Anti-Oedipus 1.1: Desiring-Production
In this section Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari explain the first synthesis of the unconscious.
The philosophical works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are increasing in popularity within academic circles. Their body of work, while undeniably profound, presents formidable challenges to even the most avid readers due to its complexity. For the purposes of this blog, I intend to thoroughly explore each section of Anti-Oedipus — Deleuze and Guattari’s most popular book.
Written in 1972, Anti-Oedipus is the first volume in the series titled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, with the second book being A Thousand Plateaus. Anti-Oedipus serves as a critical response to Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis by building on the works of Antonin Artaud, Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and many other influential thinkers. Because of the sheer amount of background knowledge necessary to understand certain aspects of Anti-Oedipus, many are left stumped after reading Deleuze and Guattari’s work. Or worse yet: many readers walk away with an incorrect interpretation.
With that being said, this blog post will focus on Chapter 1.1 of Anti-Oedipus. Here, we are introduced to the first synthesis of the unconscious. There are three syntheses of the unconscious.
You can access 1.2 here
You can access 1.3 here
Note 1: Although Deleuze and Guattari describe these syntheses in somewhat of a sequential order (i.e., first, second, third), each synthesis is happening simultaneously. They are positing three ways of looking at the same process.
Note 2: I will constantly be revising this blog post in order to do a line-by-line interpretation of the text.
**Citation Note: The citation for this text is at the bottom of the blog post.
Chapter 1.1: Desiring Production
Paragraph One
Deleuze and Guattari begin their examination by describing how desire functions:
It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. (AO, 1)
Unlike Sigmund Freud’s conceptualization of the unconscious, Deleuze and Guattari challenge Freud’s oversimplification of the unconscious; they specifically criticize the restriction of the unconscious to a tripartite structure termed the id, ego, and superego. Freud introduced this structural model (id, ego, superego) in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, published in 1920, and further elaborated on this model in The Ego and the Id, published in 1923. Simply put, Freud’s conception of the id depicts the body’s instinctual processes as something primal or animalistic, divorced from the human essence.
But it was a mistake to have said the id. Instead, we should resonate with Deleuze and Guattari when they speak of machines:
Everywhere it is machines — real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. (AO, 1)
Consider the human heart. Has this beating-machine ever existed as an independent entity, isolated from everything else? The answer, as any anatomist would tell you, is a resounding no. The heart is inextricably linked to another vital organ: the lungs. And the lungs, in turn, are connected to yet another organ: the diaphragm. Of course, we could go on about the various organs that are directly connected to one another, but that would be unnecessary. The interconnectedness of these organs forms the basis of what we commonly refer to as the human body.
Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the term ‘machines’ is not mere metaphor; it signifies actual machinery at work:
An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts. (AO, 1)
These machines do not exist in isolation as they are part of a larger network, continuously producing or interrupting flows. Freud’s obsession with specific organ-machines, such as the penis-machine, vagina-machine, or anus-machine, overlooks the interconnectedness of these machines. These machines have always been interconnected — producing and interrupting flows.
Deleuze and Guattari illustrate this with an example of the breast and mouth as machines, stating that “the breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth is a machine coupled to it” (AO, 1). Another specific example that Deleuze and Guattari isolate is the mouth-machine. This multifunctional machine serves various purposes, including eating, speaking, vomiting, breathing, and more:
The mouth of the anorexic wavers between several functions: its possessor is uncertain as to whether it is an eating-machine, an anal machine, a talking-machine, or a breathing machine (asthma attacks). (AO, 1)
Expanding beyond the heart-machine, mouth-machine, and breast-machine, it becomes clear that there is no isolated ‘self.’ You are a conglomerate of machines that collectively identify themselves as you:
Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines. For every organ-machine, an energy-machine: all the time, flows and interruptions. (AO, 1–2)
As Anti-Oedipus serves as a critique of psychoanalysis, Deleuze and Guattari briefly mention Daniel Paul Schreber, a former patient of Dr. Paul Flechsig, a German neurologist. In their brief remark, they assert that:
Judge Schreber has sunbeams in his ass. A solar anus. And rest assured that it works: Judge Schreber feels something, produces something, and is capable of explaining the process theoretically. Something is produced: the effects of a machine, not mere metaphors. (AO, 2)
This reference to Schreber is significant because Freud later analyzed Schreber’s experiences and writings in his work Psycho-analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides), published in 1911. In Schreber’s perception of reality, rays controlled by God influenced his experiences; God communicated to Schreber through these rays, similar to sun rays. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari’s mentioning of Schreber’s “solar anus” seems to reference not only Schreber’s belief in God’s communication via rays, but it also alludes to two other (potential) aspects:
- Firstly, because Freud focused extensively on the development of psychosexual stages (particularly emphasizing the anal stage), the reference of Schreber’s “solar anus” could be interpreted as a criticism of Freud’s work.
- Secondly, the “solar anus” could be a reference to Georges Bataille’s philosophical work, The Solar Anus. In this erotic text, Bataille employs vivid imagery to describe the sun as an anus.
In any case, Schreber will become more significant later on, so I highly recommend reading this article to become familiar with Schreber and Freud’s interpretation of his experiences.
Paragraph Two
At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari continue:
A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world. (AO, 2; emphasis mine)
This is one of my favorite lines in Anti-Oedipus. Here, Deleuze and Guattari shift to an analysis of what defines nature and human’s role in it (which they will suggest are intertwined). They use the literary example of Lenz, a a story by Georg Büchner from 1836, depicting Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz taking a walk outdoors.
