Inscriptions –contemporary thinking on art, philosophy and psycho-analysis– https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/ Title: Ethics of schizoanalysis Author: Mehdi Parsa Section: Academic articles Abstract: In this essay I read Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia from an ethical point of view. My main question refers to a claim that Michel Foucault made in his preface to Anti-Oedipus: “Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics”. I try to elaborate on this suggestion in conversation with Jacques Lacan’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis, a 1959-1960 seminar published under the same title. This essay responds to Lacan’s formulation of an unconscious desire by way of Deleuze and Guattari’s social-machinic perspective. In my interpretation Anti-Oedipus accounts for an ontological ethics in terms of an unconscious desire that is exteriority. I take the notion of socius as the key element of this exterior desire and therefore as the true site of ethics. Keywords: schizoanalysis, ethics, Anti-Oedipus, desire, unconscious © Copyright 2022 Parsa. Correspondence: Mehdi Parsa, e: [email protected]. Received: 8 October, 2021. Accepted: 31 December, 2021. Published: 15 January, 2022. How to cite: Parsa, Mehdi. “Ethics of schizoanalysis.” Inscriptions 5, no. 1 (January 2022): 98-104. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Ethics of schizoanalysis Mehdi Parsa1 Abstract In this essay I read Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia from an ethical point of view. My main question refers to a claim that Michel Foucault made in his preface to Anti-Oedipus: “Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics”. I try to elaborate on this suggestion in conversation with Jacques Lacan’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis, a 1959-1960 seminar published under the same title. This essay responds to Lacan’s formulation of an unconscious desire by way of Deleuze and Guattari’s social-machinic perspective. In my interpretation Anti-Oedipus accounts for an ontological ethics in terms of an unconscious desire that is exteriority. I take the notion of socius as the key element of this exterior desire and therefore as the true site of ethics. Keywords: schizoanalysis,ethics,Anti-Oedipus,desire,unconscious Introduction from a subjective or intersubjective morality to a truly ontological ethics. The book Anti-Oedipus radically critiques psy- choanalysis and also introduces an alternative I. The transcendental to it. This alternative Deleuze and Guattari, synthesis of unconscious the book’s authors, call schizoanalysis. I would like to construe the alternative Deleuze and This leads me to discuss the nature of desire, Guattari sets out in Anti-Oedipus in light of the unconscious desire, in Lacan and Deleuze Lacan’sformulationofanethicsofpsychoanal- and Guattari. First, desire is the notion that ysis. DeleuzeandGuattariintroducethefigure links ethics to psychoanalysis. In fact, psycho- of the schizophrenic as a basis for formulat- analysis sheds new light on ethical thought by ing their alternative for psychoanalysis. The introducing unconscious desire. Before Freud, figure of the schizophrenic takes the place of ethical problems were considered in terms of Freud and Lacan’s “neurotic”. This figure al- a conscious will. With Freud, ethics had to lows Deleuze and Guattari to radically trans- be redefined on the basis of a desire that was form psychoanalysis, and to invent schizoanal- unconscious. Now,ifAnti-Oedipusprovidesan ysis. Further, this replacement allows Deleuze alternative to psychoanalysis, and at the same andGuattaritodisavowoftheroleoftheOedi- time,asFoucaultsuggests,itisaworkofethics, pal family in psychoanalysis. Here I will argue it is because it reformulates the notion of un- that the move from an ethics of psychoanalysis consciousdesire. Inthisreformulationdesireis to an ethics of schizoanalysis entails a move definedfirstasnon-familial,non-personal,and 1 EreignisCenterforPhilosophyandtheArts.. 