Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

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Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Mark Seem (Translator), Michel Foucault (Preface), Robert Hurley (Translator), Helen Lane (Translator)

4.14 · rating details · 935 ratings · 81 reviews

An "introduction to the nonfascist life" (Michel Foucault, from the Preface)

When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media,...more

Paperback, 432 pages

Published May 26th 2009 by Penguin Classics (first published 1972)

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Jun 28, 2007

Lenore rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: doods who read in bars

A Thousand Plateaus this is not, but reading it in a townie bar did attract a douchey philosophy undergrad. to my table, thus warranting my star demotion from two to one.

_Anti-Oedipus_ is the worst example of content dictating form, a schizophrenic on an errant walk through the park. Notice there's no discussion of this on goodreads.com? Even with the compelling premise of synthesizing Marxism and psychoanalysis to situate desire as a productive process, D&G's desiring machines are...more

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Nov 23, 2009

Vaughn rated it

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Shelves: mus-art, left-marxian

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. Sin...more

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Feb 22, 2009

Greg rated it

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Shelves: philosophy-theory-and-other-their-i

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...more

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Jun 09, 2007

Aaron rated it

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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.

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Dec 01, 2007

Graham rated it

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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.

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Aug 24, 2011

James rated it

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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 concept...moreThis 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 relation, as individuals, to society. These large theoretical systems, like Marxism and Freudianism, push an individual's understanding through certain pat circuits that then condition our awareness at the expense of realizing new micro and macro possibilities. It's a very Nietzschean idea that D/G then broaden out with some really fancy (perhaps too fancy) jargon, such as the ideas of the body without organs, desiring machines, the socius, etc. Unfortunately, these ideas, as important as they are, do not reveal themselves in a very clear, straightforward way and must be made sense of, by the reader, through stages of refinement as they go along scratching their head from one section to next. Nonetheless, it is an infectious train of thought that develops and ultimately results in a clear analysis.

D/G build a whole new system of mental identification that encourages people to pay close attention to the flux of experience and to always be suspicious of large-scale explanations of a Hegelian sort which attempt to sublate negativities into larger conceptions on the mistaken assumption that life somehow can then be better understood or improved by the narrowing of possibility. Not so, say D/G. Better to skip free of such Oedipalizing influences into the nomadic realm of possibility, the realm of the schizo experiencing partial objects as though in a vacuum, unattached, new, possible.

As Foucault in the preface states, this is indeed a profound work of ethics. It is also a necessary counterpoint to much of the theoretical clutter that has been amassing for the last two centuries in Europe and America. I simply see this as a reminder that life remains open, full of possibility. D/G just had to invent a number of concepts to remind us and to give us, in a visceral way, a new perspective from which to view our ideological situation.

The obvious question, though, is: how far do you take this perspective? Yes, we should remain open and sensitive to systems of oppression, etc. But how does one truly change society? Is it by becoming more nomadic in one's outlook or more organized and stubbornly attached to ideals? I'm not so convinced that the former is the way. It's alluring, especially in our nihilistic culture of self-aggrandizing consumerism, where people have need of constant ego-petting. We always feel that we need to have seen every movie, read every book, talked to all the right people, etc. But obviously we can't, though we feel we should. And as a consequence everyone remains separate, stagnant, and obsessed with their own persistent, endless need to be relevant...

Setting aside these larger issues, this remains a profound and powerful book which offers a road map out of and beyond convention into an intermediary realm of loops and cross-currents and endless possibility, which while intermediary is perhaps the staging ground for far deeper and transformative thought.
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Oct 25, 2011

Shawn rated it

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Shelves: lit-theory, philosophy

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 numero...more

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Nov 08, 2007

James R added it · review of another edition

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.

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Apr 06, 2008

Peter added it · review of another edition

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.

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Oct 18, 2007

Count Duckula rated it

· review of another edition

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.

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Feb 12, 2011

Jeff rated it

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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...moreThe 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 million directions. At these times I felt a bit lost, however it is difficult to know whether it is the cause of the writing style, or my own inexperience in the finer points of Freud, Lacan, and the state of 1970s psychoanalysis. It wasn't until about half-way through the book that the ideas about the body without organs, machines of desiring-production, deterritorialization, the despot, neurosis/psychosis, and schizophrenia began to fit together on the internal limits, boundaries and axioms of capitalism.

