialism #on/marx #on/nietzsche #on/freud #on/family #on/guilt

How it works (2): the critical operators drawn from Kant, Marx, andFreud

Operator 1: Kant and critique

Kant and Transcendental Critique

Ofcrucial importance for Kant was the idea that, since these processes were constitutive of conscious thought, they provided immanent criteria for judging something to be either knowledge or metaphysics, depending on whether it was based on legitimate or illegitimate use of the three syntheses. Page 27

following Kantian usage, then, Deleuzeand Guattari call their critique of psychoanalytic metaphysics a “transcendental” critique: it will proceed by distinguishing immanent from metaphysical operations in the unconscious. Page 27

In a similar way, but speaking not in the name of reason but in that of desire andespecially schizophrenic desire, Deleuze and Guattari insist that the unconscious operates according to a specific set of syntheses to process or constitute experience, and that psychoanalysis must either be shown to conform to these processes or else stand condemned as metaphysical. Page 27

Drawing on Kant's transcendental critique, which distinguishes valid knowledge from metaphysics based on the legitimate use of constitutive syntheses, D&G apply this approach to the unconscious. They propose the unconscious operates via specific syntheses, and psychoanalysis is judged as metaphysical if it fails to conform to these processes inherent to desire.

#on/kant #on/critique #on/transcendental-critique #on/unconscious

Schizoanalysis: Transcendental and Revolutionary Critique

Schizoanalysis thus involves social as well as epistemo-psychological critique: if schizoanalysis condemns psychoanalysis as metaphysical, it will be so condemnedas a reflection or projection of capitalism; as an historical-materialist psychiatry,schizoanalysis will call not just for psychoanalytic doctrine but for social relationsin general to conform to the syntheses of the unconscious. Schizoanalysis is thus revolutionary in a Marxist sense, whereas psychoanalysis is not. Yet here Deleuzeand Guattari’s Marxist analyses acquire a distinctly Nietzschean foundation: thesocial ideal is not what best represents the interests of the proletariat (or humanityas a whole) but what least contradicts the “logic” of the unconscious and the activebodily forces animating its syntheses; revolutionary society, too, will have to conform to these unconscious processes or else stand condemned as repressive. Page 28

Schizoanalysis functions as both a transcendental (epistemo-psychological) and a revolutionary (social) critique. It judges psychoanalysis as metaphysical if it reflects capitalism, and calls for social relations to align with the syntheses of the unconscious. Rooted in a Nietzschean understanding of the unconscious and bodily forces, its social ideal is what best aligns with these processes, demanding that revolutionary society also conform to avoid repression.

#on/schizoanalysis #on/critique #on/revolutionary-critique #on/unconscious #on/social-ideal

Operator 2: Marx and revolutionary autocritique

Schizoanalysis as Materialist Analysis

If the first frame of reference makes schizoanalysis critical in the Kantian sense ofthe term, the second frame of reference then makes it critical and revolutionary in a Marxist sense: “schizoanalysis,” Deleuze and Guattari insist after presenting and recapitulating the three syntheses of the unconscious, “is at once a transcendentaland a materialist analysis” (109/130). Page 28

Building on its Kantian transcendental aspect, schizoanalysis's Marxist framework renders it a critical and revolutionary materialist analysis.

#on/schizoanalysis #on/materialism

Marx on Abstract Labor and Universal History

So the historical appearance of abstract labor in reality under capitalismconstitutes only a precondition for a universal history, according to Marx, not its actual foundation; and this in two senses.41 First of all, capitalism does not constitutea substantive foundation for universal history (whereby other modes of productionwould secretly resemble capitalism), because it is different from, not the same as,all other modes of production: no other social formation “frees” labor from objectivepre-determination by making it a commodity; labor appears as a real abstraction only at the end of the process leading up to capitalism.42 More important, thathistorical process has not actually reached its end: labor has been freed from Page 29

objective pre-determination under capitalism only to be re-enslaved, at the moment of its sale as a commodity, to external determination by capital.43 The result is that labor continually reproduces its alienated and alienating conditions of enslavementon an ever-larger scale, as Marx’s critique demonstrates. Whereas the apparentobjective movement of capital is merely reflected in the representations of Ricardoand Smith, with Marx’s critique of bourgeois political economy capitalism attainsthe point of autocritique and history can become universal: humankind can now envisage and set itself the task of freeing productive activity from any and allexternal, alien determinations–including the most subtle, abstract, and impersonalof all, that of capital itself. Page 30

The text discusses Marx's view that abstract labor under capitalism is a precondition, not the foundation, for universal history. Capitalism differs from other modes by "freeing" labor from pre-determination, but then re-enslaves it to capital. Marx's critique enables capitalism to reach a point of "autocritique," allowing humanity to envision freeing productive activity from all external determinations, including capital itself.

#on/marx #on/abstract-labor #on/universal-history #on/autocritique

Applying Autocritique to Freud and Oedipus

Deleuze and Guattari insistthat “the same thing must be said of Freud” – who is thus understood as “the Luther and the Adam Smith of psychiatry”: his greatness lies in having determined the essence or nature of desire, nolonger in relation to objects, aims or even sources
but as an abstract, subjective essence – libido or sexuality. But he still relates this essence to the family [and to]
Oedipus. Page 30

Even after discovering the nature of passion not in relation to its objects or aims but rather as indeterminate desire, as libidinal energy in general, Freud then betrays the logic of the unconscious by re-alienating desire onto the Oedipus complex andsubordinating it to the family triangle as its ultimate determination. Psychoanalysis, too, thus merely reflects the apparent objective movement of the nuclear family,itself a product of capitalism, and does not attain the point of autocritique. Page 30

So just as capitalism makes universal history possible through its difference rather than its identity – by freeing productive activity in principle from all previous forms of external pre-determination, even though it in fact resubjects labor to capitalas the most abstract form of external determination – so do the Oedipus and Oedipal psychoanalyses similarly participate in universal history: not – pace Freud – asthemselves the universal form and truth of desire, but through the recognition inprinciple of untrammeled desire as abstract subjective essence, as libido, despitethe subsequent reenslavement of that desire in fact and in theory to the nuclearfamily and the Oedipus as its most private and abstract metaphysical representation. “Yes,” Deleuze and Guattari allow, despite the title of their book, “Oedipus isnevertheless the universal of desire, the product of universal history – but on one condition, which is not met by Freud: that Oedipus be capable
of conducting its autocritique” (271/323).44 In schizoanalysis, the Oedipus becomes capable at last of conducting its autocritique Page 30

D&G critique Freud using the concept of autocritique derived from Marx. While acknowledging Freud's key discovery of desire as abstract libido, they argue he betrayed this by re-subordinating it to the Oedipus complex and the nuclear family, failing to reach the point of autocritique. They posit that Oedipus participates in universal history only if it can critique itself, a task undertaken by schizoanalysis.

