Anti-Oedipus 1.3: The Subject and Enjoyment
In this section Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari explain the third synthesis of the unconscious.
In my previous blog post detailing Chapter 1.2 of Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, we analyzed the second synthesis of the unconscious. The second synthesis is known by two interchangeable names: the disjunctive synthesis and the production of recording. Within the disjunctive synthesis, we discover that desiring-machines record points onto the body without organs’ surface. Deleuze and Guattari make clear that the schizophrenic is guided by the “either … or … or” of the second synthesis.
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: The syntheses are complex in their interplay between different stages, each building upon the previous one while producing the subsequent. In the first synthesis, we witnessed the emergence of the second synthesis, with the second synthesis falling back on (se rabat sur) the first. Similarly, the second synthesis gives rise to a third, which falls back on (se rabat sur) the second.
Note 3: 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 1.3: The Subject and Enjoyment
Paragraph One
Adhering to their definition of the word “process,” Deleuze and Guattari restate their previous thesis:
Conforming to the meaning of the word “process,” recording falls back on (se rabat sur) production, but the production of recording itself is produced by the production of production. (AO, 16)
Essentially, Deleuze and Guattari remind us that the production of recording (the second synthesis) is produced by the production of production (the first synthesis) while falling back on the production process. Similarly, the production of recording is followed by the third synthesis; the third synthesis falls back on the production of recording. Deleuze and Guattari write:
Similarly, recording is followed by consumption, but the production of consumption is produced in and through the production of recording. (AO, 16; emphasis mine)
The third synthesis is called the “production of consumption” or the “conjunctive synthesis.”
At this point, we must ask ourselves why the production of consumption is produced in and through the production of recording. So … why is the production of consumption produced in and through the production of recording? Deleuze and Guattari answer:
[The production of consumption is produced in and through the production of recording] because something on the order of a subject can be discerned on the recording surface. (AO, 16; emphasis mine)
To understand this “something on the order of a subject,” we must read further:
It is a strange subject, however, with no fixed identity, wandering about over the body without organs, but always remaining peripheral to the desiring-machines, being defined by the share of the product it takes for itself, garnering here, there, and everywhere a reward in the form of a becoming or an avatar, being born of the states that it consumes and being reborn with each new state. (AO, 16; emphasis mine)
This peculiar subject-like entity emerges on the recording surface of the body without organs. Rather than defining itself by an identification with the desiring-machines, this subject-like entity remains peripheral to them. The mouth-machine, breast-machine, and heart-machine are not markers of this enigmatic entity’s identity; instead, this something-like-a-subject’s identity is characterized by a succession of encounters. This entity is in perpetual flux, continuously undergoing birth and rebirth.
If we were to assign this ‘subject’ a quote or motto, it would be:
“It’s me, and so it’s mine. . . .” (AO, 16)
It should be noted that Deleuze and Guattari have been critical of Cartesianism, though their critique is more pronounced in this section. Cartesian thought refers to the philosophical inquiries and analyses posited by the French philosopher, René Descartes, who is famous for his quote: “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think therefore I am). Descartes was heavily concerned with subjectivity, exemplified by his question (I am paraphrasing), “How do I know I’m not dreaming right now?” He concluded that while his physical senses might deceive him, his ability to think proved his existence. Therefore, Descartes believed in a stable subjectivity with the subject at the center of everything; a stable “I” in the sense of an innate ego. This notion is akin to the idea of having a soul: an innate self, which, in Descartes’ analysis, was carefully crafted by God.
However, Deleuze and Guattari’s view of subjectivity differs from the Cartesian perspective: rather than the subject being at the center of everything, with everything peripheral to the subject, the subject is peripheral to everything and serves as the final product of of various processes. For Deleuze and Guattari, the subject is constantly being produced and defined by its experiences. The subject, we will soon learn, is produced alongside desiring-machines but does not identify with them. In this manner, there is no Cartesian “I” with a clear singularity. In the quote above, the subject states, “It’s me … so it’s mine …,” almost with a sense of finality, but the production process immediately starts up again, as the three syntheses are always at work: production is immediately recording, which is immediately consumption which is … ad infinitum ...
At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari relate this something-like-a-subject’s birth and rebirth to suffering:
Even suffering, as Marx says, is a form of self-enjoyment. (AO, 16)
This excerpt is from Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, specifically the section titled Private Property and Communism. Within this section, Marx articulates:
Each of his human relations to the world — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, observing, experiencing, wanting, acting, loving — in short, all the organs of his individual being, like those organs which are directly social in their form, are in their objective orientation, or in their orientation to the object, the appropriation of the object, the appropriation of human reality. Their orientation to the object is the manifestation of the human reality, [For this reason it is just as highly varied as the determinations of human essence and activities. — Note by Marx] it is human activity and human suffering, for suffering, humanly considered, is a kind of self-enjoyment of man. (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pg. 441; emphasis mine)
- Rather than explaining the entirety of Marx’s Private Property and Communism, I wrote a blog post detailing a line-by-line interpretation of that text which you can find here.
In any case, Deleuze and Guattari state:
Doubtless all desiring-production is, in and of itself, immediately consumption and consummation, and therefore, “sensual pleasure.” (AO, 16)
Here, Deleuze and Guattari explain how desiring-production is immediately consumption, much like their prior depiction of the production process in Chapter 1.1: “production is immediately consumption and a recording process” (AO, 4). However, in the quote above, they specifically describe this consummation as “sensual pleasure.”
- In the English translation, “sensual pleasure” replaces the French word “volupté” which translates to “voluptuousness” or “voluptuous.”
The use of “voluptuousness” to describe “sensual pleasure” is a direct reference to the case of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge and psychiatric patient. As detailed in blog posts Chapter 1.1 and Chapter 1.2, Judge Schreber was a psychiatric patient in Germany who experienced severe psychosis, hallucinations, and delirium. In his 1903 memoir, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Schreber frequently used the terms “voluptuousness” and “voluptuous” to describe their experiences. To fully understand Schreber’s use of these terms, it is essential to delve deeper into Judge Schreber’s case.