It seems that they are trying to say that schizophrenia is the limit that capitalism is always trying to approach, but can never attain. The nature of capitalism is to axiomatize, subjugate, repress, "decode" and "deterritorialize" processes that exist outside or contra to the system in order to exploit and co-opt. These are processes that revolutionary movements fight against, overtly and covertly. Seeds within the movement, itself, are also moving against the movement, flowing towards axiomatization and cooptation. In this ad-hoc manner, it seems that capitalism tends toward this schiz limit, since contra/revolutionary flows are generated in a dynamic, random fashion; many small revolutionary acts become codified, and applied to the molecular, regardless of coherent applicability. In this way schizophrenia is not necessarily revolutionary, and is even tolerated by capitalism until it can be subjugated and ascribed a use value.

Contrary to many critics, I think that these ideas are quite relevant to modern revolutionary struggle- to live more freely on both the collective/social and individual levels.(less)

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May 19, 2007

ifjuly rated it

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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.

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Jan 05, 2011

Geoff marked it as to-read

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 b...more

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Jul 23, 2010

Ryan rated it

Before A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari embarked upon an epic critical analysis of modern culture and life. Essentially a synthesis of Freudian psychology and Marxist analysis, this is one of the weirdest and most interesting books I've ever read. The reader must be prepared to confront an idiosyncratic (and possibly obfuscating, if we are to believe the critics) sort of jargon: "desiring machines" plug into one another to form "assemblages" that constitute the socia...moreBefore A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari embarked upon an epic critical analysis of modern culture and life. Essentially a synthesis of Freudian psychology and Marxist analysis, this is one of the weirdest and most interesting books I've ever read. The reader must be prepared to confront an idiosyncratic (and possibly obfuscating, if we are to believe 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 organs." It all makes a sort of sense if you roll with it, I promise.

I feel like I need to re-read earlier portions now to fully grasp what was intended there, in light of a greater understanding of the authors' peculiar conceptual framework. And for what its worth, yes, i do believe the authors had something of importance to say here, and this work is not entirely an illusion of profundity created by intentionally abstract language.

It is probably advisable to have some background in Lacan, semiotics, Freud (especially his Civilization and its Discontents), Spinoza (many of his metaphysical concepts are used here), and naturally Marx. Antonin Artuad and several curious personalities from outsider art feature in the earlier portion of the book. Deleuze and Guattari seem to use poetry and art in the way that Freud used myth.

This is a Marxist analysis applied to psychology: hence it's materialist, focused on production and processes instead of essences. Regimes are drawn along the lines of the molecular versus the molar: the multiplicity and the singularity, and the interplay of dynamics between the orders of emergent properties (molecules to proteins to cells to brains to...) It's all a very contemporary sort of realism that draws much from modern physics - I am reminded of Hofstadter's notion of "reverse causality" when they examine the causal relationship between personal psychology and the social order. Deleuze and Guattari specifically use the examples of thermodynamics and molecular biology when describing the various "regimes" that lie within their materialism.

The work is also entirely a critique of Freudian analysis. The reality of the Oedipal complex is not denied: it's still real, but not as an inherent aspect of the civilized mind. Instead the authors see the significance of Oedipus as a process by which individuals are "Oedipalized". The Freudian analyst forces a specific and "despotic" interpretation on the psychological subject in order to "cure" them (i.e., reintroduce them into productive society.)

Deleuze and Guattari place the individual psychology on a continuum that ranges from individual, unconscious desire on the one end to the specific forms of economic and social production on the other. Hence, social repression becomes psychic repression, as individual subjectivity is programmed by larger social institutions through the function of the family. The specific mechanics of this process are analyzed much later in the book, when the authors attack the time line of social formations from tribal to feudal organization.

It's a terrifying, baffling, and potentially insightful approach to psychology and sociology. Like Wilhelm Reich before, they see personal psychology and neuroses and psychoses as a result or reflection of society. I believe they claim that schizophrenia is specifically a disease that is made possible in the capitalist psychological formation- or at least, it's "capitalism's disease". The specifics of this are impossible to describe without going into detail about the authors' peculiar concepts of "flows", "deterritorialization", "coding / decoding flows" etc. In the end, I guess it's a strictly materialist view of society that sidesteps all of the traditional, social categories of knowledge and instead describes society as flows of materials and intensities created by "machines" in the broad sense of social, human, psychological formations.