#on/freud #on/oedipus #on/autocritique

Operator 3: Freud and the tendentious joke

Desiring-Production and Social-Production

“the discovery of production in general and without distinction, as it appears in capitalism, is the identical discovery of both political economy and psychoanalysis, beyond the determinate systems of representation” (302/360) Page 31

Schizoanalysis, in other words, will want to translatedesire and labor from their respective “determinate systems of representation”(psychoanalysis and political economy) into the concepts of “desiring-production” and “social-production,” precisely in order to stress their common derivation from“production in general and without distinction” as it appears under capitalism. Page 31

one of the main tasks of Anti-Oedipus, we learn in the last chapter,will be to demonstratewhy, at the same time [that] it discovers the subjective essence of desire and labor – a common essence inasmuch as it is the activity of productionin general
capitalism [is] continually re-alienating this essence
in a repressive machine that divides the essence in two, and maintains it divided – abstract labor on one hand, abstract desire on the other: political economyand psychoanalysis, political economy and libidinal economy.(302–3/360) Page 31

Deleuze and Guattari insist that thereis an “identity of nature” between social-production and desiring-production, butalso a “difference in regime.”45 The difference in regime enables schizoanalysis tocritique the organization of social-production in the name of desiring-production (as will become clear in Chapter 2), once their identity of nature is realized. And ironically enough (as we will see in Chapter 4), their identity of nature becomesvisible only under capitalism where the difference in regime between the two is Page 31

most pronounced. Page 32

Capitalism reveals a common essence of "production in general," which underlies both labor (political economy) and desire (psychoanalysis). Schizoanalysis re-conceptualizes these as "social-production" and "desiring-production" to emphasize this identity of nature. A key task of Anti-Oedipus is to show how capitalism re-alienates this essence, splitting it into these two domains. The difference in regime between desiring and social production, paradoxically most pronounced under capitalism, enables schizoanalysis to critique social organization based on the nature of desire.

#on/desiring-production #on/social-production #on/capitalism

Territorialization, Deterritorialization, Reterritorialization

“Territorialization” is a term derived from Lacan’s analysis of the process bywhich parental care-giving, starting with maternal breast-feeding, maps the infant’s erogenous zones, charging specific organs and corresponding objects with erotic energy and value (the lips and the breast, for example). Territorialization thusprograms desire to valorize certain organs and objects at the expense of others,and at the expense of what Freud called “polymorphous perversity”: the free-flowing, relatively unfixed, form of desire Deleuze and Guattari call schizophrenia.As one would expect, the schizoanalytic term “deterritorialization” designates, in the psychological register, the reverse of Lacanian territorialization – that is to say, the process of freeing desire from established organs and objects: one of the principal aims of schizoanalysis, for example, is to free schizophrenic desire fromthe nuclear family and from the oedipal representations of desire promulgated by psychoanalysis. At the same time, however, Deleuze and Guattari use“deterritorialization” – now in the social register – to designate the freeing of labor-power from specific means of production, as in the case of English peasants whowere banished or “freed” by the Enclosure Acts (1709–1869) from common land when it was enclosed for sheep-grazing. Some peasants, of course, would eventuallyfind jobs working at looms in the nascent textile industry: their labor-power wasthereby re-attached or “reterritorialized” onto new means of production. The processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization accompany the fundamentalmechanism of capital, “axiomatization”: it operates by conjoining deterritorializedresources and appropriating the surplus arising from their reterritorializing conjunction. The original capitalist axiom, for example, conjoined deterritorializedwealth – i.e. monetary wealth no longer embodied in landed property – withdeterritorialized labor-power bereft of any means of subsistence: the axiomatizationof these deterritorialized flows linked liquid wealth invested in means of production with “free” workers with nothing to sell but their labor-power. Subsequently, the continuing development of capitalism has axiomatized many other resource-flows Page 32

– including knowledge, skills, and taste – and integrated them into the productionprocess. Page 33

The terms deterritorialization and reterritorialization thuspresuppose and reinforce the notice of a “common essence
of desire and labor,” referring without distinction to the detachment and reattachment of the energies of“production in general” (including “consumption”) to objects of investment of allkinds, whether conventionally considered “psychological” or “economic.” Page 33

The concepts of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization are applied in both psychological and social registers. Territorialization fixes desire onto specific objects (reducing polymorphous perversity), while deterritorialization frees it (psychologically, from Oedipal representations; socially, labor from means of production). Reterritorialization re-attaches these flows elsewhere. These processes are central to capitalism's axiomatization and imply the common essence of desire and labor as generalized "production" energy.

#on/territorialization #on/deterritorialization #on/reterritorialization #on/capitalism

Decoding and Recoding under Capitalism

Decoding, it is important to note, does not refer to the process of translatinga secret meaning or message into clearer form: on the contrary, it refers to a processof dis-investing given meanings altogether, to a process of “uncoding,” if you like:the destabilization and ultimately the elimination of established codes that confer fixed meaning. If capitalism deterritorializes because of the imperative to constantlyrevolutionize production and consumption so as to generate and realize surplus-value, it decodes because it defines and measures value in terms of abstractquantities, because its basic institution is the market. Page 33

whereas othersocieties are based on codes, on the establishment of qualitative similarities that underlie stable meanings, capitalism systematically undermines codes, replacingthem with the cash nexus of the market as the basis of social organization. Page 33

Whatever temporary local meanings capitalism does provide through recoding are strictly derivative of the axioms that happen to be in place: job-training and retraining programs, for instance, provide certain local meanings associated withmanual labor; research projects in academic or corporate labs provide othermeanings for intellectual work; taste-management through advertising providesstill others for consumption, and so on. But they never “add up” to a stable global code or system of meanings: under capitalism, decoding prevails. That is why schizoanalysis takes schizophrenia – creative semiosis unlimited by fixed meaning – to be the fundamental tendency under capitalism and the promise of freedom in universal history, while the tendency to paranoia appears as a reaction-formationderived from the forced privatization of “productive activity in general,” ineconomics and family-life alike. Page 34

Decoding, in D&G's terms, is the elimination of fixed meanings and established codes. Capitalism systematically decodes by basing social organization on the abstract quantities of the market (cash nexus), unlike other societies based on qualitative codes. While capitalism offers temporary local meanings through "recoding," decoding ultimately prevails. Schizoanalysis identifies schizophrenia (unlimited semiosis) as the primary tendency and revolutionary potential of capitalism, while paranoia is a reactive defense against the decoding process.