Deleuze and Guattari write:
Lenz’s stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Buchner. This walk outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with his pastor, who forces him to situate himself socially, in relationship to the God of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his mother. While taking a stroll outdoors, on the other hand, he is in the mountains, amid falling snowfiakes, with other gods or without any gods at all, without a family, without a father or a mother, with nature. “What does my father want? Can he offer me more than that? Impossible. Leave me in peace.” (AO, 2)
In Lenz’s walk outdoors, Büchner vividly contrasts Lenz’s serene moments among the trees and under the bright blue skies with the times when he is constrained by social expectations. This walk outdoors stands in opposition to Lenz’s confinement with his pastor, where he is expected to conform to established religious beliefs, as well as to his prescribed roles in relation to his father and mother. The schizophrenic’s stroll outside positions the schizophrenic as part in parcel with nature — or rather, nature as a process.
As mentioned earlier, the human body consists of interconnected — machines producing and interrupting flows. But we must not forget that:
Everything is a machine. Celestial machines, the stars or rainbows in the sky, alpine machines — all of them connected to those of [the] body. The continual whirr of machines (AO, 2).
At this juncture, Deleuze and Gutarri continue by citing Büchner’s Lenz:
“[Lenz] thought that it must be a feeling of endless bliss to be in contact with the profound life of every form, to have a soul for rocks, metals, water, and plants, to take into himself, as in a dream, every element of nature, like flowers that breathe with the waxing and waning of the moon.” (AO, 2)
Lenz’s body is intertwined with the life of all forms, connected to the rocks of the earth and the plants that grow among them. He wanders across a terrain that is connected to his feet while simultaneously touching the clouds above him. The vivid imagery employed highlights the complete blurring of the distinction between human and nature. Deleuze and Guattari state:
To be a chlorophyll- or a photosynthesis-machine, or at least slip his body into such machines as one part among the others. (AO, 2)
In this quote, Deleuze and Guattari are explaining that Lenz has the capacity to slip his body into various machines that he passes by upon his venture outdoors; they specify photosynthesis-machines, but who is to say that Lenz cannot slip his body into mineral-machines, animal-machines, and so on? It is erroneous to assume that the human body is a separate entity from nature. All machines are interconnected to one another just as a part is part and parcel with other parts.
It is evident that the man-nature dichotomy is a concept that needs to be criticized. Deleuze and Guattari effectively demonstrate that:
Lenz has projected himself back to a time before the man-nature dichotomy, before all the co-ordinates based on this fundamental dichotomy have been laid down. (AO, 2; emphasis mine)
The distinction between man and nature is not inherent; it’s a constructed way of conceptualizing reality. However, we shouldn’t say that Lenz experiences nature as simply nature because he is inseparable from this its continuous process. Instead, Lenz — the schizophrenic — lives nature as a “process of production”:
[The schizophrenic] does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together. (AO, 2; emphasis mine)
Returning to the heart-, breast-, and mouth-machine(s), it becomes clear that no organ exists in isolation from the others. Thus, the ensemble of organs that constitutes the schizophrenic is part of a constantly evolving network, where no single organ or group of organs maintains a fixed identity. As mentioned earlier, Deleuze and Guattari describe this interconnectedness as the “production of production” or the “connective synthesis.” This is the first synthesis of the unconscious.
In concluding this paragraph, Deleuze and Guattari explicate:
Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all of species life: the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever. (AO, 2)
Paragraph Three
Deleuze and Guattari conclude their paragraph on the schizophrenic’s walk outdoors and shift their focus to the characters in the works of Irish novelist, Samuel Beckett:
Now that we have had a look at this stroll of a schizo, let us compare what happens when Samuel Beckett’s characters decide to venture outdoors. (AO, 2)
This quote pertains specifically to Beckett’s 1951 novel, Molloy. (We know this because Deleuze and Guattari directly quote Molloy a few sentences after this.) Molloy is the first book in a trilogy, followed by Malone Dies and The Unnamable. In Molloy, the story centers around an elderly man named Molloy and his journey to visit his mother. However, in the second half of the novel, the focus shifts to Jacques Moran, a private detective tasked with finding Molloy. When discussing Molloy, Deleuze and Guattari state that “[The characters’] various gaits and methods of self-locomotion constitute, in and of themselves, a finely tuned machine” (AO, 2). From my understanding, Deleuze and Guattari are suggesting that the actions of the characters in Beckett’s Molloy are akin to the actions of the schizophrenic in Büchner’s Lenz.
Deleuze and Guattari proceed:
And then there is the function of the bicycle in Beckett’s works: what relationship does the bicycle-horn machine have with the mother-anus machine? (AO, 2)
Since I haven’t read Molloy, I’m not familiar with the specific details of the text. However, based on this quote, I assume that the bicycle plays a significant role in Beckett’s works. In the context of the Freud’s Oedipus complex, everything can be simplified to the tripartite unconscious (ego, id, superego), psychosexual stages of development (genital-machines), and the killing of one’s father and marrying of one’s mother. Under Freud’s framework, everything — including literary works — can be reduced to Oedipus. So, Deleuze and Guattari question what the relationship between a bicycle-horn machine and the mother-anus machine.
