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.
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.
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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.