#on/decoding #on/recoding #on/capitalism #on/schizophrenia #on/paranoia

Desiring-Machines, Factory Model, and Rejecting Representation

The concept of “desiring-machines,” finally, while serving cognitively to connect libido and labor in a single term as we have said, also serves key polemical purposes. Foremost among these will be to replace the theater model of the psyche foundthroughout Freud with a factory model. This constitutes for one thing a rejectionof tragedy (as in Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and so on) as an appropriate mode for the analytic endeavor: schizoanalytic therapy, were such a thing to exist, would endwith a hearty chuckle, not a rueful sigh. In any case, schizoanalysis effects a Nietzschean transvaluation of psychoanalysis by eliminating its pervasive senseof guilt and tragic resignation to defeat and death, in favor of affirmation of the forces of life. More important, Deleuze and Guattari reject representation itself – intheatrical or any other form – as a distortion of the real mode of operation of theunconscious, which is productive rather than expressive or representative: “Theunconscious poses no problems of meaning, solely problems of use. The questionposed by desire is not ‘What does it mean?’ but ‘How does it work?’ ”(109/129) Page 34

Deleuze and Guattari consider representation to be not just a distortion Page 34

of desire but the principal means of repressing desire and of betraying its authentic schizophrenic form. Even if the answer given by psychoanalysis did not endlessly revolve around the “Oedipus complex,” the very question of “what desire means” already entails a profound misunderstanding of the unconscious: whenever and however it is answered, it traps desire in repressive representations of one kind or another. Page 35

Desiring-machines serve to link libido and labor and replace the psychoanalytic theater model of the psyche with a factory model, reflecting a Nietzschean affirmation of life over tragic resignation. Crucially, D&G reject representation itself as a distortion and repressive force, arguing that the unconscious is productive, operating on questions of use ("How does it work?") rather than meaning ("What does it mean?"), as focusing on meaning traps desire in representation.

#on/desiring-machines #on/psyche #on/representation

Desire as Productive Force, Not Lack

Deleuze and Guattaridraw inspiration from Nietzschean affirmation: desire, they insist, does not lack anything, does not aim at what it does not have or what is “missing”; it does not construct a fantasy-world containing objects of desire apart and different from the real world. On the contrary, desire is first and foremost productive force, and what it produces is simply the real world: “If desire produces, its product is real. If desireis productive, it can be productive only in the real world and can produce onlyreality.... The objective being of desire is the Real in and of itself” (26–7/34).50 Only secondarily, as a result of social organizations which deprive certain people or classes of their objective being and the fruits of their labor, does productive desire become reactive and construct a parallel world of gratification (sometimes called “fantasy,” sometimes “heaven”) as imaginary compensation for what has beentaken from it.51 To the extent that psychoanalysis subscribes to the notion thatdesire is based on lack rather than on force, Deleuze and Guattari consider it a reactive, slave psychology; under the cloak of the psychoanalyst, as Nietzschemight say, they smell a priest. Page 35

Following Nietzschean affirmation, D&G argue that desire is fundamentally a productive force that creates reality, not a lack seeking a missing object or a fantasy world. They see the construction of compensatory fantasy worlds as a secondary, reactive outcome of social systems that deprive people. Psychoanalysis, in its focus on lack, is thus critiqued as a "slave psychology."

#on/desire #on/productive-force #on/lack #on/nietzsche

Desire Produces Reality

Forschizoanalysis, of course, it is unconscious rather than conscious “intention” that constitutes reality. But more important, the difference between the“phenomenologically constituted” real and the “scientific” real is strictly secondary, according to schizoanalysis: both “versions” of reality are first of all products of desire, before distinctions between them can be drawn (distinctions which, as Nietzsche would insist, are themselves also products of a certain kind of desire!). Page 35

desire produces reality in the same sense that lawyers “produce Page 35

evidence in a court of law: they cannot “wish” it into existence; they don’t make it up, but they do make it count as real. Here, too, however, any distinction betweenwhat counts as fact, evidence, and reality inside the courtroom and what counts outside it is moot: desire in the schizoanalytic sense produces reality in and of itself, before any such inside–outside distinctions can be drawn. Page 36

In schizoanalysis, reality is constituted by unconscious intention and is fundamentally a product of desire, preceding distinctions between phenomenological and scientific versions. Using the analogy of lawyers producing evidence, the text explains that desire makes things "count as real," producing reality itself before conventional boundaries between fact/evidence and reality, or inside/outside, are established.

#on/desire #on/reality #on/unconscious

Desiring-Machines Produce Reality

Through the investment of energy in psychic as well as physical form,desiring-machines produce reality, both in the cognitive sense of psychic drivesshaping the phenomenal world and in the economic sense of labor-power shaping the material world. Page 36

Desiring-machines, by investing energy psychically and physically, actively produce reality, influencing both the cognitive shaping of the phenomenal world by psychic drives and the economic shaping of the material world by labor-power.

