Cosmic Subjectivity: Guattari and the Production of Subjective Cartographies

Abstract

As social scientists become increasingly aware of the limits of dominant models of subjectivity to address contemporary social, cultural, and environmental problems, Felix Guattari’s emphasis on the machinic and processual dimensions of subjective production offers crucial insights. This paper explores the potential of Guattari’s evocation of the “cosmos” for the reconceptualisation of subjectivity. Among the various concepts of exteriority that Guattari employs throughout his work, the notion of the cosmos evokes the ungrounding effects of encounters with radically unfamiliar ontological universes. The paper invents the notion of cosmic subjectivity as a way of theorising a mode of subjective production that draws from a maximum of ontological universes. Open to the diverse existential rhythms and durations of the universe, cosmic subjectivity abandons the myth of an a priori subject and rejects the universal sense of time that provides its ground. To speak of cosmic subjectivity is to entertain the possibility of subjective processes that are not subjugated to the dominant order, but become compatible with immanent processes of mutation. To give flesh to these claims, the paper briefly explores three science fiction films released in recent years, which gesture, in significantly different ways, beyond the human: War for the Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner 2059 and Arrival. Our use of the films is not meant to provide an outline of a new model of subjectivity, but to give a sense of the complexities of keeping subjective production open to the indeterminate forces of other ontological universes.