Start of Recording …
Schreber believed that the world was an interconnected network of nerves that not only constituted the physical body but also the fabric of reality itself:
THE HUMAN SOUL is contained in the nerves of the body … Vibrations are thereby caused in the nerves which produce the sensations of pleasure … They are able to retain the memory of impressions received … Part of the nerves is adapted solely for receiving sensory impressions (nerves of sight, hearing, taste and voluptuousness, etc., which are therefore only capable of the sensation of light, sound, heat and cold, of the feeling of hunger, voluptuousness and pain, etc.,; other nerves (the nerves of intellect) receive and retain mental impressions and as the organs of will, give to the whole human organism the impulse to manifest those of its powers designed to act on the outside world. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 19–20; emphasis mine)
Furthermore, Schreber thought that these nerves were controlled by God, who communicated and manipulated them through rays. These rays, a form of divine energy, influenced Schreber’s thoughts, sensations, and actions (more of this can be found in the examination of recording present in Chapter 1.2). Schreber explains:
God to start with is only nerve … the nerves of God are infinite and eternal. They possess the same qualities as human nerves but in a degree surpassing all human understanding. They have in particular the faculty of transforming themselves into all things of the created world; in this capacity they are called rays; and herein lies the essence of divine creation … God’s miraculous creative power travels to our earth (and perhaps to other inhabitated planets). (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 20–21; emphasis mine)
However, Schreber notes that the purity levels of the nerves vary as they are contingent upon one’s moral conduct. Schreber writes:
Only pure human nerves were of use to God … The nerves of morally depraved men are blackened; morally pure men have white nerves; the higher a man’s moral standard in life, the more his nerves become completely white or pure, an intrinsic property of God’s nerves ... This determines the various grades of states of Blessedness to which a human being can attain. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 23–24)
In any case, Schreber believed that societal “Blessedness” was in decay as he perceived a weakening connection between God and humanity. Societal nerves lacked purity. Schreber believed this precisely because he found himself to be the last living human on earth as all the other human forms on earth were “fleeting-improvised-men” (i.e., souls undergoing the process of God’s purification) (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 26).
At any rate, in Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Schreber wrote that “the male state of Blessedness was superior to the female state” as “the latter seems to have consisted mainly in an uninterrupted feeling of voluptuousness” (29; emphasis mine). Despite esteeming males as spiritually superior, Schreber’s delusions centered on his belief in a divine mandate to undergo a transformation into a woman, a process he regarded as divinely sanctioned to rescue society. Through this transformation, Schreber believed he could bear divine children, thus offering salvation to humanity. It was Schreber’s mission to populate earth.
Schreber writes:
Nothing of course could be envisaged as a further consequence of unmanning but fertilization by divine rays for the purpose of creating new human beings. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 164)
However, despite Schreber’s commitment to this divine mission, Schreber perceived this transition into womanhood as a deeply sacrificial act.
Schreber documents multiple instances of his transition to womanhood through experiences of voluptuous sensations. He concentrated his mental energy on enlarging his breasts and widening his hips in order to have God inseminate him.
I’ll highlight a few key quotations (though there are many more in Schreber’s Memoirs):
The way I was treated externally seemed to agree with the intention announced in the nerve-language; for weeks I was kept in bed and my clothes were removed to make me — as I believed — more amenable to voluptuous sensations, which could be stimulated in me by the female nerves which had already started to enter my body; medicines, which I am convinced served the same purpose, were also used;” these I therefore refused, or spat out again when an attendant poured them forcibly into my mouth. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 63–54; emphasis mine)
However, these have certainly been totally depleted, that is to say the nerves concerned have, through the power of attraction of my nerves, been absorbed into my body; in it they have taken on the character of female nerves of voluptuousness and apart from this have given my body a more or less feminine stamp; they have in particular given my skin a softness peculiar to the female sex. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 90; emphasis mine)
I must point out that when I speak of my duty to cultivate voluptuousness, I never mean any sexual desires towards other human beings (females) least of all sexual intercourse, but that I have to imagine myself as man and woman in one person having intercourse with myself, or somehow have to achieve with myself a certain sexual excitement, etc. — which perhaps under other circumstances might be considered immoral — but which has nothing whatever to do with any idea of masturbation or anything like it. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 250; emphasis mine)
An in-depth examination of Schreber’s memoirs reveals that sensations of voluptuousness are more than just mere recordings explained in Chapter 1.2. Sensations of voluptuousness pertain to a form of bodily well-being. (Who is the one FEELING these recordings? Who is the one at the END of the recording process?) Sensations of voluptuousness relate to Schreber-as-subject. These sensations are not innately sexual as these sensations denote a sense of overall pleasure; these sensations produce Schreber-as-subject: as man, woman, both, or neither. It’s important to note, however, that for Schreber, undergoing this transition to womanhood is distressing.
End of Recording…
Anti-Oedipus Continued:
As stated earlier, “sensual pleasure” is attributed to all “strange subjects” traversing the surface of the body without organs …
But this is not yet the case for a subject that can situate itself only in terms of the disjunctions of a recording surface, in what is left after each division. (AO, 16)
Deleuze and Guattari highlight that the subject emerges in the third synthesis where Voluptas comes into play. They explain that the share of sensual pleasure is attributed to the “strange subject” that manifests on the body without organs occurs exclusively in the third synthesis, not the second.
Let’s return to Judge Schreber:
Returning yet again to the case of Judge Schreber, we note that he is vividly aware of this fact: the rate of cosmic sexual pleasure remains constant, so that God will find a way of taking his pleasure with Schreber, even if in order to do so Schreber must transform himself into a woman. But Schreber experiences only a residual share of this pleasure, as a recompense for his suffering or as a reward for his becoming-woman. (AO, 16; emphasis mine)
As previously mentioned, Schreber’s transition to womanhood was a distressing experience. He described this process as “unmanning,” which he felt emasculated him as it threatened his masculinity. Here is a direct quote from Schreber’s Memoirs:
God’s rays frequently mocked me about a supposedly imminent unmanning as “Miss Schreber”; an expression used frequently and repeated ad nauseam was: “You are to be represented as given to voluptuous excesses,’’ etc. I myself felt the danger of unmanning for a long time as a threatening ignominy, especially while there was the possibility of my body being sexually abused by other people. (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 124)
Schreber’s transformation into womanhood was a painful experience; it was an experience that he initially attempted to repress, but soon succumbed to. Despite this distress, Schreber found pleasure in his transition to womanhood. He writes:
I suppressed every feminine impulse by exerting my sense of manly honor and also by the holiness of my religious ideas, which occupied me almost exclusively … My will power could not prevent the occurrence, particularly when lying in bed, of a sensation of voluptuousness which as so-called “soul-voluptuousness” exerted an increased power of attraction on the rays … (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 125)
At this juncture, you may be thinking: Why does all of this matter?
