Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly radical poststructuralism, 28 Jan 2004
This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Most poststructuralists hedge their bets and stop short of writing anything which amounts to a positive theory of their own; they also stop short of criticising the status quo. Deleuze and Guattari cannot be faulted on either count. Their theory of desire represents an original contribution which synthesises elements of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche with crucial poststructuralist themes such as the critique of the subject, and they provide a set of original concepts which offer potential for all kinds of applications. Their critique of representation and of the imposition of systems of meaning is uncompromising and, unlike so many poststructuralist critiques, does not hold itself back by insisting on the necessity of that which it critiques.A couple of words of warning are in order, however. Firstly, this is not the book where Deleuze and Guattari develop most of the concepts for which they are famous. Ideas such as smooth and striated space, rhizomes, molar and molecular assemblages, etc., appear in this work but only intermittently. Also, most of the book is about psychoanalysis rather than politics; its central focus is a critique of the Oedipal family and of psychoanalytic practice as an institutional sypport for this particular system of repressive overcoding. In the course of this critique, they also develop a genealogy of capitalism, a theory of coding and a lot more besides, but readers looking to understand their theory would do better reading A Thousand Plateaus. Secondly, this is a very difficult book - fine for specialists in poststructuralist theory, but a real problem for anyone else. There's a lot of undefined concepts borrowed from other authors and a lot of references to traditions, themes and ideas with which some readers may be unfamiliar. I would advise anyone unfamiliar with poststructuralism to read an introductory text on Deleuze (such as Paul Patton's Deleuze and the Political) and something on poststructuralism (for instance, Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners) before embarking on the original texts themselves. You have been warned!
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining - If you are ready for it!, 29 Nov 2005
I have no institutionally based education with regard to philosophy. I read philosophy because I simply enjoy both the challenge and ultimately the novel and fresh outlook which it inspires me to adopt in my life. I was new to Deleuze and Guatarri prior to reading this but I did have at least a familiarity with Nietzsche, Freud and Marx. If you are attempting to read this then this is the minimum you will require. Added to this, some knowledge of Lacan, semiology and Levi Strauss are required. The last author is important for the section 'Barbarians and Civilised men', while the first two are essential for the first two chapters. You hence need a thorough understanding of psychoanalysis and it's critics. Those aside, there are many more references to literature, I remember three references to Shakespere alone. I find that the sheer number of references are the most difficult aspect of this book to get to grips with. The writing is relatively lucid and entertaining and it is certainly designed to attract someone looking to be entertained. Often the authors will make willfully misleading and shocking comments only to explain what exactly was meant by them later on to heighten the impact. The reader gets the feeling, perhaps through being misled a little, that he is unearthing something truly revelatory.
Crudely put, the message of the book is that the mindset which creates the structure of capitalist society is that which creates the structure of the conventional family and 'conventional' thinking on sexuality, mental illness and normal conduct. The capitalist mindset, if I can call it that, passes much deeper than purely economic concerns. I found the first few chapters the most difficult because they introduce the structure of the approach in a very indirect way. You will need to remember Nietzsche to understand why this approach is being taken. You may have guessed from this that if you are a fan of Focault, then you are going to love this. I would recommend giving it a go . The worst that can happen is that you will leave it on the shelf.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Towards a Schizophrenic Capitalism., 14 Feb 2008
This is perhaps the most problematic book I have ever come across. For while I could not help but find it absolutely inspired in some regards, in others, perhaps those that are more important, I could barely contain my horror. Perhaps the best way to go about reviewing this book is by treating it first of all as a work of theory and secondly as a sort of political manifesto.
As a work of theory there are some elements here that remain unsurpassed. The most striking is Guatteri's conceptualisation of schizophrenia. Although many before him have pointed to the primacy of the dimension of culture in the manisfestation of mental illness Guatteri takes this to its limits and gives us a reasonably coherent doctrine. Psychiatrists confused as to why hysteria in its fin-de-siecle guise has disappeared, why diagnostic criteria are neccesarily in a constant state of flux or, even more markedly with regard Guatteri's theory, why although catatonic variations of schizophrenia have almost disappeared in the West they are to be found more and more in the non-industrialised or not yet fully "deterritorialised" regions of the globe should perhaps put away their CAT scanners and their neurology journals and seek wisdom in this incredible book.
