Deleuze & Guattari: Anti-Oedipus on Schizoanalysis versus Capitalism

yo my lacan videos are popular at least at least compared to the ones that i've done um but delusion guitaree are done with psychoanalysis it's over it's too limiting it had its day so brace yourself for some dissonance and you may have to work out for yourself which side you fall on [Music] this is gonna be sweeping and long so give me those contents and keep hold of your avocado toast this book this book is really difficult though maybe not as difficult as it seems the first time you open it i'm not going to summarize the whole thing i'm just going to make the case that it offers a model for an alternative politics it's a left politics but all left oh that's exactly what we need one more label for leftists to differentiate themselves from every other leftist on the internet but no this is a little different as a model still it's interested in capitalism and a critique of capitalism but far less interested in ideology and instead it focuses on generating resistances this book and here let's try that movie magic right there the title let's break it down first anti-oedipus it's against psychoanalysis and to an extent etiology critique also the oedipus of course is freud's oedipus complex which is the foundation of psychoanalysis capitalism which as you know is the global desiring machine which captures our desire and finally schizophrenia which is a model for how we could think more creatively and less or should i say hierarchically or structurally now this goes without saying but schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder it's unpleasant to have i'm sure should the man of all be silent jesus christ should he have been silent but qatari the psychoanalyst and the lose the philosopher see potential in schizophrenic delirium as a productive political process it's an unusual hypothesis but let's give it a shot so for dng schizophrenic delirium is creative and that delusions and hallucinations spring forth into the world and thought and language are non-linear in the midst of this delirium now of course we don't want to imitate the content of this process of schizophrenic delusion just the form or the movement of it in thought schizophrenic delirium is something actually kind of special that is its unrepressed uncoded freed desire and desire is the subject of this book one more time desire is the subject of this book this will help a lot if you try to open it and get lost now desire something that's almost never free and trying to free it is why dolce and gabbana are both anti-psychoanalysis and anti-capitalist together in this same book like delirium capitalism decodes but it does so only so that it can trap our desires in new systems of control video link up there now the delirium of schizophrenia is freed desire thus it's a limit that not even capitalism can capture channel or control so you and i gotta be more schizo to be politically effective this is not revolution in the sense of overthrow but revolution for a community within pushing out here is the problem most of the time desire is repressed by hierarchies and authority structures or it's being channeled by capitalism being repressed and being channeled are i guess slightly different but in both cases your desire is not free it's subject to one form of power or the other either disciplinary or a control system conversely liberated desire means desire that escapes the impasse of private fantasy it's not a question of adapting it socializing it or disciplining it but of plugging it in in such a way that its process not be interrupted in the social body and that its expression be collective now if you've tried it this just might be the most difficult book you've ever opened and that's because of its style so here's a little sample we are all schizos we are all perverts what neurotic provided he is somewhat serious is not leaning against the rock of schizophrenia a rock in this case mobile aerolytic who does not haunt the perverse territorialities beyond the kindergartens of oedipus now the reason it's so difficult to follow along with its sequel a thousand plateaus of course is that dng appeal to readers to think deliriously not linearly just like it's tough to follow the writing or speech of a schizophrenic during a psychotic episode i am a seer of spirits i communicate with souls you know i can't eat because i don't have a stomach or an alien civilization is trying to steal my thoughts deliz and qatari want to make this a model of political thinking hear this out hear this out it's good it's difficult but it's probably the most innovative post-68 political project i know of one that's radically opposed to the simple class or identity politics that's the entire menu these days and not everyone thinks so uh oh for these guys delis is either a fake anti-hegelian or politically impotent or most weirdly a crypto authoritarian statist sorry no uh not getting into that bye-bye boys okay watch this go the politics of capitalist realism so first i need to set you up with the problem that's being solved here hopefully and the problem with left politics in the 70s don't really seem all that different from the problems with left politics today so this book holds up anyway the main problem is our political world picture in this picture the world is broken up into zones and regimes of authority if we are picturing an anonymous political subject it'll be layered something like this there's a nice picture body mind social political and then we'll just call this world dash historical it's that which is outside ideology we can also call it i don't know material conditions but it includes facts such as ownership and capital most importantly okay so each concentric sphere here is sort of circumscribed by the one larger than it your mind is within ideology which is inside the world historical and so on so i'm picturing this just as a version of a political mindset one that we kind of have as default we have individuals whose vision of the world historical namely capital is obscured by ideology ideology of course makes sure that nothing changes out here so for a leftist and especially an online leftist all politics turns into making a stand in these zones because down here the mind and the body these zones have been abandoned to medical professionals namely psychiatrists and doctors leftists for that reason don't often make claims to these zones except for delusion qatari of course then outside of ideology the the most encompassing sphere is you know the world including facts such as ownership the truth about labor and material conditions and you could just say history this regime is known to economists historians and other scientific specialists and this of course is the region that everyone hopes to change hopes they can change but it feels impossible so what happens instead as a consequence is all these territories are marked out and argued about on the internet so this diagram for me explains to leftists why not everyone is a leftist you can't change