The significance lies in Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to subjectivity. They employ terms from Schreber’s memoirs to illustrate the three syntheses, with the final synthesis resulting in the emergence of the subject. In Schreber’s case, the process involved God’s demand for a “cosmic sexual pleasure,” which triggers Schreber’s transformation. Despite the painful nature of this transition, Schreber is rewarded with sensual pleasure, which ultimately defines and produces Schreber-as-subject. Deleuze and Guattari elucidate this point by directly referencing Schreber’s Memoirs:
“On the other hand, God demands a constant state of enjoyment. . . and it is my duty to provide him with this … in the shape of the greatest possible output of spiritual voluptuousness. And if, in this process, a little sensual pleasure falls to my share, I feel justified in accepting it as some slight compensation for the inordinate measure of suffering and privation that has been mine for so many past years.”
- By the end of the second paragraph, the reasons for emphasizing pleasure and suffering in Schreber’s case will become clearer.
In any case, Deleuze and Guattari proceed to define and describe the force energy in the third synthesis:
Just as a part of the libido as energy of production was transformed into energy of recording (Numen), a part of this energy of recording is transformed into energy of consummation (Voluptas). It is this residual energy that is the motive force behind the third synthesis of the unconscious: the conjunctive synthesis “so it’s . . . ,” or the production of consumption. (AO, 16–17; emphasis mine)
Unlike the connective synthesis, marked by “and then…”, or the disjunctive synthesis, guided by “either…or…or,” the conjunctive operates with “so it’s …” hinting at the presence of a subject on the surface of the body without organs. However, this subject-like entity remains in a perpetual state of flux, resisting fixed categorizations. This is why the subject cannot be properly defined as it is in a perpetual state of becoming.
Paragraph Two
Deleuze and Guattari begin the second paragraph by stating the terms of their analysis:
We must examine how this synthesis is formed or how the subject is produced. (AO, 17)
In a concise summation of what was analyzed in Chapter 1.1 and Chapter 1.2, Deleuze and Guattari state:
Our point of departure was the opposition between desiring-machines and the body without organs. The repulsion of these machines, as found in the paranoiac machine of primary repression, gave way to an attraction in the miraculating machine. But the opposition between attraction and repulsion persists. (AO, 17; emphasis mine)
Because the “opposition between attraction and repulsion persists,” energy is produced (or more accurately, the energy in the second synthesis, Numen, is transformed into Voluptas). However, a new machine must be introduced to reconcile the tension between attraction and repulsion:
It would seem that a genuine reconciliation of the two can take place only on the level of a new machine, functioning as “the return of the repressed.” There are a number of proofs that such a reconciliation does or can exist. (AO, 17)
The phrase “the return of the repressed” directly originates from Sigmund Freud’s exploration of repression in his writings. Freud delves into the mechanisms and stages of repression throughout his oeuvre, most notably in his 1915 paper titled Repression. In Freud’s framework, the return of the repressed refers to repressed emotions, thoughts, or desires that resurface, often in symbolic formations. More of this (in the context of Schreber) will be described soon.
The purpose of introducing a new machine that embodies ‘the return of the repressed’ is to facilitate a reconciliation, acting as a conduit for both the paranoiac and miraculating machines. This new machine does not aim to prioritize or eliminate either the paranoiac or miraculating machines. Deleuze and Guattari reference artist and psychiatric patient, Robert Gie, and his electrical machines:
With no further details being provided, we are told of Robert Gie, the very talented designer of paranoiac electrical machines: “Since he was unable to free himself of these currents that were tormenting him, he gives every appearance of having finally joined forces with them, taking passionate pride in portraying them in their total victory, in their triumph.”
As noted in Chapter 1.1, Deleuze and Guattari draw from the Collection de l’art brut (Art Brut Collection), established by French artist Jean Dubuffet. Arno Böhler describes Deleuze and Guattari’s fascination and analysis of the Collection de l’art brut quite well in this commentary. At any rate, this collection features outsider art, a type of artistry “which is made outside the academic tradition of fine art.” Many artists in Collection de l’art brut are individuals from psychiatric institutions or jails. The only citation provided for the quote referenced above is: L’Art brut, no. 3, p. 63. (I assume this refers to an art magazine or catalogue pertaining to the collection.)
In Figure Eleven, we see Gie’s drawing of electrical machines as an interconnected network. Instead of attempting to discard these painful machines and their harmful electrical currents, Gie (or rather, the characters in Gie’s drawing?) “joined forces with them.” Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis isolates the presence of a new machine resolving the tension between repulsion and attraction all the while serving as a conduit for both the paranoiac and miraculating machines.
Deleuze and Guattari continue:
Freud is more specific when he stresses the crucial turning point that occurs in Schreber’s illness when Schreber becomes reconciled to becoming-woman and embarks upon a process of self-cure that brings him back to the equation Nature = Production (the production of a new humanity). (AO, 17)
- The phrase “the production of a new humanity” seems to be a reference to Schreber’s becoming-woman and giving birth to God’s children.
Echoing the previous analysis regarding “the return of the repressed,” Deleuze and Guattari are (potentially) agreeing with Freud’s analysis: Schreber’s becoming-woman could be the result of repression, and this process of becoming-woman serves as a self-cure. Schreber’s self-cure whereby he becomes-woman is taking him back to the time before the Human-Nature dichotomy existed.
To highlight this point, Deleuze and Guattari write:
As a matter of fact, Schreber finds himself frozen in the pose and trapped in the paraphernalia of a transvestite, at a moment when he is practically cured and has recovered all his faculties: “I am sometimes to be found, standing before the mirror or elsewhere, with the upper portion of my body partly bared, and wearing sundry feminine adornments, such as ribbons, trumpery necklaces, and the like. This occurs only, I may add, when I am by myself, and never, at least so far as I am able to avoid it, in the presence of other people.” (AO, 17; italicized in English translation)
At any rate, we must ask ourselves: What’s the name of this new machine? Deleuze and Guattari state:
Let us borrow the term “celibate machine” to designate this machine that succeeds the paranoiac machine and the miraculating machine, forming a new alliance between the desiring-machines and the body without organs so as to give birth to a new humanity or a glorious organism. (AO, 17; emphasis mine)
- The phrase “give birth to a new humanity” seems to refer to Schreber’s delusion in which he believes he must engage in sexual intercourse with God to repopulate the earth.
Now, let’s summarize our current understanding:
Essentially, Numen — the energy present in the second synthesis — undergoes a transformation into Voluptas. This transformation is guided by the intensity that is produced between the paranoiac and miraculating machines; irreconcilable tension is present between these two machines. However, the celibate couples this intensity: the reconciliation of these opposing forces (paranoiac vs. miraculation) manifests as the celibate machine. The energy present in the third synthesis — now referred to as Voluptas — influences desiring-machines, facilitating subjectivity.
