Anti-Oedipus 2.6: A Recapitulation of the Three Syntheses
In this section Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari explain a summary of the three syntheses.
Figure One: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Image Link.
The objective of this blog post is to analyze chapter 2.6 of Anti-Oedipus.
In an attempt to clarify concepts for their readers, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari provide a renewed exposition of the three syntheses of the unconscious and the three associated paralogisms.
**Citation Note: The citation for this text is at the bottom of the blog post
Chapter 2.6: A Recapitulation of the Three Syntheses
Deleuze and Guattari begin this section with a discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche and the death of the father. In Nietzsche’s book, The Gay Science, there is a prominent passage regarding the death of God (a passage that many misinterpret). In this passage, Nietzsche tells the story of the madman:
Have you not heard of the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, ‘I seek God! I seek God!’ …“Whither is God” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers… Gods too decompose. God is dead. And we have killed him. (The Gay Science, 1882)
This passage reflects the eras of Nietzsche and the contemporary period, highlighting the diminishing dependence on God. With an increasing number of people embracing reduced belief in God, particularly in the context of Judeao-Christian traditions, Nietzsche is concerned with where morality derives from if there is no God. Many of the onlookers laugh at the madman, but the question of morality still remains. None of this is to assume the Nietzsche is implicitly concerned with the news of the death of God; instead Nietzsche is concerned with “the time this news takes to bear fruit” (AO, 106).
Figure Two: Friedrich Nietzsche. Image Link.
For the psychoanalysts, this news of the death of God (the father) floats around the unconscious. “But that is not at all what Nietzsche is saying,” Deleuze and Guattari warn, “[Nietzsche] does not mean that the death of God spends a long time plodding around in the unconscious. He means that what takes so long in coming to consciousness is the news that the death of God makes no difference to the unconscious” (AO, 107). The discourse promulgated by psychoanalysts about the death of the father gives their project coherency (as Oedipus killing the father marks an epoch for the unconscious). Yet, the unconscious is not concerned with the death of the father as this logic presumes that the unconscious believes in the father (or God, for that matter). Nietzsche’s point, from Deleuze and Guattari’s perspective, does not concern the death of the father or God; rather, it is the event of the death of the father that stains society with the blood of Oedipus (or more literally, Oedipus’ father).
And to believe in the father, the death of the father, and that this news somehow is indicative of the unconscious, is to believe in Oedipus as ideology. “Psychoanalysis cannot become a rigorous discipline unless it accepts putting belief in parentheses, which is to say a materialist reduction of Oedipus as an ideological form” (AO, 107). This false belief reduces the unconscious to a system of representations that are justified due to the death of the fater. “Oedipus killed the father, and we have killed God; therefore, there must be an innate desire to transgress the law!” the psychoanalysists exclaim.
However, “the question of the father is like that of God: born of an abstraction, it assumes the link to be already broken between man and nature, man and the world, so that man must be produced as man by something exterior to nature and to man” (AO, 107). The death of the father or God can only matter if there is a dichotomy present between man and nature because both the father and God serve as an exteriority that produces man in opposition to nature.
Many people (psychoanalysts) often point to the concept of generations progressing linearly as an example of the unconscious moving from one body to another (AO, 107–108). However, Deleuze and Guattari explain that the “organized body is the object of reproduction by generation” but “not its subject” (AO, 108). This distinction is vital because it means that the organized body plays a role in reproduction, but we ought not prescribe an overarching subjectivity to this organized body by way of generation. Instead, the unconscious “holds a circular form of production” where it constantly reproduces itself. (AO, 108). In this view, sexuality is not just about creating new life in response to Oedipus, as psychoanalysts suggest. Instead, the unconscious utilizes sexuality “as an autoproduction of [itself]” (AO, 108).
This evokes the ideas presented in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, where they problematize the arborescent model. The notion of a genealogical tree, with all previous ancestors culminating and converging upon the individual, is precisely what Deleuze and Guattari seek to subvert. It is not a matter of being solely the product of this process of reproduction. Granted, the organized body retains a debt to its ancestors in a physical sense. However, the unconscious does not adhere to this arboreal structure; rather, it exhibits a rhizomatic structure with connection radiating in a myriad of directions.
Figure Three: The Arborescent and Rhizomatic Models. Image Link.
At any rate, all of this culminates in a message from the psychoanalysts: “you will not escape Oedipus, your sole choice is between the ‘neurotic outlet’ and the ‘nonneurotic outlet’” (AO, 108). The convergence of geneaological tree and the death of the father upon an individual is enough to trap one within the confines of Oedipus. Again, the father or God may be dead — many may disavow these constructions — but they are enough to subsume the unconscious to having desired the death of the father. When in reality, “the unconscious poses no problem of meaning, solely problems of use” (AO, 109).
