Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French activist, institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician who founded schizoanalysis and ecosophy. His work, particularly in collaboration with Gilles Deleuze, delves into the complex relationships between the psyche, society, and the environment. Guattari's thought is characterized by a radical critique of capitalism and a search for new forms of organization and liberation. His approach combines a deep understanding of the human mind with an urgent call for ecological renewal.
A Thousand Plateaus is the second part of Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia - a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. Written over a seven year period, A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for 'nomadic thought' and has had a galvanizing influence on today's anti-capitalist movement.
Translator's introduction -- Part One. Semiotic Subjection and Collective Facilities: 1. The Unconscious is not structured like a language; 2. Where collective equipment starts and ends; 3. The capitalist revolution; 4. Bourgeoisie and capitalist flows; 5. Semiotic optional matter; 6. Equipment of power and political facades; 7. A molecular revolution; 8. The rhizome of collective assemblages; 9. Micro-fascism; 10. Self-management and the politics of desire -- Part Two. Pragmatic Analysis of the Social Unconscious: 11. Introduction of the principal themes; 12. Pragmatics, the runt of linguistics; 13. Pragmatics: a micropolitics of linguistic formations -- Part Three. Example of a Pragmatic Component: Faciality Traits: 14. On faciality; 15. The hierarchy of behaviour in man and animal; 16. The semiotics of the grass stem; 17. The little phrase in Vinteuil's sonata.
The first English translation of a crucial work of twentieth-century French
philosophy, in which Felix Guattari presents the most detailed account of his
theoretical position.
Transversality ... think of a field with a fence around it in which there are horses with adjustable blinkers: the adjustment of their blinkers is the "coefficient of transversality." If they are so adjusted as to make the horses totally blind, then presumably a certain traumatic form of encounter will take place. Gradually, as the flaps are opened, one can envisage them moving about more easily. Originally published in French in 1972, Psychoanalysis and Transversality gathers all the articles that Flix Guattari wrote between 1955 and 1971. It provides a fascinating account of his intellectual and political itinerary before Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972), the ground-breaking book he wrote with Gilles Deleuze, propelled him to the forefront of contemporary French philosophy. Guattari's background was unlike that of any of his peers. In 1953, with psychoanalyst Jean Oury, he founded the La Borde psychiatric clinic, which was based on the principle that one cannot treat psychotics without modifying the entire institutional context. For Guattari, the purpose of "institutional psychotherapy" was not just to cure psychotic patients, but also to learn with them a different relation to the world. A dissident in the French Communist Party and active in far-left politics (he participated in the May 1968 student rebellion), Guattari realized early on that it was possible to introduce analysis into political groups. Considered as open machines (subject-groups) rather than self-contained structures (subjugated groups), these subject-group's shunned hierarchy and vertical structures, developing transversally, rhizomatizing through other groups
An "introduction to the nonfascist life" (Michel Foucault, from the Preface) When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society. More than twenty-five years after its original publication, Anti-Oedipus still stands as a controversial contribution to a much-needed dialogue on the nature of free thinking.
The final work by the author before his death in 1992, Chaosmosis is a radical and challenging work concerned with the reinvention and resingularization of subjectivity. It attempts to embody affective change, the short-circuiting of signification and the proliferation of sense necessary to engage with non-discursive, artistic, poetic and pathic intensities. It includes critical reflections on Lacanian psychoanalysis, structuralism, information theory, postmodernism, and the thought of Heidegger, Bakhtin, Barthes, and others.
With Anti-Oedipus in 1972, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze instigated one of the most daring intellectual adventures of our time, updating both psychoanalysis and Marxism in light of a more radical and "constructivist" vision of capitalism. Assembled here for the first time, Guattari's notes, addressed to and annotated by Deleuze, reveal an inventive, visionary "conceptor," arguably one of the more enigmatic figures in philosophy and social-political theory today. The Anti-Oedipus Papers (1969-1973) are supplemented by substantial journal entries describing Guattari's turbulent relationship with his teacher Jacques Lacan, apprehensions about Anti-Oedipus and personal accounts of his life