On top of this - which I consider to be the most important contribution of the book - we get an impressive genealogy of the Oedipus complex as it established itself within the minds of Western and Westernised man; we also get an overview of Guatteri's conception of "schizoanalysis" as an alternative to psychoanalysis and while we may find ourselves in disagreement with his method we cannot deny that in reading this we must give our previous conceptions a critical going over.
Alas! throughout these wonderful ideas we have Deleuze and Guatteri's political "project". Following in the vein of Laing and Cooper they posit schizophrenia, pure and total ego-loss, as the culmination of human experience; and like these "pioneers" they are not content with simply sitting and watching the incoherent, babbling madman with a sort of detatched respect; they realise that if this poor creature cannot maintain his dignity, if he will never be able to find himself a respectable place to occupy in the modern world without violently denying his very essence then so be it, we will all become schizophrenics, we will all try and lose our egos on the road to emancipation! "Perhaps it will be discovered that the only incurable is the neurotic", we are told.
This is where the book becomes deeply problematic. It seems to rest on the assumption that the exercise of power over others has something to to with the ego, it seems to assume that collectives or masses of people tend, when not bearing the yoke of power upon their shoulders, to spontaneously become productive, free and distrustful of leadership. Unfortunatly this is, like many of Deleuze and Guatteri's sources, based on fiction, imagination which, through having no direct relation to it, makes our experience of reality more pleasant. Ego-loss and subjection to power go hand in hand; for all their talk about "fascism" the authors show little understanding of how the mass psychology of fascism functions. They may do well reading the work of Adorno in this regard, especially his essay on Freudian theory and fascist propaganda; then perhaps they would see quite clearly that ego-loss certainly does breed forms of collective organisation, only not the ones that they predict.
Today the political manifesto put foward in "Anti-Oedipus" is beginning to gain something of a following. With the publication of Hardt and Negri's "Empire" and "Multitude" these concepts are attempted to be realistically employed. The result, in my opinion at least, is disturbing; anyone who has encountered the "multitude" in its materially existant reality - to be found ostentatiously displaying itself on various college campuses - will instantly have reservations about the impact of this book. The "multitude" swarms from place to place gazing with distrust upon anyone who remotely disagrees with the ideas and values which it puts foward; dissenters become at once "hegemonic males", "homophobes" and "fascists". To be progressive one must "Join the Multitude" as we are instructed to do by the blurb on the back of Hardt and Negri's book, dissolve one's ego and hence one's critical facilities - one can almost imagine this command being uttered in manner similar to the loudpeaker in Fritz Lang's "Testament of Dr. Mabuse"...
The basic thesis of "Anti-Oedipus" and hence "Empire" seems to echo the quasi-Marxist theories of other psychologically inspired authors: Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse and the psychotically disturbed Wilhelm Reich to name only the most prominent. All these, drawing from their experiences with group therapy, seem to recognise that some sort of Bakhtinian "carnival" is neccesary for progressive politics; by lumping the dejected together one can apparently create, without mediation, a political movement of sorts in which the egoless swarm is homogenous and egalitarian. In reality the cost of such internal homogeneity is, familiarly enough, a projection of aggression outside itself at anyone who is not willing to conform to the non-conformity promoted by the swarm. To go as far as doing a little bit of theorising of my own here I think it would be quite likely that once the external "enemies" had been wiped out the aggression would soon turn inwards and such a collective would collapse; indeed a famous historical example springs instantly to mind here.
Since this conception of politics arose mainly in the analysts consulting room and the psychiatric ward and hence is tightly bound with psychology then perhaps we would do well remembering the simple criticism put foward by Adorno, so repressed today:
"It would be poor psychology to assume that exclusion arouses only hate and resentment; it arouses too a possessive, intolerant kind of love, and those whom repressive culture has held at a distance can easily enough become its diehard defenders".
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by Gilles Deleuze
by Gilles Deleuze
by Gilles Deleuze
by Gilles Deleuze
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