Deleuze and Guattari write:
The question posed by desire is not “What does it mean?” but rather “How does it work?” How do these machines, these desiring-machines, work — yours and mine? With what sort of breakdowns as a part of their functioning? How do they pass from one body to another? How are they attached to the body without organs? (AO, 109)
Note: In the next paragraph or two, Deleuze and Guattari discuss schizoanalysis as a political project. I will analyze that at the end of this blog post and will (eventually) have a post dedicated to the project of schzoanalysis. For now, let’s get to the three sytheses of the unconscious and the first three paralogisms!
The first synthesis and the first paralogism:
“In the first place, a partial and nonspecific use of the connective syntheses was found to be in opposition to the Oedipal use, itself global and specific” (AO, 110).
We begin with the first synthesis dealing with the multiplicity — all partial objects are interconnected through flows and breaks. The first paralogism is when a partial object is lifted from the multiplicity ascribing the multiplicity to a state of lack (i.e., the multiplicity lacks the partial object lifted from the group). “The extraction of a transcendent complete object from the signifying chain, which served as a despotic signifier on which the entire chain thereafter seemed to depend, assigning an element of lack to each position of desire, fusing desire to a law, and engendering the illusion that this loosened up and freed the elements of the chain” (AO, 110).
The second synthesis and the second paralogism:
“In the second place, an inclusive or nonrestrictive use of the disjunctive syntheses is in opposition to their Oedipal, exclusive, restrictive use” (AO, 110).
As the production of recording inscribes points on the surface of the BwO which gives organs their functions, the organs are differentiated from one another yet remain interconnected. The second paralogism records these points in an exclusive way that establishes the law of the father. This law exists in a double-bind: “it demonstrates Oedipus’s method: a paralogism of the double bind, the double impasse” (AO, 110). The double-bind is that of two poles — the imaginary and the symbolic. Because the multiplicity and the phallus (the object extracted from the multiplicity) are strictly delineated, the endeavor to acquire or relinquish the phallus becomes a fruitless and unattainable pursuit. In an earlier section of AO, Deleuze and Guattari describe the second paralogism like that of a father telling his son to criticize him: if the son criticizes the father, he gets punished. Yet, if he doesn’t criticize his father, then he isn’t obeying the father and gets punished.
The third synthesis and the third paralogism:
“In the third place, a nomadic and polyvocal use of the conjunctive syntheses is opposed to the segregative and biunivocal use made of them” (AO, 110).
The conjunctive synthesis consists of a subject appearing on the surface of the BwO and passing through oscillations on the periphery of desiring-machines. It is in this synthesis where the subject is constantly produced and in a state of flux, not identifying with desiring-machines. However, the third paralogism consists of the placing of an ego at the center of these desiring-machines and identifying with them. Here is the difference between the racial and the racist: the subject is produced by race but passes through racial gradients on the BwO. However, the racist identifies with race as something fixed. This paralogism has two moments: “first, a moment that is racist, nationalistic, religious, etc., and that, by means of a segregation, constitutes an aggregate of departure that is always presupposed by Oedipus, even if in a totally implicit fashion; next, a familial moment that constitutes the aggregate of destination by means of an application” (AO, 110). It is in this paralogism where the signifier enters: everything is reduced to a representation with an overarching meaning.
“The three errors concerning desire are called lack, law, and signifier. It is one and the same error, an idealism that forms a pious conception of the unconscious” (AO, 111).
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I went over the three syntheses and first three paralogisms with a friend and we came up with an idea to explain it.
Take a piece of paper out and start drawing random lines that interconnect with one another. This is the connective synthesis. Now, start drawing random figures with different curvatures from one another on those lines (these figures are not ‘people’ because we haven’t got there yet). This is the disjunctive synthesis recording various functionalisms that differ from one another (yet remains interconnected). And finally, make these drawings their own subject — here we have a drawing of a chair, a pair of eyes, a coffee cup, a laptop.
Figure Four: A Random Drawing. Image Link.
Now, for the first paralogism, let’s remove something from the multiplicity. Let’s lift a pair of eyes from the multiplicity. Note that every partial object in the multiplicity now lacks this pair of eyes. Moving on to the second paralogism, it involves each partial element within the multiplicity being ensnared in a double-bind. Each partial element is forever barred from obtaining that pair of eyes since they’ve been lifted from the set. Simultaneously, each partial element cannot disown this set of eyes, as it remains an integral part of the multiplicity. And finally, the third paralogism concerns the signifier. A pair of eyes? Well, those are actually a set of your mother’s breasts. Actually, it represents God looking down on the rest of the partial objects. You get the point.
Although this is a heavily simplified view of the three syntheses and the first three paralogisms, it still highlights the pervasive nature of Oedipus. We are already defined as lacking the phallus. From here, everything we do in relation to the phallus — whether we attempt to attain it or deny — is a futile effort. And lastly, all productions of the unconscious are just signifers for the phallus.
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“Oedipal analysis imposes a transcendent use on all the syntheses of the unconscious, ensuring their conversion” (AO, 112; emphasis mine).
Conclusion
To sum up, this blog post explained chapter 2.6 of Anti-Oedipus. However, there are still two more paralogisms to go over. If they are not already posted on my blog, I am writing an analysis of those up now.
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Citation:
- Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. (1972). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
