Carla Gilfillan
September 24, 2008
Phenomenology
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
In 1972’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari form a rebuttal to Freud’s psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex and introduce a new medium to use in analyzing human consciousness and behavior: “schizoanalysis.” As Michel Foucault writes in the preface, “one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life” (page xiii). Deleuze and Guattari systematically analyze the social structures that bring out the fascist in every person and examine the characteristic of humans that allows them to be lead, to desire to be controlled. The goal of schizoanalysis is identified by Mark Seem, one of the translators, as “to break the holds of power and institute research into a new collective subjectivity and a revolutionary healing of mankind” (xxi). Deleuze and Guattari seek to examine “oedipalization” through schizophrenics—those who are mad, psychotic, and therefore in their delirium, insusceptible to the influence of social structures. To them, schizophrenia is an appropriate example because in its purest form, it is the “process of the production of desire and desiring-machines” (24) unadulterated, lacking the filter of oedipalization.
Deleuze and Guattari refute the idea that Oedipus is the end-all-be-all of analysis, but they do not question its validity: "It is often thought that Oedipus is an easy subject to deal with, something perfectly obvious, a ‘given’ that is there from the very beginning" (page 3). The Oedpial complex is indeed, perfectly obvious to Deleuze and Guattari, but the main goal of Anti-Oedipus is to reform psychoanalysis through schizoanalysis—there are far too many factors at play, especially societal and social ones, to limit the understanding of the consciousness and the unconciousness by prescribing Oedipus to every situation and person. Oedipus is a "given," and it is obvious that Deleuze and Guattari accept that there is a "givenness" of things humans can analyze. Deleuze and Guattari want to specifically examine the schizo because, in their terms, “we knew the schizo was not oedipalizable, because he is beyond territoriality,” (67). Despite society’s influence, psychosis has allowed the schizophrenic to keep his desires intact. Indeed, there is a difference between neurosis (in capitalism, part of a double bind which in a sense is also normative) and psychosis: “in neurosis the ego obeys the requirements of reality and stands ready to repress the drives of the id, whereas in psychosis the ego is under the sway of the id, ready to break with reality” (122). This faculty of “readiness” is what separates schizophrenics from the capitalist machine. Indeed, Deleuze and Guattari approach “neurosis as an intra-oedipal disorder, and psychosis as an extra-oedipal escape” (125). Neurosis is what the capitalist machine expects of us, and psychosis is a rebellion to this kind of fascism. Psychosis is a medium of understanding society’s hold on humans, for “madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough” (131).
The "tripartite formula—the Oedpial, neurotic one: daddy-mommy-me" (23) is often looked at as the explanation of repression, however, Deleuze and Guattari assert that the Freudian Oedipal complex is only a tool of repression. Deleuze and Guattari also ask the reader to keep in mind D.H. Lawrence’s view of psychoanalysis à la Freud, in an attempt to reveal its absurdity: “that psychoanalysis was shutting sexuality up in a bizarre sort of box painted with bourgeois motifs, in a kind of rather repugnant artificial triangle, thereby stifling the whole of sexuality as production of desire” (49). Sexuality is at the root of desire and therefore desiring-production and desiring-machines—it is what drives reproduction and serves as a base for human existence and can lead to neurosis through its distortion.
Deleuze and Guattari begin by explaining the basic terminology discussed within the work. They define a "machine" as "a system of interruptions or breaks" and assert that "every machine . . . is related to a continual material flow that it cuts into" (36). These breaks are always filled by the production of other machines and flows—"every machine is a machine of a machine" and there is a consistency, a "continuous, infinite flux" (36). To them, "the body without organs," refers to a system not unlike the human body, but one without organs—one that is not alive, and does not possess a "desiring-machine" itself, but is the indirect product of human's desiring-machines. "The body without organs is nonproductive" (8) and therefore must rely on desiring-machines to function. The body without organs does not represent anything. Conversely, it is comprised of "partial objects," at the very base, "races, cultures, and their gods" (85). The breaks in the production flow of the machines of a body without organs are what a subject uses "as reference points in order to locate itself" (43), therefore, humans within a capitalist society (or any society) become dependent on society, the body without organs, for a sense of identity. A desiring-machine is the term used to refer to that which instigates "desiring-production"—essentially, it is a machine connected to many other machines. Desiring-production possesses its own true flow of desire—a desire that flows freely unless it is obstructed by some social or external structure. Similarly, all humans possess "desiring-machines." An important aspect of desiring-production is that desire to Deleuze and Guattari does not represent a want of something, but a productive force. From the chain-links in the “flows” of machines, surplus value is accumulated. It should be noted that surplus is the foundation of civilization and especially of a capitalist society.
Deleuze and Guattari also assert that the paranoiac machine "is merely an avatar of the desiring-machines: it is a result of the relationship between the desiring-machines and the body without organs" (9). The product of the paranoiac machine is neurosis—therefore, it is the relationship between desire (used by society) and society (requiring production) that creates mental disorder and essentially causes humans to be “oedipalized.” Oedipus presents a "double-bind": it is an "oscillation between two poles: the neurotic identification and the internalization that is said to be normative" (80). People are expected to accept that Oedipal complex as applying to themselves—the body without organs via psychoanalysis demands that they relate to it. Oedipalization is a way that society “overcodes” the socius. It is the medium through which psychoanalysis accounts for neurosis, but also creates it. This “overcoding” is what “constitutes the essence of the State, and that measures both its continuity and its break with the previous formations” (199).