material conditions because ideology is in the way and you know too many simp dads are watching propaganda on tv and that's why we can't have nice things or the things that we want access to health stuff education wealth redistribution but all politics for the most part is limited to this region so what you're doing when arguing about politics is just arguing over zone control and setting up these little camps in here campground politics and of course the world historical is never affected by discussions or debates like these and yet so much of our time is spent in these zones with all manner of activists pundits experts theorists youtube channels yeah i'm in here too here to explain why not everyone agrees with us but hey here is the picture of capitalist realism at least my picture so everyone has their zone and everyone stays in their zone medical professionals down here culture warriors here the cancelers and collar outers here and then the clubs of you know anarcho communo accelerationo crypto primitivo lenin mao whateverists and not a single one of these labels makes any difference by the way then the real world keeps on trucking you know where capital actually flows and where wealth begets wealth but every cause camper and larper gets to go to bed thinking that they've had a good moral day because they posted about what they believe the world should look like on the internet if this looks like a problem to you then maybe deliz and gatari have a project for you you may find this interesting give me that ding delirium so here's our campground everyone's in their zone doing whatever they're doing now here's what happens in schizophrenic thought which doesn't stay inside the lines at all it's crossing boundaries because that's its defining feature should the man of honour be silent jesus christ should he have been silent now the schizophrenic claims authority over world history declaring himself to be napoleon or jesus then takes it back and writes it on his body not even on the outside but inside the doctor has stolen his stomach there is no boundary between the inside and the outside the nsa is eavesdropping on his thoughts his thoughts are outside of his head someone has planted chips under his skin can you see what's going on here the schizo does not limit themselves to territories schizo thought takes over every territory and you can't keep up with it to get ahead of capitalist realism this is what we should be going for a process and not a goal a production and not an expression here we can also see why dellari object to psychoanalysis all of your motivations and behaviors are interpreted here opposed to the father displacing the desire of the mother this is another apparatus for limiting desire not freeing it and no gatari was a student of lacan before this and he quit the team while most of their derision is directed at freudian analysts they do claim that lacan changing the mommy daddy triangle to one of algebra you know law abje ah desire it's really just kicking the can further down the road without explaining anything more about desire for production they hate this idea that desire is a lack and that's why psychoanalysis is old news and we now need to go to schizo analysis [Music] all right i'm hoping you'd like to know what this book actually says and then i'll give you some examples here's the movement of schizo desire the code of delirium or of desire proves to have an extraordinary fluidity it might be said that the schizophrenic passes from one code to the other but he deliberately scrambles all the codes by quickly shifting from one to another according to the questions asked him never giving the same explanation from one day to the next never invoking the same in genealogy never recording the same event in the same way so this freed fluid desire resists capitalism which wants you in a demographic so that it can create needs for you or desires the schizo is too slippery for all that let me give you an example judge schraeber schraeber wrote a now famous book from a mental asylum in 1900 everyone including freud uses it as the paradigmatic paranoia schizoid the psychiatric system is obviously repressive it restrains desire either physically or psychochemically but from here judge schreiber creates this complicated mythical universe full of magical rays and miracles upper gods lower gods voices of nerve language and struggles against the order of the world it's bizarre paranoid because schreiber is schizo but he's definitely not staying in his zone he goes all the way up to god into history then back into his own body claiming authority i am god i was not god i am a clown of god [Music] now the god of schreiber's world is punitive and demanding so freud reads this and in freudian fashion goes oh this whole thing must be a repressed resentment against the father deliz and gatari are like no stop making everything about the family and instead listen to what he says look at what he says his language doesn't need to represent something else what it does do is create these connections so dng have this concept called the body without organs i've explained this elsewhere but look at what schraeber writes in this book i could not eat because i had no stomach sometimes immediately before meals a stomach was so to speak produced ad hoc by miracles so he can't eat because he has no stomach but sometimes he would get a miraculous stomach just there on the spot temporarily so that he was able to eat again [Music] this is a diagnosis that a non-schizo wouldn't make we find it humorous most non-schizos are fine subjecting themselves to a doctor's professional diagnosis but not schreiber and by the way we're not done with schreiber's stomach because now he thinks there's something wrong with the miraculous stomach he just got the viennese nerve specialist miraculously produced in place of my healthy natural stomach a very inferior so-called jew's stomach naturally this never lasted long the stomach which had been produced by miracles in any case only an inferior stomach was usually removed again miraculously stomach appears stomach disappears his doctor miraculously puts in an inferior jewish stomach into his body and then miraculously takes it out again so aside from being a pretty humorous delusion here we can also note that racism is part of schreiber's delirium obviously we don't like the racism but then again look to the form of the thought instead of the content and ask the question then what is a race so races make up the world historical they're way out here in our diagram part of human history that extends past us as individuals in both directions so delusion guitaree note that the schizo moves through the whole world and all of history fluidly marking out his own body as a territory of history so yeah what schreiber said is racist but the point is that all these disparate regions can be intimately and creatively connected the inside of the body connects directly with world history in this case so in their interpretation hear their words first things to be distributed