Anti-Oedipus 2.5: The Conjunctive Synthesis of Consumption-Consummation

Chapter 2.5: The Conjunctive Synthesis of Consumption-Consummation

Lastly, we arrive at the third paralogism, which pertains to the third synthesis of the unconscious. To commence our exploration, let’s begin with the egg:

“In the third synthesis, the conjunctive synthesis of consumption, we have seen how the body without organs was in fact an egg, crisscrossed with axes, banded with zones, localized with areas and fields, measured off by gradients, traversed by potentials, marked by thresholds” (AO, 84).

An egg serves as a profound symbol of potentiality — a notion deeply explored by Deleuze and Guattari, who aptly describe the BwO as a “cosmic egg” within the context of their philosophy. The egg encapsulates a state of existence where nothing is fully formed, yet everything is engaged in an ongoing process of becoming. Much like the universe itself, this cosmic egg is in a perpetual state of flux. Within its delicate confines, the subject embarks on a transformative journey, traversing through numerous states and dimensions. It is within this cosmic egg that the seeds of possibility are sown, awaiting the right conditions to hatch and evolve into new realities.

Figure Nine: The Egg. Image Link.

Within the conceptual framework of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, the egg symbolically holds within it a rich tapestry of intensities and gradients. As these elements converge and disperse on the BwO, they encompass a wide spectrum of entities and phenomena, ranging from “countries, races, families, parental appellations, divine appellations, geographical and historical designations, and even miscellaneous news items” (AO, 84–85). The essence of this analysis lies in its refusal to impose a single despotic or authoritarian center upon the BwO; instead, this analysis seeks to explain how variation and distribution on the BwO occur in a manner that defies any rigid definitions or hierarchies. To put simply, commonly perceived categories like countries, races, and genders are simply gradients and thresholds that operate as a movement across the across the BwO.

Deleuze and Guattari’s perspective does not condemn delirium (which will be discussed soon) or the existence of countries or races; instead, they emphasize that these constructs are manifestations or effects distributed upon the BwO. They assert that “the first things to be distributed on the body without organs are races, cultures, and their gods” (AO, 85). Such entities are not fixed but rather dynamic and contingent elements that find their place within the ever-evolving landscape of the BwO. Therefore, when a subject is produced as American, they are produced through a molar formation composed of various statistical aggregates that compose what it means to be American; however, the aggregates that constitute Americanness is in a constant state of flux — never fully formed.

The schizo’s approach to history is one that actively engages with history, not as a passive observer but as an active participant. In doing so, the schizo engages in a form of hallucination and delirium that spans the entirety of universal history. The schizo “participates in history; [the schizo] hallucinates and raves universal history, and proliferates the races” (AO, 85). They become a conduit for the proliferation of races and cultures, defying the traditional notion of a linear, teleological history.

Figure Ten: The Schizo as Universal History. Image Link.

It is not delirium that produces subjects as members of a specific country or race; rather, the subject is the consummation of race itself. A dynamic interplay of racial forces, like that of a gradient, is at work upon the BwO, consummating both the subject and the territory. Race, functioning as a threshold on the BwO, exerts a compelling force that drives the subject towards becoming. As the subject passes through various oscillations on the BwO — oscillations that are themselves racial — the subject traverses zones of intensive quantities, which are the very essence of race itself. Delirium, in this context, presupposes the existence of race, providing the groundwork for subjects to declare their affiliation with a specific racial identity.

However, it is crucial to understand that race cannot be isolated from other races, as they are intrinsically interconnected. When a subject boldly proclaims, “I am white” (a delirious exclamation), this assumes a shared collective understanding of what it means to be white. Though, the crux of the matter does not reside in the statement itself. Deleuze and Guattari assert, “all delirium is racial, which does not necessarily mean racist” (AO, 85). Therefore, the problematization resides in significations applied to the statement. Here is where racism enters the equation: racism serves as an example of the misuse of the third synthesis through significations.

