Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm

by Félix Guattari, Paul Bains

Guattari's final book is a succinct summary of his socio-philosophical outlook. It includes critical reflections on Lacanian psychoanalysis, structuralism,
information theory, postmodernism, and the thought of Heidegger, Bakhtin, Barthes,
and others.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Psychology, Politics, Sociology, Psychoanalysis

135 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy. Guattari is best known for his intellectual collaborations with Gilles Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Reviews

[Levi Jaco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The strongest opinion of Guattari, and subsequently Chaosmosis, that I can muster is that his pointed usage of lack-filling language arouses me. The conceptualization, of what I believe to be sets of vaguely determinate presuppositions, fulfills the man's assurance that these signifying words are merely shifters amidst not-yet-fully-realized social situations. Therefore, as complex as his compositions may be, I walk away 'feeling' his intent. Although theorists within the Continental tradition may prefer to be understood otherwise, I find some authors in this field, Guattari especially, capable of a great strength that is not subject to coherency but instead produces something phenomenological (e.g. an undefinable function of cognizance beyond all attempts of linguistic control). It is a weird philosophy. It may not be applicable, in fact, I do not entirely agree with Rhizomatic thought in general but I do champion his intention to find a subjectively apperceptable balance in ecological, mechanistic, and above all else, humanitarian relations. Guattari was one of many theorists bound up in a discourse that had believed itself to be capable of mass reform, which is why his progressive interest in the molecular remains an important shift away from deconstruction to intersubjective peculiarities.

[xenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucjk.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potent diction, better than 3 Ecologies. It's tough to say why I enjoy Deleuzoguattarian formulations over, say, Lacan or other philosophies which are similarly complex, but I do know that I can enjoy it without much understanding. I think their inherent optimism helps, as does the anti-capitalist presumptions which are more evident with them than Lacan, for instance, but that doesn't explain why I like Guattari more than, say, Zizek.
Some issues I have with D&G that are particularly present here: A) what if capitalism happens to be the best way to engender these mutant enunciations G speaks of? B) what if, by their very weirdness, the mutations are politically debilitating? Yes, I know we need to change the realm of the everyday to make them more socially acceptable, but short term it seems like arcane movements might engender more reactionary backlash than support. C) extending B, isn't a set of universal values necessary as a guide for which mutations are constructive? I think Zizek's critique of D&G is that their discourse becomes a perfect complement to capitalism simply because Marxist doctrine is less important to them than a-ethical ontology. An ethical treatise might be necessary, something to fill the void of the death of god and supplant present-day capitalism. D) how problematic is speculative realism for the virtual/actual binary? Obviously G couldn't answer this as he died before SR became a true school of thought.

[Javee]

Siento que algo en mi cerebro se ha movido de sitio

[Otto Lehto · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not understand most of this book. This could be the fault of the reader. But it is also the unavoidable result of the author's "schizoanalytic" and "ecosophic" method, which aims to break from both common sense AND established scientific and philosophical terminology. A major obstacle to comprehension is that Guattari likes to invent new concepts without explaining them clearly. The style is more artistic and political ("ethico-aesthetic") than analytical or theoretical. I consider this to be an inexusable disregard for proper structure and form, although Guattari would say that it is necessary to achieve the intended effect of breaking away from the rigid "universes of value" and the "existential territories" of state, church, markets, scientism, psychoanalysis, etc.

The resulting book is a strange mixture of outrageously obscure metaphysics, scattered commentaries on trendy French philosophies, reflections on his schizoanalytic practice, new formal classifications of existential modalities, sketchy guidance to organizing political collectivities, attempts to think solutions to ecological catastrophes outside of the ordinary toolbox, etc...

On the whole, the book has some good ideas, but they are weighed down by a lack of focus, clarity and depth. The descent into hallucinatory metaphors and idiosyncratic obscurantism sucks the reader into the private language games of Guattari. This allows for an intuitive grasping and affective sensing of some transformative "existential territories", which can be useful in motivating the creation of new ways of living and being, i.e. new "subjectivities." But the failure to establish clear lines of communication between the author and the reader entails an intolerably low signal-to-noise ratio. The vision is seen "through a glass darkly." It is impossible to know sh*t from shinola. Seemingly
deep insights intermingle with bland clichés and worthless nonsense. The breakdown of meaning is occasionally illuminating, as in a Zen koan, but it leads to the unnecessary obscuration of the powerful insights of an independent thinker. And sadly it leads to a failure to achieve to goals set by the book.

