With the publication of Anti-Oedipus, both Gilles Deleuze and the Lacanian psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, had not only created an entirely new philosophy but the promise of an original approach to literary theory. Schizoanalysis is a paradigm which finds itself in a continuing process of growth, particularly in the English speaking world with the gradual translation, dissemination and explication of not only Anti-Oedipus but texts which have emerged since its first publication (such as On the Line)- particularly those penned by Felix Guattari (Chaosophy and Chaosmosis). Schizoanalysis is primarily a response to both Lacanian psychoanalysis and structuralism, and in texts on literary theory such as Barry or Eagleton, it is thus given a brief mention under the umbrella of the poststructuralist paradigm. Lacan united Freud with the Marxist notion of a political repression, which combined led to a particular understanding of society - an worldview which schizoanalysis challenges. The schizoanalytic approach is therefore both post-Freudian and post-Marxist. Not only this, but the revolutionary ideas of Deleuze and Guattari also share the flavour of popular postmodernist literature in its references to modern technology and cyberculture, as well as an attempt to capture the spirit of the modern world's plurality and multiplicity. This is despite Felix Guattari's own proclamation - "I am not a postmodernist". If not, schizoanalysis dwells within those misty borders that exist between terms coined for a particular age and ideology.
The texts themselves are dense, especially Guattari's final work, Chaosmosis, which seems to reiterate or exemplify the policy of schizoanalysis' multiple references and the chaosmic creation of a unique language the likes of which may never be seen again - evident in chapter headings such as 'schizophrenic metamodelisation' or 'machinic heterogenesis'. The theory itself is awash with concepts such as the 'body without organs' or the constant references to the 'machinic' - to 'machines'. It must also be acknowledged that in reading a manuscript translated from French, the reader may not receive the best english equivalent nor the same meaning that Deleuze and Guattari had intended. Consider that 'machine', such a fantastically integral part of their work, has reference to an undefined object or 'thing' . The creation of this almost entirely new vocabulary on Deleuze and Guattari's behalf may also be seen as an attempt to avoid aligning themselves with the very theories that they are contrasting schizoanalysis with.
For Deleuze and Guattari schizophrenia is the model from which a template for the ideal human being can be drawn. A human being capable of expressing or utilising productive desire (which itself is not unlike Nietzsche's 'will-to-power'). Obviously, this is a reference not to schizophrenia as a medical condition or diagnosis, but as a state of activity in which the full potential of the unconscious can be realized. Marx set up an opposition between production and ideology in asserting that human discourse cannot be the final word but must be placed within the relations of production, and in doing so united human desire with ideology - hence Marxist desire is unproductive. Obviously, Deleuze and Guattari do not believe this. In fact, they are adamant that this is not the case, instead asserting that desire is the means by which humanity breaks free of imposed borders and repressive regimes to explore beyond set territorial boundaries. These boundaries being not only political, but social, as well as being those limitations imposed upon the vast landscape that is the unconscious. History itself can be seen as a constant process of reterritorialization. Specifically, one method by which humanity may attempt to deterritorialize - to explore beyond the territory already mapped out for it - can be seen in literature and in the process of writing.
As a focus for the broad spectrum of philosophical speculation that engenders schizoanalytic theory we must consider the text - the novel. "In a book, as in everything else, there are lines of articulation and segmentation, strata, territorialities; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and of destratification" . A book is described as a "little machine" whose only significance (as with Literature as a whole) exists in understanding that, rather than being a finite example of any particular ideology, it exists only in its connection with other machines - "..[T]he only question when writing is with what other machine the literary machine can be connected, and must be connected in order to function" . It is here that schizoanalysis is in direct conflict with structuralism in that it implies that no real 'structure' exists - its more a matter of trying to identify the connections between 'bodies'; between 'little machines'. "Writing has nothing to do with signifying, but with land-surveying and map-making, even of countries yet to come".
Lacan spoke of the entry of the child into language, a process of adopting the various systems of signification that almost bestow identity and authority upon any individual. These systems of signification being the 'symbolic'. Before adopting the symbolic language, however, the child exists in an imaginary state in which it lacks a notion of self as existing in a world of oppositions - subject-object, self-other, masculine-feminine, etc. It could almost be said that this imaginary state has its own comparisons to the world of the schizophrenic, particularly if we consider what is then imposed. It is at about two years that the foundations for a symbolic distinction are set down, apparently as a result of the Oedipal complex, from which the child learns that the mother cannot satisfy desire continuously and so is not part of the self, and that the father introduces a notion of authority which arranges the signs and symbols of signification into a hierachy - male over female, order over disorder, differences over unity and so forth.
We are actually approaching the signified from the viewpoint that there are in fact multiple points of view, some of which are incorporeal, that will contribute to the final product or enunciation. To say that we had one particular intention that formed the content of our expression is to minimalise the multitude of possible meanings and sources of meaning that may have not only contributed to the enunciation but the final understanding of the expression and its content on behalf of the individual receiving it. For Deleuze and Guattari, it is more about subjectivity and its production than about rational, scientific, objective enunciations devoid of contextual plurality.