It is an error to perceive race as a static, unchanging entity. Instead, we must heed Deleuze and Guattari’s perspective, acknowledging whiteness, and all other races, as a zone of intensive quantities in a perpetual state of flux and production. The adherence to a fixed notion of whiteness among individuals contributes to this delirious understanding. Whiteness, as a molar aggregate, is interwoven with the molecularities of all other races at the level of the multiplicity. But at the level of the territory, this does not entail white subjects traversing territories containing molecularities of all other races — territories are defined by the specific intensities they produce.

As discussed earlier, the BwO resists categorizations and vehemently opposes any attempts to confine it within rigid conceptual frameworks. When we delve into the intersections of races and cultures, we discover races and cultures serve as thresholds designating specific regions on this body. Within these designated regions, the processes of individualization and sexualization dynamically take shape and unfold as phenomena.

It is imperative to recognize that the schizo defies adherence to a singular, fixed identity, such as exclusively identifying as “white.” Instead, the schizo transcends these limited categorizations and encompasses the diversity of historical labels. Echoing Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari proclaim that “Every name in history is I” (AO, 86). This concept challenges our conventional understanding, which often revolves around the ego or “I” associating with a single nationality or race. This analysis does not imply that the schizo undergoes a change in race (transraciality); rather, it underscores the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of identity, transcending rigid racial boundaries.

Deleuze and Guattari are not advocating for a notion of identity that allows individuals to simply declare themselves as belonging to a different race, as seen in Season 1 Episode 7 of Atlanta. In this episode, Antoine Smalls, a young Black man, identifies as a 35 year old white man from Colorado, Harrison Booth. This satirical (and very funny) episode of Atlanta serves as a social commentary on race and what it means for a subject to consummate race. In Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, the declaration “I am white” or any similar assertion is not a mere act of delirium that magically transforms one’s racial identity. None of this is to assume that there are not becoming-white or becoming-black becomings at the molecular level; but the idea is simple: becoming does not mean mimicry.

Figure Eleven: A 35-Year-Old White Man. Image Link.

Thanks to some help from one of my friends interested in Deleuze and Guattari, I was shown that the movie 8 Mile serves as a fascinating example of how becoming-white and becoming-black can appear at the molecular level. When we watch the final rap battle between Eminem and Anthony Mackie, we see the racial movements and becomings moving through the city of Detroit, MI. The usual roles are reversed in this situation. Eminem, as a molar white man, should be the one that attended the private school, embracing the free world. Yet, in this rap battle, Eminem isolates that Mackie went to a private school (and that Mackie’s real name is Clarence). There are many racial movements in this battle: names, locations, places of residence, what schools people attended, area codes, and mentions of famous rapper 2Pac (along with 2Pac posers).

Figure Twelve: The Final Rap Battle. Video Link.

Indeed, we can observe a becoming-black of the subject-Eminem during this rap battle — the general roles are reversed here. However, it is crucial to clarify that this concept of becoming, as outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, is not a personal or individual transformation. Eminem cannot say “I am black” to belong to a different race. Instead, this becoming-black is deeply intertwined with the territory and the intensities generated within this specific territorial context.

You might be thinking that it is racist to define Eminem’s becoming-black as not attending a private school, but we must be careful with the distinction between the racial and racist. Because the intensive quantities produced by the territory of Detroit consists of white subjects attending private schools (in a general sense), one can accurately isolate Eminem’s becoming-black. However, we must be very careful as this territory has come to be defined in a racialized manner whereby private schools biunivocalize whiteness and blackness. Even so, this territory is still in a state of flux.

Regardless, becomings are present within this rap battle, but that does not mean the battle exists without representations. This scene was replete with representations that attempted to define and confine what it means to embody a particular racial identity.

To put it simply, when we limit the understanding of a historical name, a racial identity, or even a nation to individual meanings and representations, we overlook the larger and more profound impacts and influences that these concepts have on society and individuals. Deleuze and Guattari illustrate this idea within the context of physics, where proper names are used to denote such effects within fields of potentials, as seen in examples like the Joule effect, the Seebeck effect, and the Kelvin effect (AO, 86). “History is like physics”, they explain, “a Joan of Arc effect, a Heliogabalus effect — all the names of history, and not the name of the father” (AO, 86). Names are given to the effects; the problem lies in identifying these names as significations of global persons.

This is the distinction between the racial and the racist.

So… what’s the third paralogism?