on the body with their organs are races cultures and their gods the fact has often been overlooked that the schizo indeed participates in history he hallucinates and raves universal history and proliferates the races all delirium is racial which does not necessarily mean racist so de luz and gatari's problem with psychoanalysis is that it claims to be listening to the words of its patients the analyzands but really what they do is ignore everything except what can relate to family dynamics thus god equals father but this misses all the creative boundary crossing that's happening right in front of their face in this schreiber case that's right oedipus is completely useless as the schizophrenic has escaped the mommy daddy triangle i don't know if i'd go so far as to say that that's their words not mine so here's another example a common delusion for schizophrenics is that someone's listening in on their thoughts and that's crossing another boundary the social and the mind sometimes they believe themselves to be messianic figures or the opposite gender temporarily sometimes their organs belong to a different race or they disappear entirely see all of this is inside the body outside the body in world history in the social in the mind and there's utility here and that's which there's no identity to which this creativity is affixed because it's always moving delusion qatari would be adamantly imposed to identity politics for this reason to commit to an identity is to have your desire captured and encircled by the state or by capitalism and as a minority then you have accepted the state's definition of you and become a statistic or a demographic that is you become molar becoming minor means you always elude the state and to become minor you need to follow the schizo okay what does this boundary crossing look like well this depends on what you're doing they tried it as writers and you can see the result here this is the table of contents from a thousand plateaus which creates an assemblage of concepts from literature psychoanalysis history science art etc they're happy intentionally going all over the place and gatsari explains why the psychoanalysts have their own cooking utensils and the politicians have their own etc the necessity to re-examine this division is not born from some concern for eclecticism and it does not necessarily lead to some sort of confusion the same way that it is not due to confusion that a schizophrenic jumps from one register to the next so you can see the intention here it is the reality he finds himself confronted with that drives him to do it well from this perspective people in the human sciences and in politics should in a sense go a little schizo to have the same ability to embrace all the disciplines together that is of course to not get stuck in camps the creative subject imitates the desire of schizophrenic delirium boundaries and disciplines are nothing to it they are collapsed it has no inside no organs it's an intensity purely on the plane of imminence and that's the nomad in contrast to the state specialist another new character in dilla's and guitarist philosophy i'm not going to tell you what to do and i never tell anyone what to do but this is an interesting way to reconsider the social field so here it is it's an offering these days and i spend an unfortunate amount of time on the internet so i know this but these days people are all trying to make themselves specialists within boundaries of their field i speak as a socialist and i speak for the socialist community so does you know so to speak i speak as an anarchist i speak for the gay community i speak for the black community as a blank here's what we say now as soon as you speak as an identity you have stopped becoming that identity and the risk is then you're stuck then your community becomes a demographic for capital interests including politics as a voting bloc revolutionaries and nomads do not speak to the state they seek to subvert it creatively as you can guess here's where capitalism and schizoanalysis come in as sort of opposing forces politics as this i speak as a blank to the state is actually useless and it's made useless by capitalism capitalism is a challenging machine and it has no opinion of you or your identity in fact it decodes your identity and whichever community you identify with capital growth goes wherever it wants over borders into computers creating value here and destroying it elsewhere capitalism is a flow that decodes what we would call tradition mores and identities this is exciting in a way because it does the same thing as a schizophrenic thought which also ignores boundaries and it goes where it wants but capitalism has one limitation from which it can never escape the profit motive once it identifies you it's going to try to channel your desire usually as a demographic representative as an identity it will create needs for you here's what you want here's how to look here's your five year plan here's what's wrong with you and here are your meds capital captures for profit now this can be a bit overwhelming but it also demonstrates that there's a limit to capitalism and that's our advantage in resistance to become other than ourselves so becoming schizo becoming minor becoming nomadic this is the mode of escape whether it's as an artist writer musician or most importantly as a political subject this has by the way both revolutionary and fascist potential nazism for example crosses and folds the social field by drawing on mythological histories race science and divine destinies in the theories of um rosenberg alfred rosenberg for example but there's also a revolutionary potential in a schizoanalytic virtual desiring machines there are tons of examples in dalari's schizoanalysis both in etsy oedipus and thousand plateaus but they were written in the 70s so i think they're not going to have the same resonance with us probably so that's why i've tried i'm going to offer you here a different example for you one that emerges adjacent to the beating heart of capitalism in new york city final section to be honest i'm surprised you're still here thanks i hope you're having fun i'm getting a little sweaty now the native tongues collective is a small movement from the late 80s and early 90s but it follows the schizo line of de-territorialization uniting history both real and mythical art music and style in a movement of identity creation it also i think serves as a productive model for political resistance it was all part of us searching for our identity as people of color as black and latino people who are we really you know because it wasn't enough for us to just have our own culture than that time called hip-hop we're like wait a minute why don't we embrace where we came from like this is great because it actually hits so many of the right notes in terms of applying theory becoming minor deterioratorialization an artistic innovation past the edge of capitalism at least it was past the edge probably not anymore but it takes a lot of effort continued effort