#on/desiring-machines #on/reality

Schizoanalysistherefore insists that while desire and labor are essentially the same productive force, they nonetheless operate under capitalism according to different regimes, which are conventionally mapped by different disciplines: political economy and psychoanalysis. Although Deleuze and Guattari show little respect for the boundaryseparating these two disciplines, they do maintain a specific difference between the regimes themselves, which they refer to as desiring-production (formerly libido)and social-production (labor). But this difference is not between fantasy and reality:“There is no such thing as the social production of reality on the one hand, and a desiring-production that is mere fantasy on the other
social production is purelyand simply desiring-production itself under determinate conditions” (28–9/36). Page 36

Such is precisely the effect of the lexical link Deleuze and Guattari forge between desiring-production Page 36

and social-production through their use of the term desiring-machines: the normallydistinct regimes of libidinal economy and political economy, of asceticism andcapitalism, are targeted by a mode of critique that simultaneously produces pleasure and insight by showing that these economies are in fact one and the same. Page 37

Despite appearing as distinct regimes (psychoanalysis/libidinal economy vs. political economy/social economy) under capitalism, desire and labor are fundamentally the same productive force. Social production is simply desiring-production under specific conditions. The concept of "desiring-machines" serves as a lexical link, revealing the identity of these regimes and enabling a critique that shows how libidinal and political economies are one.

#on/desiring-machines #on/desiring-production #on/social-production #on/capitalism

2DESIRING-PRODUCTION AND THE INTERNAL CRITIQUE OF OEDIPUS

The Three Syntheses of the Unconscious

The desiring-machines operate according to three syntheses, called theconnective synthesis of production, the disjunctive synthesis of recording (enregistrement), and the conjunctive synthesis of consumption–consummation(consommation). Page 38

The connectivesynthesis concerns instincts and drives, and the ways they endow objects with value or erotic charge; roughly speaking, it translates Freud’s notion of libidinalinvestment or cathexis and the functions he assigns to Eros or the life instinct.The disjunctive synthesis involves the functioning of pleasure, memory, and signs in the psyche, along with what Freud called the death instinct, or Thanatos. Theconjunctive synthesis, finally, is about the formation of subjectivity. Page 38

Desiring-machines function through three core syntheses of the unconscious: the connective synthesis of production (linking drives to objects, like Freudian cathexis), the disjunctive synthesis of recording (involving signs, memory, pleasure, and the death instinct), and the conjunctive synthesis of consumption-consummation (where subjectivity is formed).

#on/syntheses #on/unconscious #on/desiring-machines

The connective synthesis of production

The Connective Synthesis of Production

The connective synthesis of production is in some ways the easiest of the three to understand, deriving as it does from the Freudian notions of “drive,” psychic“investment” (investissement) or “cathexis,” and “polymorphous perversity.”Productive desire makes connections, and what it connects are part-objects (oftenbut not necessarily organs). Page 39

In the first place, the production of such connectionscorresponds to Freudian drives and constitutes the materialist basis of the model: connections are made so as to tap into a source of energy and procure a “charge,” whether physiological, erotic, or both. Page 39

Second, syntheses of production connectonly what Melanie Klein termed “part-objects,” not whole persons or organs understood as belonging to whole persons.2 If an infant’s mouth connects to amother’s breast while at the same time its eye scans her face, the synthesis of production makes only those two connections: the breast and face are not connected to one another nor to a larger whole, are not viewed as belonging to a single whole person. Page 39

Third, the connections made by the synthesis of production are multiple, heterogeneous, and continual: an eye scans a head of hair, and then sees a face, and then a breast, and then a knee; a mouth connects to a breast, to some air, and then to a finger; a finger connects to a lock of hair, and then to a mouth, and so on. Page 39

Deleuze and Guattari thus sum up the syntax of the connectivesynthesis as a series of “and
and then
and then
” (5/11) whereby one “organmachine” (6/12) connects with another, and then another, and then another3 –provided we understand the semantics of the term “organ” being used here toqualify these machines in the broadest possible “polymorphous” way, as any partial-object which gives or gets a charge or flow of energy through a connection. Page 39

The connective synthesis of production, rooted in Freudian concepts like drives and cathexis, makes connections between "organ-machines" understood as polymorphous part-objects rather than whole entities. These connections are multiple, heterogeneous, and continual, driven by the need to tap into energy flows, following a logic of "and... and then... and then...".

#on/connective-synthesis #on/desiring-production #on/organ-machine #on/part-object

The disjunctive synthesis of recording

Freud and the Mystic Writing Pad

Freud himself, for example,found it useful to construct a model of the psyche based on the analogy with a “mystic writing pad”; on a more general level, he suggested that drives invest (or Page 39

cathect) mentally recorded images of previous objects of satisfaction whenever the organism cannot obtain the objects themselves. Page 40

The text references Freud's use of the "mystic writing pad" analogy to model the psyche, where drives invest in mental images of past satisfactions when real objects are inaccessible.

#on/freud #on/psyche

Deleuze on Difference and Repetition

Deleuze insists that difference andmultiplicity are the primary categories, and that identity is secondary anddependent on them, rather than the other way around. Difference and multiplicityare what is given ontologically; they then get betrayed and distorted by operations (including, notably, the Hegelian “work of the negative”) that result in identity.Restoring the category of difference to its rightful place of primacy in turn transforms the concept of “repetition,” for it is henceforth necessary to understandrepetition to involve not identity or equivalence among terms, but difference and variation. Within a materialist ontology of difference, what gets repeated is notthe same, but different. Page 40

The text outlines Deleuze's philosophy where difference and multiplicity are primary ontological categories, with identity being secondary. He argues that conventional thought often distorts difference into identity. Restoring the primacy of difference transforms the concept of repetition, defining it as the repetition of difference and variation rather than the mechanical return of the same.

#on/deleuze #on/difference #on/repetition #on/ontology

Freud on Repetition and the Death Instinct

According to the Freud of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the compulsion to repeat is what makes pleasurea principle of psychic life: we take pleasure in what we have previously found to be pleasurable. Yet since Freud’s repetition compulsion is grounded in a death instinct that stipulates a “return to the inorganic state” of matter before life began,it is ultimately governed by identity, by a mechanical return to the same, ratherthan by difference. Freud’s instincts are therefore, as he himself put it, “innatelyconservative”; even the pleasure principle, on this understanding of repetition Page 40

succumbs to stasis, fixation, neurosis. Page 41

The text describes Freud's concept of the repetition compulsion from Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where repetition is linked to pleasure. However, grounded in the death instinct's aim for a return to the inorganic state, this repetition is characterized by a mechanical return to the same, leading to conservative instincts, stasis, fixation, and neurosis.