(The only chapters I really like are the first and the last. I would recommend the Deleuze/Guattari collaborations instead. But even they suffer from similar issues.)

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guattari can be hard to read for every reason. This one is actually him at his best. Sometimes even readable! This is the book to read alongside Difference & Repetition as a users guide to the labyrinth of philosophy, should you choose to accept the mission.

When I think of the paradigm as “ethical” or “aesthetic”, I consider Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of Kafka and Proust who were two existential artists of a kind of representation that evolves beyond and before the more permanent, but stagnant material objectivity of signifier and signified. Basically politics had become useless, capital all encompassing, and representation untrustworthy. To reverse engineer the temporal meant to see the socioeconomic field as a sort of material elaboration of ethics identified within the aesthetics of embryological phenomenology.

Guattari is building thought in a way that not only applies temporality but dissolves all forms of representation to present virtual eventualities and phenomenological horizons. He shows how to more correctly draw the borders of subject and object.

Since Guattari and Deleuze divert philosophy from Hegel I think about why. When reading Hegel I first realize how negation is inherent to representation and then only later on do I wonder just how politics and media use it to control the temporality of modern narratives. In Guattari I like how he rather encourages the reader to go through politics and the state. He starts with aesthetics and the politics of representation and then we build out of a psychoanalytic tradition into the space of thought which encompasses all political forms. An ethicoaesthetic paradigm that spans not only all politics but all ethical metaphysical possibilities.

[Lorenzo Paião · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leitura difícil, talvez pela pluralidade de temas e referências. O esforço em seguir lendo, por mais que pareça incompreensível em diversos pontos, é recompensando quando, ao final da leitura, parece surgir uma compreensão quase tácita das proposições de Guattari.
O capítulo 7, em especial, é um prato cheio pra qualquer trabalhador da saúde mental e pra qualquer um que se interesse por Reforma Psiquiátrica.

[Gebo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obtuse and overly complex language make this book nearly unreadable like many of Deleuze/Guattari's works. I unfortunately didn't have the time to mire in the details, but what I was able to extract was fascinating. His project is to redefine subjectivity/objectivity and to rework phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Definitely recommend it to anyone thinking about phenomenology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, or post-structuralism on a higher level.

[L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Period.

[nonegloga]

L’arte della performance consegna l’istante alla vertigine indotta dell’emergere di Universi ora stranieri ora famigliari. Ha il merito di spingere all’estremo le implicazioni dell’estrazione di dimensioni intensive atemporali, aspaziali, asignificanti, a partire dalla trama semiotica della quotidianità. Ci inchioda davanti alla genesi dell’essere e delle forme, prima che queste ultime siano inghiottite dalle ridondanze dominanti, dagli stili, dalle scuole, dalle tradizioni della modernità. Una tale forma di arte implica, a mio parere, non tanto un ritorno a un’oralità originaria, quanto una fuga in avanti nelle macchinazioni e nelle vie macchiniche deterritorializzate atte a generare soggettività mutanti. Voglio dire, cioé, che si ha qualche cosa di artificiale, di costruito, di composto – ciò che io chiamo processualità macchinica – nella riscoperta dell’oralità della poesia sonora. In generale, ogni decentramento estetico dei punti di vista, ogni demoltiplicazione polifonica delle componenti di espressione, passa attraverso una preliminare decostruzione delle strutture e dei codici in vigore e un’immersione caosmica nelle materie di sensazione. A partire da ciò ridiviene possibile una ricomposizione, una ricreazione e un arricchimento del mondo (come quando si parla di uranio arricchito), una proliferazione non solo di forme, ma anche di modalità di essere. Nessuna opposizione, quindi, manichea e nostalgica fra una buona oralità ed una cattiva scritturalità ma, diversamente, ricerca di fuochi enunciativi in grado di instaurare nuove sfaldature fra altri “di fuori” e altri “di dentro” e di promuovere un diverso metabolismo passato-futuro, a partire dal quale l’eternità potrà coesistere con l’istante presente.

[K]

I admit I'm not the most avid reader of high end philosophy, but I just can't stand when people purposefully write in unnecessary complexity. For my money, the mark of a person who understands a concept can explain it to a layman in simple terms. When I read I want the information and ideas, not the "satisfaction" dopamine of decrypting some complex prose. This is not a critique of Guattari alone. Someone like Nick Land is one of the worst offenders, creating unnecessary new words and grammatical structures. One must ask if he writes like that to convey understanding or prevent understanding so that few can contest your ideas. By the time you've finished reading their work, you have a suck cost fallacy of thinking it was quality...