Clearly, Deleuze and Guattari discard the reductionist nature of Oedipus by citing Molloy directly:
“What a rest to speak of bicycles and horns. Unfortunately it is not of them I have to speak, but of her who brought me into the world, through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct.” (AO, 2–3)
It appears challenging to dismiss Oedipus because “it is often thought that Oedipus is an easy subject to deal with, something perfectly obvious, a ‘given’ that is there from the very beginning” (AO, 3). Here, it’s worth noting that parts of Anti-Oedipus may seem dated because, at the time Deleuze and Guattari were writing, Freud’s Oedipus complex was more generally accepted than it is today. However, when Deleuze and Guattari discuss the challenge of dismissing Oedipus, they are not solely referencing Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex; their criticisms of Lacanian psychoanalysis — which Deleuze and Guattari find to model Freud’s Oedipal framework — highlight the assumption that Oedipal processes and mechanisms are inherently “given” …
[…] But that is not so at all: Oedipus presupposes a fantastic repression of desiring-machines. (AO, 3; emphasis mine)
We’ve previously explored desiring-machines: all of those interconnected organ-machines operating in a state of flux. Heart-machines, breast-machines, mouth-machines, along with photosynthesis-machines and celestial-machines. Yet, these desiring-machines are not inherently oedipalized; instead, desiring-machines are produced oedipally due to repression — not the other way around.
Deleuze and Guattari ask a series of questions:
And why are [desiring-machines] repressed? To what end? Is it really necessary or desirable to submit to such repression? And what means are to be used to accomplish this? What ought to go inside the Oedipal triangle, what sort of thing is required to construct it? Are a bicycle horn and my mother’s arse sufficient to do the job? Aren’t there more important questions than these, however? Given a certain effect, what machine is capable of producing it? And given a certain machine, what can it be used for? Can we possibly guess, for instance, what a knife rest is used for if all we are given is a geometrical description of it? (AO, 3)
The “Oedipal triangle” mentioned by Deleuze and Guattari consists of: mommy-daddy-me. For Freud, everything fits inside of this triangle. You want to be a writer? Well, that must mean you want to kill your father and marry your mother. You don’t want to be a writer? Well, that must mean you want to kill your father and marry your mother … At any rate, the questions presented above are going to serve as the foundation for the rest of the book.
However, the final question presented is something worth considering. How might we give the geometrical description of a knife rest? Let’s say we describe it as resembling an elongated cylinder or rectangular prism with a central indentation designed to accommodate a smooth, thin or thick object, depending on its size. If this were the description, is it possible to guess a knife rest? Or would one guess the vagina-machine every time?
Deleuze and Guattari give another example:
Or yet another example: on being confronted with a complete machine made up of six stones in the right-hand pocket of my coat (the pocket that serves as the source of the stones), five stones in the right-hand pocket of my trousers, and five in the left-hand pocket (transmission pockets), with the remaining pocket of my coat receiving the stones that have already been handled, as each of the stones moves forward one pocket, how can we determine the effect of this circuit of distribution in which the mouth, too, plays a role as a stone-sucking machine? Where in this entire circuit do we find the production of sexual pleasure? (AO, 3; emphasis mine)
This “stone-sucking machine” example illustrates a complex system of emissions and interruptions that are entirely interconnected. Deleuze and Guattari appear to be challenging traditional psychoanalytic interpretations that reduce these systems to mere sexual pleasure. Where can we find the production of sexual pleasure in this system? Does the mouth as a “stone-sucking machine” represent the oral stage of psychosexual development? (Of course not).
To conclude the third paragraph, Deleuze and Guattari reference the second book in the Molloy trilogy, Molone Dies. They write about the schizophrenics in Malone Dies and state that they are “in the midst of nature”:
At the end of Malone Dies, Lady Pedal takes the schizophrenics out for a ride in a van and a rowboat, and on a picnic in the midst of nature: an infernal machine is being assembled. “Under the skin the body is an over-heated factory,/ and outside,/ the invalid shines,/ glows,/ from every burst pore.” (AO, 3)
Paragraph Four
At this juncture, Deleuze and Guattari clarify that nature is not a direct cause or defining element of schizophrenia. How could nature and schizophrenia possibly be separated? Rather than viewing schizophrenia as a result of nature, they propose that, akin to nature, schizophrenia itself is a process of production. They write:
This does not mean that we are attempting to make nature one of the poles of schizophrenia. What the schizophrenic experiences, both as an individual and as a member of the human species, is not at all any one specific aspect of nature, but nature as a process of production. (AO, 3)
This sentence isolates that Deleuze and Guattari are purposefully blurring the distinction between schizophrenia and nature along with the individual and the society. Thus far, we have concluded that the schizophrenic experiences nature as a process of production, but “what do we mean here by process?” (AO, 3). Deleuze and Guattari define process in three ways.
First Definition of Process (found in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph):
To formulate their first definition of the term “process,” Deleuze and Guattari examine the relationship between nature and industry:
It is probable that at a certain level nature and industry are two separate and distinct things: from one point of view, industry is the opposite of nature; from another, industry extracts its raw materials from nature; from yet another, it returns its refuse to nature; and so on. (AO, 3)
This brings to mind the common notion that people seek out nature to escape city life. From one perspective, the city appears at odds with nature, as it more often than not damages the environment in pursuit of economic growth. However, all buildings, streets, and infrastructure originate from the earth, and industrial waste returns to the earth in a continuous cycle. Therefore, it’s inaccurate to conclude that industry and nature are completely separate entities.
