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.
Throughout a large part of the 1980s, Felix Guattari, known for his
collaborations with Gilles Deleuze and his experimental and groundbreaking
practices in psychotherapy, decides to shift his experimental work into a
different medium of artistic and creative thought practice: the world of
science fiction. Part self-analysis, part cinematic expressi
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
The French philosopher Felix Guattari frequently visited Japan during the
1980s and organized exchanges between French and Japanese artists and
intellectuals. His immersion into the machinic eros of Japanese culture put
him into contact with media theorists such as Tetsuo Kogawa and activists
within the mini-FM community (Radio Home Run), documen
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.
Extending the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns, The Three Ecologies argues that the ecological crises that threaten our planet are the direct result of the expansion of a new form of capitalism and that a new ecosophical approach must be found which respects the differences between all living systems. A powerful critique of capitalism and a manifesto for a new way of thinking, the book is also an ideal introduction to the work of one of Europe's most radical thinkers. This edition includes a chronology of Guattari's life and work, introductions to both his general philosophy and to the work itself, and extended notes to the original text.
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.
This extraordinary collaboration between Felix Guattari amd Antonio Negri was written at the dawn of the 1980s, in the wake of the crushing of the autonomous movements of the previous decade. The diagnose with incisive prescience transformations of the global economy and theorise new forms of alliance and organisation: mutant machines of subjectivation and social movement.
