Guattari Research Articles

Poetics in the work of three urban photographers: Love for the chaotic city from the site of urban rooftops

AbstractBy exploring the poetics of three photographers, this article attempts to capture the relationship between urban denizens and the ephemeral, tumultuous city. I understand poetics as arising from their spatial affection for, and sensemaking of, the city, which in turn engenders visual landscapes. I first outline poetics as the art of inhabiting, which generates affection for the city, drawing on the writings of Gaston Bachelard, Michel de Certeau, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Next, I examine how the poetics of photography is crafted in terms of creative sensemaking, where the affected body attunes to percepts and finds resonance with the city's vital forces, thereby enabling poetical landscapes to be captured by the lens.

‘Be a man!’

This autoethnographic article adopts Rosemarie Anderson’s (2001) notion of embodied writing to ruminate on the bodily violence done to the effeminate body by hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity and femophobia. Specifically, this text seeks to underscore how the socio-culture discourse to “be a man” bears negative consequences for the effeminate body from childhood to adulthood and from the schoolyard to the opera stage. Masculinity and queer theories, alongside the theories of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Audre Lorde, are interwoven with the auto-narratives and serve as theoretical lenses through which the author widens his narratives beyond the self, situating his experiences within historical and theoretical contexts to contribute to the scholarship around masculinity and opera. At the end of this text, the author suggests that by creating Lordeian connections, new expressions of masculinity might be sought, which could pave the way for new futures within opera.

Fungal Rhizomes: Mycorrhizae and Posthumanism

ABSTRACT As the material conditions of the Anthropocene continue to destabilise, urgent and heightened attention to diverse, more-than-human agents is imperative. One ecologically critical domain of life is that of fungi. Fungi, although important trophic links in their ecosystems, are often given short shrift as ecological agents when it comes to discourses around sustainability, whilst conventionally viewed (in Western thought) as either harbingers of disease and degradation, or primarily instrumental or aesthetic objects-in-the-world, reinforcing binary notions of anthropic exceptionalism. Drawing together the concept of fecundity, indebted to the non-fiction narratives of Annie Dillard, and the rhizomic model explicated by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, this paper will argue that an effective means of undermining this ontological stratification between domains of life is realised through rhizoanalytic approaches to fecund contexts in fungal worlds, as they allow for the employment of methodologies which endeavour to articulate the multi-agential, embodied processes of worldmaking which occur ceaselessly within and around human bodies.

Encountering the image of thought in artmaking

Drawing from observations by contemporary art critic Jerry Saltz that recent art-school graduates are producing work that imitates the styles of successful and established artists and movements, this article explores how the ways in which artist-students are taught in university art programmes might potentially impact their postgraduate art practices. If art school-educated professional artists do indeed tend to adhere to prescriptive modes of artmaking, what are some ways in which university art educators might disrupt these habits at the outset for art students who are just starting out in a college art programme? To contemplate this question, this article engages Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s philosophical concept of the encounter as one approach that might trigger a new kind of thought in learning and artmaking, which informed a teaching experiment that I undertook with one of my introductory art courses. The implantation and reflection on this teaching experiment illustrates how teachers at all levels of art education might create their own adaptive forms of experimenting with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the encounter to short circuit such emulative modes of thinking in students’ approaches to artmaking.

How does artificial intelligence work in organisations? Algorithmic management, talent and dividuation processes

AbstractThis article analyses the forms of dividuation workers undergo when they are linked to technologies, such as algorithms or artificial intelligence. It examines functionalities and operations deployed by certain types of Talent Management software and apps—UKG, Tribepad, Afiniti, RetailNext and Textio. Specifically, it analyses how talented workers materialise in relation to the profiles and the statistical models generated by such artificial intelligence machines. It argues that these operate as a nooscope that allows the transindividual plane to be quantified through a process known as dividuation. Finally, by way of conclusion, the notion of the dividual is presented as the logic that characterises the human–machine relationship in the case of artificial intelligence and as the horizon of what Felix Guattari called “machinic capitalism”.

