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  • Pavlichenko_Fan_Club [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    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.