Who is Félix Guattari ?

Pierre-Félix Guattari Pronunciation (help·info) (April 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992) was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy. Guattari is best known for his intellectual collaborations with Gilles Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980).

Biography

 

Clinic of La Borde

Guattari was born in Villeneuve-les-Sablons, a working-class suburb of north-west Paris, France.^[1] He trained under (and was analysed by) the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in the early 1950s. Subsequently, he worked (until his death from a heart attack in 1992) at the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde under the direction of Lacan's pupil, the psychiatrist Jean Oury. 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 trotskyist newspaper.^[2] He supported anti-colonialist struggles as well as the Italian Autonomists. Guattari also took part in the G.T.P.S.I., which gathered many psychiatrists at the beginning of the sixties and created the Association of Institutional Psychotherapy in November 1965. It was at the same time that he founded, along with other militants, the F.G.E.R.I. (Federation of Groups for Institutional Study & Research) and its review Recherche (Research), working on philosophy, mathematics, psychoanalysis, education, architecture, ethnology, etc. The F.G.E.R.I. came to represent aspects of the multiple political and cultural engagements of Guattari: the Group for Young Hispanics, the Franco-Chinese Friendships (in the times of the popular communes), the opposition activities with the wars in 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 organisation 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 Friendly Male Nurses (Amicales d'infirmiers) (in 1958), the studies on architecture and the projects of construction of a day hospital of 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 Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Julian Beck. He was involved in the events of May 1968, starting from the Movement of March 22. It was in the aftermath of 1968 that Guattari met Gilles Deleuze at the University of Vincennes and began to lay the ground-work for the soon to be infamous 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 fr:CERFI (Center for the Study and Research of Institutional Formation), which developed the approach explored in the Recherches journal. In 1977, he created the CINEL for "new spaces of freedom" before joining in the 1980s the ecological movement with his "ecosophy".

 

1980s to 1990s

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, What is Philosophy? (1991). In Chaosmosis, Guattari proposes an analysis of subjectivity in terms of four dimensions: (1) material, energetic, and semiotic fluxes; (2) concrete and abstract machinic phylums; (3) virtual universes of value; and (4) finite existential territories.^[3] This scheme attempts to grasp the heterogeneity of components involved in the production of subjectivity, as Guattari understands it, which include both signifying semiotic components as well as "a-signifying semiological dimensions" (which work "in parallel or independently of" any signifiying function that they may have).^[4]
In 1995, the posthumous release 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 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 pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality.
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 "postmedia era."

 

Works

 

Works translated into English

• Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (1984). Selected essays from Psychanalyse et transversalité (1972) and La révolution moléculaire (1977).
• The Three Ecologies (1989).
• Chaosmosis: an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (1992).
• Chaosophy (1995). Collected essays and interviews.
• Soft Subversions (1996). Collected essays and interviews.
• The Guattari Reader (1996). Collected essays and interviews.
• The Anti-Oedipus Papers (2004). Collection of texts written between 1969 and 1972.
• "The Machinic Unconscious" (2011)

In collaboration with Gilles Deleuze:

• Anti-Oedipus (1972).
• Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975).
• A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
• On the Line (1983). Contains translation of "Rhizome" (1976).
• Nomadology: The War Machine. (1986). Translation of chapter 12 of A Thousand Plateaus.
• What Is Philosophy? (1991).

Other collaborations:

• Communists Like Us (1985). With Antonio Negri.
• Molecular Revolution in Brazil (1986). With Suely Rolnik.
• The Party without Bosses (2003), by Gary Genosko. Features a 1982 conversation between Guattari and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the current President of Brazil.

 

Untranslated Works

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

• Psychanalyse et transversalité. Essais d'analyse institutionnelle (1972).
• La révolution moléculaire (1977, 1980). The 1980 version (éditions 10/18) contains substantially different essays from the 1977 version.
• L'inconscient machinique. Essais de Schizoanalyse (1979).
• Les années d'hiver, 1980-1985 (1986).
• Cartographies schizoanalytiques (1989).

Other collaborations:

• L’intervention institutionnelle (Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, n. 382 - 1980). On institutional pedagogy. With Jacques Ardoino, G. Lapassade, Gerard Mendel, Rene Lourau.
• Pratique de l'institutionnel et politique (1985). With Jean Oury and Francois Tosquelles.
• (it) Desiderio e rivoluzione. Intervista a cura di Paolo Bertetto (Milan: Squilibri, 1977). Conversation with Franco Berardi (Bifo) and Paolo Bertetto.

 

See also

• History of capitalism
• Gilles Deleuze
• Becoming

 

References

1. ^ Guattari (1989, ix).
2. ^ Guattari (1989, x).
3. ^ Guattari (1992, 124).
4. ^ Guattari (1992, 4).

 

Sources

 

Primary sources

• Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1972. Anti-Oedipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of L'Anti-Oedipe. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476953.
• ---. 1975. Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. Trans. Dana Polan. Theory and History of Literature 30. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1986. Trans. of Kafka: pour une litterature mineure. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0816615152.
• ---. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476945.
• ---. 1991. What Is Philosophy?. Trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson. London and New York: Verso, 1994. Trans. of Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 1860916863.
• Guattari, Félix. 1984. Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0140551603.
• ---. 1989. The Three Ecologies. Trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. Trans. of Les trois écologies. Paris: Editions Galilée. ISBN 1847063055.
• ---. 1992. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1995. Trans. of Chaosmose. Paris: Editions Galilee. ISBN 0909952256.
• ---. 1995. Chaosophy. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1570270198.
• ---. 1996. Soft Subversions. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Trans. David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1570270309.
• ---. 1996. The Guattari Reader. Ed. Gary Genosko. Blackwell Readers ser. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 0631197087.
• ---. 2006. The Anti-Oedipus Papers. Ed. Stéphane Nadaud. Trans. Kélina Gotman. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1584350318.
• Guattari, Félix and Toni Negri. 1985. Communists Like Us: New Spaces of Liberty, New Lines of Alliance. Trans. Michael Ryan. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e), 1990. Trans. of Nouvelles espaces de liberte. Paris: Bedon. ISBN 0936756217.
• Guattari, Félix, and Suely Rolnik. 1986. Molecular Revolution in Brazil. New York: Semiotext(e), 2008. Trans. of Micropolitica: Cartografias do Desejo. ISBN 1584350512.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Guattari