98 January 2022 – Volume 5 Parsa Ethics of schizoanalysis non-structural; rather it is considered machinic. tureofunconsciousdesire. Withschizophrenic Second,desireisdefinedintermsofproduction figuressuchasAdolfWölfliandjudgeSchreber as a legitimate synthesis. The outcome of this Deleuze and Guattari show that unconscious accountisthattheunconsciousisbothexterior desire initially is desiring-production.2 Here, toandconstitutiveofpersonsandfamilialstruc- the unconscious is the field of production, and tures and entities. By introducing a machinic consciousness the field of consumption, and it and productive desire schizoanalysis renders is in the figure of the schizophrenic that the the unconscious as an exteriority. nature of the unconscious comes to the sur- This is the main task of Deleuze and Guat- face. This is why they replace the traditional tari’s project: to reformulate the nature of the Freudian metaphor of the theatre with that of psychoanalytical desire by giving an account thefactory;theunconsciousdoesnotrepresent oftheunconsciousdesireunderlyingpureexte- things, it produces them. And desire, the un- riority. They criticize existing psychoanalysis conscious desire, is machinic. Therefore, if the for reducing the unconscious to an image of unconscious is primary and transcendental, de- conscious structures and entities. According sirecannotbeconsideredintermsofproduced, to them, psychoanalysis in Freud and his heirs, representational entities. Desiring is essentially includingLacan,failstoliberateitselffromthe different from willing or needing. Despite the bounds of consciousness and therefore cannot psychoanalytical account, the schizoanalytical provideforatrueunconsciousduetoitsdepen- desireisnotnegativeorgroundedinlack;desir- dencyonthefamilialandonpersonalrolesand ing means producing. And Deleuze and Guat- structures (the roles of the father, the mother tari insist that the production of desire is not and the child). Deleuze and Guattari summa- imaginary or fantastic; rather, it is real.3 rizethispsychoanalyticalfamilialismunderthe Thetranscendentalunconsciousmustbeim- title of Oedipus, claiming that the true uncon- personal and exterior to personal minds, as it sciousmustbetranscendentalandnottranscen- marks a transcendental exteriority. Hence, the dent, which is to say that it must condition the conscious will is the product of a real transcen- production of conscious entities without itself dental desire. A real, immanent synthesis un- being based on conscious products. Psycho- dergirds productive unconscious desire. Pro- analysis must lay the ground for a true syn- duction here is indeed synthesis but not the thesis of consciousness, rather than analysing transcendent synthesis of complete objects we its pre-existing structure. Family, and partic- associate with a full subject; rather, it is an ularly the Oedipal family, is a derivative and immanent synthesis of partial objects. This produced structure, and the persons involved constitutes the core of Deleuze and Guattari’s are simply products. Therefore, the familial account of desiring-production: If the relation structure and the Oedipal unconscious cannot ofthepsychetotheoutsideiscalledexperience, satisfy the requirements of a true transcenden- this experience takes place in terms of produc- tal unconscious. tion. Further, the unconscious experience is Unlike Freud, whose favourite patients are the productive site of both the subject and the neurotics, Deleuze and Guattari formulate the object of experience. On the one hand, expe- unconscious in terms of psychosis, and partic- riencing and constructing the subject are one ularly schizophrenia. It is in the figure of the andthesameprocess. Ontheother,theprocess schizophrenicthatweshouldsearchforthena- throughwhichthesubjectisunderproduction 2 DeleuzeandGuattari1983,15-16,19. 3 Ibid.,26. January 2022 – Volume 5 99 Ethics of schizoanalysis Parsa is identical to the process through which the ship between the unconscious desire and the outside world is under production. This view conscious will. The conscious will must be underlies the central role of the unconscious: regulated in conformity with the unconscious The unconscious is not a site of cognition, and desire. The latter is prior to the former. You also not a site in which a fully produced sub- shouldactinconformitywiththedesirewhich ject experiences, but rather the site where the already is in you and constitutes you. In this subject has real experiences. This subject, fur- way, Lacan’s formula is compatible with the thermore, is permanently under production. Stoic formula of ethics which can be summa- Andmoreimportantly,andmoreradically,the rized as an injunction to “live in accordance unconscious marks the productive register of with nature”. The