François Dosse: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives (2007–)

“In May 1968, Gilles Deleuze was an established philosopher teaching at the innovative Vincennes University, just outside of Paris. Félix Guattari was a political militant and the director of an unusual psychiatric clinic at La Borde. Their meeting was quite unlikely, yet the two were introduced in an arranged encounter of epic consequence. From that moment on, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in a surprising, productive partnership, collaborating on several groundbreaking works, including Anti-Oedipus, What Is Philosophy? and A Thousand Plateaus.

François Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history—particularly the turbulent time of May 1968—play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari’s posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles.”

Originally published as Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari: biographie croisée, La Découverte, Paris, 2007.

Translated by Deborah Glassman
Publisher Columbia University Press, 2010
European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
ISBN 0231145616, 9780231145619
672 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-11-13)

Félix Guattari: The Anti-Œdipus Papers (2006)

“‘The unconscious is not a theatre, but a factory,’ wrote Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1972), instigating one of the most daring intellectual adventures of the last half-century. Together, the well-known philosopher and the activist-psychiatrist were updating both psychoanalysis and Marxism in light of a more radical and ‘constructivist’ vision of capitalism: ‘Capitalism is the exterior limit of all societies because it has no exterior limit itself. It works well as long as it keeps breaking down.’

Few people at the time believed, as they wrote in the often-quoted opening sentence of Rhizome, that ‘the two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together.’ They added, ‘Since each of us was several, that became quite a crowd.’ These notes, addressed to Deleuze by Guattari in preparation for Anti-Oedipus, and annotated by Deleuze, substantiate their claim, finally bringing out the factory behind the theatre. They reveal Guattari as an inventive, highly analytical, mathematically-minded ‘conceptor,’ arguably one of the most prolific and enigmatic figures in philosophy and sociopolitical theory today. The Anti-Oedipus Papers (1969-1973) are supplemented by substantial journal entries in which Guattari describes his turbulent relationship with his analyst and teacher Jacques Lacan, his apprehensions about the publication of Anti-Oedipus and accounts of his personal and professional life as a private analyst and codirector with Jean Oury of the experimental clinic Laborde (created in the 1950s).”

Edited by Stéphane Nadaud
Translated by Kélina Gotman
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2006
Foreign Agents series
ISBN 1584350318, 9781584350316
437 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-6-26)

Félix Guattari: Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (1984)

A collection of essays on social psychiatry includes discussions of the capitalist system, class struggle, and institutional psychotherapy. Selected from Psychanalyse et transversalité (1972) and La révolution moléculaire (1977).

Publisher Penguin, 1984
A Peregrine Book
ISBN 0140551603, 978-0140551600
308 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)
PDF (2008 edition; added on 2012-7-15)