Beyond the machinery metaphors: Towards a theory of international organizations as machines

Abstract This article builds upon the common metaphor of international organizations as the ‘machinery’ of international law to present a theoretical exploration of these institutions. This metaphor has remained unexamined, a reflection of the paradoxical status of international organizations as objects lacking theoretical attention. By tapping into the metaphor’s full theoretical potential and expanding it into a theory of international organizations as machines, this article introduces a new conceptualization of their role and operation. This is accomplished by applying a particular machine concept from social theory, as developed in the work of Felix Guattari and his collaboration with Gilles Deleuze. The proposed machinic perspective enables the casting of the relation between international organizations and states in a new light, building on the classical concerns with these entities’ attributed powers and granted international legal personality. It presents an image of these institutions as agents focused on the production of connections and links with external ideas and forces, in order to produce unforeseen powers and capacities.

Slow World Cinemas' Rhizomatic Flux in Carlos Reygadas's Japón

Adopting Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's formulations of the rhizome, this article will examine a dynamic that lies between the film Japón's (Carlos Reygadas, 2002) vernacular specificities, European modernist aesthetics and cosmopolitan spectatorship. The article aims to reveal that Japón, along with other contemporary slow films from around the world, has the potential to reify a deterritorialising and reterritorialising encounter that rethinks a Eurocentric genealogical reading of world cinema and challenges a capitalist code of filmmaking.

Understanding the Kashmir Conflict: A Complex Multiplicity Perspective

Understanding the Kashmir Conflict: A Complex Multiplicity Perspective

Elvio Fachinelli — Psychoanalysis of Dissension in Italy

I recently wrote a chapter on the book _The Years of Alienation in Italy_ (Barbetta, 2019) focusing on the persona of Elvio Fachinelli (1928-1989). In this essay, I will outline Fachinelli’s thought and clinical practice from the 1960s to the 1980s, up until his premature death at 61, in 1989. Fachinelli was a prominent exponent of the critical psychoanalysis in Milan; he was a peculiar type of psychoanalyst, not the kind of person easily to be enrolled or framed into a mainstream – whether it be Freudian or Lacanian. But this is not Fachinelli’s main highlight; during the years following 1968 in Europe, there have been many left-wing dissidents, or libertarians, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts: Ronald Laing, Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro, Franz Fanon, Felix Guattari, just to mention few. Fachinelli is important for three main contributions to the field: 1. the way he shaped the connection between psychoanalysis and historical materialism; 2. the issue concerning the possibility of a different kind of psychoanalysis for the working class; and 3. his singular approach concerning what I call _corporeal turn_ in psychotherapy. The arguments with Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan are at the center of the following essay. The years of Fachinelli’s work have not had the same influence and popularity as Lacan’s in Italy. However, Lacan was interested in involving Fachinelli within his movement, yet Fachinelli refused Lacan’s proposal and advanced theoretical and clinical reasons – that I will mention and analyse in this paper - for such said refusal.

Analysis of Postcolonial Kazakh Poetry in the Context of Minor Literature

In the article, the characteristics and manifestations of post-colonial Kazakh poetry are analysed based on the concept of “minor literature” introduced by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to the field of social sciences and postmodern discourse. During the period of the Soviet Union, that is, in the understanding of colonialism, the literature of the colonised peoples was always considered as someone else's literature, and the author himself was excluded and considered as “another person”. Even after independence, these complexes continued on literary/cultural/political basis. As a result, the image of the typical writer in literary texts, works, language, style, political content and collective discourse has undergone significant changes. This article analyses these and other changes in post-colonial Kazakh poetry in the context of minor literature. Focusing on the works of Kazakh poets, including Turmanbay Moldagaliyev's poems written after independence, and poets such as Yesengali Raushanov, Bakhytzhan Kanapiyanov, Meirkhan Akdauletuly, Temirkhan Medetbek, Bakhyt Kenzheev, it draws attention to the deterritorialisation of the language and the transformation of the Kazakh language into a creole language and the political and collective discourse of literary works. Within the framework of these studies, the psychological impact of colonialism and emancipation tendencies in post-colonial Kazakh society and political and social issues were evaluated through literary texts.