Stoic formula implies that the outside world. nature signifies what is exterior to the living In this sense, experience underlies a practice subjectandbeyondhisconsciouscontrol. Such linking speculative reason to practical reason. an exteriority is exemplified in the Stoic think- Ethics belongs to the transcendental exterior- ing about misery, suffering, and death. The ity, formulated by Deleuze and Guattari in Stoic ethic is a method to live with your mis- terms of unconscious desire. In short, ethics is eries and, ultimately, with death, with the in- not the matter of psychology (or any Oedipal evitable factuality of your death. These are psychoanalysis) but rather ontology. things that happen from without; they cannot be reduced to conscious categories. Deleuze’s II. Desiring the event specific term for this irreducible exteriority in Logic of Sense is the event or fate. In “Twenty- Now, we have a double formula in defining First Series of the Event” in Logic of Sense he desire: it is desiring-production as immanent introduces Joe Bousquet as a true Stoic who synthesis and it entails exteriority (the onto- takes his “inclination for death” as the truth of logical register). This relation between desire his desire. In reference to Bousquet’s Stoicism, as immanent synthesis or production and its Deleuze writes, exteriority is at the centre of my reading as it constitutes the ethics of schizoanalysis. The It is in this sense that the Amor relationformsthegroundofourinterrogation fati is one with the struggle of free of Lacan and Deleuze’s Stoicism. man. My misfortune is present in In the conclusion to his 1959-60 seminar all events, but also a splendor and on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan brightness which dry up misfor- formulated his view of ethics around the ques- tune and which bring about that tion “have you acted in conformity with the the event, once willed, is actual- desirethatisinyou?”4 Inmyreading,whatLa- ized on its most contracted point, can formulates is the exteriority of desire: “the on the cutting edge of an opera- desirethatisinyou”isdifferentfrom“yourde- tion. (Deleuze 2015, 154) sire”,andyoushouldregulateyouracts,which are normally based on “your desire”, with the DeleuzetranslatestheStoicpassivityinrelation exterior desire which is in you as the uncon- toanexterioreventintowhatconstitutesthein- scious. Lacan considers ethics in terms of “the terioroffreeman. Thisentailsatensionwithin relationshipbetweenactionandthedesirethat will or desire, which is indeed the tension be- inhabits it”.5 I translate this into the relation- tween conscious will and unconscious desire: 4 JacquesLacan,TheSeminarofJacquesLacan,BookVII,translatedbyDennisPorter(Norton: 1997),314. 5 Lacan1997,313. 100 January 2022 – Volume 5 Parsa Ethics of schizoanalysis It comes into being when I will what happens affinity with Freudian Oedipalism. Deleuze to me, whatever it may be, including my mis- and Guattari’s relationship with Lacan is in- fortune, my miseries, and my death. Thus, the deed very controversial. Let us discuss this re- Lacanianformulaofactinginconformitywith lationship in more details. the desire that is in you can be construed in Lacan’s formula seems well compatible with the Deleuzian terminology of Logic of Sense as Deleuze’s ethical view in Logic of Sense and making a passive synthesis with the event, in- withDeleuzeandGuattari’saccountoftheun- corporating the exterior event within yourself, conscious desire in Anti-Oedipus. But this is and in short, loving the fate (Amor fati). just one side of the picture. There are indeed In Anti-Oedipus, this exteriority receives a two tendencies in Lacan’s work regarding de- more ontological register as it is rendered in sire. Deleuze and Guattari summarize these terms of machines: everything is a machine two tendencies or two poles in a footnote in and a machine is composed of flows of desire reference to Serge Leclaire: and of interruptions of these flows. My de- sire is that in me which is exterior, which is Lacan’s admirable theory of desire to say that it is the same as that which flows appears to have two poles: one re- in nature. What Deleuze and Guattari take as lated to ‘the object small a’ as a machines are natural machines, and nature is desiring-machine, which defines composed of machines that interrupt, break, desire in terms of a real produc- and connect the flows of