Deleuze and Guattari continue:
This is tantamount to saying that the subject is produced as a mere residuum alongside the desiring-machines, or that he confuses himself with this third productive machine and with the residual reconciliation that it brings about: a conjunctive synthesis of consummation in the form of a wonderstruck "So that's what it was!" (AO, 17–18; emphasis mine)
When a subject consumes Voluptas —which can elicit either enjoyable or painful sensations (or a combination of both) — the subject traverses the body without organs. This is why Deleuze and Guattari spent so much time discussing Schreber’s pain and pleasure in his transition to womanhood. Regardless of whether Schreber experienced pain or pleasure is besides the point; Schreber’s experience of enjoyment, pain, or whatever else, isolates that there is a subject experiencing sensations, signifying the subject’s becoming.
Thus, in the conjunctive synthesis, one can exclaim: “So that’s what it was!” This retrospective statement implies that the subject lacks a stable identity. We can only discern a semblance of a subject after the fact. Moreover, the subject is produced alongside desiring-machines; it is crucial to emphasize that the subject does not identify with these desiring-machines. The subject is not merely a heart-machine connected to a diaphragm-machine and so forth. Instead, we must note that there is only a metaphysical subject.
- The mouth-machine concerns a subjectivity of hunger. The breast-machine concerns a subjectivity of lactation. For Deleuze and Guattari, the question is not one of identifying with these machines, but rather, attempting to understanding how these subjectivities are produced.
Paragraph Three
At the top of the third paragraph, Deleuze and Guattari reference Michel Carrouges, a notable French author recognized for his work Kafka Versus Kafka, published in 1968. However, in this paragraph, it is evident that Deleuze and Guattari owe the theoretical formation of their “celibate machine” to Carrouges’ book titled Les Machines célibataires (translated to: Bachelor Machines), published in 1954. In Les Machines célibataires, Carrouges examines “celibate machines,” a term he coined to describe machines or systems that function autonomously. (Hence, why Deleuze and Guattari define the subject emerging alongside desiring-machines, but not identifying with the desiring-machines.)
Deleuze and Guattari assert that Carrouges has examined a multitude of celibate machines in various literary works and paintings. Deleuze and Guattari assert:
Michel Carrouges has identified a certain number of fantastic machines — “celibate machines” — that he has discovered in works of literature. The examples he points to are of many very different sorts, and at first glance do not seem to belong to a single category: Marcel Duchamp’s painting “La mariee mise a nu par ses celibataires, meme” (“The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even”), the machine in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” Raymond Roussel’s machines, those of Jarry’s Surmale (Supermale), certain of Edgar Allan Poe’s machines, Villiers’s Eve future (The Future Eve), etc. (AO, 18; emphasis mine)
Let’s examine each of the examples that Deleuze and Guattari allude to. I have not read all of these works in their entirety, so please bear with me:
— —
Marcel Duchamp
- First is the painting, La mariee mise a nu par ses celibataires, meme, crafted from 1915–1923 by Marcel Duchamp. Carrouges interprets Duchamp’s painting as incorporating machine-like characteristics, but he views it as a unified whole rather than being defined solely by its individual mechanical components.
— —
Franz Kafka
- Second is the machine in Franz Kafka’s literary classic, In the Penal Colony, published in 1919. In the Penal Colony narrates the implementation of a brutal system of justice. Within the colony, convicts endure punishment through a machine referred to as the “apparatus,” which etches their crimes onto their bodies using needles, piercing their skin in the process. This is a must-read piece.
— —
Raymond Roussel
- Third is French poet, Raymond Roussel, and his machines. Most likely, this is a reference to Roussel’s novel, Locus Solus, published in 1914. In Locus Solus, there is a character named Martial Canterel who is a scientist and inventor. There are many whimsical machines presented by Canterel, all of which serve as metaphorical examples of the celibate machine.
— —
Alred Jarry
- Fourth is French author, Alfred Jarry, and his novel Le Surmâle (The Supermale), published in 1902. In this novel, there are unusual and strange machines presented such as the ‘love machine’ which is a machine that allows individuals to engage in prolonged sexual activity.
— —
Edgar Allan Poe
- Fifth are some of the machines created by American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe. Throughout Poe’s literary works, there are many mentions of machines. This could be a reference to The Pit and the Pendulum, a short story by Poe published in 1842. In this story, there is a pendulum that serves the purpose of being a torture device used to terrorize the protagonist.
— —
Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam
- Sixth is Eve future (The Future Eve) by French author Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, published in 1886. Eve future revolves around scientists, Thomas Edison (which is a reference to real life Thomas Edison), who invents a lifelike robot named Hadaly. Hadaly — an android— is emblematic of advanced artificial intelligence that we envision in contemporary society.
— —
Though all of these examples are very different, the examples carry with them a common theme:
The characteristics that allow us to classify all of [the examples] in this one category [i.e., the celibate machine] — though their importance varies according to the example considered — are as follows: the celibate machine first of all reveals the existence of a much older paranoiac machine, with its tortures, its dark shadows, its ancient Law. (AO, 18; emphasis mine)
Deleuze and Guattari define the paranoiac machine as having an “ancient Law”; thus, the paranoiac machine precedes the celibate machine. The reference to an “ancient Law” highlights that the paranoiac machine might be a reference to the idea that, from one point of view, everything appears to emanate from the recording surface (though, I’m not sure exactly what “ancient Law” is referring to).
However, we must not confuse the celibate machine with the paranoiac machine:
The celibate machine itself is not a paranoiac machine, however. Everything about it is different: its cogs, its sliding carriage, its shears, needles, magnets, rays. Even when it tortures or kills, it manifests something new and different, a solar force. (AO, 18)
Just as we should not conflate the celibate machine with the paranoiac machine, we must also avoid confusing the celibate machine with the miraculating machine. Deleuze and Guattari write:
In the second place, this transfiguration cannot be explained by the “miraculating” powers the machine possesses due to the inscription hidden inside it, though it in fact contains within itself the most impressive sort of inscriptions (cf. the recording supplied by Edison for Eve future). (AO, 18)
- Edison’s inscription on the android is undeniably impressive. However, Deleuze and Guattari clarify that the production of subjectivity by the celibate machines, in order to proclaim “So that’s what Hadaly was!” is different than the production of recording.
The machine may possess remarkable inscriptions, but these inscriptions don’t explain the transfiguration from the recording process to subjectivity.