But I guess I'm just a brainlet.

[Alejandro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amo a Guattari, es de los filósofos más importantes de finales del siglo xx. Nada se le escapa, absolutamente nada.

[Severin M]

Can't properly review this yet. Need to review his other works.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical Guattari plus a surprising criticism of how most people read Anti- Oedipus

[Till Sunfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guattaris Kommentare zu seinen älteren Schriften, sowie vereinzelte Passagen und das übergeordnete Plädoyer für eine Transversalität fand ich super spannend und anregend. Allerdings konnte ich mich inmitten der Kaskaden von Neologismen und idiosynkratischen Konzeptverbindungen nicht vom Gefühl befreien, dass ich ab einem gewissen Punkt dieselben Ideen zum x-wiederholten Mal in reformulierter Zusammenstellung von besagtem eigentümlichen Wortschatz lese.

[Arda · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the Culture Studies notes:

Questions revolving around subjectivity have been demonstrated by Guattari (1995), who explores the notions of how the self, when in receiver-mode, becomes the identity that is received-to, talked-to, subjected-to. He clarifies this with the example of watching television: When confronted with TV, the person is turned into a subject: an identity that is the outcome of what it is subjected to through an activity that involves ‘refrain’ that takes one onto another path, as though in ‘captive’ mode.
Our self-involvement, Guattari (1995) acknowledges, is in and of itself lined in the production of our own subjectivity. While understanding how this works might equip us with the know-how to avoid subjectivity, Guattari recognizes that avoiding it may not always end up being a good thing, as he notes with the example of the Iran revolution, which may have taken things backward rather than forward. Nevertheless, he emphasizes the need to understand how the production of subjectivity works, and identifies forms of communication, particularly those associated with mass media, which serve as a collective tool that convey the “economy of language” through what he refers to as “sign machines” (Guattari, 1995, p.5). Guattari’s observation of how signification is actualized through the media industry reminds us of the careful examination of Barthes (1957), who had paid attention to the distortion and manipulation that can happen, and does in fact happen, when one is presented with speech.

Guattari (1995) stresses on the early role of production in subjectivity, which is carried through in different mediums, the most relevant of which is the current ‘post-media’ times that presents “multiple exchanges between individual-group-machine” (Guattari, 1995, p.7).

It is the singular/individual VS. collective/social that represents itself through the production of communication that Guattari (1995) sheds light on, specifically in relation to mass media, and particularly by ways of conformity to already-set and already-established ideas. While acknowledging the significance of production, Guattari warns of falling into the Freudian unconscious interpretations, for he deems those as tricky. What he suggests, instead, is to perhaps steer away from the traps of science, and go towards “ethico-aesthetic paradigms” (Guattari, 1999, p.10) instead: To take on a more personalized approach that is oriented from inside-out, rather than from outside-in.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provavelmente o maior feito do Guattari com esse livro (que encapsula suas obras e ideias ali da virada do século) seja provocar de maneira consistente a ampliação de nossos Universos de referência em um sentido de heterogeneização, isto é, uma reorganização através do caos sem se desfazer da complexificação de tais processos. A subjetividade maquínica entre um sufocamento dos 'mass-media' e uma produção dinâmica intensificadora da desterritorialização.

Soa complicado... porquê realmente o é. Faz parte de todo um esforço em não oferecer uma metodologia pronta, já que ela só pode surgir de acordo com a situação (como fala no ensaio sobre sua experiência clínica). O esforço de provocação é mais compreensível quando colocado em paralelo com as obras de Mark Fisher, Kodwo Eshun e até mesmo Albert Camus, em uma tentativa (prática) de transbordar os limites do possível.

(cont.)

[Homo · Rating 2 out of 5]

theyres some ok thoughts but also allot of redunndancy about things mutating and intermingling. thers too much ontology which who cares about and the real arguments are to oshort.

[Dejan Stojkovski]

excelent !

[Harald Wenk]

a very good boook. whr the "idea wgich we are",our "soul", is by SUBJECTIVATION and META-MODELSAZSATION from a machnique point of view the ethicsd withoutr morals basckground. Gusattri coulod ghsave nenbtin the sympATHIcus and parasymymPATHicus, but misse that.