desire. Ethics, how- tion, thus going beyond any idea ever, is the practical affirmation of the flows of need and any idea of fantasy; of desire as my nature, an affirmation which and the other related to the ‘great is evental. Desire-production is the flow itself other’ as a signifier, which rein- whichisunderstoodastheprocessualorimma- troduces a certain notion of lack. nent synthesis. This renders the synthesis with (Deleuze and Guattari 1983, 27; the event in me as the practical affirmation of footnote) the exteriority of the event (my death) as my According to the first tendency, Lacan defines essence and my nature. Human nature must desire in terms of lack. This is indicative of La- essentially be exterior nature itself. A Stoic liv- can’sstructuralismofthesymbolicorderwhich inginaccordancewithnatureimpliesawhole, is organized in terms of the big Other. This a conflagrant fire, which synthesizes imma- tendency is harshly criticized in Anti-Oedipus. nently, and my consciousness is just one of the According to this criticism, Lacan’s account of ephemeral products of this fire. But the fire the symbolic order does not sufficiently break burns in me (or walks with me) as well as in with the imaginary order. For Lacan, the sub- any entity; this fire is the unconscious desire. jectemergeswithinalinguisticstructure. This III. Ethics of the Real symbolicstructuralemergenceisfarfromwhat Deleuze and Guattari take as real production. In this way, we can connect Lacan’s ethics of Therefore, his account of the unconscious re- psychoanalysis with Deleuze’s reading of Stoic mains in the image of consciousness; the struc- ethics, and with Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti- tural unity reflects the imaginary ego, despite Oedipusasabookofethics. Theyareconnected Lacan’seffortstodistinguishthem. Thereal,in by a similar approach to unconscious desire. this account, remains impossible, which is far But as mentioned, Anti-Oedipus at the least is fromDeleuzeandGuattari’sapproachinwhich criticaltoLacanbecauseofthispsychoanalyst’s therealisnecessary. ForDeleuzeandGuattari, January 2022 – Volume 5 101 Ethics of schizoanalysis Parsa who stand against the structuralist moments of lyst, indicates that he was aware of the exteri- Lacan, the unconscious is not a symbolic struc- orityofrealunconsciousdesire. Suggestion,in ture, but a real process. It is machinic, has to this view, is when the analyst applies his own do with natural and vital machines, not struc- image of reality onto the patient. Lacan here tural ones. Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of rejects any presupposition that good human desiring-production is indeed a positive coun- nature or proper adaptation within representa- terparttowhatLacancallstheRealandrenders tional reality may serve as definitions of health. impossible. He makes a similar claim with regard to the But it would be a simplification to reduce therapeutic desire of analyst to cure: Lacan’s work to this pole. Deleuze and Guat- tari, in the quoted remark, summarize another We have to deal with that as if it tendency in Lacan’s thought under his notion were something that is likely to of ‘objet petit a’ and identify it with their own leadusastray,andinmanycasesto ‘desiring-machine’ and desiring-production. dosoinstantly. Iwillevenaddthat Let us review the moments in Lacan’s Ethics of one might be paradoxical or tren- Psychoanalysis where this tendency surfaces. chant and designate our desire as In the second section of chapter 22, Lacan a non-desire to cure (Lacan 1997, discusses an inherent relation between life and 219). death and suggets that death intrudes into life The analyst does not possess a better human and life into death.6 Apparently, death here naturethatthepatient,heisnotbetteradapted signifies the impersonal processes which are to reality, and therefore he does not have a beyondthesymbolicorder. Sotheintrusionof therapeutic task. The ethics of psychoanalysis death onto life is indeed the injection (synthe- rejects any therapeutic relationship between sis)ofdesireinme. Lacanalsoreferstoitbythe the analyst and the patient. Deleuze and Guat- German term Das Ding and devotes two chap- tari’s schizoanalysis takes exact direction from ters of his seminar to this notion: here, accord- Lacan’sthought,bypositingtheschizophrenic, ing to Lacan, the object of desire is not merely not as the subject of therapy, but