Anti-Oedipus I: Logic of Flows, Lecture 3, 21 December 1971

<p><em>The Deleuze Seminars</em> is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.</p>

<p>During his first year at Vincennes, where Deleuze began in fall 1970, he taught two seminars, back-to-back in the same three-hour weekly sessions, one titled “Logic and Desire”, the other titled “Spinoza’s Logic” (with no documents on either currently available). Hence, the first transcripts available correspond to Deleuze’s second year at Vincennes as he continues to expand the concepts developed for <em>Anti-Oedipus </em>(published in March 1972) but also with the long view of the second volume, <em>A Thousand Plateaus</em>, in progress with Félix Guattari. Focusing on this forthcoming book, Deleuze with Guattari develop only one text for publication corresponding directly to the seminar, their first jointly published essay titled “La synthèse disjonctive”, in the journal <em>L’Arc</em> 43 (1970), an issued dedicated to Pierre Klossowski.</p>

<p>In session 3, 21 December 1971, Deleuze considers psychoanalysis as related to economics, predominantly material from <em>Anti-Oedipus,</em> chapters II and III. He begins with social investments of the unconscious, particularly as related to libidinal investments, a linkage disconnected by Freud, whereas for schizo-analysis, the libido’s primary function is to fuel the social field’s unconscious investments of desire. Deleuze maintains that the traditional perspective is a race towards death, desire choked off, and the Oedipal framework focusing on the triangle father-mother-me. Deleuze focuses on how Freud constructed this emphasis on familialism and toward the death drive, and then shifting to an economic perspective, he emphasizes the fundamental linkage between schizophrenia and the capitalist machine’s schizo mode of functioning. He recalls the previous session’s discussion of the schizo’s channeling of decoded flows in contrast to the neurotic’s grounding within Oedipal recoding. Deleuze pursues an economic analysis of the two heterogeneous flows, constant capital and variable capital, as mechanisms of capitalism, leading to the distinction of money of exchange and credit money. The truncated session ends with Deleuze raising additional distinctions about the types of money in banking circuit and the credit domain.</p>

<p>No recording of this session is available currently. The original French transcript provided here, in Open Data Text (odt) format, is from the WeDeleuze site, also with the revised French transcription and new English translation in odt format. [WebDeleuze was founded by Richard Pinhas -- a student in Deleuze's seminars -- who, with the Deleuze family's support, developed transcripts and translations of many of the seminars.]</p>

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<p>Les Séminaires de Deleuze sont une collection d'enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents complémentaires des conférences que le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze a donné lors de sa carrière à l'Université de Paris 8.</p>

<p>Cette séance 3, le 21 décembre 1971, est fragmentaire, où Deleuze s’adresse à la confrontation cruciale avec la psychanalyse et les formations économiques, développée dans l’<em>Anti-Oedipe </em>entier, mais surtout dans sa troisième partie. Deleuze s’intéresse à la manière dont Freud a construit cette insistance sur le familialisme et sur la pulsion de mort, puis, passant à une perspective économique, il souligne le lien fondamental entre la schizophrénie et le mode de fonctionnement schizo de la machine capitaliste.</p>