Anti-Oedipus I: Logic of Flows, Lecture 1, 16 November 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 1, 16 November 1971, Deleuze lays out material from <em>Anti-Oedipus </em>chapter four, notably the grounds for the important tasks of schizo-analysis, in contrast to traditional psychoanalysis, and also returning to the positions developed in “Introduction to Schizo-analysis” (chapter 4). Deleuze connects capitalism directly to schizophrenia, both based on decoded and deterritorialized flows, their identity occurring at the level of the economic process, through a system of conjunction, deterriorializing flows and then tying together an identity. Responding to student questions, Deleuze explores the internal threats to society, the danger of flows decoding themselves, and he considers competing anthropological explanations of flows and their blockages and possible recourses for continued flows, including sorcery, all of which is swept away by the introduction of money with a new circuit of consumption given that capitalism no longer counts on any code. Deleuze also details the opposition posed by schizo-analysis to psychoanalysis’s introduction of the triangular axiomatic by emphasizing dual dimensions of desire: desiring machines working within the unconscious with no reference to Oedipus or castration, and desire understood in terms of its socio-political investments rather than familial. Hence the three tasks of schizo-analysis: the first destructive task, countering the Oedipal and castrating structures; a first positive task, a functional analysis of desiring machines; and a second positive task, understanding the investment of desiring machines in the social machines.</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>Lors de cette séance 1, le 16 novembre 1971, Deleuze avait déjà passé une année universitaire (1970-71) à développer les éléments clés qui apparaîtraient dans <em>L’Anti-Œdipe</em>, publié au début de 1972. Deleuze présente ici des éléments du chapitre quatre de <em>L’Anti</em>–<em>Œdipe, </em>notamment les fondements des tâches importantes de la schizo-analyse, par opposition à la psychanalyse traditionnelle, et en revenant également aux positions développées dans « Introduction à la schizo-analyse » (chapitre 4) : une première tâche destructrice, contrer les structures œdipiennes et castratrices ; une première tâche positive, une analyse fonctionnelle des machines désirantes ; et une seconde tâche positive, comprendre l’investissement des machines désirantes dans les machines sociales.</p>