Anti-Oedipus I: Logic of Flows, Lecture 7, 22 February 1972

<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 7, 22 February 1972, <strong>which begins in progress,</strong> Deleuze continues to reflect on socio-economic theories under capitalism and their relationship to schizophrenia and psychoanalysis, with the session’s main topic being the structure and status of flows in the capitalist State. The first aspect addressed is the system of differential relations between decoded flows (the axiomatic’s very definition), on the levels of industrial capital, financial capital, and merchant capital. Raising a second aspect, Deleuze emphasizes the infinite nature of accumulation, labor’s flow ceaselessly deterritorialized, capital’s flows ceaselessly decoded, capitalism gleefully extending its machine to its limit only in the schizo flow, schizophrenia as the limit of capitalism’s decoding and deterritorializing. Deleuze argues that all axiomatics are the means of drawing science into the capitalist market as abstract, decoded Oedipuses, and he locates such abstract Oedipal expressions in art and music, providing a detailed analysis of Lawrence’s <em>Lady Chatterley’s Lover</em>, concluding that in art, Oedipus can cause awful expressions of the great phallus-Oedipus-anus trilogy. He concludes by responding to a student question about the body without organs under capitalism which encompasses money as a tool and thereby causes something to be produced, to flow.</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 7, le 22 février 1972, se poursuit avec des réflexions sur les théories socio-économiques, mais aussi avec une référence particulière à R.D. Laing. Par conséquent, le texte se développe avec une référence implicite à la quatrième partie, mais aussi à la suite, <em>Mille Plateaux</em>. Le premier aspect abordé est le système de relations différentielles entre les flux décodés (définition même de l’axiomatique), aux niveaux du capital industriel, du capital financier et du capital marchand. Soulevant un second aspect, Deleuze souligne le caractère infini de l’accumulation, les flux de travail sans cesse déterritorialisés, les flux de capitaux sans cesse décodés, le capitalisme n’étendant allègrement sa machine jusqu’à sa limite que dans le flux schizo, la schizophrénie comme limite du décodage et de la déterritorialisation du capitalisme.</p>