to stay past the edge of capitalism which again seeks to capture the new desire and anything that you've created really anyway back to this this little energy explosion includes all the potentiality in creating yourself as subject in this case it's becoming minor first of all uh here are the native tongues so obviously they're a visible minority relative to white america and a creative minority relative to the profitability of hip-hop in the late 80s compared to like gangsta rap for example now for deliz and qatari minorities can deteritorialize a major culture because no matter how inside a culture a minority is they can always see it as if from outside their main example is kafka's literature who was jewish and wrote in prague german as opposed to high german but you get this outside perspective from within as a minority so the native tongues collective did territorializes by consciously breaking from the existing symbols of captured or commercialized hip-hop hip-hop was growing in popularity and this collective including the groups de la soul and a tribe called quest are known for this lyrical style called conscious wrap and the implication i guess is that other rap is unconscious and that would be a fun little rabbit trail to go down but anyway um they immediately distanced themselves qua image from the bling gun thug image of the emerging gangsta wrap we started giving rappers zulu beads and african medallions we was like shaming people that still wore jury you know what i mean and we we would get on them and get on them and get on them and we just put so much pressure on rappers themselves that even llc and run dmc took their jury off in this video de la soul does it explicitly [Music] this is called uh me myself and i by de la soul rejecting one hip-hop uniform they re-territorialize themselves with african regalia spinning off the aesthetic of the universal zulu nation in delizian terms becoming african-american and folding identity and world history together to create a divergent and new line of flight it's schizophrenic in the same way that schreiber thought about the race of his stomach except now we're applying it to an image now dylas and qatari give the uh i guess pre-rex or what to look for when something's being territorialized in a minor literature and all three of these things apply here so the three characteristics of a minor literature are the de-territorialization of language in this case through rap music obviously the connection of the individual to a political immediacy and the collective assemblage of enunciation we might as well say that minor no longer designates specific literatures but the revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart of the established literature by the way it's from a different book the kafka book so minorities really don't have the privilege of not being political a minority stance vis-a-vis the state is ipso facto political and the native tongues embrace this pushing outward in every direction at once here's another line our novel line of flight hip-hop tends to be hyper-masculine and violent even and the native tongues included anthems like queen latifah's ladies first and unity which used a masculine or masculine dominated medium to vocalize issues like domestic violence or speak towards the empowerment of women de-territorialized i wish i could show you more examples but i don't want to get murdered on the copyright so please look up these examples this is all political and it never sticks to a zone this collective was very involved in community organization and against drugs and violence which is elsewhere valorized in hip-hop now this in itself is not that different from a lot of political organization but what makes this special is that the whole orbit of identity formation and political activity circles art hip-hop invention lyrics now i don't know anything about music theory or history other than to say you know i like the lyrics and i like how this sounds and i like the samples but all the sources that i looked at for this speak to the innovation of uh the sampling and recording used especially by the groups de la soul and a tribe called quest for example sampling jazz music and the main delusion point here is that all of this comes together the art the style the image the identity formation so the delusion descriptor for all of this is an intensity an intensity that sort of burst out into all this stuff identity image art and politics all at the same time so this is not a purity politics not a politics of scolding people not a politics of stepping on twitter rivals it's a politics entirely of creation inventing styles identities and coloring outside of lines a politics of creativity this becoming minor isn't overly concerned with answering the major because instead it just transcends the channels it creates for desire no doubt and of course this always happens it was eventually commercialized now it's cheap but the ongoing goal of de-territorialization here is to always stay ahead to keep your desire out in front commercialization is always rearguard because capitalism is not free desire and that's always the schizo subject's advantage so this is not another manifesto god knows there are enough of those but deluse and ghitari in these books are trying to unite form and content for them philosophy has gotten boring stale cut off and put into boxes and academic departments we could say the same thing about our political positions always focused on the cause of the hour and who broke the rules when there's a world's wealth out there of connections styles histories mythologies even to be created or recreated if we were doing politics like this there wouldn't be a purity test at the door and factions would have no use anyway that's my appeal and to a lesser degree this philosophy reflects what i kind of hope that this channel does namely to be informative not boring creative when i can be and adverse to the prevailing winds of online media so you can thank my patrons who picked this topic for the rest of y'all they're keeping this going so thank you deep thanks to them supporting my work there is not just a one-way exchange either patrons get a whole bunch of more in-depth content on the stuff that i deal with here so if that's a draw for you check it out now we're going to do this call to action so giving a call to action with deliz and guitaree is always tough because everyone wants to know you know what can i do and they walked their walk by doing what they were trained in that is writing books um i'm trying it with youtube and not very well actually this is definitely not a schizophrenic episode it's extremely linear like this but i have to walk before i run okay so native tongues did it of course with music so to you if you're a writer activist cartoonist academic musician or a memer the call to action here is just to go schizo and what does that mean cross a boundary make a new connection try something experiment stay ahead of the curve go schizo all right this is plastic pills go schizo [Music] you