The whole system of the unconscious upon which so many of the principles of psychoanalysis depend in fact mean nothing. It is a matter of understanding how the unconscious functions. Desire is the basis of the unconscious and can be understood only by reference to the category of 'production'. Deleuze and Guattari oppose themselves to the view that desire may be 'unproductive' (except in dreams). The unconscious, more than being a theater in which a representation of the Oedipus complex is continually played out, is in fact, according to schizoanalytic theory, more of a mechanism - "...the unconscious as a producer of little machines of desire, desiring machines" .
While in agreement with Freud that the unconscious itself exists, there is considerable disagreement as to its exact nature and/or purpose. Rather than constantly making reference to the 'Unconscious', Guattari uses terminology which seems far more apt in referring to a "subjective continent" or "Collective Equipment" . This confusion and resultant debate is in fact quite understandable, as Freud's description of the 'mechanics' of the unconscious was often ambiguous in itself. Deleuze and Guattari (among other scholars regarding Freud) do not agree with the manner in which Freud 'positioned' the unconscious. Primarily, Freud posited the unconscious as the location for repressed desires and instincts, arising primarily from the guilt experienced as a result of an ever-present Oedipus complex. Rather than being a burial ground or dump site for repressed desire, the unconscious almost becomes the schizophrenics source of creativity. A source of inspiration of an almost revolutionary nature. Psychoanalysis lives in a perpetual state of ignorance to the greater social and political influences which are constantly at play upon the individual, and in fact serves to provide limitations to the vast potential of the unconscious to react to these influences. It provides something of a surrogate reality devoid of any potential for socio-political reactivity. Psychoanalysis has not stopped introducing Oedipus as the continually enacted 'story of the unconscious', which in itself almost provides a unifying signifier for the unconscious - a focus - the phallus. As stated by Guattari, it is due to this unification of plurality that "[p]sychoanalysis is in crisis; it is bogged down in routine pratices and ossified conceptions." Not only does the explanation provided by Oedipus/Psychoanalysis exclude women from its 'scientific equation', but provides a startlingly reductionist explanation for the complex, heterogeneous and mutable environment or continuum that is the unconscious. It is typical of a pragmatic, capatalist, rationalist understanding that a "univocal, ontological plinth" is given to underscore all discourse and human productivity. The assumption is made that society and language are static, and that everything which is produced by humanity can be governed by rules and legislation which serve to channel productive desire to purposes which serve to support that same repressive regime. For example, capitalism "...has cut individuals up into partial machines subjected to its ends, and has excluded or infused guilt into everything that opposed its own functionality".
It must also be acknowledged that schizoanalysis is a response to the "very special delirium" that is capitalism, itself basically a repressive, exploitative regime which supports an organization of power under the illusion of ideology. The fact that capitalism has become such a regime is something of a paradox. Schizoanalytic theory acknowledges that capitalism has in fact been the greatest example of the schizophrenic system on a global scale. As capitalism was only interested in the individual and his own profit it sought the pursuit of an absolute, nomadic freedom - a deterritorialization which would have fled from territorialized spaces such as the church, state, family etc (basically whatever was traditional). Since capitalism also requires that social groupings be formed there was the promise of a regular reterritorialization in which new groups similar to those traditional ones were established as long as they remained productive. Unfortunately, this is where capitalism began to assume the role of a repressive regime which hindered the crystallization of desire. The desire which is constantly being produced by the unconscious becomes channeled according to capatalist needs. In suggesting that the human race adopt a schizophrenic approach to life is to now suggest that we deterritorialize and explore beyond the boundaries set by this capitalist regime. "In every social system, there have always been lines of escape...capitalism has a very particular character: its lines of escape are not just difficulties that arise, they are the conditions of its own operation" . Capitalism is constituted by a generalised decoding of the very flux and fluctuation that characterise the schizophrenic unconscious in attempting to undercut that which represses the private individual who 'owns' not only his own body but its labour. It's a real poser!
More than just capitalism, Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis almost frames itself as a reactionary ideology in resistance to anything which imposes limits on what is essentially an infinite space. That is, as Guattari defines it in Chaosmosis, anything which serves as "energetico-spatio-temporal coordinates or category systems" . To map, to striate or apply a similar pragmatic perspective to something subjective, incorporeal or schizophrenic is to capture the potential of the unconscious and its desiring machines within a "prison of signification" . The concern is no longer about who speaks the 'truth' "but how, and under what conditions can the best bring about the pragmatics of incorporeal events that will recompose a world and reinstall processual complexity?"
Bibliography
Barry, P. (1995). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. (1983). On the Line. Autonomedia.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1984). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone.
Eagleton, T. (1996). Literary Theory. An Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Guattari, Felix (1995). Chaosmosis: an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. University of Sydney: Power Publications.
Guattari, Felix (1995). Chaosophy. New York: Semiotext[e].