rather as the a lack but a real thing-ness, a dead thing-ness, productive idea. a plenitude. This compares well to Deleuze LetussummarizethesetwotendenciesinLa- and Guattari’s idea of a body without organs can’s thought as the two poles of structuralism as anti-production (death), which in synthesis thatDeleuzeunpacksinhisearlytext“Howdo withproductionofpartialobjects(life)grounds werecognizeStructuralism?” Onepoleconsists desiring-production. It is in his 1957-1958 of a structural fixation and systematicity, and seminar Formations of the Unconscious, that La- the other of a structural permanent circulation can introduces the object of desire as objet petit whichisonlypossibleasaparadoxicalelement, a in reference to the Kleinian partial objects, or aleatory point, an element which is moving which are the main ground of Deleuze and bynature,servestocirculatethestructure,and Guattari’s account of desiring-production.7 constitutes its life and existence. By the first Furthermore, the distinction Lacan makes pole desire is designated as lack, and by the between analysis and suggestion, as well as his second as production. Obviously, the second position against the therapeutic desire of ana- 6 JacquesLacan,EthicsofPsychoanalysis: TheSeminarofJacquesLacan,BookVII,translatedbyDennisPorter (NortonandCompany: 1997),294. 7 JacquesLacan,FormationsoftheUnconscious: TheSeminarofJacquesLacan,BookV,translatedbyRussellGrigg (Polity: 2017),148-9;cf. 213-216;cf. 363. 102 January 2022 – Volume 5 Parsa Ethics of schizoanalysis poleisthesiteoffreedomanddefinestheethics of desire, or material socius, in nature. This of schizoanalysis. In this regard, the figure of underlies the way natural freedom or contin- the schizo must be considered in terms of the gency generates conscious and subjective free- circulativeelementofstructure,theelementof dom, and transcendental material ethics leads freedom. to empirical morality. Hence, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the IV. A Machinic Socialism primitive existence of socius in terms of the very materiality of the earth, which is where The ontological nature of ethics receives a so- territoriesandgroup-identitiesemerge. Socius cial register in Anti-Oedipus. Ethics as the is a name for the flows of desire in nature at a glue of societies, as what connects people to- point where human and other persons are un- gether by generating them, is described in derconstruction. Thus,andinthisview,prim- Anti-Oedipusintermsofapre-individualsocius; itive societies, where such constructions first inotherwords,sociusmarksthepre-individual appear, are not familial in the Oedipal sense. It sociality of desire. Here, Deleuze and Guattari isonlylater,underdespotism,andthroughthe provide an account of ethics which is beyond mediation of the imperial state, that the role the intersubjective register of the symbolic or- of the father appears as mirroring the task of der: socius provides a source for an ethics in the despot. And then, under capitalism, this the real. role receives an independence generative of InthethirdchapterofAnti-Oedipus,Deleuze nuclear families. This is indeed the history of andGuattariprovideasocial-historicalaccount the emergence of conscious persons. of the ontological nature of ethics along three Hence, society is a machine that produces registers of territorialism, despotism and cap- individuals, and not a primary structure that italism, in which socius evolves and takes dif- determines them. In other words, the exterior- ferent forms along with different formulations ity of the transcendental unconscious renders of freedom (natural freedom or contingency, it a primary sociality which is not structural determination,individualfreedomorfreewill). but machinic: “Our definition of schizoanaly- In this account, desire as an element of ethics sis focused on two aspects: the destruction of is discovered primitively in the materiality of theexpressivepseudoformsoftheunconscious, the earth. Deleuze and Guattari then goes on and the discovery of desire’s unconscious in- toexplainhowtheterritorializationofthisma- vestments of social field”.8 The expressive and terial desire results in the formation of persons structural forms of the unconscious must be and Oedipal structures. Their account aims destroyed to clear the space for a true social- to disavow an understanding of societies as es- ity of an unconscious which is machinic