Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia

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nSummary of the Article

nThe article Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze discusses the relationship between capitalism community and aspiration to reality. In addition, the article focuses on human history, society, economics and psychology. The authors highlight materialist psychiatry designed on the unconscious in its association with community and its dynamic processes. Furthermore, they outline the idea of desiring production, which explains the inter-connection between ‘body without organs, and desiring machines (Guattari and Deleuze 1977). Furthermore, the article criticizes psychoanalysis theory by Freud Sigmund and addresses its Oedipus complex theory. The authors also describe the critical bond, which is referred to as schizoanalysis.

nThe article suggest that schizoanalysis is a militant political and social analysis that pay close attention on the conservative practices of psychoanalysis. It recommends an operational assessment of the straight investments of aspirations both reactionary and revolutionary (Guattari and Deleuze 1977). More importantly, schizoanalysis contradicts psychoanalytic idea since it proposes that the libido should not be sublimated or de-sexualised in order to capitalize for political or economic factors. They advised that the desires of unconscious libidinal investment cohabit without certainly corresponding with preconscious investments produced by philosophical interests and needs.

nThe article also analyses the issues of social production and desiring machines. In this regard, it argues that the old knowledge of desire take a special merit between acquisition and production. Therefore, social production is a type of theoretical idealism. Other ideas, which consider desires as a productive and positive force, have acquired minimum attention (Guattari and Deleuze 1977). The authors propose that aspiration is a positive system of production, which generates reality. Moreover, they develop a relationship between social oppression and psychological repression. In this case, they noted that a universe constitute desiring machines which are inter-linked to one another. Therefore, no desiring machine that works independently from the social machine.

nThe article also criticizes the idea of sublimation by Freud, which explains an innate dualism between social production and desiring, machines. According to the authors, this dualism frame and limit the revolutionary ability of the Reich and Laing theories. Therefore, the article opposes Freudo-Marxism, anti-psychiatry and psychoanalysis (Guattari and Deleuze 1977). The idea of sexuality is not restricted to relationship between females and male role but rather explains a diversity of flows that many desiring machines establish within their interlinked universe.

nThe authors also redesign the oedipal complex by opposing the Freudian oedipal complex. In this regard, it disapprove familialism noting that the oedipal system of the family is a type of institution that should inhabit its members and suppress their aspirations as well as provides complexes if it is to work as a forming standards of society. In this regard, they recommend that a family must be an open institution, which comprise of personal subjects. The association between members of the family should explain social production and pre-personal desires (Guattari and Deleuze 1977). Similarly, the article suggests that schizophrenia is an extreme psychological state co-surviving with the capitalists structure. Furthermore, capitalism continues to impose neurosis in a manner to sustain normality. Nonetheless, they reject a non-clinical idea of schizophrenia since author does not aim to romanticize mental illness.

nThe article also describes the idea of body without organ. According to the authors, aspirations can be of many forms since there are many individuals to execute it, it should pursue new ways and diverse arrangements to accomplish it (Guattari and Deleuze 1977).

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nGuattari, F. and Deleuze, G., 1977. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Mark Seem et al. New York: Viking Press.