They continue:
Even within society, this characteristic man-nature, industry-nature, society-nature relationship is responsible for the distinction of relatively autonomous spheres that are called production, distribution, consumption. (AO, 3–4)
Here, we encounter three arbitrary distinctions — those of man-nature, industry-nature, and society-nature — which constitute the basis for the differentiation of production, distribution, and consumption. However, the separation of production, distribution, and consumption is fundamentally constructed under capitalism. Deleuze and Guattari contend that these distinctions are not natural or inherent divisions, but instead are shaped by the capitalist system. (This part can get confusing, so bear with me.)
Deleuze and Guattari explicate:
But in general this entire level of distinctions [between production, distribution, and consumption], examined from the point of view of its formal developed structures, presupposes (as Marx has demonstrated) not only the existence of capital and the division of labor, but also the false consciousness that the capitalist being necessarily acquires, both of itself and of the supposedly fixed elements within an over-all process. (AO, 4; emphasis mine)
Essentially, when we examine the economic conditions of production, distribution, and consumption, we need to analyze what Karl Marx — German philosopher and polical economist — has identified: the existence of capital, division of labor, and false consciousness. From my interpretation, I believe that Deleuze and Guattari are associating production, distribution, and consumption, with their correlatives being capital, division of labor, and false consciousness.
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- **Quick Note: I’m curious as to whether Deleuze and Guattari are implying that the man-nature dichotomy is analogous to capital, the industry-nature dichotomy is analogous to distribution, and the society-nature dichotomy is analogous to consumption. As it stands, the man-nature dichotomy involves human labor to extract resources (capital) because man is deemed separate from nature; the industry-nature dichotomy involves the movement, allocation, and distribution of these resources; and the society-nature dichotomy involves groups of individuals falling into false consciousness and consuming goods and services … Just a note.
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Firstly, capital is associated with production because production requires the creation of goods and services that are driven by ownership of capital or the means of production.
Secondly, division of labor is associated with distribution because division of labor refers to how labor is divided amongst people in society. The division of labor plays a crucial role in how goods and services are distributed to consumers.
Thirdly, false consciousness is associated with consumption because the misperception that individuals have about their economic conditions under capitalism is necessary in order for individuals to consume goods and services. False consciousness affects how people perceive their economic conditions, influencing their consumption patterns.
To be extremely clear, Deleuze and Guattari are arguing that there is no fundamental difference between production, distribution, and consumption. Instead, these distinctions are constructed by capitalism.
*Notice in Figure Eighteen how the system appears to be linear. Obviously, it is easier to understand the concepts of production, distribution, and consumption in a linear manner, but we must not forget that these processes are occurring simultaneously.
In any case, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the widely accepted and understood belief in the differences between these processes is rooted in delirium:
For the real truth of the matter — the glaring, sober truth that resides in delirium — is that there is no such thing as relatively independent spheres or circuits: production is immediately consumption and a recording process, without any sort of mediation, and the recording process and consumption directly determine production, though they do so within the production process itself. (AO, 4)
Production, distribution, and consumption are three ways of viewing the same process. Similarly, when we analyze the three syntheses of the unconscious — production of production, production of recording, and production of consumption — it must be noted that the three syntheses are three ways of viewing the same process.
Everything is production; production is immediately distribution which is immediately consumption; and the production falls back upon this process immediately:
Hence everything is production: production of productions, of actions and of passions; productions of recording processes, of distributions and of co-ordinates that serve as points of reference; productions of consumptions, of sensual pleasures, of anxieties, and of pain. Everything is production, since the recording processes are immediately consumed, immediately consummated, and these consumptions directly reproduced. (AO, 4)
- **Footnote Comment: In this passage, Deleuze and Guattari mention Bataille’s notion of nonproductive expenditure. More of this will be in Chapter 3.
Thus, the first definition of the term “process” is: production, recording (distribution), and consumption are one and the same process.
This is the first meaning of process as we use the term: incorporating recording and consumption within production itself, thus making them the productions of one and the same process. (AO, 4; emphasis mine)
Paragraph Five
In the preceding paragraph, Deleuze and Guattari explained that production, distribution (or recording), and consumption are one and the same process. Now, they are going to further highlight the arbitrariness of the attempt to divorce humans from nature:
Second, we make no distinction between [hu]man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of [hu]man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of [hu]man as a species. (AO, 4)
As stated previously, we must not view industry as separate from nature. Production or industry is a human endeavor just as much as it is part and parcel with nature, as nature. Thus:
Industry is then no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of [hu]man and by [hu]man. (AO, 4)
- **Footnote Comment: Here, Deleuze and Guattari reference Psychoanalysis and Transversality, a book written by Guattari in 1972 that details Guattari’s theoretical developments prior to writing Anti-Oedipus. (It is composed of essays written by Guattari.)
When considering “man,” it’s common to identify man as the pinnacle of the nature hierarchy. However, in reality, man is an equal and integral part of the production process. Human = Nature. Deleuze and Guattari isolate this point clearly:
Not [hu]man as the king of creation, but rather as the being who is in intimate contact with the profound life of all forms or all types of beings, who is responsible for even the stars and animal life, and who ceaselessly plugs an organ-machine into an energy-machine, a tree into [their] body, a breast into [their] mouth, the sun into [their] asshole: the eternal custodian of the machines of the universe. (AO, 4)
This statement eloquently places humans — not humans as the center of the universe or top of an arbitrary hierarchy — in harmony with everything. Deleuze and Guattari come full circle with their earlier example of machines connecting to other machines. Their reference to Schreber here is maybe not-so-subtle, but insightful; instead of demonizing Schreber and finding him ill, they celebrate the interconnectedness of machines, regardless of the unexpected connection — the sun-machine connects with the anus-machine.
