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Anti-Oedipus is by far the hardest book I've ever read. It's like the hyperbolic time-chamber in terms of theory--if you really put the effort in and mull over every paragraph it will be worth it IMO; but it's extremely exhausting.
I guess I will try and sell you on this book:
To be pedantic, the book is not just about Psychoanalysis, in fact, I dare say that that is the entire point! While Gauttari was a favored student of Lacan before this Molotov-cocktail of a book was published an understanding of Lacan is by no means the only entry point. After all, Lacan is 100% indecipherable. Anyways, why is Anti-Oedipus not being just about anything the point exactly? In my opinion, at its core, this book is a fundamentally radically new theory of subjectivity, metaphysics, politics, ... , n+1, which, on the one hand, transforms psychoanalysis by critiquing it from a historical-materialist standpoint, and on the other, accounts for libidinal and semiotic factors in political economy. Early in the first chapter they make their casus belli clear: they--much like Wilhelm Reich--are trying to answer the question as to why people desire their own oppression. The book wanders all across intellectual territories--from literature, to anthropology, to Nietzsche, you get the idea--to create a sort of performative aspect which really engenders their concepts with demonstrative power: desire is free-flowing, and it is only through repression that it can become codified into rigid boundaries; so start by breaking boundaries between disciplines. Schizophrenia is exactly this then--not just the clinical condition--, it is, at a broad level, the creative process itself according to D&G. That jazz musician freely improvises and flows between fixed rule-sets, the clinical schizophrenic unceasingly makes connections between words and their various territories (people can read my thoughts, I cannot eat as my stomach has been stolen, ...), or even our conception of 'human body' (see for example the Zodiac Man versus the Vitruvian Man for an interesting genealogy). I would caution against immediately trying to get some actionable politics out of this though; it does exist, but I am not sure as to what it is exactly. I do not trust accelerationists--I think most of them are dilettantes.
As you can probably tell this book has destroyed my brain. If you wish to continue I would recommend:
a) Watching this recent video (35 mins). It gives a pretty good overview of the project of Anti-Oedipus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TE7HFBzf-w
b) Getting some secondary literature. I can personally vouch for Eugene Holland's Introduction to Schizoanalysis. I would recommend testing the waters by reading the introduction (25 pages) to gauge if you're ready.
Good luck.
truly a good post, but my goodness, what is my dude wearing in that vid.
Anti-Oedipus is the first of two books, the second is 1000 plateaus, that together are called Capitalism and Schizophrenia. It is mostly a critique of Freudian psychoanalysis (the Oedipus Complex), but it links that to anti-capitalism, and well, everything: linguistics, literary criticism, anthropology. It's a really wild ride, exhilarating, but also unreadable a lot of the time. Not sure I would recommend it as a starting point, but you could read the preface Foucault wrote for the English edition, which is great, and decide after that:
http://richardpayton.pbworks.com/w/page/12580685/Preface%20to%20Anti-Oedipus"I think that Anti-Oedipus can best be read as an "art," in the sense that is conveyed by the term "erotic art," for example. Informed by the seemingly abstract notions of muliplicities, flows, arrangements, and connections, the analysis of the relationship of desire to reality and to the capitalist "machine" yields answers to concrete questions. Questions that are less concerned with why this or that than with how to proceed. How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action? How can and must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more intense in the process of overturning the established order? Ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica."
Honestly, anti-oedipus is all about Freudian psychoanalysis and I couldn’t get into it. It’s not really relevant if you’re not super familiar with what it’s referencing (meaning you need to have read Freud’s specific case studies)
If you’re invested in Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus is probably a better starting point. I actually just started it the other day. There are free PDFs readily available.
That said, if you want to start reading theory you should start with the communist manifesto or something, Deleuze is pretty abstract.
Jesus Christ it's like the worst possible place to start with theory. I don't even think it even really qualifies as radical theory or whatever. Read Lenin or Mao or some shit. Like Lenin's book on left communism and the one on imperialism, or that edition of selected writings by Mao with the Zizek forward (it is not really necessary to read the forward). Their texts are relatively simple and easy to understand, and also very useful. Above all they teach you to be pragmatic and effective, and they get referenced a lot by other people. You wanna read something that is gonna be useful to you and your praxis. That is not gonna be useful. That is either something that people read after they already know a ton of other more basic stuff and can actually get something out of it, or just something that champagne socialists read while sipping wine and not really understanding shit.
BTW, my pantheon of theory includes: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Gramsci, Althusser, and Poulantzas. They write stuff that is both insightful and useful, AND if you put in enough effort, they will always make sense, unlike Deleuze et co. Like, Poulantzas for instance is notoriously hard to read, but in the sense that a mathematical proof is hard, if you take it word by word, line by line, you'll figure it out. Whereas Deleuze is hard to read in the sense that you're listening to a raving lunatic or someone tripping on acid who is actually saying something but you have to discover the meaning somewhere in what he is saying somehow, plus he is NOT shy to use difficult terminology. I'd also include Chomsky but ONLY his expositions of the awful shit the US and the media do, not his theoretical analysis. Also, there are definitely others too who have written about class struggle in the US in particular and especially about race in the US, but I'm not familiar with these things because I'm not American.
Deleuze does not shy away from "poetry" in some of his works, might be why. He says philosophy must be readable by a layman or an expert, or rather, must be readable both ways at the same time. With something as abstract as Anti-Oedipe, it means, for the layman, reading it as poetry sometimes. And it's perfectly alright. Still means a lot, like any sincere work of art.
Foucault : "I think that Anti-Oedipus can best be read as an "art," in the sense that is conveyed by the term "erotic art," for example. Informed by the seemingly abstract notions of muliplicities, flows, arrangements, and connections, the analysis of the relationship of desire to reality and to the capitalist "machine" yields answers to concrete questions. Questions that are less concerned with why this or that than with how to proceed. How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action? How can and must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more intense in the process of overturning the established order? Ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica."
Oh, Reading Capital is probably not the best place to start reading Althusser. But yeah, Althusser and to a greater extent Gramsci and Poulatzas are very likely to give you the snoozzies (unlike, say, Lenin who is fun to read because he is angry all the time). But that doesn't make them bad.
So yeah, my general advice start with Lenin and maybe some stuff by Marx, then read some Mao, that's the most immediately useful and easy to understand stuff that won't make you wanna fall asleep. Then read the others. For fun, you can read whatever you want, including Deleuze and Guattari, even if you don't understand. But for "work", the others are far better.
I may be mistaken, but I believe anti oedipus is a sub title for Deleuze's book on schizophrenia and capitalism. I haven't read it yet, it's next on my list. From what I understand it's not normally recommended reading.
Personally I started by reading Pirsig, then Zizek, then Lenin, then Capital which is a pretty unorthodox start I guess. I see quite a few people recommend Settlers as a starter.
I think it precedes all of those and follows from a fairly distant relation
just take an old copy of Oedipus and read it in reverse
i'm going to assume anti-oedipus is about gouging your eyes out, then fucking your mom, then killing your dad
don't, tbh its a waste of time or at least not the place to start theory
if you want to get into deleuze and are starting your journey into theory overall, I'd start with 'what is philosophy?'
Its easy to read, also addresses what the function of philosophy is related to other domains, also its fun