In any case, Deleuze and Guattari state:
A genuine consummation is achieved by the new machine, a pleasure that can rightly be called autoerotic, or rather automatic: the nuptial celebration of a new alliance, a new birth, a radiant ecstasy, as though the eroticism of the machine liberated other unlimited forces. (AO, 18)
As mentioned earlier, the celibate machine effectively groups or couples the intensity produced from the tension between the paranoiac and miraculating machines. This serves as a form of consummation whereby the subject consumes Voluptas, shaping and producing subjectivity.
Paragraph Four
At this juncture, Deleuze and Guattari posit a few questions:
The question becomes: what does the celibate machine produce? what is produced by means of it? (AO, 18)
Thankfully, they answer their own questions:
The answer would seem to be: intensive quantities. (AO, 18)
To properly conceptualize the celibate machine, it is necessary to understand that the ‘product’ produced by the celibate machine (known as “intensive quantities”) originates from the preceding forces of attraction and repulsion. At any rate, let us ask a different question: what does the schizophrenic experience in terms of intensive quantities?
Deleuze and Guattari explain:
There is a schizophrenic experience of intensive quantities in their pure state, to a point that is almost unbearable — a celibate misery and glory experienced to the fullest, like a cry suspended between life and death, an intense feeling of transition, states of pure, naked intensity stripped of all shape and form. (AO, 18)
Deleuze and Guattari’s examination of the schizophrenic’s experience of intensive quantities as “unbearable” shows that these intensive quantities are overbearing and almost uncontrollable. They continue by explaining how intensive quantities are usually described as “hallucinations” and “delirium” (though they contest this view):
[Intensive quantities] are often described as hallucinations and delirium, but the basic phenomenon of hallucination (I see, I hear) and the basic phenomenon of delirium (I think . . . ) presuppose an I feel at an even deeper level, which gives hallucinations their object and thought delirium its content — an “I feel that I am becoming a woman,” “that I am becoming a god,” and so on, which is neither delirious nor hallucinatory, but will project the hallucination or internalize the delirium. (AO, 18; emphasis mine)
Let’s clarify where we’re at before diving into hallucinations and delirium: we’ve encountered numerous partial objects, such as the heart-machine linked to the diaphragm-machine and so on. These machines are both attracted to and repelled from the body without organs. The interaction between the miraculating machine and the paranoiac machine generates pure intensities that gets coupled by the celibate machine. (I like to think of this as a rubber band grouping a set of pencils as seen in Figure Twenty-Three.) When these intensities are banded, one can properly say, “So that’s what it was!” Now, we finally have a subject at the end of the recording process; this subject is what we call “Judge Schreber.” Schreber traverses the surface of the body without organs experiencing a litany of intensive quantities. It doesn’t matter if Schreber experiences pain or pleasure — what matters is that Schreber feels something.
So … what are hallucinations and delirium?
Hallucinations and delirium are not themselves intensive quantities — they are after-effects. But we must be careful here and look at the wording the Deleuze and Guattari use with precision; to reiterate:
“I feel that I am becoming a woman,” “that I am becoming a god,” and so on, … is neither delirious nor hallucinatory, but will project the hallucination or internalize the delirium. (AO, 18; emphasis mine)
Thus, the mind emerges through delirium; the delirium and hallucinations are preexisting conditions. Schreber is in the process of becoming-woman. But first … what is a woman? The concept of a woman is rooted in delirium; it is a collective agreement on an arbitrary set of guidelines we follow and label as ‘woman.’ For Schreber — and most of society — a woman dresses in a particular way and has voluptuous breasts. As mentioned in the quote above, hallucinations have a specific object and delirium has a specific content. The hallucinations already exist — the objects that define a woman precedes Schreber’s projection of these hallucinations onto his body without organs. The delirium already exists — the definition of what constitutes a woman precedes Schreber’s internalization of delirium.
Deleuze and Guattari succinctly state:
Delirium and hallucination are secondary in relation to the really primary emotion, which in the beginning only experiences intensities, becomings, transitions.* (AO, 18–19)
- Here, they reference English psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion. Deleuze and Guattari write in their footnote:
W.R.Bion is the first to have stressed this importance of the I feel, but he places it in the realm of fantasy and makes it an affective parallel of the I think. See Elements of Psycho-analysis
Deleuze and Guattari continue by restating their earlier thesis regarding the pure intensities produced as a result of the tension between repulsion and attraction:
Where do these pure intensities come from? They come from the two preceding forces, repulsion and attraction, and from the opposition of these two forces. (AO, 19)
However, Deleuze and Guattari make clear that we ought not view the intensities produced by repulsion and attraction as diametrically opposed to one another:
It must not be thought that the intensities themselves are in opposition to one another, arriving at a state of balance around a neutral state. (AO, 19)
Instead, in relation to the anti-productive body without organs, the intensities produced by the paranoiac and miraculating machines are positive:
On the contrary, they are all positive in relationship to the zero intensity that designates the full body without organs. And they undergo relative rises or falls depending on the complex relationship between them and the variations in the relative strength of attraction and repulsion as determining factors. (AO, 19; emphasis mine)
The body without belongs to the realm of anti-production, so there is no doubt that the body without organs is designated as having a zero intensity. However, the intensities produced by attraction and repulsion are both positive and constantly shifting in relation to the body without organs.
Deleuze and Guattari sum up this phenomenon:
In a word, the opposition of the forces of attraction and repulsion produces an open series of intensive elements, all of them positive, that are never an expression of the final equilibrium of a system, but consist, rather, of an unlimited number of stationary, metastable states through which a subject passes. (AO, 19)
These intensive states are perpetually in flux as the subject navigates the surface of the body without organs, encountering a diverse range of intensive quantities. Subjectivity remains fluid and ongoing, devoid of a fixed ideal or ultimate destination.
Deleuze and Guattari conclude this fourth paragraph with a reference to renowned German philosopher of the 18th Century, Immanuel Kant:
The Kantian theory according to which intensive quantities fill up, to varying degrees, matter that has no empty spaces, is profoundly schizoid. (AO, 19)
- It’s worth noting that Deleuze and Guattari may have termed this coupling of intensities “intensive quantities” as a sort of homage to Kant’s “intensive magnitudes.”
Deleuze and Guattari are directly referencing Kant’s analysis of “extensive magnitudes” and “intensive magnitudes” in his prolific work Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781. Kant defines extensive magnitudes:
… The appearances are all magnitudes, and indeed extensive magnitudes, since as intuitions in space or time they must be represented through the same synthesis as that through which space and time in general are determined. (Critique of Pure Reason, 287)
To put simply, extensive magnitudes are concerned with the spatiotemporal measurement of objects in space; for example, a rock’s length or width. However, Kant points out that two rocks can appear identical visually but differ in weight when held. This variability in weight represents an intensive magnitude — both rocks occupy space in varying degrees.