#on/freud #on/repetition #on/death-instinct

Repetition of Difference vs Repetition of the Same

Restoring difference to repetition does not diminish the importance of repetition in psychic life as the principle of pleasure,but frees pleasure from mechanical repetition and a strictly linear temporality: whereas repetition of the same constitutes a static neurotic form of pleasure fixed on the past, the repetition of difference takes pleasure in variation, ramification, improvisation (as these are achieved by the exercise of active force). Page 41

By introducing difference into the concept of repetition, pleasure is freed from the static, neurotic repetition of the same (fixed on the past). Instead, the repetition of difference allows for pleasure in variation, ramification, and improvisation, linked to the exercise of active force.

#on/repetition #on/difference #on/pleasure

Anti-Production (D&G's Death Instinct) and the Body-Without-Organs (BwO)

We can now return to the schizoanalytic syntheses of desire, for taking pleasurein variation and ramification rather than in mechanical repetition requires acomplementary counter-force to the connective synthesis, which would otherwise lock the organism into instinctual or habitual patterns of connection. Such a counter-force would allow a given set of organ–machine connections to be broken and other connections made in their place, only to be broken in their turn and replaced with others, and so on ad infinitum. Page 41

Desiring-machines [operating by connective synthesis] make us anorganism; but at the very heart of production, within the very production of this production [of organ-machine connections], the body suffers from being organized in this way, from not having some other organization, or no organization at all....The [machines] stop dead and set free the unorganized mass [of energy-flows] they once served to articulate.(8/14) Page 41

This is the role of Deleuze and Guattari’s version of the death instinct: to bring productive desire to a halt, to suspend or freeze the connections it has made, in order that new and different connections may become possible; they thereforeprefer the term “anti-production” to “death instinct” Page 41

The effect of anti-production on the connective syntheses, then, is to desexualize desire by neutralizing the organ-machine connections, and thereby constitute a surface that records networks of relations among connections, instead of producing connections themselves: it is this recording-surface that Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the body-without-organs. Page 41

It should now be clearer why they resort to this obscure term borrowed from Artaud: it is used to raise the question of how the body is organ-ized, and how itmight be actively dis-organ-ized so as to enable the production of other forms of organ-ization – or no fixed organ-ization at all, which is the state they designate as schizophrenia. Page 41

Schizoanalysis construes the body as an assemblage of “organs” in the broadest sense of the term, including not just sex and sense organs, but allparts of the body that either focalize sensations and feelings of pleasure or pain,or perform actions of use or expenditure: the tongue as organ of taste but also as Page 41

organ of speech and song; the opposable thumb as organ for grasping an ax but also for operating a track-ball or signaling someone’s death. Yet along with its organ-ization of organs, the body as schizoanalysis construes it also has a force and a locus of dis-organ-ization – anti-production and the body-without-organs– which can prevent any given organ-ization from becoming permanently fixed,10Whether fixed organ-ization or radical dis-organ-ization is likely to prevail dependsultimately on the mode of social-production and one’s place in or stance towardit Page 42

To enable pleasure in variation, a counter-force is needed against the connective synthesis's tendency towards fixed patterns. This force, which D&G call "anti-production" (their version of the death instinct), halts productive connections to make new ones possible. Anti-production neutralizes connections, creating a recording surface called the body-without-organs (BwO). The BwO is the body's force of dis-organization, preventing fixed organization and enabling the fluid state of schizophrenia. Schizoanalysis sees the body as an assemblage of broadly defined organs, with the BwO as the potential for radical dis-organization depending on the social context.

#on/anti-production #on/death-instinct #on/body-without-organs #on/bwo #on/schizophrenia

BwO, Memory, and Synchronic Time

The formation of the body-without-organs opens or subjects animal instinctto the distinctively human form of time: to memory and to repetition. What registerson the body-without-organs are essentially signs of organ–machine connections that enable or oblige us to repeat previous modes of desiring-satisfaction, albeitwith greater or lesser degrees of freedom of variation within repetition. Forming a system of relations, these signs bind or synthesize time, enabling us to relate or compare one satisfaction to another, and to take pleasure not necessarily in experiencing the new in terms of the old (as Freud would have it) but simply in experiencing one thing in relation to something else, instead. For inasmuch as the signs comprise a “system of possible permutations among differences” (12/18; translation modified) on the body-without-organs, they bind time synchronically,as Lacan (following Saussure) might put it, rather than linearly Page 42

The body-without-organs introduces memory and repetition, opening instinct to human time. It registers signs of past connections, facilitating repetition with variation. These signs form a system of relations on the BwO, binding time synchronically and enabling pleasure in relating different experiences rather than just linearly repeating the past.

#on/body-without-organs #on/bwo #on/memory #on/repetition #on/synchronic-time

D&G's Qualifications to Lacan's Unconscious as Code

Deleuze and Guattari credit Lacan with “the discovery of this fertiledomain of a code of the unconscious” (38/46), i.e. an unconscious comprised ofsigns forming a synchronic differential system. But they insist on several qualifications to this discovery. For one thing, the system of relations formed on the body-without-organs is not linear, does not sponsor what Lacan calls the“metonymy of desire,” a vain search for some lost object from the past;12 it operates instead by a radically indeterminate mode of “free association” among signs. Theythus do not, for another, form a single “signifying chain,” as Lacan would have it,but many: sign-relations on the body-without-organs form “a multiplicity so complex that we can scarcely speak of one chain or even of one code of desire” (38/46). Finally, not only are these signs not meaningful (as Lacan would ultimatelyagree), they do not even belong to one sign-system (as Lacan claims they do: theunconscious as language-system); instead they are radically heterogeneous, andthus Page 42

may include a succession of characters from different alphabets in whichan ideogram, a pictogram, a tiny image of an elephant passing by, or a rising sun may suddenly make an appearance. In
mix[ing] togetherphonemes, morphemes, etc. without combining them, papa’s mustache,mama’s upraised arm, a ribbon, a little girl, a cop, a shoe suddenly turn up. (39/47; translation modified Page 42

Synchronic rather than linear or metonymic, multiple rather than singular,heterogeneous and polyvocal rather than univocal and meaningful, “the one vocation of the sign is to produce desire, engineering it in every direction” (39/47). Page 43

While crediting Lacan for seeing the unconscious as a code-like, synchronic system, D&G offer several qualifications. They argue the BwO system is not linear or a single chain but a complex multiplicity of heterogeneous signs (not just linguistic, including images, etc.). These signs are not meaningful in themselves but function to produce desire in multiple directions via free association.