From Humanitarian Intervention to Regime Change in Libya: Human Agency in the Production and Transformation of Global Security Assemblages

The paper examines human agency in the production and transformation of global security assemblages. A situated conception of human agency is elaborated theoretically through the reincorporation of key concepts from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s original oeuvre, such as ‘bodies’ ‘desire’ and ‘affect’. Through this Deleuzoguattarian assemblage framework it becomes possible to distinguish between human/non-human and active/reactive forms of agency, while not losing sight of how human actions invariably take place within broader structures of signification. To showcase the utility and analytical potential of this approach, the paper returns to a paradigmatic case of global security cooperation in recent times: the military intervention in Libya of 2011. Through the assemblage framework advocated it is illustrated how the agency of the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States is crucial for making connections with other bodies in the production of a Libyan humanitarian intervention assemblage, and later bringing about its transformation into a Libyan regime change assemblage. More than this, it becomes possible to grasp how in fact both these processes form part of a single Western-led biopolitical-geopolitical strategy. The paper concludes by emphasising the political and ethical significance of an appreciation of human agency in global security assemblages. De l’intervention humanitaire au renversement du régime en Libye : l’agentivité humaine dans la production et la transformation des agencements de la sécurité mondiale

Метаморфозы тела в контексте цифровой моды

The article is devoted to the study of hybrid images in digital fashion, to which the concept of “metamorphoses” can be applied. Using the concept of “metamorphoses” both form and content of visual objects are analyzed simultaneously, which corresponds to the idea of overcoming binarity, namely philosophical essentialism in relation to the concept of the human body and human subjectivity. Instead of a unitary subject, we propose an “expanded” vision of the human being as undergoing constant transformation depending on the internal and external environment. The philosophical justification for this position is based on the notion of “becoming” by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as the concept of “metamorphoses” by Rosi Braidotti. The author also refers to Ovid’s poetic work of the same name as a primary source of the idea of metamorphoses and as a collection of myths that inspire designers around the world. The article examines images-metamorphoses of digital designers and brands such as The Fabricant x Trs.Mnz, Bad Binch TONGTONG with XTENDED IDENTITY, Tribute, Eva Iszoro, Antoni Tudisco, etc. They have become famous thanks to their placement on recognized digital clothing markets such as The Fabricant, The Dematerialized, and participation with digital shows in official fashion weeks. The author concludes that the concept of metamorphoses is a visual and methodological tool that permits one to analyze the relationship between man, animal, and machine. Metamorphoses are not only a way to represent the diversity of bodies, but also an occasion for discussion regarding aesthetics, politics and ethics from the point of view of these bodies.

Minor Voices in Salim Barakat’s “The Captives of Sinjar”: Deleuzian Perspective

Salim Barakat's The Captives of Sinjar (2016), has been read as historical accounts of the actual events that happened in Sinjar back in 2014. It appears to depict the accounts of Yazidi women who endured victimization at the hands of a collective of male perpetrators – ISIS – the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham fighters. However, in this paper, we unravel the signs and symbols of the text to show the invisible aspects of the incidents which are mediated through the perspective of the male narrator, Sarat. The narrative language employed within the text serves to engage readers at a cognitive level that encourages contemplation and fosters a heightened mental engagement. With the blend of magic reality mode and surrealist scenes, the linguistic approach facilitates the construction of vivid imageries, particularly concerning the portrayal of the mass execution of captives, as portrayed through meticulously selected artistic representations embedded within the novel’s fabric. This study aims to explore alternative dimensions of the novel. Through a close reading, we seek to establish links between the analysis and the theoretical framework of minor literature as examined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Central to our findings is the discernment of an enduring and dynamic struggle between marginalized and oppressed factions, juxtaposed against those in positions of dominance. Moreover, the study examines the intricate interplay between constructed notions of identity and the subjective realities of the characters.