Kant argues that our perception cannot be divorced from the sensations we experience as we are perceiving objects. When perceiving a rock, sensations such as its color or its weight when touched contribute to our overall perception. Because of this, Kant concludes that our sensations themselves possess intensive magnitudes. Kant writes of intensive magnitudes:
Now since sensation in itself is not an objective representation, and in it neither the intuition of space nor that of time is to be encountered, it has, to be sure, no extensive magnitude, but yet it still has a magnitude … Thus it has an intensive magnitude, corresponding to which all objects of perception, insofar as they contain sensation, must be ascribed an intensive magnitude, i.e., a degree of influence on sense. (Critique of Pure Reason, 290)
Essentially, how we perceive objects is inseparable from the sensations we are experiencing as we are perceiving objects in the moment. For instance, the color of a rock may appear different depending on factors such as the brightness of the light reflecting off the rock, one’s biological makeup, or whether one was in a dark room all day versus spending time at a sunny beach. Similarly, the perceived weight of a rock can vary depending on physical conditions, such as whether one has recently worked out or undergone a change in body state. There are many intensive magnitudes pertaining to perception: vision, sound, physical touch, smell, pain, etc.
In any case, Deleuze and Guattari elaborate on intensive quantities. The celibate machine couples the positive intensities produced by the paranoiac and miraculating machines and labels them ‘intensive quantities.’ These intensities are in a constant state of flux, influencing how individuals experience the world as they traverse the surface of the body without organs.
In Schreber’s case, the hallucinations and delirium he experiences — such as seeing breasts on his body — are explained by the specific sensations he experiences while observing himself. This implies that Schreber’s subjective experience generates sensations that manifest as hallucinations and delirium. For example, the forced imposition of Schreber in an all-male psychiatric institution abiding by strict gender and sexual norms, along with the presence of an overwhelming God, all contribute to Schreber’s hallucinations and delirium.
Therefore, what Schreber experiences is real — the breasts are on his body; the breasts are real — but this is solely because of the sensations he experiences while looking at his torso.
Paragraph Five
As previously mentioned, Schreber’s memoirs vividly depict the heightened sensitivity of his nervous system as he experiences intensive quantities, where he perceives (feels) the rays of God directly affecting his nervous system. Deleuze and Guattari write:
Further, if we are to believe Judge Schreber’s doctrine, attraction and repulsion produce intense nervous states that fill up the body without organs to varying degrees — states through which Schreber-the-subject passes, becoming a woman and many other things as well, following an endless circle of eternal return. (AO, 19; emphasis mine)
Schreber-the-subject (in contrast to the Cartesian subject) passes through various states, constantly engaging in various becomings, such as the becoming-woman described above. The concept of eternal return — referenced at the end of the sentence — clearly alludes to the 18th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche proposed the idea of the eternal return (also known as “eternal recurrence”) as a thought experiment in his 1882 book The Gay Science. In section 341 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes:
What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence … The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine.’ (The Gay Science, Section 341; emphasis mine)
Simply put, the eternal return is the idea that time is forever repeating itself, infinitely. The life that one lives is the same life in an infinite succession. In The Gay Science, it is clear that Nietzsche isn’t making some overarching cosmological claim; instead, Nietzsche is begging the reader to question how they are living their lives if their life were to be repeated for eternity — with the same events occurring repeatedly. Would you curse the demon? Or embrace the eternal return? Regardless, Deleuze and Guattari are utilizing Nietzsche’s eternal return to describe the process of production — specifically, how this process is forever repeating.
Deleuze and Guattari continue by examining the case of Schreber:
The breasts on the judge’s naked torso are neither delirious nor hallucinatory phenomena: they designate, first of all, a band of intensity, a zone of intensity on his body without organs. (AO, 19; emphasis mine)
- This is the first place where Deleuze and Guattari indicate that a subject has their own body without organs.
To understand the idea of Schreber having a band of intensity on “his body without organs,” we must follow Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the body without organs being an egg:
The body without organs is an egg: it is crisscrossed with axes and thresholds, with latitudes and longitudes and geodesic lines, traversed by gradients marking the transitions and the becomings, the destinations of the subject developing along these particular vectors. Nothing here is representative; rather, it is all life and lived experience: the actual, lived emotion of having breasts does not resemble breasts, it does not represent them, any more than a predestined zone in the egg resembles the organ that it is going to be stimulated to produce within itself. Nothing but bands of intensity, potentials, thresholds, and gradients. (AO, 19; emphasis mine)
An egg itself is never hatched. It is always in a state of becoming. Yet, it is defined by its intensities and gradients, its “transitions” and “becomings.” When Deleuze and Guattari state, “Nothing here is representative,” they are very clear that everything is upon the body without organs as a band of intensity or a gradient or threshold. In this case, the breasts present on Schreber’s torso are nothing but a band of intensity.
Deleuze and Guattari conclude this paragraph with a reference to French artist Antonin Artaud, specifically citing his 1925 text titled Le Pése-Nerfs.
A harrowing, emotionally overwhelming experience, which brings the schizo as close as possible to matter, to a burning, living center of matter: “. . . this emotion, situated outside of the particular point where the mind is searching for it . . . one’s entire soul flows into this emotion that makes the mind aware of the terribly disturbing sound of matter, and passes through its white-hot flame.” (AO, 19; emphasis mine)
- This quote from Artaud is taken from the Collected Works of Antonin Artaud Vol. 1, specifically from his Fragments of a Diary from Hell, published in 1925.
For additional context, Le Pése-Nerfs is concerned with Artaud’s intense psychological struggles, which is why Deleuze and Guattari describe the experience of the schizophrenic traversing the body without organs as an “overwhelming experience.”
Paragraph Six
In what was described above, it is observed that the schizophrenic traverses the surface of the body without organs, defined by the intensive quantities they pass through. Deleuze and Guattari seek to understand how the schizophrenic emerges as a clinical entity in society. Why do we isolate and remove the schizophrenic from the rest of the world? If someone doesn’t conform to society’s prescribed categories, why are they deemed ill? What prompts individuals to act out or behave irrationally when they are reduced to a sick schizophrenic? Deleuze and Guattari ask:
How is it possible that the schizo was conceived of as the autistic rag—separated from the real and cut off from life—that he is so often thought to be? (AO, 19–20)
Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the term “autistic rag” does not align with its contemporary meaning. In their era, “autistic” referred to a state akin to its etymological roots, where “autos” in Greek means “self,” indicating a tendency to be closed in on oneself. Unlike today’s understanding of autism as a neurodevelopmental condition, early to mid-20th century psychiatry associated “autism” with social withdrawal, often seen in conditions like schizophrenia. However, Deleuze and Guattari challenge this notion by suggesting that the schizo is not withdrawn, self-absorbed, or closed in on oneself; rather, the schizo is part and parcel with social production.
