Capitalism and Schizophrenia - Deleuze and Guattari

*Capitalism and Schizophrenia* is a two-volume project comprising *Anti-Oedipus* (1972) and *A Thousand Plateaus* (1980), written by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. The work functions as a "universal history" of desire, seeking to understand how human drives are organized, repressed, or liberated within social and economic systems. ## Desiring-Production and the Critique of Lack The authors introduce the concept of **desiring-production**, arguing that desire is not a psychological "lack" or a search for a missing object (as posited by Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis). Instead, desire is a primary, productive force that functions like a machine, constantly connecting to other machines to create reality. In this framework, the social field is directly invested by desire; there is no distinction between the "individual" psyche and the "collective" socio-economic structure. ## The Dual Movement of Capitalism Deleuze and Guattari argue that capitalism occupies a unique historical position because of its relationship with **territorialization**. 1. **Deterritorialization**: Capitalism functions by breaking down traditional barriers, sacred rituals, and rigid social hierarchies (decoding flows). It seeks to make everything exchangeable and fluid to facilitate the movement of capital. 2. **Reterritorialization**: To prevent total collapse into chaos, capitalism simultaneously creates new, artificial boundaries. It recodes flows through the state, the nuclear family, and consumer identity. The "Schizophrenic" in this context is not merely a clinical diagnosis but a process. The "schizo" represents the limit of capitalism—a movement that deterritorializes further than the system can manage, breaking away from the "molar" (rigid, centralized) structures of the state and the ego. ## Rhizomes and Assemblages In the second volume, the authors move toward a non-hierarchical epistemology. They contrast the **arborescent** model of thought—which is linear, hierarchical, and rooted in a single "trunk" of truth—with the **rhizome**. A rhizome is a decentralized network where any point can connect to any other point. This concept underpins their theory of **assemblages**, which are temporary constellations of bodies, ideas, and technologies that produce specific effects without a central governing logic. ## Promising Directions for Exploration 1. **The Body without Organs (BwO)**: How does this concept of a "limit-surface" describe the potential for humans to resist being organized into functional, productive units by the state? 2. **State Apparatus vs. War Machine**: What is the distinction between the "State," which seeks to capture and internalize flows, and the "War Machine," which exists exterior to the state and operates through nomadic movement? 3. **Minor Literature and Politics**: How can marginalized groups utilize "minor" languages or practices to subvert the dominant, "major" cultural frameworks?

To understand why Deleuze and Guattari reject the Freudian and Lacanian model of desire as "lack," one must examine the specific mechanical processes they propose in its place. While traditional psychoanalysis suggests desire is born from a missing object (the mother, the phallus, or the *objet petit a*), *Anti-Oedipus* posits that desire is an immanent, self-sufficient force that requires no external justification or origin. ## The Passive Syntheses of Desire Deleuze and Guattari detail how desire functions through three **passive syntheses**. These are unconscious processes that build reality before any "ego" or "subject" emerges. 1. **The Connective Synthesis (Production of Production)**: This is the "and... and..." logic of desire. It involves the coupling of "partial objects." For example, the mouth-machine connects to the breast-machine to produce a flow of milk. There is no "person" here, only functional couplings that produce something new. 2. **The Disjunctive Synthesis (Production of Recording)**: This process organizes the various connections onto a surface, which the authors call the **Socius** or the **Body without Organs**. It creates a grid or a map of where flows can go. Unlike traditional logic, which uses "either/or" to exclude (you are either a son or a worker), the "inclusive disjunction" of desire allows for multiple, overlapping identities. 3. **The Conjunctive Synthesis (Production of Consumption)**: Only at this final stage does a "subject" emerge. The subject is not the cause of desire but a residual byproduct—a feeling of "So that’s what I am!" or "So that’s what I was doing!" It is a point of arrival, not a point of departure. ## Desire as a Social Investment By removing "lack" from the definition of desire, the authors perform a political intervention. If desire is defined by lack, it is inherently dependent on an authority (the Parent, the Priest, or the State) to provide what is missing. This creates a "priestly" psychology of guilt and debt. Instead, they argue that **desire is directly economic and political**. There is no "private" desire for a mother that is later "sublimated" into a job or a political stance. Rather, the child’s desire is already invested in the social field: the father is not just a parent, but a representative of a specific class, a specific workplace, and a specific history. We do not desire "objects"; we desire **assemblages**. One does not desire a car; one desires the entire social assemblage of the highway, fossil fuels, status, and mobility. ## The Critique of Scarcity The concept of lack is the foundational myth of market economics. By framing desire as lack, capitalism can maintain the "theatre" of **scarcity**. If we believe we are fundamentally incomplete, we are easily manipulated into seeking completion through consumption. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that "desiring-production" is actually characterized by **excess**. It is a profligate, overflowing force that capitalism must constantly capture, channel, and restrict to maintain its specific order. The "schizo" as a process represents the moment desire ignores the artificial boundaries of lack and simply continues to connect, produce, and flow.

While Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of desire-as-production is distinctive, it belongs to a broader philosophical lineage that rejects the Platonic and Hegelian traditions of desire as a search for a missing "ideal" or "synthesis." ## The Spinozist Foundation: Conatus and Joy The primary ancestor of the "desire as production" model is **Baruch Spinoza**. In his *Ethics*, Spinoza defines **conatus** as the innate striving of a thing to persist and increase its power of acting. 1. **Affirmative Ethics**: Unlike the Freudian model, where desire is a "problem" to be solved through sublimation, Spinozist desire is an affirmation of existence. 2. **Affect**: Spinoza introduces the concept of **affect** (distinct from emotion), which refers to the variations in a body's capacity to act when it encounters another body. D&G adopt this to explain how assemblages are formed not by "feelings," but by the mechanical compatibility of different forces. ## Nietzsche and the Active Force **Friedrich Nietzsche** provides the vitalist framework for *Anti-Oedipus*. His concept of the **Will to Power** is not a desire *for* power (which would imply a lack of it), but a "plastic force" that creates, shapes, and imposes new forms upon reality. - **Reactive vs. Active**: Nietzsche critiques the "ascetic priest" who interprets life through guilt and debt. D&G use this to attack the "Oedipal" structure of psychoanalysis, which they view as a modern form of reactive nihilism that turns desire against itself. - **Eternal Return**: D&G interpret the eternal return not as the return of the same, but as the "selection" of the most intense, productive forces of desire. ## Foucault and the Productive Nature of Power **Michel Foucault**, a contemporary and close interlocutor of Deleuze, moved in a parallel direction regarding **biopolitics**. In *The History of Sexuality, Volume 1*, Foucault explicitly rejects the "repressive hypothesis"—the idea that power simply says "no" to desire. - **Immanence of Power**: Similar to D&G’s view that desire is already social, Foucault argues that power is not something held by a central authority but is a productive grid that generates knowledge, discourses, and bodies. - **Micro-physics**: Both frameworks shift the focus from macro-structures (the State, the Law) to the "micro-physics" of how bodies and desires are organized in daily life. ## Feminist Extensions: Irigaray and Braidotti Later theorists have utilized the "desire as production" model to critique the patriarchal underpinnings of lack. 1. **Luce Irigaray**: Although critical of some aspects of D&G, Irigaray challenged the Freudian "logic of the same," where the female is defined only as a "lack" of the male organ. She proposed a "multiplicity" of desire that resonates with D&G’s partial objects. 2. **Rosi Braidotti**: A contemporary "neo-materialist," Braidotti extends these concepts into **Nomadic Theory**. She argues that the productive, non-unitary subject is better suited for an era of globalized, technologically-mediated flows, moving beyond the "Oedipal" nuclear family.