#on/lacan #on/unconscious #on/code #on/body-without-organs #on/signs

Lacan on Repression, the Unary Trait, and Lost Drives

Repression, in Lacan’s view,is based on this incompatibility between the substantial nature of the body and bodily drives, on the one hand, and the differential nature of language as signifyingsystem and of consciousness, on the other: being and meaning do not interfaceor converge; human language fails to represent the human body. Page 43

The unary trait henceforth serves as a kind of magnet of lost substantiality, drawing all subsequently repressed material into the unconscious where it formsits own matrix of differential relations: the unconscious is now structured like a Page 43

language, with a constantly shifting, idiosyncratic set of “meanings” all its own. Page 44

But for the existentialist psychoanalyst, such meanings are radically groundless and ultimately illusory: as a kind of screen separating differential meaning from bodily substance, the meaningless unary trait blocks access to the body and its drives, which are thus forever tragically “lost” to consciousness. Page 44

The text describes Lacan's view of repression as stemming from an incompatibility between the body's substantiality and language's differential nature. The unary trait, a meaningless mark, acts as a screen, attracting repressed material and structuring the unconscious like a language, but ultimately blocking access to bodily drives, which remain tragically inaccessible.

#on/lacan #on/repression #on/unary-trait #on/unconscious

D&G vs Lacan on the Body-Without-Organs and Signification

For Deleuzeand Guattari, the body-without-organs functions, like the unary trait, as such a screen between the body and consciousness, but with several differences. For one thing, the sign-system constituted on the body-without-organs is not exclusively linguistic, and therefore not purely differential in the sense that Saussure insisted phonetic language is. Moreover, given Deleuze’s understandingof the repetition compulsion within his materialist ontology, bodily drives are themselves already differential as well as substantial (and, given Deleuze andGuattari’s materialist semiotics, we might add, systems of representation are equallysubstantial as well as differential). So there is for schizoanalysis no absolute, tragic incompatibility between the body and processes of signification. Instead, therelative compatibility or incompatibility of desire with any historically given system of representation depends on the degree to which that system contravenes or agrees with the modes of operation intrinsic to desire (i.e. operates according toillegitimate or legitimate use of the syntheses). Page 44

This highlight explains how D&G's concept of the Body-Without-Organs compares to Lacan's unary trait. Both act as a screen between the body and consciousness. However, D&G's BwO involves a heterogeneous sign-system (not just linguistic), and in their materialist ontology, bodily drives are seen as both substantial and differential from the start. This means D&G do not see an absolute, tragic incompatibility between the body and signification, unlike Lacan. Instead, compatibility depends on how well a given system of representation aligns with the inherent operations of desire's syntheses.

#on/body-without-organs #on/lacan #on/unary-trait #on/signification

BwO as Potential for Freedom

For now what is important is thatthe body-without-organs represents for schizoanalysis not just the locus of repression but the potential for freedom. It can be compared to a kind of tabula rasa, freeing the organism from the purely mechanical repetition of instinctual determination as well as the fixations of neurosis – provided we understand that such a tabula rasa does not exist from the start, but rather gets produced in the course of psychic development by the transformation of energies of connection into energies of recording. Page 44

The Body-Without-Organs is presented as both a site of repression and, more importantly, a potential for freedom. Acting like a tabula rasa, it liberates the organism from rigid instinctual repetition and neurotic fixations. This BwO is not a given but is actively produced psychically by transforming the energy of connection into the energy of recording.

#on/body-without-organs #on/bwo #on/freedom #on/repression

BwO States: Barrier vs Network

When anti-production predominates, “the body without organs presents its smooth, slippery,opaque, taut surface as a barrier
in order to resist organ–machines” (9/15). When productive desire prevails, machines “attach themselves to the body-without-organs as so many points of disjunction, between which an entire network of new syntheses is now woven, marking the surface off into co-ordinates, like a grid” (12/18). Page 44

Depending on whether anti-production or productive desire predominates, the Body-Without-Organs appears in different states: either as a smooth, resistant barrier against organ-machines (anti-production prevailing) or as a surface onto which machines attach as points of disjunction, weaving a network of new connections (productive desire prevailing).

#on/body-without-organs #on/bwo #on/anti-production #on/desiring-production

Disjunctive Synthesis Syntax and Multiplication of Possibilities

What is essential is that even while anti-production interrupts or suspendsexisting productive connections on the body-without-organs, it at the same time registers their diverse possibilities, and ends up multiplying the relations among them to infinity. Hence the importance of the syntax of the disjunctive synthesisof recording, which selects and networks signs of organ–machines produced by Page 44

connective syntheses in a strictly open-ended series: “either
or
or....” Page 45

The disjunctive synthesis of recording, facilitated by anti-production on the Body-Without-Organs, is crucial because it not only interrupts existing connections but registers and multiplies their diverse possibilities. This synthesis operates via an open-ended "either...or...or..." syntax, networking signs of potential organ-machine connections.

#on/disjunctive-synthesis #on/recording #on/body-without-organs #on/anti-production #on/syntax

D&G vs Freud/Lacan on the Emergence of Recording and Examples

Unlike Freud, for whom a recording-apparatus emerges in the psyche becauseinfantile desire hampered by lack of motor control is unable to obtain the realobject of gratification and therefore invests (“hallucinatory”) images of satisfaction instead; and unlike Lacan, for whom the recording-function of the unconsciousis based on the unary trait which radically separates bodily drives fromconsciousness, Deleuze and Guattari see disjunctive synthesis on the bodywithout-organs first emerging as a transformation of connective energy itself, at the point when an identity between the process of desiring-production and afinished product has been achieved. Page 45

The connection between mouth and breast,for example, gets broken when it has finished producing its “product,” which is nourishment or satisfaction: as the connection gives way to disjunction, it registers on the body-without-organs as a sign of satisfaction, and the infant rejects the breast and turns away. The mouth is now freed from the breast, and may lapse into quiescence or become some other organ altogether: an organ for expellinginstead of ingesting liquid, for example, if the infant proceeds to burp or vomit; oran organ for smiling; or an organ for expelling a flow of air instead of liquid, if the child sighs happily, or starts to cry or coo or babble. More significantly, the infant may pull away from the breast for other reasons,without any ultimate physiological satisfaction having been achieved. Perhaps a smile catches its eye, and it suspends the mouth–breast connection to pursue an eye–face connection instead – and then maybe looks away and brings a finger into connection with a lock of hair: in each case the disjunctive energy of anti-production functions to suspend one organ-machine connection, but only for the sake of another, in an open-ended series: either mouth–breast, or eye–smile, or finger–hair, or whatever. Page 45

The text contrasts D&G's view on the emergence of the disjunctive synthesis/recording with Freud and Lacan. For D&G, it arises from the transformation of connective energy upon achieving a "product," not from lack (Freud) or the unary trait (Lacan). Examples like an infant rejecting the breast after feeding or turning to another object show how disjunction suspends connections, registering signs on the BwO and freeing organs for different uses in an open-ended "either/or" series.