Deleuze and Guattari continue by positing two questions (we will go over the first question prior to stating the second question):
Worse still: how can psychiatric practice have made him this sort of rag, how can it have reduced him to this state of a body without organs that has become a dead thing — this schizo who sought to remain at that unbearable point where the mind touches matter and lives its every intensity, consumes it? (AO, 20)
The symptoms that make one appear as being socially withdrawn or self-absorbed are produced by the psychiatric practice. This quote reminds me of the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because the film highlights how institutions produce particular behaviors through their methods of controlling the body (we can think of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish as well). In any case, if we can conclude that psychiatric institutions have the capability to produce particular symptoms and behaviors, we must ask ourselves what other behaviors are produced — specifically by psychoanalysis.
Deleuze and Guattari continue by asking their second set of questions:
And shouldn’t this question immediately compel us to raise another one, which at first glance seems quite different: how does psychoanalysis go about reducing a person, who this time is not a schizophrenic but a neurotic, to a pitiful creature who eternally consumes daddy-and-mommy and nothing else whatsoever? How could the conjunctive synthesis of "So that's what it was!" and "So it's me!" have been reduced to the endless, dreary discovery of Oedipus: "So it's my father, my mother"? (AO, 20; emphasis mine)
Psychoanalysis reduces the schizophrenic to an “autistic rag” and simultaneously reduces the neurotic to a subject that relates desire to Freud’s oedipal complex. (The explicit ‘difference’ between neurosis and psychosis can be found in Chapter 2.8). Let’s see what the (Freudian) psychoanalyst says: You want to be a writer of a blog post? Well, that means you want to kill your father and have sexual relations with your mother. You want to read a blog post? Well, that means you want to kill your father and have sexual relations with your mother. … Obviously, this conceptualization of desire is reductive. Furthermore, to reduce desire to Oedipus it to assume global persons. We must not forget that Deleuze and Guattari are dealing with partial objects. We don’t start with the mother — we start with the mouth-machine and the breast-machine.
The questions that Deleuze and Guattari posit don’t get answered here. However, the questions are employed as rhetorical devices in order to make the readers question how one is able to reduce desire to a mere representation of Oedipus:
We cannot answer these two questions at this point. We merely see how very little the consumption of pure intensities has to do with family figures, and how very different the connective tissue of the “So it’s . . .” is from the Oedipal tissue. (AO, 20)
Paragraph Seven
Let’s summarize what we’ve gone over:
How can we sum up this entire vital progression? Let us trace it along a first path (the shortest route): the points of disjunction on the body without organs form circles that converge on the desiring-machines; then the subject — produced as a residuum alongside the machine, as an appendix, or as a spare part adjacent to the machine — passes through all the degrees of the circle, and passes from one circle to another. (AO, 20; emphasis mine)
As a result of the intensities produced by the paranoiac and miraculating machines, we see the rise of the celibate machine in the third synthesis which bands the intensities produced by the paranoiac and miraculating machines; we call these intensities coupled and banded by the celibate machine “intensive quantities.” Here, we find something-like-a-subject traversing through surface of the body without organs, passing through and consuming these intensive quantities. It’s important to note that Deleuze and Guattari describe intensive quantities as a circle, converging on desiring-machines (this will play an important role shortly).
At any rate, if the subject is passing through and consuming these intensive quantities, how are we able to define the subject? Deleuze and Guattari write:
This subject itself is not at the center, which is occupied by the machine, but on the periphery, with no fixed identity, forever decentered, defined by the states through which it passes. (AO, 20)
The subject is defined by “the states through which it passes,” indicating that the subject is in a constant state of becoming.
To illustrate this process, Deleuze and Guattari reference the works of Irish playwright and novelist, Samuel Beckett:
Thus the circles traced by Beckett’s Unnamable: “a succession of irregular loops, now sharp and short as in the waltz, now of a parabolic sweep,” with Murphy, Watt, Merrier, etc., as states, without the family having anything whatsoever to do with all of this. (AO, 20)
Oddly enough, the characters mentioned by Deleuze and Guattari are not in Beckett’s 1953 novel The Unnamable. All of the characters mentioned are protagonists in their own book:
- Murphy is the protagonist in Beckett’s 1938 novel, Murphy.
- Watt is the main character in Beckett’s 1958 novel, Watt.
- Mercier is the title character in Beckett’s 1970 novel, Mercier and Camier
If we are to move away from a literary comparison, let’s speak in terms of machines:
Or, to follow a path that is more complex, but leads in the end to the same thing: by means of the paranoiac machine and the miraculating machine, the proportions of attraction and repulsion on the body without organs produce, starting from zero, a series of states in the celibate machine; and the subject is born of each state in the series, is continually reborn of the following state that determines him at a given moment, consuming-consummating all these states that cause him to be born and reborn (the lived state coming first, in relation to the subject that lives it). (AO, 20; emphasis mine)
- I find this to be a perfect summary of 1.1–1.3.
Paragraph Eight
Deleuze and Guattari begin paragraph eight by referencing Pierre Klossowski’s 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle:
This is what Klossowski has admirably demonstrated in his commentary on Nietzsche: the presence of the Stimmung as a material emotion, constitutive of the most lofty thought and the most acute perception. (AO, 20)
The word “Stimmung” carries various connotations in German philosophy, culture, and literature. In Nietzsche’s context, “Stimmung” is best translated as “affect” or “mood.” This quote highlights Stimmung as a “material emotion,” suggesting that feelings influence perceptions.
