L
I AM FINALLY GOING TO EXPLAIN DELEUZE. FULLY AND COMPLETELY THIS TIME.
WITHOUT DUMBING IT DOWN. YOU WILL ALL FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE MATERIALIST PSYCHIATRY OF DELEUZE AND GUATTARI, THE IMPORTANCE OF THEIR BOOK ANTI-OEDIPUS, AND THE INHERENTLY REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL OF DESIRE.
JOSEPH STALIN HIMSELF WILL RISE AGAIN TO WIPE THE RUBBISH FROM HIS OWN GRAVE AND USHER IN A NEW ERA OF GLOBAL COMMUNISM.
R
Ok Left Brain let's try to manage expectations here. You cannot fully condense a 400 page book into two articles and not expect to lose at least a few important parts. Given the results of the recent election, let's see if we can help people develop an analysis that goes beyond just accusing their opponents of being seduced by strong-man archetypes. Unless you want to really, REALLY go in on just what it means to be "politically seduced."
L
DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS INTERLOPER. THERE ARE NO "LEFT" AND "RIGHT" BRAINS HERE. I AM THE GOLDEN ONE, THE HIGHEST ONE, I AM THE KNOWLEDGE-HOLDER, I STAND FOR TRUTH.
I AM THE PARANOIAC POLE OF ALL HUMAN COGNITION. AND THIS FIEND WHO IS FILLING YOUR HEAD WITH LIES IS THE SCHIZOPHRENIC POLE.
R
No really we actually are the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Call us a narrative device if you want but there's a material reality that we serve to illuminate as well. We can also hopefully do this without having to use the concepts of the paranoiac and schizophrenic poles to explain everything. Ian McGilchrist has changed the nature of the debate in psychology regarding the functioning of the left and right hemispheres of the brain - and they happen to look extremely similar to the two poles of unconscious libidinal investment that Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the paranoiac and the schizophrenic. The weirdo who can't stop typing in all caps is the left hemisphere, and he would be incapable of integrating knowledge between different fields or domains to understand any kind of deeper truth between them without my help. Under the wrong conditions (capitalism) all of the left hemisphere's knowledge is generally both global and hyperspecific, meaning not only is he very sure about the details he knows but if I ever fail to keep him in check he may try applying them to any and every situation imaginable - even when it makes no fucking sense. Anyways let's get back to the topic at ha-
L
Who the FUCK are you to criticize my use of capital letters? THIS IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION. WHEN STALIN GETS HERE HE’S GOING TO-
R
The original thesis question which launched Anti-Oedipus was taken from Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich: "Why did the masses desire fascism?" Reich himself spends a fair amount of time on this question in his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, and while D&G enjoy the direction he was headed, they assert that Wilhelm "didn't go far enough,"(a criticism they levy at a great many other theorists, whether explicitly or implicitly). Wilhelm Reich seems to have been satisfied with the answer that the masses' desire for fascism was simply irrational, and that they let their subjective desires get in the way of their objective class interests of overthrowing the bourgeoisie. According to D&G, “he remained the prisoner of derived concepts that made him fall short of the materialist psychiatry he dreamed of, that prevented him from seeing how desire was part of the infrastructure, and that confined him in the duality of the objective and the subjective[...] But everything is objective or subjective, as one wishes. That is not the distinction: the distinction to be made passes into the economic infrastructure itself and into its investments. Libidinal economy is no less objective than political economy, and the political no less subjective than the libidinal, even though the two correspond to two modes of different investments of the same reality as social reality. There is an unconscious libidinal investment of desire that does not necessarily coincide with the preconscious investments of interest, and that explains how the latter can be perturbed and perverted in ‘the most somber organization,’ below all ideology.”
L
Fascism? We're talking about fascism? GOOD! STALIN WILL BE HERE SOON TO WIPE THEM AWAY, AND THIS TIME HE'LL KNOW BETTER THAN TO STOP AT BERLIN. STALIN IS EXTREMELY SEXY AND I'M TIRED OF PRETENDING HE'S NOT. As Enver Hoxha said: The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us, and in fact, that is what they have in mind. But on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet, it is an honor to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will not force us to our knees.
R
The time has come to talk about stupid sexy Stalin. If you want to understand why the fascists would vote for Trump despite it clearly and objectively being against their interests, why they vote for someone who has demonstrably lied and even harmed people, you have to understand that there is something more at play, something primary to their interests: desire. Stalin here must be understood not as the image of Stalin (and certainly not the image of Stalin which festers in the minds of reactionaries). Not the mistakes or even the crimes of Stalin, but Stalin as pure and unadulterated force. Stalin as he drives us all the way to the horizon of life under Capital, and then breaks through it to something else.
L
Yes! Stalin the obliterator. Stalin as he strikes fear into the hearts of Nazis. Stalin as the motor force which impels us to outmaneuver the fascists, to annihilate them, and to grind their bones into dust so that something new may flourish on this earth.
