Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

4.08 of 5 stars 4.08  ·  rating details  ·  2,117 ratings  ·  102 reviews
A major work in the development of critical theory in the late 20th century, ANTI-OEDIPUS is an essential text for feminists, literary theorists, social scientists, philosophers, and other interested in the problems of contemporary Western culture. "An important text in the rethinking of sexuality and sexual politics spurred by the feminist and gay liberation movements".--...more
Paperback, 432 pages
Published December 15th 1983 by Univ Of Minnesota Press (first published 1972)
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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)
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Vaughn
One of my top few favorite books ever. Wacky prose that hides its dense, educated side with unabashededly mindfucking disregard for mores, academic humility, linearity. It's more or less a critique of the early Lacan's emphasis on the Oedipal complex and the way that emphasis typifies structural analysis in anthropology and psychology, which was trying to edge out philosophy in France at the time. Of course, since it's Deleuze, it also has a vitalist, anti-law, anti-transcendence agenda. Since i...more
Greg
I could possibly say that this book ruined my life. I have never grappled with a book for as long as this one, for months I read and re-read it. I decided that I had to incorporate it into a paper that ended up taking me over a year to actually write and then edit, and then edit some more and then write some more before I finally decided to mail the stupid thing out to the professor from a mailbox that happened to be in front of some buildings that some planes would crash into about an hour or s...more
Aaron
I think people FEEL like they should give this book five stars -- but, unlike machines, they are not honest with themselves and feel compelled to rate it higher than it deserves. 1968 drivel.
Graham
This is pop philosophy and not serious political thought. If Orwell read this he would have eaten it and then puked it out projectile vomit style. It is the postmodern writing that so terrifies Sokal. All of that being said, it is damned fun to read. Just don't take it too seriously. People who fall deeply into this stuff become pretentious hipster assholes. The introduction by Foucault is important if you want any chance in understanding this mess. It sure could use more footnotes.
John Kemp
Sep 07, 2012 John Kemp rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: avoid
I struggled with this for a year, more or less. The language is often baffling but if you let it wash over you, certain threads start to cohere in an intelligible way. D/G's "schizo-analysis" has suffered as a result of the debunking of anti-psychiatry (Laing,et al.) and anyone seriously concerned with their programme will have to junk the outdated, laboured and wilfully impenetrable argot in which it is couched. This is vintage '68 stuff after all so excess and hyperbole are inevitable. A groun...more
James
This book is one giant attack on the traditional liberal-democratic view of the individual as a responsible agent and citizen. It is also a profound materialist critique of old-school Marxism and Freudianism. Since I'm a big fan of both of these schools of thought, this was a tough pill to swallow, but swallow it I did, and to great effect.

One of the big themes that stuck with me from the first chapter on is the idea of paranoia becoming a very real influence in the way that we conceptualize our...more
Shawn
As finished as I'm going to be... I started this book two years ago over winter break during grad school. I got as far as the conclusion (p. 273). Now, I have read about twenty pages or so, and it is all I can handle. It is going back on my shelf. I can say that at one point I knew what was going on with this text, but now, picking it up two years later, with many other texts completed... I have either no clue, or no interest in understanding this work.

I will merely add to the numerous reviewers...more
James R
Nov 08, 2007 James R added it Recommends it for: lunatics of skeptical temperament
Controversial literary project that pigeonholed Deleuze for many scholars, a bizarre synthesis of an eclectic range of texts. There is a spontaneity of thought that many find inspiring, (particularly artists) while it tends to repel a reading grounded in analytic philosophy. The criticism of this style of discourse helps orient the text just as much as its interpretations do.
Peter
Apr 06, 2008 Peter added it
When I was in England I joined an informal discussion group about this book. The group included my advisor and his wife. We read the first paragraph and his wife said, "That paragraph is sexist." My advisor swore at his wife, and then the discussion group was done.
Count Duckula
to me this was the philosophical equivalent of thinking you know what jazz is (smoky, midnight, bar) and then hearing bitches brew ... challenging but in yr face liberating. i especially admired the strategic use of dull old Kant to mess with heads.
Jeff
The introduction by Foucault is certainly a healthy way to view this book. As a guide to leading a non-fascist life, this work condenses a great number of ideas, and attempts to dismantle/discourse on the hang-ups of would-be revolutionary groups.

I would describe the writing style as delirious. At times it is very lucid, hitting hard at ideas standing in the way of the non-fascist life and free thought. At others, the prose descends, or rather extends (explodes?) down lines of escape, off in a m...more
ifjuly
in my top 5 theory books of all time, and one of my favorite books across genre/divides, period. the style makes me smile every time i read it, and the point is one of the most important to me as well.
Paul Adkin
1) Oedipus: Power is maintained by our submission to the Oedipus myth; Oedipus myth as a psychological explanation of why the masses accept a system which does not favour their own interests.
2) In Western Civilisation desire is conceived of as a means of acquisition rather than a means of production. This slant is important in maintaining the surplus, capitalist economy and any revolution would have to alter the perception we have of desire.

