Félix Guattari

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Félix Guattari
University of Paris VIII
Main interests
Psychoanalysis, Marxist philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, semiotics[1]
Notable ideas
Assemblage, desiring-production, deterritorialization, ecosophy, schizoanalysis[1]
Semiotics
 
General concepts
Fields
Methods
Semioticians
Related topics

Pierre-Félix Guattari (

social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, and is best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.[1]

Biography

Clinic of La Borde

Guattari was born in

political activism as a teenager, before studying and training under (and being analyzed by) the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in the early 1950s.[4] Subsequently, he worked all his life at the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde under the direction of Lacan's pupil, the psychiatrist Jean Oury. He first met Oury at a private psychiatric clinic in Saumery in the Loire region at the suggestion of Oury's brother Fernand, who had been Guattari's high school teacher. Guattari followed Oury to La Borde in 1955, two years after it had been established.[5] La Borde was a venue for conversation among many students of philosophy, psychology, ethnology, and social work
.

One particularly novel orientation developed at La Borde consisted of the suspension of the classical analyst/analysand pair in favour of an open confrontation in group therapy. In contrast to the Freudian school's individualistic style of analysis, this practice studied the dynamics of several subjects in complex interaction. It led Guattari into a broader philosophical exploration of, and political engagement with, a vast array of intellectual and cultural domains (philosophy, ethnology, linguistics, architecture, etc.).

1960s to 1970s

From 1955 to 1965, Guattari edited and contributed to La Voie Communiste (Communist Way), a

Algeria and Vietnam
, the participation in the M.N.E.F., with the U.N.E.F., the policy of the offices of psychological academic aid (B.A.P.U.), the organization of the University Working Groups (G.T.U.), but also the reorganizations of the training courses with the Centers of Training to the Methods of Education Activities (C.E.M.E.A.) for psychiatric male nurses, as well as the formation of a Fellowship of Nurses (Amicales d'infirmiers) (in 1958), the studies on architecture and the projects of construction of a day hospital for "students and young workers".

In 1967, he appeared as one of the founders of OSARLA (Organization of solidarity and Aid to the Latin-American Revolution). In 1968, Guattari met

University of Vincennes. Then he began to lay the groundwork for Anti-Oedipus (1972), which Michel Foucault described as "an introduction to the non-fascist life" in his preface to the book. In 1970, he created Center for the Study and Research of Institutional Formation [fr]), which developed the approach explored in the Recherches journal. In 1973, Guattari was tried and fined for committing an "outrage to public decency" for publishing an issue of Recherches on homosexuality.[7] In 1977, he created the CINEL for "new spaces of freedom" before joining the environmental movement with his "ecosophy" in the 1980s
.

1980s to 1990s

Grave of Guattari at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

Guattari viewed the primary commodity produced under capitalism as subjectivity itself.[8]: 254  According to Guattari, producing consuming subjects with novel desires satisfiable through continuing purchase of commodities and experiences is the precondition to creating a consumer society.[8]: 254 

In his last book, Chaosmosis (1992), Guattari returned to the question of subjectivity: "How to produce it, collect it, enrich it, reinvent it permanently in order to make it compatible with mutant Universes of value?" This concern runs through all of his works, from Psychoanalysis and Transversality (a collection of articles from 1957 to 1972), through Years of Winter (1980–1986) and Schizoanalytic Cartographies (1989), to his collaboration with Deleuze,

semiological dimensions" (which work "in parallel or independently of" any signifying function that they may have).[10]

Death and posthumous publications

On 29 August 1992, two weeks after an interview for the

heart attack.[12][13]

In 1995, the posthumous release of Guattari's Chaosophy published essays and interviews concerning Guattari's work as director of the experimental La Borde clinic and his collaborations with Deleuze. The collection includes essays such as "Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring Machines," cosigned by Deleuze (with whom he had coauthored Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus), and "Everybody Wants To Be a Fascist." It provides an introduction to Guattari's theories on "schizoanalysis", a process that develops Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis but which pursues a more experimental and collective approach towards analysis.

In 1996, another collection of Guattari's essays, lectures, and interviews, Soft Subversions, was published, which traces the development of his thought and activity throughout the 1980s ("the winter years"). His analyses of art, cinema, youth culture, economics, and power formations, develop concepts such as "micropolitics," "schizoanalysis," and "becoming-woman," which aim to liberate subjectivity and open up new horizons for political and creative resistance to the standardizing and homogenizing processes of global capitalism (which he calls "Integrated World Capitalism") in the "post-media era." For example, he used the term "micropolitics" to delimit a certain level of observation of social practices (the unconscious economy, where there is a certain flexibility in the expression of desire and institution) and, practically, to define, in a segregated world, the field of intervention of "people who work to interest themselves in the discourse of the other."[14]

Works

Works translated into English

Untranslated works

Note: Many of the essays found in these works have been individually translated and can be found in the English collections.

  • La révolution moléculaire (1977, 1980). The 1980 version (éditions 10/18) contains substantially different essays from the 1977 version.
  • Les années d'hiver, 1980-1985 (1986).

Other collaborations:

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISSN 0994-4524 – via Cairn.info
    .
  2. ^ Simon Choat, Marx Through Post-Structuralism: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Continuum, 2010, ch. 5.
  3. ^ Guattari (1989, ix).
  4. ^ Shatz, Adam (2010). "Desire was everywhere. Review of Dosse F. 2010, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Intersecting Lives. Columbia, translated by Deborah Glassman". London Review of Books. 32 (24).
  5. ^ Robcis, Camille (2021). Disalienation. Politics, Philosophy and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 75–77.
  6. ^ Guattari (1989, x).
  7. ISBN 0-262-63143-1
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-1-5179-0031-1
    .
  9. ^ Guattari (1992, 124).
  10. ^ Guattari (1992, 4).
  11. ^ "Entretien avec Félix Guattari à la télévision grecque Archived 2016-03-09 at the Wayback Machine" ("Felix Guattari interview on Greek television"), Revue Chimères, 4 February 2009 (in French)
  12. ^ "Obituary: Felix Guattari" by James Kirkup, The Independent, 31 August 1992
  13. ^ "Felix Guattari, a Psychoanalyst And Philospher, [sic] Is Dead at 62" by Alan Riding, The New York Times, 3 September 1992
  14. ISBN 9782846711586
    .

External links

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