A review by javorstein
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari

5.0

Loved it. All over the place but grounded a particular anti-Freudian critique in materialism. Very detailed argument for the social production of subjectivity and the particular historical formations of the Oedipus complex being rooted in shifts in economic/power relations throughout history. Also does so in a way that presents a path forward; never once argues for unrestrained deterritorialization (not sure what book accelerationists were reading) but instead specifically connects it with reterritorialization and the construction of new constellations of reference that subvert dominant semiotic codes and open up new lines of flight. Creates a whole new framework for analysis and resistance. Not entirely sure on the nominally anti-Hegelian stuff (although that was more D&R/LoS); the Nietzschean affirmation metaphysics is a cool idea but philosophically I'm not super sure of it (again, more an N&P thing though). The anthropology felt questionable but it was being used more genealogically than historically; in any case, the development of the Oedipus complex through changing economic and power formations and the incest-taboo was a fascinating argument. Overall, great book, definitely a must-read. Interested in the possibility of a clinical schizoanalysis—one that, rather than being cloaked in the Oedipal theater of representation, works directly on the ground with the patient and engages in a direct, materialist analysis of their desiring-production, discovering the partial objects of their unconscious. In a perhaps Foucauldian light, D&G get "off the couch", so to speak, and go "out for a walk"—rather than positing the analyst as a transcendent interpreter, they posit the schizoanalyst as a mechanic, working with the analysand to destroy the molar representations that stratify and segment the unconscious, thereby making analysis a necessarily political task. Never do they glorify schizophrenia, only show the "schizophrenic process", of which the schizophrenic is only a moment, to be a revolutionary one. A fascinating thesis, and it's unfortunate that this schizoanalysis was never really expanded upon in any future clinical practice beyond, perhaps, La Borde. It would be interesting to see how schizoanalysis would work in practice.