Following this reference, Deleuze and Guattari directly cite Klossowski’s Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle:
“The centrifugal forces do not flee the center forever, but approach it once again, only to retreat from it yet again: such is the nature of the violent oscillations that overwhelm an individual so long as he seeks only his own center and is incapable of seeing the circle of which he himself is a part; for if these oscillations overwhelm him, it is because each one of them corresponds to an individual other than the one he believes himself to be, from the point of view of the unlocatable center. As a result, an identity is essentially fortuitous, and a series of individualities must be undergone by each of these oscillations, so that as a consequence the fortuitousness of this or that particular individuality will render all of them necessary." (AO, 20–21; emphasis mine)
Deleuze and Guattari discuss centrifugal forces in relation to the subject engaging with intensive quantities on the surface of the body without organs. It’s important to remember that the non-zero intensities produced by the paranoiac and miraculating machines are coupled by the celibate machine (i.e., a band of intensity). This process “form[s] circles that converge on desiring-machines” which allows us to say: “So it’s the heart-machine!” “So it’s the mouth-machine!” “So it’s the breast-machine!” However, the subject does not identify with the center of desiring-machines. Instead, the subject moves along the periphery of these circles, similar to a centrifugal force pushing an object away from a center point. As the quote above indicates, centrifugal forces oscillate by moving away from and moving towards the center.
When an individual focuses solely on their core identity, in a Cartesian manner, they lose sight of the circles they traverse — or rather, they move along the periphery of these circles. The subject is always in flux, never maintaining a fixed core identity. The idea of a subject possessing a core identity overwhelms them, as they inevitably oscillate and shift between circles.
Deleuze and Guattari sum up this progression — again by directly citing Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle:
The forces of attraction and repulsion, of soaring ascents and plunging falls, produce a series of intensive states based on the intensity = 0 that designates the body without organs (“but what is most unusual is that here again a new afflux is necessary, merely to signify this absence”). (AO, 21)
At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari continue by contrasting Nietzsche-the-self and the Nietzschean subject:
There is no Nietzsche-the-self, professor of philology, who suddenly loses his mind and supposedly identifies with all sorts of strange people; rather, there is the Nietzschean subject who passes through a series of states, and who identifies these states with the names of history: “every name in history is I. . . .” (AO, 21)
Deleuze and Guattari refer to Nietzsche’s “letters of insanity,” a period of time where Nietzsche wrote letters during his descent into madness. During this period, Nietzsche experienced delusions and portrayed himself in a messianic manner. In his letter to Swiss historian, Jacob Burckhardt, on January 4th, 1889, Nietzsche briefly explores the concept of identity, in which he writes that “every name in history is I.” Deleuze and Guattari draw on Nietzsche’s statement to argue that there is no singular Nietzsche-the-self. They reject the notion of a Cartesian subject — one that is named Nietzsche and defined as losing his mind. Instead, Deleuze and Guattari offer the formation of the Nietzschean subject — a subject that moves on the periphery of desiring-machines, consuming intensive quantities and constantly changing with each state traverse.
As stated previously, the subject does not identify with the desiring-machines:
The subject spreads itself out along the entire circumference of the circle, the center of which has been abandoned by the ego. At the center is the desiring-machine, the celibate machine of the Eternal Return. (AO, 21)
- Note: the Eternal Return is explained above with the analysis of the subject’s continual rebirth.
Desiring-machines are at the center of celibate machines. If the subject were to position an ego at the center of a celibate machine, they would solely be identifying with desiring-machines: the heart-, mouth-, and breast-machines. Instead, the subject lies on the periphery of the circle rather than placing an ego at the center of the desiring-machine.
Deleuze and Guattari proceed:
A residual subject of the machine, Nietzsche-as-subject garners a euphoric reward (Voluptas) from everything that this machine turns out, a product that the reader had thought to be no more than the fragmented oeuvre by Nietzsche. (AO, 21)
As previously mentioned, the subject is produced as a mere residuum of the machines. And, in the exact same manner that Schreber receives a recompense for his suffering, Nietzsche-as-subject “garners a euphoric reward” through his consummation of intensive quantities. Nietzsche-as-subject is constantly being produced by and through intensive quantities.
Deleuze and Guattari continue by citing Klossowski:
“Nietzsche believes that he is now pursuing, not the realization of a system, but the application of a program … in the form of residues of the Nietzschean discourse, which have now become the repertory, so to speak, of his histrionicism.” (AO, 21)
In this quote, Klossowski argues that Nietzsche never sought to create a unified or totalizing system of thought. Instead, Nietzsche assembled fragments from his experiences and integrated them into a philosophical program that guided his performative engagement with the world.
They continue:
It is not a matter of identifying with various historical personages, but rather identifying the names of history with zones of intensity on the body without organs; and each time Nietzsche-as-subject exclaims: ‘They’re me\ So it’s me\” No one has ever been as deeply involved in history as the schizo, or dealt with it in this way. (AO, 21)
Referring back to bands of intensity, zones, gradients, and thresholds on the body without organs, Deleuze and Guattari explain that the names found in history are “zones of intensity on the body without organs.” Therefore, when Nietzsche states that “every name in history is I,” he isn’t claiming that he is literally Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, or Siddhartha Gautama. Insetad, Nietzsche is suggesting that Joan-of-Arc-as-subject, Jesus-as-subject, and Gautama-as-subject are merely zones that mark the body without organs. The subject has the capacity to identify with these zones; these subjects are zones — zones that can be inscribed upon Nietzsche’s body without organs. In this sense:
[The schizo] consumes all of universal history in one fell swoop. We began by defining [the schizo] as Homo natura, and lo and behold, [the schizo] has turned out to be Homo historia. (AO, 21)
In Chapter 1.1., we found that the schizo could not be divorced from nature. In the same manner, the individual cannot be divorced from history. Homo natura = Homo historia.
And finally, Deleuze and Guattari end this section by citing Klossowski again — this time with a longer quote:
This long road that leads from the one to the other stretches from Holderlin to Nietzsche, and the pace becomes faster and faster. “The euphoria could not be prolonged in Nietzsche for as long a time as the contemplative alienation of Holderlin. . . . The vision of the world granted to Nietzsche does not inaugurate a more or less regular succession of landscapes or still lifes, extending over a period of forty years or so; it is, rather, a parody of the process of recollection of an event: a single actor will play the whole of it in pantomime in the course of a single solemn day — because the whole of it reaches expression and then disappears once again in the space of just one day — even though it may appear to have taken place between December 31 and January 6 — in a realm above and beyond the usual rational calendar.” (AO, 20–21)
In this quote, Klossowski describes the literary and philosophical progression from Friedrich Hölderlin to Nietzsche. Hölderlin’s form of thought is defined as “contemplative alienation,” characterized by prolonged contemplation. In contrast, Nietzsche’s form of thought is more fleeting and intense, described as euphoric.
— —
Citation:
- Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. (1972). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
- Schreber, Daniel. (1903). Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. New York Review Books.
- Kant, Immanuel. (1781). Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge University Press. First published 1998.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1882). The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press. First published 2001.