Second Definition of Process:
This is the second meaning of process as we use the term: [hu]man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other — not even in the sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation, ideation, or expression (cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather, they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product. (AO, 4–5; emphasis mine)
In this manner, humans are not merely the product, result, or effect of nature; rather, humans and nature share a “producer-product” relationship. To be clear, there is no Platonic, idealized category or form of human essence as humans are not above nature. When referring to Platonism, we are discussing transcendence — the belief that truth exists “out there” beyond nature or that there is a greater human essence to fulfill. Instead, nature and human as a process of production is akin to an immanent principle; immanence opposes transcendence.
Deleuze and Guattari state:
Production as process overtakes all idealistic categories and constitutes a cycle whose relationship to desire is that of an immanent principle. (AO, 5)
Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari’s project is one that focuses on desiring-production as an immanent principle. Unlike psychoanalysis which posits desire in relation to transcendence (which we will discuss in 2.3–2.5), Deleuze and Guattari are concerned with a materialist psychiatry.
They write:
That is why desiring-production is the principal concern of a materialist psychiatry, which conceives of and deals with the schizo as Homo natura. (AO, 5)
- **Homo natura indicates humans being nature itself. In this case, the schizo serves as a process of production.
Third Definition of Process:
[A materialist psychiatry] will be the case, however, only on one condition, which in fact constitutes the third meaning of process as we use the term: it must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. (AO, 5; emphasis mine)
The process of production is not an end or goal in itself but rather a continuous, free-flowing process. For a materialist psychiatry to be effective, this process should not be halted. Attempts to either end or prolong the process of production results in the creation of artificial schizophrenics (also known as “clinical entities”) found in mental institutions. Individuals that we deem “mentally ill” in our society, are produced rather than innately ill. And, the production of these illnesses serves as the result of societal structures, cultural norms, and capitalism that impose certain expectations and pressures on individuals which result in the process being halted or prolonged indefinitely.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss how artificial schizophrenics become produced:
Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely — which, strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely — is what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and independent entity. (AO, 5)
- **The word ‘autistic’ here refers to the behavior of clinical entities.
This quote reminds me of the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest …
At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari utilize an example from writer and poet, D.H. Lawrence, to illustrate their point, referencing Lawrence’s novel Aaron’s Rod published in 1922:
D. H. Lawrence says of love: “We have pushed a process into a goal. The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. . . . The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish.” (AO, 5)
This quote illustrates the idea that when we attempt to turn a natural process, such as love, into a fixed goal or aim, we distort what it is. Love doesn’t necessarily have a definitive end; it is completed the second it is undertaken; love ebbs and flows, serving as a continuous process. We should not abruptly stop loving or turn love into an end goal — if we do so, it will have massive ramifications.
Schizophrenia is akin to love:
Schizophrenia is like love: there is no specifically schizophrenic phenomenon or entity; schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines, universal primary production as “the essential reality of man and nature.” (AO, 5; emphasis mine)
Paragraph Six
We must continue our discussion on desiring-machines. These machines either produce a flow or interrupt a flow, operating based on a binary system:
Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. (AO, 5)
As mentioned earlier, the first synthesis of the unconscious is the productive synthesis, also referred to as the production of production or the connective synthesis. Deleuze and Guattari contend that the first synthesis of the unconscious is inherently connective (hence, the term “connective synthesis”):
The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature: “and . . .” “and then . . .” This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow (the breast — the mouth). (AO, 5; emphasis mine)
The use of “and …” “and then …” signifies the interconnectedness of machines that constantly emit and interrupt flows. Deleuze and Guattari use the example of the breast and the mouth: the breast emits a flow of milk, the mouth interrupts this flow. In this context, the interruption or drawing off of a flow by one machine is not a disruption but rather an integral part of the connective process.
This process of desiring-machines connecting, producing, and interrupting flows forms a linear series of binary connections. The production of a flow is linked to a machine that interrupts it, which in turn is connected to another machine. On this matter, Deleuze and Guattari write:
And because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction. (AO, 5)
Desire is the force responsible for the flow of all these machines — all these couplings and connections:
Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows. (AO, 5)
Here, it’s important to clarify what Deleuze and Guattari mean by partial objects. Throughout 1.1, they use the breast and the mouth as examples of these partial objects, deliberately avoiding reference to the broader concept of the mother and the baby. They do this intentionally to emphasize that everything is a machine, made up of other machines, interconnected with — you guessed it — more machines. At this point, the mother and baby ought to be viewed as merely a collection of organ-machines termed “mother” and “baby”. Instead of viewing a machine as isolated and separate from the group (i.e., a global person), Deleuze and Guattari aim to conceptualize desire at a molecular level.