Channel: PlasticPills

Views: 167,271

Keywords: Antioedipus, Psychoanalysis Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Plasticpills, Lacan, Zizek, Plastic Pills, Badiou, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, ATP, A Thousand Plateaus, BwO, Body Without Organs, Nomadology

Id: 2TE7HFBzf-w

Length: 35min 43sec (2143 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/pilulesenplastique]

This video advances the claim that Deleuze and Guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and Anti-Oedipus in particular, offers an alternative political project for the left by creating distance from what it calls "campground politics." Schizo thought, conversely, demands a creative, non-identitarian collectivity at the limit of capitalism's "decoding."

[u/endCIV_]

Can someone give me contemporary examples of lines of flight/deterritorialization/reterritorialization?

Edit: Also, love the video(s) as always.

[u/JonathanPhillipFox]

I love Foucault's Introduction to this, which goes,

During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of political discourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud. And one had to treat sign-systems -- the signifier -- with the greatest respect. These were the three requirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.

Then came the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years. At the gates of our world, there was Vietnam, of course, and the first major blow to the powers that be. But here, inside our walls, what exactly was taking place? An amalgam of revolutionary and antirepressive politics? A war fought on two fronts: against social exploitation and psychic repression? A surge of libido modulated by the class struggle? Perhaps. At any rate, it is this familiar, dualistic interpretation that has laid claim to the events of those years. The dream that cast its spell, between the First World War and fascism, over the dreamiest parts of Europe -- the Germany of Wilhelm Reich, and the France of the surrealists -- had returned and set fire to reality itself: Marx and Freud in the same incandescent light.

