Chaosophy, New Edition: Texts and Interviews 1972 - 1977, Félix Guattari

Originally published in 1995, this new edited edition by Sylvère Lotringer combines collective texts and articles by the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Félix Guattari. Chaosophy also presents a selection of interviews following the publication of Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) in collaboration with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

It would be an obvious misnomer to categorise Guattari as the 'underestimated one' of the infamous collaboration with Deleuze that gave birth to the theory of 'schizoanalysis'. The popular philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek argued in ' Organs Without Bodies' (2003) that Deleuze turned away from concepts similar to Lacan in The Logic of Sense ( 1969) in order to become 'Guattarised' ( OWB , p.20). Zizek views Deleuzeian solo concepts, including the philosophical 'challenge' of 'transcendental empiricism,' as a similar reading to Zizek's own conception of Hegel. One feels that in light of reading Chaosophy any contemporary Lacanian influenced theorist wishing to address Deleuze's thought has to deal with Guattari as a schizophrenic 'backup'. Furthermore, one could potentially equate Deleuze's absolute impenetrability of Hegel (as Zizek sees it) with Zizek's impenetrability of Guattari.

The first collection of dialogues and interviews present Deleuze and Guattari in dual discussion with Vittorio Marchetti and Maurice Nadeau (amongst others). These discussions coincide with the publication of Anti Oedipus , and although Deleuze and Guattari are interviewed as an external collaborative effort, it could be argued that the collection of interviews resemble an extension of Anti Oedipus where stylistically, their individualistic contributions do not differ whatsoever.

Deleuze's principles of a vitalist 'horizontal thought,' indebted to Nietszche and Bergson, foresaw a critical disagreement with psychoanalysis as totalising theory of the human 'psyche'. Guattari's background in institutional analysis showed he had a similar and clear understanding that ' if psychoanalysis does not radically reform its methods and its theoretical references it will lose all credibility .' ( Chaosophy , p.196) and, thus, the principles of psychoanalysis built on the ideas of the prohibition of incest must be rethought into desire as a productive power.

Deleuze and Guattari's often deliberate and obscure writing is contrasted here to Guattari's solo style. In short, Chaosophy presents Guattari's noticeable contribution to Anti Oedipus in eclectic, multidisciplinary methodology. The articles, writings and papers presented in Chaosophy are very well researched and this is complimented in part with Guattari's solo writing style which, whilst difficult in parts, remains lucid for most of the publication illustrating an almost militant elimination of the 'psyche'.

The central selection of writings and texts present Guattari formulating ideas for later expansive ecological theorisations whilst also designating some early concepts on subjectivity over 'subject' (explained in much more detail in his posthumous publication Chaosmosis (1992). One can see how artists and art critics influenced in artwork guided by relational motifs rely on Guattari's concepts, and it is here I am particularly referencing Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics , (1998).

Artists clearly relate to Guattari's principle that whilst seemingly referencing structuralist notions, nature and culture are superseded by a flattening principle of 'social desire'. Thus a 'subjectivity' of an artist is defined by its movement, always in reliance with other subjectivities and never separated from his or her cultural parameters, that is to say 'becoming scientist', 'becoming militant'. Guattari's conception of subjectivity is nothing more than the connections and the productions it makes, a subjective machine can only be productive when connected to other machines. In his paper, Beyond the Psychoanalytical Unconscious, he asks a very simple question; ' Why has psychoanalysis constantly designated the unconscious at the hand of specialists ' (p. 197). A valid point, one in which Guattari repeatedly views the psychoanalytical unconscious as that which instils Capitalism into social desire, and thus throughout his multidisciplinary work he seeks to supersede (and not oppose) this blatant reductionism and reveal unconscious desire in its horizontal rhizomatic productive potentiality.

Chaosophy presents Guattari as a thinker never troubled with regard to putting theory into motion; in as much to say Guattari's thought was his own practice. It would be difficult to encounter a better elaboration on schizo-analysis in practice than reading the short article La Borde: A Clinic Unlike Any Other ; a brief overview of the innovative experimental clinic founded by Jean Oury. One critical principle that features heavily is to escape the institutional power "concentrated in the hands of administrators [...] This condemns any innovation " (p. 188), unveiling his often ambivalent relationship with anti-psychiatry (R.D.Laing amongst others), Guattari views 'La Borde' as an expressive, creative clinic for psychiatric treatment. This is typically evident in the implementation of therapies using social groups rather than Analyst and Analysand.

In, perhaps, a more simple intervention, Guattari also describes at great length the fluid identities of employment roles within La Borde. Medical staff, maintenance staff and cooking staff became interchangeable, gardeners and chefs were taught how to administer injections whilst directors, doctors and patients would cook and clean in equal measure. Thus, all aspects of the psychiatric clinic are inextricably linked for Guattari, identifying deeper levels of ecological, economic and political factors supporting subjectivity and not a totalising closed structural system of language or law.

Later essays and papers include Guattari's 'critiques' on cinema. In an interesting and expected comparison with Deleuze's solo concepts on the discourse, he reveals a largely pessimistic view of the social analytical dangers of commercial cinema, " undeniably familialist, Oedipian and reactionary", (p. 267), but in light of the utter hopelessness of psychoanalysis, cinema also has the ability to " modify the arrangements of desire" (p. 267).

A reader of Chaosophy may wish to read (what might be considered) its counter-part publication, Deleuze's published texts and interviews Two Regimes of Madness [2001] reprinted in 2006, also published by Semiotext(e). One can see that in light of this comparison, Chaosophy reveals Guattari as a marvellously, productive, schizo-militant; more multi-disciplinary in practice rather than in thought and in light of this, his work takes on a somewhat artistic stance.