Paralogism 3: Desire applies signification to itself, producing a segregative use of the conjunctive synthesis.

• The fundamental problem at the heart of the third paralogism concerns significations. Names designated to effects of history — to becomings — must not be confined to representations. Instead, names ought to be designated to “effects”: “effects that are not a mere dependence on causes, but the occupation of a domain, and the operation of a system of signs” (AO, 86).
• “There is therefore a segregative use of the conjunctive syntheses of the unconscious, a use that does not coincide with divisions between classes, although it is an incomparable weapon in the service of a dominating class: it is this use that brings about the feeling of ‘indeed being one of us,’ of being part of a superior race threatened by enemies from outside” (AO, 103).

So far, we have seen how global persons are produced in the first paralogism and how they are defined exclusively in the second paralogism. In the third paralogism, desire applies signification to itself making every element of the real conform and fit into the Oedipus complex — a true extension of the Oedipal triangle across the entire social field.

It’s crucial to emphasize that not all names in history are synonymous with the name of the father. In fact, the reality is that “the schizo has no principles: [the schizo] is something only by being something else… [The schizo] is a girl only by being an old man who is mimicking or simulating the girl. Or rather, by being someone who is simulating an old man simulating a girl. Or rather, by simulating someone . . ., etc.” (AO, 87).

This intricate web of simulation allows the schizo to both identify with and disidentify from the various states they traverse. When the schizo asserts, “I am man. I am woman. I am child,” they are not establishing a fixed ego at the center of the celibate machine. In this context, there is no ego at the center, just as there are no distinct persons scattered around the periphery. The conjunctive synthesis, therefore, can be expressed as follows: “So I am the king! So the kingdom belongs to me!” However, this “me” is simply the residual subject that circulates within this circle of identification and draws a sense of self from its continuous oscillations along the circular path (AO, 87–88). In essence, the schizo’s identity is not anchored in a static ego but rather emerges as a dynamic interplay of identifications and disidentifications within the circular flow of their experiences.

Figure Thirteen: The Kingdom Belongs to Me. Image Link.

The conjunctive synthesis, in essence, describes a process where a subject continually absorbs and moves through different states and fluctuations. However, a more profound question arises from this dynamic: Is this fundamental passage, which encompasses everything from “races, cultures, continents, and kingdoms,” solely the result of a “derivative of Oedipus” (AO, 88)? In other words, is our identification with all the names of history exclusively shaped by our relationship with a father figure? Is the identification with man solely constituted through a relationality with with the father? What about an identification with a woman or child? Or God or the absence of God?

Psychoanalysis forecloses the possibility of escaping the oedipalization assigned to every name in history. They believe that Oedipus was present from the very start. However, “believing is an operation of a conscious or preconscious nature…rather than an operation of the unconscious upon itself” (AO, 92). To believe in Oedipus is to start from conscious or preconscious investments instead of an orphan-unconscious that does not relegate itself to, or produce, representations. “If there is one problem that does not exist in schizophrenia, it is the problem of identifications” (AO, 91). Yet, identifications are present and dominant within psychoanalysis. As Deleuze and Guattari write, “If getting well amounts to getting oedipalized, we can easily understand the outbursts of the patient who ‘does not want to be cured,’ and who treats the analyst as one of the family, then as an ally of the police” (AO, 91). Why would the schizophrenic seek to be cured if the supposed cure reifies the dichotomy between human and nature? The schizophrenic is not sick because they lack Oedipus — they are sick by “the virtue of oedipialization that [they] are unable to bear” (AO, 91). (The schizophrenic noted here can be understood as a clinical entity that has gone mad or a schizo who is deemed as ill from the perspective of the psychiatrist.)

Dominant identifications persist not only within the boundaries of the family but also extend their influence as the concept of the family stretches and permeates the entire social landscape. “In this manner the study of the families of schizophrenics has breathed new life into Oedipus by making it reign over the extensive order of an expanded family, where…each person would combine to a greater or lesser extent [their] triangle with the triangle of others… (AO, 93). Deleuze and Guattari argue that the triangulation of desire extends beyond the confines of one’s immediate family. They argue that desire does not solely operate within the bounds of one’s household but rather manifests through the formation of alliances between individuals from distinct family units. Deleuze and Guattari quote a slogan from Jacques Hochman: “From the family to the institution of the hospital, from the institution of the hospital to the familial institution… a therapeutic return to the family”! (AO, 94).