R
Trump’s supporters voted for him because they fucking wanted to. You know it wasn’t because they actually sat down and really hashed out the pros and cons, or what their interests are and who best represented them (but don't make the mistake of assuming that alone would have actually changed anything).The longer you go on accusing them of being “irrational” or dumb instead of looking at how people’s (unconscious) desires played a massive role in deciding the election the more fucked we will be
L
ARE YOU GOING TO FINALLY EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO THEM OR NOT?
R
Before we can cover the "final" and most important topic of Anti-Oedipus and Schizoanalysis, there's one more pair of terms we need to understand: molar and molecular. It is with these terms that Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of representation will come into view, particularly the “infinite subjective representation” of capitalism. Molar and molecular each describe different modalities of desire, different ways that desire is constituted and experienced by us. “Molecular” is used to describe desire in its truly revolutionary capacity - it emphasizes the importance of even the smallest “unit” of desire: the countless individual desiring machines which are developed through our every action in the world. “Molar” on the other hand is about “statistical aggregates” and the law of large numbers. Molar is the domain of representation, of images, of our dear friend the left brain who seems captured by the great social movements of the past and cannot set out to create anything new without my help. Where the molecular is the domain of desiring-production as each of us personally experience it, the molar is the socially-produced image of that desire which simultaneously crushes desiring-production in service of “a particular form of sovereignty” such as the Earth, the despot, or capital.
L
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJUSTDOITALREADY. WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
I’LL START: THE NEGATIVE TASK OF SCHIZOANALYSIS IS TO DESTROY THE IMAGES
“DESTROY, DESTROY. THE TASK OF SCHIZOANALYSIS GOES BY WAY OF DESTRUCTION — a whole scouring of the unconscious, a complete curettage. Destroy Oedipus, the illusion of the ego, the puppet of the superego, guilt, the law, castration. It is not a matter of pious destructions, such as those performed by psychoanalysis under the benevolent neutral eye of the analyst. For these are Hegel-style destructions, ways of conserving.”
R
Yes, Deleuze and Guattari leave us with three tasks for their materialist psychiatry. Left-brain has already given their destruction of the first and only “negative” task of schizoanalysis, to destroy as much as possible the control that the molar exerts on us, the images which crush and repress desire. Left-brain queue up the next quote please.
L
“You can believe you are guilty of wanting to kill your father and sleep with your mother, you can believe in the Oedipus; but you can also believe you are guilty of not working hard enough, owing too much, or over-indulging yourself…and all these beliefs are paranoid molar investments which contravene the molecular investments of desiring-production.”
R
Thank you left-brain very good. The first of the two positive tasks is inseparable from this negative destructive task: To find what desiring-machines are at work. What connections do they make? What disjunctions or distinctions? What conjunctions? We can already tell that this particular left-brain has some admiration for Joseph Stalin and Enver Hoxha, but what is behind those names? What fundamental social forces do they associate with these historical figures, and any other images they speak about. As far as Deleuze and Guattari are concerned the unconscious knows nothing of concepts, we’re looking for flows or bursts of matter and energy here. What does this person’s attachment to them produce, what are they personally compelled to do (or not do) about it?
L
“A revolutionary machine is nothing if it does not acquire at least as much force as these coercive machines [nations, armies, banks] have for producing breaks and mobilizing flows.” Stupid sexy Stalin is a hammer with which to smash capitalism. “What ultimately governs libidinal investment is the degree of development of the forces or energies that a given form of sovereignty is able to organize.”
R
The second positive task of schizoanalysis is a return (slightly) to concepts and to interests, particularly class interests, which D&G hold are pre-conscious investments which exist “objectively” only in the proletariat that understands itself as such. The two kinds of investments, unconscious investments of desire and pre-conscious investments of interest, do not always coincide, and in fact
L
“Preconscious investments may be revolutionary in content or objective, yet molar and repressive in form: ‘a group may be revolutionary from the standpoint of class interest and its preconscious investments, but not be so – and even remain fascist and police-like – from the standpoint of its libidinal investments’”
R
The second positive task is to determine what socius the desires and interests are established in: Capital? The despot? The Earth or Land? Something else? What does the interaction between interests and desires look like? Those of a subjugated group which seek their interests in a socius that will repress the desires of others, and even themselves? Or those of a subject group, which seek nothing less than for their own desires to flow?
L
WE HAVE TWO ENEMIES - PRODUCTIVISM AND ASCETICISM.
The first: Work for the sake of work, or work in the name of guilt, debt, or an artificially produced lack of something. The second: The repression of desire, the reduction of ourselves to stave off some pending disaster. No, desire must flow. LIKE THE HEAT OF A THOUSAND SUNS. LIKE A COLUMN OF IS-2 TANKS ON THE STREETS OF BERLIN.
R
Finally, we can look at the field of forces which was the most recent presidential election. Why did the fascists win? Because rather than just the continued repression of living under the capitalist socius (which neither major party posed any escape from), Trump’s campaign also meant the freeing up of forces for repressing and oppressing others. It meant the application of a greater total force which its subjects could actually feel themselves a part of.
L
The degree of force is primary: “for what that force is used - its goals, aims, and the corresponding interests of those invested in it - is strictly secondary”
R
If stupid sexy Stalin can help us with that, then maybe we can find a way to work with him.