Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Why am I giving this book a five star rating? Because this work is an effort at a new theory that is systematic and terminologically consistent and must have been a torture for the writers to conjure up in their head. It certainly is a torture to read this work. Not because I can't understand hard-core philosophy - I have read, understood and liked Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and Derrida, considered amongst the most abstruse stylists - but because it is difficult to empathize with writers who characterize themselves and their readers as 'desiring machines' rather than as subjects with consciousness and will. Is desire the only thing that defines human beings - what about will, thinking, compassion, judgment? And further why am I supposed to be a machine and in what sense? These are the questions that came to my mind. The authors never explain. The question of the subject is dismissed in one sentence. It is also difficult to agree with writers who dismiss all seeking of power and all active resistance by implication as fascism and preach escape/flight as the most radical ideology of resistance and hope. And it is difficult to find hope in the vain jargon of molecular vs. molar, in the lines of escape or flight, or in a schizoid approach to life (a schizophrenic has no control over himself - is a machine and hence is the authors' favorite). The authors fail in their synthesis of Marx and Freud although they come close and fail to understand Nietzsche, one of their favorite philosophers. Marx, Freud and Nietzsche would turn violently in their graves, if they ever know what Deleuze/Guattari did to their philosophies. They speculations on incest, kinship etc., are just too weak, sketchy and merely assertoric to be taken seriously. I do not endorse the philosophy of Deleuze/Guattari. To be sure they offer brilliant insights but their line of argument has as many holes as Swiss cheese. Yet there are a few things that are brilliant in the work and it certainly remains an original and challenging work. Having, stated my disappointment with the work, now let me also state the better aspects of this work. This work has a very well argued theory of control mechanisms in primitive, barbarian and capitalist societies. The authors rightly point out that capitalism governs well because it always generates new rules to survive (new axiomatic) and controls because all social codes are 'decoded' (de-codified) into flows (loose, lawlike systems of control) and de-territorialized. (Other writers have explained the same things in simpler jargon, but Deleuze-Guattari need to be given due credit for the brilliance of their analysis of capitalism, although their libidnalization of economics doesn't add anything valueable to the analysis of either libido or economics and seems forced). The other hallmark of this work is that it offers one of the more interesting critiques of Freud's Oedipal complex, psychotherapy and its role in making humans conformist. They d

This is, in my opinion, the most important work of theory/philosophy for the latter half of the twentieth century. Although D & G's jargon tends to be weighty at times, it is ultimately playful. there is the tendency, amongst numerous D & G fans, to reduce their philosophy to a text merely about postmodern criticism. i believe this is a mistake. ultimately, Anti-Oedipus (and its companion volume) are about politics--radical politics at best--written by two Marxists who are looking for a new revolutionary theory. indeed, Guattari once said in an interview that postmodernism is "the very paradigm of every sort of submission, every sort of compromise with the existing status quo". Anti-Oedipus is important for political activists, otherwise it becomes just another piece of "knowledge-capital"...

Deleuze (and Felix Guattari)are fasinating, but their prose appeals to only the sophisticated and open-minded. These men test and subsequently abolish the hierarchies on which elitism, superiority, and exclusion are built and return the world to a "horizontality" that has not existed since humans came out of the trees. They begin be striking at the heart of modern psychology, the Oedipus Complex, seeking to destroy what they believe to be the source of dominance and difference. They supplement this radical notion by equating individual desire with social desire and have no use for repression. Superegos and overactive egos have no place in their society of unbridled and unexcused desire. Because desire takes as many forms as there are persons to implement it, its is a constantly changing thoroughly innovative idea seeking new channels and different combinations to realize itself, or as they term it, a "body without organs," the changing social body of desire. This is wild stuff and worth the time it takes decifer it.

An amazingly distilled discussion exploring the fascistic roots of psycholanalysis, Marxism, and capitalism. Certainly not for the timid of heart, Deleuze-Guatarri weave a tapestry than unravels soon after reading. A must for anyone interested in post-structural discussions of power.