#on/disjunctive-synthesis #on/recording #on/body-without-organs #on/freud #on/lacan

BwO Frees from Instinctual Determination

The body-without-organs is thus ultimately what freesthe human animal from instinctual determination, for it prevents us from remainingfixated on any (developmentally or historically) given mode of satisfaction. What possibilities would exist for the development of culinary arts, for instance, ifhumans remained exclusively fixated on the breast for nourishment, or for oral gratification? The senses and organs can operate productively (in the broadest sense: creatively; as “theoreticians in their immediate praxis,” as Marx put it16) only on condition that they are freed from pre-established or instinctual connections and modes of satisfaction – and that is one effect of anti-production: to produce the body-without-organs as a kind of tabula rasa on which objects ofdrives and instincts register so as to multiply and differentiate. Page 45

Ultimately, the Body-Without-Organs is presented as the key to human freedom from instinctual determination. By preventing fixation on pre-established modes of satisfaction, it allows senses and organs to operate creatively. This liberation is an effect of anti-production, which creates the BwO as a surface for diversifying possibilities, much like a tabula rasa for the objects of drives and instincts.

#on/body-without-organs #on/bwo #on/freedom #on/instinct #on/anti-production

Pathologies: Fixation, Breakdown, and Catatonia

Just as the connective energy of desiring-production can succumb to fixation, the disjunctive or repulsive energy of anti-production can lead to total breakdown.If productive connections are systematically broken or denied by others, suchdenial can subsequently be “internalized” via repression, taken up and reproduced Page 45

autonomously by the force of anti-production operating consistently against the organism’s own connective syntheses: the temporary deferral of gratification associated with self-mastery and the enhancement of active force can becomethe absolute refusal of gratification characteristic of neurosis and self-denial. Page 46

Taken tothe extreme, anti-production can prevent the formation of any organ-machineconnections whatsoever, thereby bringing about complete withdrawal onto what Deleuze and Guattari sometimes call the “full” body-without-organs: this is the condition known in psychiatry as catatonia – a condition which Deleuze and Guattari suggest is usually the result of capitalist society’s violent refusal tocountenance the process of schizophrenia fostered by capitalism itself. Page 46

The text explores pathological outcomes of the syntheses. Just as connective energy can lead to fixation, excessive anti-production can lead to breakdown. If productive connections are systematically denied externally, this can be internalized, causing anti-production to turn against the organism's own connections, leading from temporary deferral to neurotic refusal. At its extreme, anti-production results in catatonia – a complete withdrawal onto the "full" BwO, often seen as a consequence of capitalism's violent rejection of its own generated schizophrenic process.

#on/pathology #on/neurosis #on/catatonia #on/anti-production #on/capitalism #on/body-without-organs

The conjunctive synthesis of consumption–consummation

Subjectivity Emerges Post-Selection

When production and anti-production conflict systematically, two specific forms of subjectivity result whichare noteworthy, in part because Freud had already identified them as corollariesof one another: the neurotic and the pervert.19 In the neurotic, the forces of antiproduction prevail: desiring-production is denied one or more of its own connections and is constrained to fix instead on a relatively ungratifying substituteconnection (the neurotic symptom). In the pervert, the forces of production prevail:an unorthodox organ-connection is maintained despite (or, in some cases, becauseof) social sanctions against it. Page 46

the subjects ofneurosis and perversion are noteworthy because they illustrate in dramatic orexaggerated form the relation of the third synthesis, the conjunctive synthesis ofconsumption–consummation, to the interplay of production and anti-productioncomprising the first two: the subject emerges only as an after-effect of theselections made by desire among various disjunctive and connective syntheses,not as the agent of selection. Page 46

The text discusses how the conflict between production and anti-production forces gives rise to specific subjectivities like the neurotic and the pervert. These forms illustrate a key point about the third, conjunctive synthesis: subjectivity emerges only as an after-effect of the choices made by desire across the first two syntheses, rather than the subject being the initiating agent of these selections.

#on/subjectivity #on/syntheses #on/neurosis #on/perversion

Illusion of Sovereign Subjectivity

when the infant rejectsthe breast and turns away to smile at a familiar face, this act is not chosen by but constitutes the infant as a subject (as “a snacker,” “an extrovert,” or whatever).“Normal” adults, by contrast, typically indulge in the illusion – the metaphysics Page 46

of sovereign subjectivity – whereby they choose their pleasures and desires, rather than being “chosen,” that is to say constituted, by them; Deleuze and Guattaridraw directly on Nietzsche to dispel this illusion and insist that the productionsand anti-productions of desire, like “will-to-power,” always come first, and the appearance of the subject afterward. Page 47

Using the example of an infant's actions constituting its subjectivity, the text highlights how "normal" adults live under the illusion of sovereign subjectivity, believing they are the agents of their desires. Drawing on Nietzsche, D&G counter this, asserting that the productive and anti-productive forces of desire precede and constitute the subject, rather than the subject originating desire.