and sentially grounded in common needs of estab- productive. In Lacanian terms, there are two lished individuals. Rather, it describes how accounts of exteriority: one that relies on the these individuals are historically produced and Real and another that draws on the symbolic the character of their material sociality as it order. Structuralism takes only the latter as was prior to their emergence. It would then a site of sociality, but Deleuze and Guattari be wrong to understand ethics in terms of the introduce a sociality grounded in the Real, a relationshipbetweenconsciousindividualsand machinic sociality, or socius. their needs or wills. There must be an a priori Thus, at the heart of the primary socius and ontological ethics grounded in the flows stands the notion of desire. The established 8 DeleuzeandGuattari1983,167. January 2022 – Volume 5 103 Ethics of schizoanalysis Parsa posterior society is based on individual needs, desiring-production. In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze whereas the notion of desire marks a pri- and Guattari repeat that desiring-production mary sociality which is not composed of fully- and social production are one and the same formed individuals. In the same manner, in thing (1983, 28-29). In so far as theirs is a “Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Precursor of Kafka, matter of persons, which is to say, the connec- Celine and Ponge” Deleuze rejects the idea tion between ethics and morality, an ethics of of common needs as the raison d’etre of soci- schizoanalysis discovers the exteriority of my eties, declaring that “one of Rousseau’s con- unconscious desire which appears as living in stant themes is that need is not a factor which (discordant) accordance with nature, or of a bringspeopletogether: itdoesnotunite,itiso- loveoffate. Theunconsciousdesireisthealien lateseachofus”,9 AlongwithGuattariDeleuze in me, the exterior which is inside, the death claims in Anti-Oedipus that, “society is not ex- within life. changist,thesociusisinscriptive: notexchang- ing but marking bodies, which are part of the References earth”.10 First, it is desire that unites. But Deleuze, Gilles. Logic of Sense. Translated by it does not unite isolated individuals, rather Constantin V. Boundas, Mark Lester, and it is social desiring-machines that are primar- Charles J. Stivale. London and New York: ily linked together on the earthly body. Sec- Bloomsbury, 2015. ond, this approach to sociality entails a related ——. Logiques du Sens. Paris: Les Edition de view regarding the economy which is primar- Minuit, 1969. ilybasedondesireandproduction,ratherthan ——. Desert Islands and Other Texts. Edited by need and exchange. David Lapoujade, translated by Michael Taormina. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), Conclusion 2004. Anethicsofschizoanalysisdealswiththenat- ——, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: uralflowsofdesirewhichareexteriorandprior Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by to any conscious interiority and any Oedipal Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. (familial) or structural (symbolic) unconscious. Lane. Minneapolis: University of ThecritiqueofOedipusmirrorsthecritiqueof Minnesota Press, 1983. structuralismandresultsinamachinicaccount Lacan, Jacques. Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The of desire. If ethics is the site of desire it is a site Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII. of true unconscious desire which cannot be re- Translated by Dennis Porter. New York: ducedtoconsciousneeds;ifethicsisanelement Norton and Company, 1997. toanysociality,itissointermsofasociusthat ——. Formations of the Unconscious: The Semi- is a productive element in any sociality, and nar of Jacques Lacan, Book V. Translated by this is why it must be defined on the basis of Russell Grigg. Cambridge: Polity, 2017. 9 Deleuze2004,52. 10 DeleuzeandGuattari1983,185. 104 January 2022 – Volume 5 Parsa Ethics of schizoanalysis © Copyright 2022 Parsa. Correspondence: Mehdi Parsa, e: [email protected]. Received: 8 October, 2021. Accepted: 31 December, 2021. Financial statement: The scholarship for this article was conducted at the author’s own expense. Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests. How to cite: Parsa, Mehdi. “Ethics of schizoanalysis.” Inscriptions 5, no. 1 (January 2022): 98-104. January 2022 – Volume 5 105