| Félix Guattari
The Anti-Oedipus Papers
| “The
unconscious is not a theatre, but a factory,” wrote Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1972), instigating
one of the most daring intellectual adventures of the last
half-century. Together, the well-known philosopher and the
activist-psychiatrist were updating both psychoanalysis and
Marxism in light of a more radical and “constructivist” vision
of capitalism. “Capitalism is the exterior limit of all
societies because it has no exterior limit itself. It works
well as long as it keeps breaking down.” |
Few people at the time
believed, as they wrote in the often-quoted opening sentence
of Rhizome, that “the two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together.
Since each of us was several, that became quite a crowd.” These
notes addressed to Deleuze by Guattari, in preparation for
Anti-Oedipus, and annotated by Deleuze, substantiate their
claim, finally bringing out the factory behind the theatre.
They reveal Guattari as an inventive, highly analytical, mathematically-minded “conceptor,” arguably
one of the most prolific and enigmatic figures in philosophy
and social-political theory today. The Anti-Oedipus Papers
(1969-1973) are supplemented by substantial journal entries
describing his turbulent relationship with his analyst and
teacher Jacques Lacan, his apprehensions about the publication
of Anti-Oedipus and accounts of his personal and professional
life as a private analyst and co-director with Jean Oury of
the experimental clinic Laborde (created in the 1950s).
Félix Guattari (1930-1992), political activist and anti-psychiatrist,
met Gilles Deleuze in Paris in May 1968 and co-authored with
him landmark works including the infamous Anti-Oedipus (1972),
A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
(1975), and What is Philosophy? (1991). |
|
order
this book |
