Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

by Gilles Deleuze

Other authorsMichel Foucault (Preface), Felix Guattari, Robert Hurley (Translator), Helen Lane (Translator), Mark Seem (Translator)

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

616

Publication

Penguin Classics (2009), Paperback, 432 pages

Description

The authors set forth a theory that "Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group" and that "those who suffer from mental disorders my not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense."--Publisher's description.

User reviews

LibraryThing member ifjuly

in my top 5 theory books of all time, and one of my favorite books across genre/divides, period. the style makes me smile every time i read it, and the point is one of the most important to me as well.

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LibraryThing member dagseoul

great book. wonderful to discover how Deleuze&Guattari structured their collaborative work.

I find myself drawn to Guattari as the more significant of the two thinkers that are one. Is it the wasp or the orchid becoming orchid or wasp?

esp:
Introduction: Love Story between an Orchid and a Wasp

LibraryThing member jonfaith

Psychoanalysis was from the start, still is, and perhaps always will be a well-constituted church and a form of treatment based on a set of beliefs that only the very faithful could adhere to, i.e., those who believe in a security that amounts to being lost in the herd and defined in terms of

common and external goals.

My review from 1994 would be gushing, one near febrile abuzz with the insights revealed in this suicide vest of a book. My 2011 self appreciates the arsenal of metaphors and allusions established. It also recognizes the limits of application of this in ordinary life. That is the present project, no? I mean we are living in some guise, whether or not as bodies without organs; but we find ourselves trapped in associations both molar and molecular: all the while feeling for stones in our pockets as we're prohibited from lounging on the turf outside.

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LibraryThing member gilbs

This book should remain in serious libraries as an admonition and a reminder of the bad days of ideology in the 80s and 90s. Deleuze and Guattari brilliantly elaborate a fraught world where everything is seen through the most absurd ideological lenses. . . but the purportedly economic

interpretations are pretty much nonsensical, as far as I can tell. The purportedly medical/psychiatric interpretations are manifestly ridiculous or pointless, again, as far as I can tell. Or dangerous, if taken seriously. All around, I think it's a pointless and, now, harmless bit of bullshit--though I think it continues to harm English majors till this day.

By the way, I dispute the work's inclusion under psychology or philosophy.

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LibraryThing member kencf0618

I've been plowing through this abstruse text because I've been hanging out with critical theory kids (who make videos à la CountraPoints) about such things, and I quickly realized "Oh man, I'm getting 10% of this...!" Well, it's my 10%. Much of it seems like mental masturbation, as in a monkey

idiosyncratically masturbating with its left foot, but then you read a paragraph about Proust, say, which drops into a niche in your soul, and that's depositive.

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