From a glance at the other reviews on Goodreads this i...more
Geoff
I've actually had a copy of this book for several months, but, honestly, it keeps tossing me out around page 7 or so. Like my mind shatters after about 7 pages of this. I can't tell whether or not it is bullshit. It seems like something is going on here that maybe I am not equipped to understand, almost like when I am trying to read a book in an antiquated form of French (because my modern French isn't even very good). This book is a little vortex, a little black hole that keeps pulling me back...more
Pearce Shea
As others have said, my 2001 self would have given this five stars. My 2012 self gives it three. Part of this is time: this seemed exciting and daring and iconoclastic when I first read it. By the time I'd re-read it as a sophomore in college, it seemed inevitable. Now it seems naive. Also suffers a bit with age - is Freud really taken all that seriously anymore? (he wasn't when I was in college, either, but at least you read him in college; you had to grapple with Freudianism, so insofar as he...more
Ralowe Ampu
i'm coming away from this pretty sure... uh, well questioning, actually, that since desiring machines produce production, whether the form of desire can be altered. following what is given here i don't really know. what barely sustained my thin interest throughout reading this: sensing the stylistic ancestral traces of what would later proudly become the ad busters-sounding graffito on subsequent oscar grant "riots." it becomes increasingly difficult to deny that this was a book i read simply so...more
KATEtheGREATESTBESTONE
yo capitalism. i have sunbeams coming out of my ass.
Jonfaith
My review from 1994 would be gushing , near febrile about the insights revealed this suicide vest of a book. My 2011 self appreciates the arsenal of metaphors and allusions established. It also recognizes the limits of application of this in ordinary life. That is the present project, no? I mean we are living in some guise, whether o not as bodies without organs; but we find ourselves trapped in associations both molar and molecular: all the while feeling for stones in our pockets as we're prohi...more
Grig O'
In his foreword, M Foucault interprets Anti-Oedipus as a book of ethics. This isn't evident from the text itself, as the authors are (almost) never explicit about how one should live. Instead they invent and combine neologisms like desiring-production, body without organs and deterritorialization to build their philosophy, making for a confounding couple hundred pages before you get a handle on the terminology. And the translators into English don't help - I'm sure they tried their best, but som...more
Nathan "N.R." Gaddis
Jan 13, 2013 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis marked it as to-read
Shelves: philosophy
Some day I will read some Deleuze. Meanwhile, my first attempt at this volume two years ago has left the following passage haunting me, that phrase, "A schizophrenic out for a walk. . ."
. . .is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world. Lenz's stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Büchner. This walk outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with his pastor, who forces him to situate
...more
Ryan
Before A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari penned this sprawling critical analysis of modernity. Essentially a synthesis of Freudian psychology and Marxist theory, this is one of the weirdest and most interesting books I've ever read. The reader must be prepared to confront an idiosyncratic (and obfuscating, according to the critics) sort of jargon: "desiring machines" plug into one another to form "assemblages" that constitute the social order, or "socius inscribed upon the body without o...more
Phil
This is Deleuze at his most abstruse. I would consider this work to be for post-modernism to what Hegel's phenomenology is to metaphysics. Nevertheless, it is an incredible analysis!

One must first consider the linguistical backbone of all post-modern thought in order to at the very least entertain the initial precepts. What was most marveling to me was the books oscillation between both synthetic and analytic thought, which are virtually mutually exclusive in philosophical thought. Much like Hei...more
Rashedb26 bhuyan
Its a milestone in thinking.
I like the ideas of 'desiring machines' 'body without organ'and 'desiring production'.I would like to categorize these ideas as 'practical/literalistic' rather than spiritual or philosophical.
I liked the line: 'the child is a metaphysical being'(p-52).This cannot be true! but must be true! Here comes the necessity of 'desiring machine' that makes two apparently opposite statements at a time: the child is a machine; also, the child is full of desire.
Adrian Stevenson
Jun 06, 2012 Adrian Stevenson rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Adrian by: Nick Land
An odd one this for sure. I 'studied' this book with Nick Land when doing an MA in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick some years ago now. As a big Freud fan, it appealed on that front too, but not sure how much I really got it. Time for another crack maybe.
Troy
Jan 07, 2009 Troy rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: theory
Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari is one of the harder books I've ever read. It's theory and it's an attempt to think differently; an attempt to change our underlying and unfocused ideology; an attempt to rewrite psychoanalysis and an attempt to think through Capitalism. Hell of a book. Worth the trouble.
Dan
I only understood this book in bits and pieces. While some of the concepts Deleuze and Guattari employ are familiar ideas from Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx, there are a number of concepts that are not clearly defined in the text, at least that I was able to see. The book is abstract and dense, sort of the postmodern equivalent of Hegel.

While the text is difficult, the argument Deleuze and Guattari make is fairly significant. My view of the psychoanalytic industry has changed as a result of reading...more
Peter
Challenging but mostly rewarding. Helpful to have some background in Freud and Marx to get more out of the book. I read it in a book club outside of school and discussing it with others was important for making sense of a lot of the main ideas of the book.
JW
This book was a STRUGGLE, but one my intellectual wanderings could no longer set aside. It's harrowing density was worth it in the end; really adds some necessary context to anyone building a knowledge of the 'postmodern.'
Leonard Pierce
By far the best book from the Deleuze/Guattari team, this is a fascinating study of the contradictions of late-period capitalism put through a Freudian/mythological lens that makes it surprisingly graspable.
Natasha
What??? This is a very rambling book. I sometimes got what the authors were talking about, but more times than not, I had no idea what was going on. The book was interesting at times. In general, just a really whacky book.
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Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Penguin Classics)
Anti-Oedipus (Paperback)
Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Oedipe (Hardcover)
L'anti-Edipo. Capitalismo e schizofrenia (Paperback)
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Paperback)

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Deleuze is a key figure in postmodern French philosophy. Considering himself an empiricist and a vitalist, his body of work, which rests upon concepts such as multiplicity, constructivism, difference and desire, stands at a substantial remove from the main traditions of 20th century Continental thought. His thought locates him as an influential figure in present-day considerations of society, crea...more
More about Gilles Deleuze...
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Nietzsche and Philosophy (European Perspectives) Difference and Repetition Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs Cinema 1: The Movement-Image

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