When we talk about the Oedipal triangle involving mother, father, and child (3), along with the phallus as the missing element (+ 1), it is crucial to understand that this triangle is not a closed or self-contained system. In fact, “there is no Oedipal triangle: Oedipus is always open in an open social field… (not even 3 + 1, but 4 + n)” (AO, 96). Deleuze and Guattari offer a distinctive perspective on the ‘Oedipal triangle,’ characterizing it as “poorly closed” or not adequately sealed due to desire’s tendency to flow beyond its supposed boundaries and into uncharted territories (AO, 96). They pinpoint a significant problem with psychoanalysis: the creation of a simplified, almost artificial version of Oedipus. This straw-man Oedipus is then superimposed onto various individuals, such as soldiers, police officers, occupiers, collaborators, radicals, resistors, bosses, and bosses’ wives. These individuals consistently disrupt any attempts to fit them into the conventional triangular framework, thus preventing the entire situation from being reduced to the confines of the familial complex and from being internalized within it (AO, 97). Therefore, Oedipus is always ever-present and constructed through social relations — a family that is decentered and across the social field.

Figure Fourteen: Triangulation of the Social Field. Image Link.

The third paralogism pertains to a segregative use of the conjunctive synthesis. Nowhere are Deleuze and Guattari arguing that the presence of races and classes on the BwO are problematic; but rather, the question is how these races and classes voyage across the BwO. Here, Deleuze and Guattari differentiate from the schizo’s departure vs. Oedipus’ arrival: “In the aggregate of departure there is the social formation, or rather the social formations: the races, the classes, the continents, the peoples, the kingdoms, the sovereignties; Joan of Arc and the Great Mongol, Luther and the Aztec Serpent. In the aggregate of destination, there remains only daddy, mommy, and me” (AO, 101). The schizo is always in a process of departure while Oedipus was always at the end; if the end result is always Oedipus, psychoanalysts can easily apply Oedipus to anything and everything.

Oedipus is present all throughout history and collective formations — at least from a molar standpoint. In fact, “there is no more an individual Oedipus than there is an individual fantasy” (AO, 103). Psychoanalysts erroneously claim that Oedipus is placed at the very beginning (in order to apply the Oedipal name to every subject in history). However, it has always been the reverse: “it is not the father who is projected onto the boss, but the boss who is applied to the father, either in order to tell us ‘you will not surpass your father,’ or ‘you will surpass him to find our forefathers’” (AO, 104). Although it is incorrect to place Oedipus at the beginning, it is brilliant in forcing subjects to internalize Oedipus and carry out Oedipus when no one is watching.

As with the previous syntheses, there are two uses of the conjunctive synthesis:

• “The nomadic and polyvocal use” of the conjunctive syntheses (AO, 105).
• “The segregative and biunivocal use” of the conjunctive synthesis (AO, 105).

Deleuze and Guattari write: “Delirium has something like two poles, racist and racial, paranoiac-segregative and schizonomadic” (AO, 105). Therefore, there is an immanent and transcendent use of the third synthesis; there is a use that coincides with nature as nature and another use that is segregative, attempting to block connections from being made.

The schiziophrenic is a revolutionary in that they are guided by a nomadic use of the conjunctive synthesis; the fight and resist Oedipus as if in battle. They toss Oedipus to the side and pass through oscillations, identifying with every name in history.

“The revolutionary is the first to have the right to say: ‘Oedipus? Never heard of it’” (AO, 96).

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have delved into an exploration of the first three paralogisms and their intricate connections to desire and the unconscious. In the course of our analysis, we have illuminated instances where each synthesis is misapplied, leading to a profound understanding of how desire represses itself. Deleuze and Guattari have provided us with insightful and eloquent insights into the mechanisms through which repression manifests. Through their work, they invite us to critically examine the multifaceted nature of desire and its complex relationship with our unconscious processes.

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Citation:

• Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. (1972). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.