Abstract
In Anti-Oedipus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari analyze the manner in which what they refer to as deterritorialized flows of desire, have been reduced to state, family or religious hierarchies. Matter, capital, and libido are among the flows of desire for which nature and human nature are processes of production. The author’s argue that there is really only one process of desiring-production, that now capitalism and psychoanalysis are inextricably linked, and that the former produces subjective abstract labor, while the latter produces subjective abstract libido. Thus although nothing exists outside of the socius, without its inhabitants, there is no socius: “they are strictly inseparable and constitute one and the same process of production.” This leaves one with the uncomfortable conclusion that social repression and psychic repression are one and the same mechanism, and insofar as the transition from primitive territories, to barbarian despots, to civilized capitalists, which they refer to as State power, has proceeded lock-step, that there is possibly no place else to go.
Highlights
At most, what seems possible is a level of interpretive examination of the social processes in which the user is caught up (322)
- 72 PhænEx schizophrenic investment is simultaneously a social investment and it is the task of schizoanalysis to reach the investments of the unconscious in the social field
At the same time, the positive task is the discovery of libidinal investments in the social field, the social nomadic distribution, the “nomadology,” a social undoing of the organized and unified social field, a nomadic distribution of the socius that is not able to be captured by civilized capitalism
Summary
In their Treatise on Nomadology, Deleuze and Guattari seek to examine the parameters of State and judicial power through the lens of IndoEuropean mythology. Quoting Marcel Granet, Dumézil adds that “‘throughout the world this revolution [meaning the advent of the warrior] signals one of the great moments, constitutes one of the great openings of society to progress.’” (108) Attuned to this revolution, this great opening, Deleuze and Guattari identify Indra with their concept of the “war machine,” which “in-itself” remains outside of sovereign authority and prior to its legislative power insofar as what they come to call the war machine in the guise of Indra operates against State power, both the sovereign and the law They carry out this analysis in order to articulate the conflict between State power and its apparent adversary, Nomadic power, a conflict that began with ancient societies, that is, the primitive territories, but continued through the reign of barbarian despots and up to the present day of so-called civilized capitalists. If the Go player operates with strategies of attack and retreat rather than lawful reason, what is the nature of this kind of thinking and acting? Is it enough to strategize, to form bands against the State, to play the nomad with no paths or land, to territorialize and as quickly to turn around and deterritorialize, to think always in terms of continuous variations of variables? Or, is there something more needed—something that can interfere with the big game played between the King, the priest, and the law on the one hand and the nomad on the other?
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