Deleuze and Guattari's universe is composed only of desiring-production and social-production: “there is only desire and the social, and nothing else” (29). In humans' primitive state, their desiring-machines were able to flow freely. However, civilization has obstructed, disfigured, and distorted this natural flow—thereby interfering with humans' productive nature, which can result in a kind of "self-care." Once the desiring-machine is obstructed, a human’s productivity can only seek to serve the capitalist society that forces "oedipalization" upon it. Capitalist societies interfere with a person in such a way that through the society's influence, the person becomes "individualized"—influenced, prompted, and molded by society. Deleuze and Guatarri assert that it is an error to attempt to put human beings in boxes by analyzing them via the Oedipus-complex-through-psychoanalysis. They argue that the Oedipus complex has become a part of the social structure and is thereby forcing itself on the men and women and especially children of the society. Deleuze and Guattari call for a "deindividualization" that will eventually lead to a goal of collective "mutual self-care."
Deleuze and Guattari seek to focus schizoanalysis from a more ontological approach than psychoanalysis has adopted in the past. They argue that history and social structures influence society and therefore people. Furthermore, they criticize the psychoanalyst because in employing the Freudian Oedipal complex, he "becomes a director for a private theater, rather than the engineer or mechanic who sets up units of production, and grapples with collective agents of production and antiproduction" (55). This is to say that psychoanalysts must truly analyze instead of applying a form and a formula (the dreaded tripartite Oedipus complex) to every situation.
Deleuze and Guattari also suggest that it is the phallic-obsessed and phallus-oriented nature of modern civilization that "makes the whole of sexuality shift into the Oedipal framework" (73). Furthermore, the penis occupies the position in society as representing the “lack” imposed by modern notions of desire as want of something (see the notion of penis-envy as it is applied to women and the fear of castration as it is applied to men in Freud’s thought). In Freudian terms, “it is the anus that in this manner detaches it, it is the anus that removes and sublimates the penis in a kind of Aufhebung that will constitute the phallus” (143). If the primitive state of man is viewed in relation to Freud’s “oral stage,” and civilization, specifically capitalism, represents Freud’s “phallic stage,” where does the “anality” fit in? In terms of Oedipus, “the whole of [it] is anal and implies an individual overinvestment of the organ to compensate for its collective disinvestment” (143). In other words, the idea of Oedipus itself is neurotic and anal-retentive.
Deleuze and Guattari use Husserl's terminology, referring to what is "immanent" and what is "transcendent." They present the idea that there are two possible forms of the "disjunctive synthesis of recording"—"one immanent, the other transcendent" (78). It is this process of recording that results in a connection between the oral tradition—what Deleuze and Guattari identify as the "primitive state" of man) and the phallic system (due to the advent of writing, the replacing of voice with words). This “graphism” replaces the voice in society and aside from being symbolic in regard to the advent of civilization, destroys some of the authenticity of communication and desire is open, once again, to be distorted and thwarted.
Capitalism rose out of tyrannical societies, according to Deleuze and Guattari. Ontologically, capitalism is in “a totally new situation: it is faced with the task of decoding and deterritorializing the flows” (33). According to Deleuze and Guattari, what separates capitalism from “despotic” or “primitive” societies before it is that a capitalist society delocalizes and industrializes all manner of production within the society. The form of capital is essentially imaginary, pieces of paper that represent the society’s promise to recognize its “value”—“substituting for intrinsic codes an axiomatic of abstract quantities in the form of money” (139). This abstraction essentially removes all meaning from the “socius,” so that members of the society adapted to it are prone to desire empty things. Because of the “decoded flows of production in the form of money-capital, and the decoded flows of labor in the form of the ‘free worker,’” capitalism is “incapable of providing a code that will apply to the whole of the social field” (33). This means that capitalism can supply no real or material thing with which to connect to people, to provide meaning.
Capitalism necessitates that true desire cannot have a place, for “no society can tolerate a position of real desire without its structures of exploitation, servitude, and hierarchy being compromised” (116). According to Deleuze and Guattari, the only manner in society through which desire can operate “still in its own mode” is through the “revolutionary unconscious investment” as opposed to the “reactionary unconscious investment” that feeds society (105). There is a possibility to overcome the fascist within the man. Deleuze and Guattari pose the question: "What is an unconsciousness that no longer does anything but "believe," rather than produce?" (61). The simple answer is that in believing, the subject clings to dead concepts and is thereby less open to the "infinite flux" and cannot perceive change—making him all the easier to control. In other words, a “believing” being is far more reactionary than a “productive” being because he, by his essence, is either passive or aggressive—believing is not an action, producing is. In a neurotic state, humans wish to be led and worry less, and in this sense, “psychic repression is such that social repression becomes desired; it induces a consequent desire, a faked image of its object, on which it bestows the appearance of independence” (119) and neurosis seeks to serve society. A thing is not necessarily prohibited because it is desired, but is often desired because it is prohibited. Furthermore, the prohibition of a thing contorts the image of the thing that is truly desired by applying an emotion of guilt to it. “Indeed, this is how social repression prolongs itself by means of a psychic repression without which it would have no grip on desire” (162)—society, in effect, turns human desires against the humans through the application of connotations. In this way, “Oedipus is the baited image with which desire allows itself to be caught” (166) and results in fascism.
Deleuze and Guattari do not suggest that all humans go crazy and seek the experience of psychosis as a means of rebellion against the external and internal fascist. Rather, drawing on Marx’s philosophy, they prescribe a revolution—a new way of analyzing and critiquing society through an understanding of the structures that give it its power. Schizoanalysis can be the doorway to an entirely new conception of society, and where the self fits into society.












Work Cited
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans.
Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983.