It must be reiterated: Desire is the force responsible for the connection of machines, the production of flows from machines, and the interruption of flows by machines:
Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows. (AO, 5)
To employ vivid imagery and elusive language surrounding the emission of flows by desiring-machines, Deleuze and Guattari cite American novelist, Henry Miller, and his book titled Tropic of Cancer:
“I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund.” Amniotic fluid spilling out of the sac and kidney stones; flowing hair; a flow of spittle, a flow of sperm, shit, urine that are produced by partial objects and constantly cut off by other partial objects, which in turn produce other flows, interrupted by other partial objects. (AO, 5–6)
In this manner, “every ‘object’ presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object” (AO, 6). Simply put, an “object” is defined by its continuous flow; conversely, a flow disrupts and fragments the object due to its continuous movement. (Later on in 1.1, Deleuze and Guattari argue that desiring-machines only work by breaking down; this is beacause a continuous flow disrupts and fragments the object.)
To conclude this paragraph, Deleuze and Guattari clarify that every organ-machine conceptualizes the world from its own point of view:
Doubtless each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything — speaking, understanding, shitting, fucking — in terms of seeing. (AO, 6)
However, while an organ may perceive the world from its own perspective — for example, the eye interprets the world through sight; the heart circulates blood throughout the body through its beating; etc. — machines are always interconnected with other machines:
But a connection with another machine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one machine interrupts the current of the other or “sees” its own current interrupted. (AO, 6)
Paragraph Seven
Similar to the blurring of the man-nature dichotomy, where a machine connects the two in a relationship of product/production, the relationship between partial objects and flows consists of a product/producing dynamic. The product is the producer; the producer is the product:
Hence the coupling that takes place within the partial object-flow connective synthesis also has another form: product/producing. (AO, 6; emphasis mine)
The concept of product/producing aligns closely with the Spinozist perspective that God is nature, emphasizing immanence over transcendence. Instead of a transcendent God creating nature — where nature is deemed a product of God — Deleuze and Guattari find nature to act as both the producer and product simultaneously. Nature continuously produces itself while undergoing the process of production. (Further analysis on Baruch Spinoza will be provided shortly.)
In this manner:
Producing is always something “grafted onto” the product; and for that reason desiring-production is production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine. (AO, 6)
Deleuze and Guattari reject conceptual frameworks that give precedence to single-factor explanations, such as mental states, for desiring-production. They argue that attributing the schizophrenic experience to mental state is overly simplistic and reductionist:
We cannot accept the idealist category of “expression” as a satisfactory or sufficient explanation of this phenomenon. We cannot, we must not attempt to describe the schizophrenic object without relating it to the process of production. (AO, 6)
In this context, “expression” refers to idealist categorizations that posit a single factor as the sole expression of the schizophrenic object. This type of expression must be rejected as it does not relate the schizophrenic object to desiring-production. According to Deleuze and Guattari, The Cahiers de I’art brut, “a series of monographs, issued periodically, containing reproductions of art works created by inmates of the psychiatric asylums of Europe,” understood the necessity of relating the schizophrenic object to desiring-production (AO, 6; footnote).
Deleuze and Guattari explain how The Cahiers de I’art brut serves as a good illustration of relating the schizophrenic object to desiring-production:
The Cahiers de I’art brut are a striking confirmation of this principle, since by taking such an approach they deny that there is any such thing as a specific, identifiable schizophrenic entity. (AO, 6)
To give more background information, the Collection de l’Art brut website states:
The concept of Art Brut stems from the French painter Jean Dubuffet who, from 1945, assembled a collection of objects created by the inmates of various psychiatric hospitals and prisons — solitary or outcast persons. In their creations, he saw “an entirely pure, raw artistic operation that the creator fully reinvents in all its phases , as spurred uniquely by his own impulses.” The idea of Art Brut is thus based on certain social characteristics and aesthetic peculiarities.
To provide another example of connecting the schizophrenic object to desiring-production, Deleuze and Guattari reference The Major Ordeals of the Mind, published in 1974 by the Belgian-French poet and writer, Henri Michaux. In this work, Michaux depicts the schizophrenic table:
Or to take another example, Henri Michaux describes a schizophrenic table in terms of a process of production which is that of desire: “Once noticed, it continued to occupy one’s mind. It even persisted, as it were, in going about its own business. . . . The striking thing was that it was neither simple nor really complex, initially or intentionally complex, or constructed according to a complicated plan. Instead, it had been desimplified in the course of its carpentering. … As it stood, it was a table of additions, much like certain schizophrenics’ drawings, described as ‘overstuffed,’ and if finished it was only in so far as there was no way of adding anything more to it, the table having become more and more an accumulation, less and less a table. … It was not intended for any specific purpose, for anything one expects of a table. Heavy, cumbersome, it was virtually immovable. One didn’t know how to handle it (mentally or physically). Its top surface, the useful part of the table, having been gradually reduced, was disappearing, with so little relation to the clumsy framework that the thing did not strike one as a table, but as some freak piece of furniture, an unfamiliar instrument … for which there was no purpose. A dehumanized table, nothing cozy about it, nothing ‘middle-class,’ nothing rustic, nothing countrified, not a kitchen table or a work table. A table which lent itself to no function, self-protective, denying itself to service and communication alike. There was something stunned about it, something petrified. Perhaps it suggested a stalled engine.” (AO, 6–7; emphasis mine)
In Figure Thirty-Two, Nevena Ekimova presents her model of the schizophrenic table. The table appears to continually fill up, gather more items over time; yet it never remains stable as the surface of the table gradually reduces. This concept of the schizophrenic table underscores the persistent and relentless nature of desiring-production. It illustrates that desiring-production operates in a continuous cycle of connection, production, and interruption, without a clear end or completion.
