Deleuze and Guattari: A Psychoanalytic Itinerary

179 Pages·2008·1.03 MB·English

by  Fadi Abou-Rihan

Deleuze and Guattari
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series
from Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research
monographs across the fi eld of Continental philosophy. Each work
makes a major contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research.
Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan
Badiou and Derrida, Antonio Calcagno
Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas Hewlett
Deconstruction and Democracy, Alex Thomson
Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert
Deleuze and Guattari: A Psychoanalytic Itinerary, Fadi Abou-Rihan
Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire Colebrook
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan-Wortham and Allison Weiner
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell
Husserl’s Phenomenology, Kevin Hermberg
The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms
Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement, T. Storm Heter
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Deleuze and Guattari
A Psychoanalytic Itinerary
Fadi Abou-Rihan
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Fadi Abou-Rihan 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6371-3
ISBN-13: HB: 978-1-8470-6371-7
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Abou-Rihan, Fadi.
Deleuze and Guattari: a psychoanalytic itinerary/Fadi Abou-Rihan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84706-371-7 (HB: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-84706-371-3 (HB: alk. paper)
1. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925–1995. 2. Guattari, Félix, 1930–1992.
3. Psychoanalysis. 4. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925–1995. Anti- Œdipe. I. Title.
B2430. D454A26 2008
194--dc22 2008013535
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
For their gift of presence, I dedicate this
book to Antonio Calcagno,
Kathy Daymond, Margaret Huntley,
François Lachance and Jeannelle Savona.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowlegements xi
1. Nietzsche: by way of an introduction 1
2. Winnicott: the psychoanalytic family 15
3. Anti-Oedipus : reading, listening, analysing 32
4. Process notes: productions and syntheses 49
5. Sophocles: under the sign of Nemesis 79
6. Cixous: the unseen seen 100
7. Désirand: the transitional subject 118
Notes 136
Bibliography 147
Index 155
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
Most commentators have situated Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus along
two principal hermeneutic axes, the one historico-political, as an ethic
grounded in the events of May 1968, and the other textual, as a Nietzschean
reordering of Marx and Freud, ostensibly uncomfortable to both Marxists
and Freudians. Very few indeed have seen fi t to locate the text, and posi-
tively so, within a specifi cally psychoanalytic tradition. After all, the advocates
of schizoanalysis consider the text a Medusa into whose face psychoanalysis
cannot but stare and subsequently suffer the most abominable of deaths.
And, to believe the few within the clinical circles that have actually both-
ered to read it, one would think Anti-Oedipus is, at best, a well-intentioned
but thoroughly misguided fl ash in the pan. Both of these responses suffer
from (1) a reading strategy that treats psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis as
opposing paradigms caught up in a dispute over the so-called truth of the
unconscious, and hence (2) an exclusive focus on the ways in which either
paradigm can trap, conquer and/or discredit the other. While I do not wish
to underestimate the critical legacy with which Anti-Oedipus has been rightly
credited, I want to insist on a no less signifi cant but much less manifest pro-
ductive, psychoanalytic legacy that needs to be unravelled. To ignore that
legacy is to wrest the text from its theoretical and practical matrix and reify
its authors’ richly ambivalent position.
My plan in the following pages is to reorganize the various components
of the debate and show how, in underscoring the truly productive core of
desire, Deleuze and Guattari remain fully committed to Freud’s most singu-
lar discovery of an unconscious that is procedural and dynamic. I will show
how Anti-Oedipus is not only a harsh and most insightful critique of the
assimilationist vein in psychoanalysis, but that it is also, and more p rofoundly,
a practice where the science of the unconscious is made to obey the laws it
attributes to its object. The outcome here is nothing short of the ‘becom-
ing-unconscious’ of psychoanalysis, a becoming that signals neither the
repression nor the death of the practice but the transformation of its prin-
ciples and procedures into those of its object. Psychoanalysis is no longer
the subject that speaks of the unconscious; it is subject to it. Ostensibly,
Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-oedipal project is ‘anti-’ insofar as it ushers in
a much needed moment of refl exivity where psychoanalytic theory and