A further note: The rear copy writing on this edition is terrible and makes this work seem like some sort of celebration of madness while drastically misrepresenting its social-theoretical content. The introduction from Foucault, however, is essential.
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Nov 21, 2011

Ralowe Ampu rated it

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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...more

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Oct 07, 2008

KATEtheGREATESTBESTONE rated it

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yo capitalism. i have sunbeams coming out of my ass.

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Aug 31, 2011

Jonfaith rated it

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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 pro...more

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Jan 06, 2012

Grig O' rated it

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Shelves: kindle

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

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Nov 17, 2010

Rashedb26 bhuyan added it · review of another edition

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.

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Jan 07, 2009

Troy rated it

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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.

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Nov 18, 2008

Dan rated it

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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 res...more

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Sep 18, 2010

Michael Murray rated it

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Shelves: ideas, france

I cannot get the gist of the argument... al i see are creaky old sixties/seventies kisch-think; Marcuse's One Dimensional Man has covered most of this already, surely?

Ok, as you may guess from that last comment, i did give up on it - maybe too soon.

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Jan 02, 2009

Leonard rated it

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Shelves: philosophy

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.

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Apr 30, 2011

Natasha rated it

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Shelves: philosophy, classics

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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Jun 05, 2010

Justin is currently reading it · review of another edition

In my opinion, grasping the materialism v. idealism distinction is key to solidly understanding D&G's conceptual vision in this work. Loving the book so far! - Currently on the second chapter.

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Sep 30, 2009

Derek rated it

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methOD ACTing Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Œdipus whil st untRAVELing [deTERRItorializing [re\VERSEnC0DING:]] X-country ' hatCHing cLams & calaMARii: http://5cense.com/09/anti-oed_x-count.ht...

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Jan 15, 2010

Britain is currently reading it · review of another edition

it is difficult to wrap my head around some of the thoughts in this book but i find it fascinating and hope that one day i will grasp it. maybe after a few years of school?

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Feb 10, 2009

Lamar rated it

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When you have gone as far as you want to go before really understanding Lacan then go here. You will need to have a very strong grasp on Spinoza and Nietzsche.

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Jan 14, 2008

Sachin rated it

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Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: literary-criticism-theory, philsophy

Trying to philosophize and critique culture and capitalism from the point of view of a schizhoprenic is in some sense trying to go beyond Freud, Marx, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan. You find some interesting alternatives to the ideas like `roots'(hierarchically structured , `logocentric thought') in the metaphor of `rhizomes' ( spreading horizontally and connecting randomly at tips), and the terms like `desiring machines' and `body without organs' seem to be alternatives for Freudian `eros' and `...more

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Oct 13, 2011

Luke Franklin is currently reading it · review of another edition

I don't know if I'm sure what's going on... but thanks to the introduction, I'm pretty sure I'm uprooting fascism. And I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to go read Henry Miller and Beckett.

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About Gilles Deleuze

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...moreDeleuze 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, creativity and subjectivity. Notably, within his metaphysics he favored a Spinozian concept of a plane of immanence with everything a mode of one substance, and thus on the same level of existence. He argued, then, that there is no good and evil, but rather only relationships which are beneficial or harmful to the particular individuals. This ethics influences his approach to society and politics, especially as he was so politically active in struggles for rights and freedoms. Later in his career he wrote some of the more infamous texts of the period, in particular, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These texts are collaborative works with the radical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, and they exhibit Deleuze’s social and political commitment.

Gilles Deleuze began his career with a number of idiosyncratic yet rigorous historical studies of figures outside of the Continental tradition in vogue at the time. His first book, Empirisism and Subjectivity, isa study of Hume, interpreted by Deleuze to be a radical subjectivist. Deleuze became known for writing about other philosophers with new insights and different readings, interested as he was in liberating philosophical history from the hegemony of one perspective. He wrote on Spinoza, Nietzche, Kant, Leibniz and others, including literary authors and works, cinema, and art. Deleuze claimed that he did not write “about” art, literature, or cinema, but, rather, undertook philosophical “encounters” that led him to new concepts. As a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Additionally, according to Deleuze and his concepts of difference, there is no identity, and in repetition, nothing is ever the same. Rather, there is only difference: copies are something new, everything is constantly changing, and reality is a becoming, not a being.
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