Transversal Harm and Zemiology: Reconsidering Green Criminology and Mineral Extractivism in Cerro de Pasco, Peru

Green criminology has been advancing a focus on environmental crimes and harms. Extending this inquiry into avoidable and avertable environmental harms is a key function of both green criminology and zemiology. However, while the former seeks to expand regulatory frameworks, the latter contains within it the potential for a more holistic reimagining of the social world. Based on a methodology that combines qualitative methods (key informant interviews), a zemiological analysis, and the political ecology of Felix Guattari, we present a reconceptualization of harm inflicted by mineral extractivism in Peru’s Cerro de Pasco. The analysis utilizes the concept of transversal harm, which allows us to move beyond the criminal and civil damage of corporate crime and negligence, and to capture the collective and continuous impact of mineral extractivism. A discussion of transversal harm as a potential new avenue for expanding the conceptual boundaries of studying environmental harm concludes the article.

Aswang contra aswang: Interrogating the drug war chaos through Alyx Arumpac’s Aswang (2019)

In this research, I seek to interrogate Rodrigo Duterte’s “war-on-drugs” through the documentary film Aswang (Arumpac, 2019). In the first part of this paper, I revisit the aswang phenomenon against the backdrop of the Philippine folkloric tradition and some evolving issues in the Philippine society. Before I narrate and dissect the indispensable aspects of the film, I explain first Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theory of chaosmosis against the backdrop of the neoliberal capitalist chaos. Subsequently, I theorize the aswang as an aesthetic principle capable of traversing other worlds, disciplines, and scholarship. I use the film’s revolutionary potentials as an impetus to explore other artistic productions and community—rehabilitation initiatives critical of Duterte’s drug war. In the third part of the paper, I use the film in diagnosing the drug war’s secularized aswang­­—an authoritarian flattening and superimposition of chaos. In this vein, Aswang metamorphoses into a political principle that can antagonize the repressive configurations of Duterte’s anti-chaos chaos. Ultimately, the fusion of the aesthetic and the political seeks to transform the Aswang into a vector of transformation, resistance, and hope, which I call post-Aswang.

Rest so deep now

SummaryIn this “hundreds” in honor of Kathleen Stewart, we channel her work on ordinary affects. In the form of a refracted dialogue, we make indirect references to Kathleen Stewart, Lauren Berlant, Sigmund Freud, Donald Winnicott, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari to evoke the vital and deadly repetitions that sustain the re/production of coupled forms of life.

Displacements of Mohammed Abdalah During His Life

Contemporary discourse on the desert challenges colonial approaches to this landscape, yet there is a risk of remaining within an imperial theoretical framework. Departing from the dichotomy of “smooth” versus “striated” space conceptualized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, this essay argues for the need to move beyond the notion of the desert as a spatial continuum. Considering the complex historical development of decolonizing Western Sahara, this paper argues for understanding the desert otherwise through a focus on three specific buildings. Mohammed Abdalah’s tent offers a model for how traditional nomadic forms of living were entangled in the process of geographical expeditions of the Spanish colonial government in the first half of the twentieth century—a form of life that vanished with the establishment of new cities and a mining company in the African colony. While the population started settling in towns, the colonial government had the project of making a profit from the rich resources of phosphate in the national and international market: the ground itself became movable. That ‘fluid movement’ was achieved by constructing the world’s longest conveyor belt, connecting the mine of Bou Craa with the port of El Aaiun, a moment in which the difference between spaces that are “smooth” and “striated” begins to blur. Finally, the construction of a fortifying wall of sand by the Moroccan army during the war with Western Sahara—a wall that still divides the contemporary territory—manifests the final iteration of the shifts of spatial understanding that have taken place, particularly since the 1980s. This essay accumulates this complex history in order to reveal how gray areas, ambiguous overlaps, and ill-defined borders configure a contemporary form of sovereignty over the desert. Highlighting the tensions between politics and geology, it argues that Western Sahara presents a case in which architecture arrests the movements and the trajectories of the nomadic paradigm.

THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE PROJECT OF UKRAINIAN PHILOSOPHY AND ITS "LEXICON OF UNTRANSLATABLES"

The illustrations of the translation of "untranslatables" considered in the article prove the idea that they are not an inconvenience, but a form of enrichment of philosophy, which formats the line of its cumulative development through the production of concepts (Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari "What is philosophy?"), as a way of existence of modern philosophy. The concept is determined not only by tradition and the ability to use the "lexicon of untranslatables", but also by language, cultural and political contexts. We substantiate the thesis that the format of the concept dismantles the idea of ​​such a philosophy that is able to speak only in universal languages ​​and emphasize the importance of local philosophies, to which the Ukrainian one belongs. Such importance is manifested in the fact that: national philosophies demonstrate local features of European philosophy; is the transformation and approbation of its ideas in national contexts; creates that "lexicon of untranslatables", the mastery of which teaches philosophy to speak national languages; the national language acquires the ability to become a means of expressing philosophical ideas (Dmytro Chyzhevsky, Oleksander Potebnia); the "lexicon of untranslatables" is modified by the dominant values ​​of the time, embodied in the mentality and culture of the people. The historical examples and analogies given in the text of the objective symbolic fixation of the translation of philosophical terms in national languages ​​allow us to clarify the options of the linguistic prerequisites of philosophical theories expressed in national languages, and are an argument against the monolingualism of philosophy. The modern translation of "untranslatables" works within the epistemological field of the philosophy of language, shifting the focus from the language code to the discourse, the latter is not a necessary condition for understanding the language, but is a source of destruction of communication or development of those rules, following which makes communication effective. Rejecting the universalist approach and focusing on national strategies, we consider language as a primary source that "pressures" the philosopher, which means that it implies a critique of traditional linguistic ideas about language. The trending topic is the concepts of cultural imperialism, which with the beginning of Russia's aggression against Ukraine became a fact of life for Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian language turned into a weapon of support for this aggression.

Dilemmas of Transcultural Mobility in M. G. Vassanji’s <i>The Assassin’s Song</i>

The contemporary trend in migration has transformed the world into a space without borders with multiple crossings across national and international boundaries taking place. It has given rise to what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari characterise as deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, which, in turn, affects the process of identity constitution and establishing of home. Often it gives rise to a conflict between reality and aspirations, responsibilities and desires. The present paper explores ideas related to transcultural mobility and its impact on identity and belonging as portrayed in M. G. Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Song (2007). Vassanji in the novel creates a transcultural space to examine dilemmas around the concept of roots, as identity travels on other routes in search of better lives and fulfilment of aspirations. The paper examines how mobility empowers even as relationships change with home and with those left behind.

Minor Literature as a Vital Component of World Literature: Lu Xun’s Translation of Bulgarian Literature via German Sources

At the turn of the twentieth century, many Chinese translators departed from the mainstream approach to world literature advocated by Western powers and turned their attention to what Chinese theorists call the “literature of weak and small nations.” China’s marginalized position in the international political and economic order of the time prompted the pursuit of a discourse to address imperialism and national identity, as well as problems of social injustice and oppression. This article draws on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s interpretation of “minor literature” to analyze Lu Xun’s interest in the literature of weak and small nations, which developed against the backdrop of the European formation of a canonical genealogy of world literature ( Weltliteratur). By introducing Chinese readers to relevant literary history and translating selected works of fiction, Lu Xun formed an imagined community of letters joining China to the weak and small nations — despite his heavy reliance on German sources that took a markedly canonical stance. This article focuses on Lu Xun’s translation and interpretation of two short stories by Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria’s pre-eminent modern writer, to explore how the literature of weak and small nations assisted Lu Xun in negotiating not only with Western cultural hegemony but also with Chinese tradition and nationalism.