#on/subjectivity #on/illusion #on/nietzsche #on/desire

Retrospective Subject Recognition and Consummation

The subject’s recognition of “its” desire, indeed even of itself as subject, isthus crucially retrospective; hence the syntax of the conjunctive synthesis, withits use of the past tense: “So that’s what that was!”; “So that’s what felt sointense!”; or “Oh! that was me!” Page 47

The contents of such moments of“consummation,” moreover, are derived from the connections and disjunctions generated by the previous syntheses. “Just as a part of the
energy of production was transformed into energy of recording,
a part of this energy of recording is transformed into energy of consummation” (16–17/23), and a subject emergesalongside the desiring-machines to “consume,” to enjoy or suffer, part of what has been produced. Page 47

The conjunctive synthesis involves the subject's retrospective recognition of desire and self ("aprĂšs coup"), reflected in its use of the past tense. The moments of "consummation" draw content from the connections and disjunctions of the preceding syntheses, with the subject emerging alongside the desiring-machines to experience the results of this production process.

#on/conjunctive-synthesis #on/subjectivity #on/retrospection #on/consummation

Subject's Misrecognition and Claim of Ownership

There is thus a significantambiguity in the other formulation Deleuze and Guattari give for the conjunctive synthesis: “It’s me, and so it’s mine” (16/23). Here the subject in fact only arises in the consuming appropriation and consummating recognition of the results ofdesiring-production, yet it tends to construe itself as an autonomous entity capableof taking possession of products of the processes that in fact constitute it. The recognition that “they’re me!” (in the sense that my self derives from them) succumbs to the claim that “they’re mine!” (they belong to me). Page 47

This reversal of the relation between process and product, which is crucial tosuch misrecognition (mĂ©connaissance) on the part of the subject and conducive to the illusion of sovereign subjectivity, is made possible by the earlier process/ product reversal of the disjunctive synthesis, whereby only results of thesuspension of the process of connective synthesis register on the body-withoutorgans – as differences among “finished” products. At this point, what is merely a recording-surface henceforth appears to be the source of what getsrecognized in the constitution of the subject in conjunctive syntheses. Finally, the subject in turn claims mastery or ownership of the body-without-organs – orof its products: consummate experience, intensities – when it is in fact merely derivative of them. The subject as product claims as its own the very process thatconstitutes it as subject Page 47

The text explores the subject's misrecognition (méconnaissance) in the conjunctive synthesis. The subject emerges from experiencing the results of desiring-production but mistakenly sees itself as an autonomous agent ("It's me, and so it's mine"). This illusion is facilitated by the disjunctive synthesis registering results on the BwO, making the BwO appear as the source of the subject's experience. The subject then claims ownership of the BwO and its intensities, despite being a product of the very processes it seeks to master.

#on/subjectivity #on/misrecognition #on/body-without-organs #on/conjunctive-synthesis

The Conjunctive Synthesis and the Nomadic Subject

Just as much as theconnective synthesis is continual (and
and
and
), and the disjunctive synthesis of recording is open-ended (either
or
or
), the conjunctive synthesis in turn generates, from the latter’s vast networks of relations among organ–machines on the body-without-organs, an indefinite series of constellations orstates of intense experience, each of which gets recognized and consummated ex post facto (or aprùs coup, in Lacan’s phrase) by a subject of that experience. Andif this subject has Page 48

no specific or personal identity, if it traverses the body-without-organswithout destroying [the latter’s] indifference [to any subjectivity], this isbecause it is not only a part that is peripheral to the machine, but also a part that is itself divided into parts that correspond to [the connective anddisjunctive syntheses] brought about by the machine. Thus the subjectconsumes and consummates each of the states through which it passes,and is born of each of them anew
(41/49; translation modified) Page 48

Just as the other syntheses have their structures (connective: "and...and...", disjunctive: "either...or..."), the conjunctive synthesis generates a series of intense experiences from the BwO's networks. A subject emerges to recognize and consume these states retrospectively. This subject, potentially without a fixed identity, is reborn with each state it experiences, mirroring the processes of the desiring-machines themselves.

#on/conjunctive-synthesis #on/subjectivity #on/body-without-organs #on/intensities

Subjective States: Catatonia, Paranoia, Schizo

Deleuze and Guattari designate catatonia as the state of zero intensity: total breakdown; the synthesesextinguished completely: no connections, no recording, no subject.22 It forms a kind of base-line against which to measure the forces of attraction and repulsion operating on the active body-without-organs. The paranoiac experiences the entire panoply of desiring-machines as threatening and wants to repel them, but withoutlosing touch with them altogether (as the catatonic does). Here the forces of repulsion predominate, yet the forces of attraction are still in play: constantly repelling the desiring-machines, with no prospect of ever completely succeeding, is itself a form of intensity, especially compared to the zero-degree intensity ofthe full body-without-organs. The schizo, by contrast, affirms the forces of bothattraction and repulsion, and takes them to the limit. Instead of being repelled or Page 48

merely having their finished products registered, the connective syntheses are brought back into play and put into operation on a body-without-organs whose disjunctive syntheses multiply their ramifications indefinitely, thereby fueling theconsummation of a perpetually renewed “nomadic” subject always different from itself, a kind of “permanent revolution” of psychic life. Page 49

To sum up their view ofschizophrenia as a process and of the subject that results from it, Deleuze and Guattari say thatthe proportions of attraction and repulsion on the body-without-organsproduce, starting from zero, a series of states
and the subject is born ofeach state in the series, is continually reborn of the following state thatdetermines him at a given moment, consuming–consummating all thesestates that cause him to be born and reborn (the lived state coming first, in relation to the subject that lives it). (20/27) Page 49

The text outlines different subjective states based on the forces operating on the Body-Without-Organs. Catatonia is zero intensity, total breakdown. Paranoia involves predominant repulsion of desiring-machines but maintains intensity. The schizo affirms both attraction and repulsion, taking them to the limit. This state involves productive syntheses on the BwO, indefinite multiplication of possibilities, fueling a perpetually renewed "nomadic" subject in a process of "permanent revolution" of psychic life. The subject emerges from these states, constantly reborn.

#on/subjectivity #on/states #on/catatonia #on/paranoia #on/schizophrenia #on/body-without-organs #on/nomadic-subject

The Conjunctive Synthesis Produces Subjectivity Without Fixed Identity

The conjunctive synthesis of consumption–consummation thus does produce “a” subject – or rather “some” subjectivity: series of lived subject-states – but without necessarily culminating in a fixed subject possessed of a specific identity. Page 49

The conjunctive synthesis of consumption-consummation generates subjectivity not as a fixed, unified identity, but as a series of transient, lived subject-states.

#on/conjunctive-synthesis #on/subjectivity #on/identity