Paragraph Eight
To recapitulate the ideas from the previous paragraph, Deleuze and Guattari write:
The schizophrenic is the universal producer. There is no need to distinguish here between producing and its product. We need merely note that the pure “thisness” of the object produced is carried over into a new act of producing. The table continues to “go about its business.” The surface of the table, however, is eaten up by the supporting framework. The nontermination of the table is a necessary consequence of its mode of production. (AO, 7)
At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari proceed by examining the well-known anthropologist and prominent structuralist thinker, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and his concept of bricolage. To understand Lévi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage, it is essential to refer to his book The Savage Mind, published in 1962. In traditional or primitive societies, a bricoleur (which is essentially defined as a jack-of-all-trades type of handyman) employs whatever tools and materials are at their disposal to craft something new. For the bricoleur, there is no fixed set of instructions to follow; instead, they improvise based on the resources at hand. Lévi-Strauss extends this analysis by arguing that mythology functions like that of a bricoleur. In contrast, western science functions like that of an engineer. (Deleuze and Guattari’s footnote on page 7 of Anti-Oedipus is informative on the concept of Lévi-Strauss’ bricolage as well, too.)
Deleuze and Guattari write:
When Claude Levi-Strauss defines bricolage he does so in terms of a set of closely related characteristics: the possession of a stock of materials or of rules of thumb that are fairly extensive, though more or less a hodgepodge — multiple and at the same time limited; the ability to rearrange fragments continually in new and different patterns or configurations; and as a consequence, an indifference toward the act of producing and toward the product, toward the set of instruments to be used and toward the over-all result to be achieved. (AO, 7)
In this context, Deleuze and Guattari draw a parallel between desiring-production and the concept of bricolage. By employing Lévi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage, they liken the schizophrenic to a bricoleur, emphasizing the continuous nature of schizophrenia. A bricoleur is a handyman; however, can one properly equate the joyous feeling a handyman gets when connecting machines to one another with the relationship a handyman has to their mother and father? Of course not; this feeling is just a characteristic of desiring-production:
The satisfaction the handyman experiences when he plugs something into an electric socket or diverts a stream of water can scarcely be explained in terms of “playing mommy and daddy,” or by the pleasure of violating a taboo. The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production. (AO,7)
On this point, Deleuze and Guattari reference a painting by American-German artist, Richard Lindner:
A painting by Richard Lindner, “Boy with Machine,” shows a huge, pudgy, bloated boy working one of his little desiring-machines, after having hooked it up to a vast technical social machine — which, as we shall see, is what even the very young child does. (AO, 7)
Here, we see Deleuze and Guattari begin to formulate an argument that challenges the oedipalization of young children; even young children are handy-people.
Paragraph Nine
The producing/product relationship constitutes an identity:
Producing, a product: a producing/product identity. It is this identity that constitutes a third term in the linear series: an enormous undifferentiated object. (AO, 7)
As mentioned earlier on page 5, desiring-machines operate in a binary series characterized by emissions and flows. Machines either emit a flow or interrupt one. However, the connection of machines, such as the breast-machine linking to the mouth-machine, constitutes an identity. And, as mentioned earlier, all machines are interconnected. Hence, even if momentarily and subtly, a sort of universal identity emerges.
They continue:
Everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place — and then the whole process will begin all over again. (AO, 7)
At this identity is constituted, the process restarts with machines emitting flows or interrupting them. However, this profound organization of the body by desiring-machines is one that the body finds unbearable.
If the organization of the body is unbearable then … :
“[…] From a certain point of view it would be much better if nothing worked, if nothing functioned. Never being born, escaping the wheel of continual birth and rebirth, no mouth to suck with, no anus to shit through.” (AO, 7)
However, is it possible to break free from this cycle of birth and rebirth? The cycle in which one’s identity is incessantly being produced? The cycle where one is simultaneously reborn and newly deceased? Can one evade the perpetually restarting process? “Will the machines run so badly, their component pieces fall apart to such a point that they will return to nothingness and thus allow us to return to nothingness?” (AO, 7–8). The answer appears to be a resounding “no”:
It would seem, however, that the flows of energy are still too closely connected, the partial objects still too organic, for this to happen. (AO, 8)
Rather, “what would be required is a pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interruption, streaming over the surface of a full body” (AO, 8). In other words, the desiring-machines are too integral or fresh to be reduced to a state of nothingness. Due to this, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that a fluidity over the surface of a full body is required. (This will become cleare when we discuss the body without organs in just a moment.)
As stated previously, the body suffers from the intense organization of the organs. Deleuze and Guattari explain:
Desiring-machines make us an organism; but at the very heart of this production, within the very production of this production, the body suffers from being organized in this way, from not having some other sort of organization, or no organization at all. (AO, 8)
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize that the enemy is not the organs themselves as there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a mouth that eats or a heart that beats. Instead, the real enemy is the organism; in particular, the transformation of one into an organism. The idea that one’s organs are inherently fixed, rather than in a state of flux, confines one to the rigid structure of an organism. However, the third term in the series — the one that constitutes identity — is not a stable identity, as this identity is always in a process of becoming. Here, Deleuze and Guattari cite someone, though I’m not precisely certain who:
“An incomprehensible, absolutely rigid stasis” in the very midst of process, as a third stage: “No mouth. No tongue. No teeth . No larynx. No esophagus. No belly. No anus.” The automata stop dead and set free the unorganized mass they once served to articulate. (AO, 8)
And then, the process starts up again.