But is that really what happened? Had the utopian project of the thirties been resumed, this time on the scale of historical practice? Or was there, on the contrary, a movement toward political struggles that no longer conformed to the model that Marxist tradition had prescribed? Toward an experience and a technology of desire that were no longer Freudian. It is true that the old banners were raised, but the combat shifted and spread into new zones.

Anti-Oedipus shows us first of all how much ground has been covered. But it does much more than that. It wastes no time in discrediting the old idols. even though it does have a great deal of fun with Freud. Most important, it motivates us to go further.

It would be a mistake to read Anti-Oedipus as the new theoretical reference (you know, that much-heralded theory that finally encompasses everything, that finally totalizes and reassures, the one we are told we "need so badly" in our age of dispersion and specialization where "hope" is lacking). One must not look for a "philosophy" amid the extraordinary profusion of new notions and surprise concepts: Anti-Oedipus is not a flashy Hegel. I think that Anti-Oedipus can best be read as an "art," in the sense that is conveyed by the term "erotic art," for example. Informed by the seemingly abstract notions of muliplicities, flows, arrangements, and connections, the analysis of the relationship of desire to reality and to the capitalist "machine" yields answers to concrete questions. Questions that are less concerned with why this or that than with how to proceed. How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action? How can and must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more intense in the process of overturning the established order? Ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica.

Whence the three adversaries confronted by Anti-Oedipus. Three adversaries who do not have the same strength, who represent varying degrees of danger, and whom the book combats in different ways:

The political ascetics, the sad militant, the terrorists of theory, those who would preserve the pure order of politics and political discourse. Bureaucrats of the revolution and civil servants of Truth.

The poor technicians of desire -- psychoanalysts and semiologists of every sign and symptom -- who would subjugate the multiplicity of desire to the twofold law of structure and lack.

Last but not least, the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti-Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini -- which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively -- but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time (perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular "readership": being anti-oedipal has become a life style, a way of thinking and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part, pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body.

Paying a modest tribute to Saint Francis de Sales, one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.

This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide for everyday life:

Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, u/littlesubgirl_ castration, u/hellen5110, lack, lacuna, u/_mymindbreaks), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force.

Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.

Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization.

Do not become enamored of power.

It could even be said that Deleuze and Guattari care so little for power that they have tried to neutralize the effects of power linked to their own discourse. Hence the games and snares scattered throughout the book, rendering its translation a feat of real prowess. But thse are not the familiar traps of rhetoric; the latter work to sway the reader without his being aware of the manipulation, and ultimately win him over against his will. The traps of Anti-Oedipus are those of humor: so many invitations to let oneself be put out, to take one's leave of the text and slam the door shut. The book often leads one to believe it is all fun and games, when something essential is taking place, something of extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everday lives. - Michel Foucault

Edit: exactly, how he wrote it iirc

[u/Weird_Church_Noises]

Thanks for posting this guy's work. He's broken down a lot of concepts in accelerationism and Simulation theory that were fairly opaque to me. His video on the Travis Scott burger depressed me to fuck holy shit.

And I'm starting to appreciate YouTubers who can talk about complex philosophical concepts without er... elaborate skits.

[u/CoffeeTaker]

Been binge-watching your stuff since I found your channel (4 days ago :D), keep it up man.

[u/TilDaysShallBeNoMore]

Such an underrated channel!!

[u/A1_Herbal]

I love PlasticPills. Their videos are among the best things on YouTube.

[u/bullshitonmargin]

In reading through Deleuze, I’ve found that the greatest barrier to understanding his key concepts (including those formed with Guattari) is the rabid attempt to make them communicable; that is, it’s much more sensible when their articulation is no longer a goal and instead the process of becoming-animal, for example, is felt, but the drive to make sense of this and translate it into a broader logical framework of thought scrambles the understanding which was present beforehand.

The Body Without Organs... is it even feasible to summarize what it is in a paragraph, or even a short essay? How do you describe what goes beyond language? What happens when we find that a concept’s description corrupts its very meaning?

Deleuze is a difficult read because his writing leads one toward something plainly inaccessible; his words can lift you off but there’s a compulsion to return, a vicious cycle, but through enough reputations, a pure concept is born, an example of what’s being discussed which finally makes the process obsolete... but then where does it go?