Unlike the productive nature of desiring-machines, Deleuze and Guattari present the concept of the body without organs which is unproductive in nature:
The full body without organs is the unproductive, the sterile, the unengendered, the unconsumable. (AO, 8)
Why the body without organs? Because there is no heart, no mouth, and no breast. Not figuratively, literally. All these organs are in a constant state of flux, perpetually changing, as everything is one body in a state of becoming. And if everything is in a state of becoming, how could one possibly identify an organ as something static, existing independently from everything else? The concept of the body with organs is drawn from Spinoza’s one-substance model: everything is one substance, taking on different forms. In this context, the body without organs acts as a fluid surace, facilitating the breakdown of desiring-machines as they connect. Furthermore, the universal identity that arises through the connection of desiring-machines is elusive. As the body without organs constitutes this identity — and as the body without organs is in a constant state of flux — there is no stable identity to grasp.
To develop their concept of the body without organs, Deleuze and Guattari draw on French artist Antonin Artaud:
Antonin Artaud discovered [the body without organs] one day, finding himself with no shape or form whatsoever, right there where he was at that moment.
Deleuze and Guattari conclude this paragraph:
The death instinct: that is its name, and death is not without a model. For desire desires death also, because the full body of death is its motor, just as it desires life, because the organs of life are the working machine. We shall not inquire how all this fits together so that the machine will run: the question itself is the result of a process of abstraction. (AO, 8)
In this context, Deleuze and Guattari are criticizing Freud’s concept of the death drive. Instead of agreeing with Freud’s theorization of desire being exclusively driven by death and destruction, Deleuze and Guattari propose that desire desires both life and death. They appear to associate the body without organs as breaking down the organ-machines (in a death-like fashion), and the organ-machines with life (as the organs are organic); they view death as the motor and the organ-machines as the machine.
Paragraph Ten
In this paragraph, I find the distinction between the body without organs and the desiring-machines to be most clear. Deleuze and Guattari write:
Desiring-machines work only when they break down, and by continually breaking down. (AO, 8)
As previously mentioned, desiring-machines attach themselves to the body without organs (or rather, cling to the body without organs), while the body without organs consistently disrupts the organization of these desiring-machines. As a result, desiring-machines continue to break down and evolve, forming new connections and couplings with other desiring-machines. To further illustrate this concept of desiring-machines functioning while breaking down, Deleuze and Guattari cite Freud’s Psycho-Analytic Notes upon an Autobiographical Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) and the case of Judge Schreber:
Judge Schreber “lived for a long time without a stomach, without intestines, almost without lungs, with a torn oesophagus, without a bladder, and with shattered ribs; he used sometimes to swallow part of his own larynx with his food, etc.” (AO, 8)
The body without organs is not productive in its pursuit of breaking down desiring-machines; the body without organs is nonproductive.
They write:
The body without organs is nonproductive; nonetheless it is produced, at a certain place and a certain time in the connective synthesis, as the identity of producing and the product: the schizophrenic table is a body without organs. The body without organs is not the proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality. (AO, 8)
The nonproductive nature of the body without organs does not assume that the body without organs is ‘nothing’ nor is the body without organs a lost object (we will learn more about this in Chapter 2.3). Instead, this non-productivity of the body without organs resists productive organization. At any rate, the body without organs is produced as the identity of the producing/product relationship in the connective synthesis. As partial objects connect to one another — and as all partial objects are interconnected — we see a surplus produced as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This surplus is the fluid identity that is the body without organs.
The body without organs is anti-representationalist. This concept challenges the idea of rigid or fixed representations that claim to define truth or capture the essence of reality. Instead of accepting dominant frameworks that attempt to define absolute truths, the body without organs exists without an image of itself:
Above all, it is not a projection; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the body itself, or with an image of the body. It is the body without an image. This imageless, organless body, the nonproductive, exists right there where it is produced, in the third stage of the binary-linear series. It is perpetually reinserted into the process of production. The catatonic body is produced in the water of the hydrotherapy tub. (AO, 8)
- The last sentence mentioning the hydrotherapy tub seems to allude to the psychiatric treatment of the catatonic body. In this form of therapy, patients would spend extended periods of time submerged in water to soothe their nerves.
Finally, Deleuze and Guattari end by stating:
The full body without organs belongs to the realm of antiproduction; but yet another characteristic of the connective or productive synthesis is the fact that it couples production with antiproduction, with an element of antiproduction. (AO, 8)
The concept of antiproduction will be further explored in Chapter 1.2.
Conclusion
When I first wrote this blog post, I was wrong to equate the connective synthesis as solely being the BwO. As we will learn in 1.1–1.3, the BwO is produced by the syntheses while serving as a fundamental foundation for the syntheses operation. The BwO is produced by the syntheses and, in a way, produces the syntheses.
Unlike Freudian psychoanalysis, whereby desire is understood in relation to sexual relations, Deleuze and Guattari define desire as a positive force that “constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented” (AO 5). We will see in 1.2 that the energy that the body without organs employs for these connections is what Deleuze and Guattari term ‘Libido’, signifying a profound redefinition of desire.
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Citation:
- Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. (1972). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
