Félix Guattari (1930–1992)

How does one read this book, and why? Hopefully not from beginning to end, and hopefully not expecting to find many easily digestible passages, let alone meaty, neatly wrapped takeaways.

This book is very much post 1968 (for Deleuze, the great Paris student revolt). It's politics are anti-authoritarian, acting itself out with irony, irreverence, and a heightened continental-styled intellectual obfuscation. Straight language and discourse were to be tossed out with a corrupt old guard that show more deliciously, for Deleuze, included many of his own professors. The style combines the exuberance of revolt and the vindictiveness of rebellion, exuberance in the energy of the language and vindictiveness in its opacity. It's rare to find a sentence that makes immediate sense or a pair of sentences with easy logical continuity between them.

Guattari, the team's other half, was a psychoanalyst, and you see that vector in the quirky obscure images and symbols that appear to have popped out of dreams to ride the monotonous rhythm of these sentences, one after the other for what feels like forever, soothed in the cozy confidence that the analyst in the corner, one of the good guys, never censures or censors. There will be a solidarity and classless parity in the parading of these repeating words, images, and ideas, each little one a citoyen of a new in-world that has pushed the old one decisively out.

So why give five stars to something whose language I mostly couldn't understand? Probably to honor its uniqueness; there's nothing quite like it. But more likely, for its musicality. It offers music of a kind I'll come back to; in small doses, one little plateau at a time. It will be a kind of music I can get nowhere else. It will refresh me. My fellow-traveling psychiatrist in the corner will look on avuncularly as I declaim (or Deleuze does for me) anything that suddenly and urgently demands to break free. It will be spring. I will be young. Masses will cheer as budding trees fall to the buzz of buzz saws to become our barricades. I will let my world die, knowing that it has already been reborn.

Then I'll wake up, smile, and say what a good little nap that was -- and be so, so glad the trees weren't really sawn down. show less

Psychoanalysis was from the start, still is, and perhaps always will be a well-constituted church and a form of treatment based on a set of beliefs that only the very faithful could adhere to, i.e., those who believe in a security that amounts to being lost in the herd and defined in terms of common and external goals.

My review from 1994 would be gushing, one near febrile abuzz with the insights revealed in this suicide vest of a book. My 2011 self appreciates the arsenal of metaphors and show more allusions established. It also recognizes the limits of application of this in ordinary life. That is the present project, no? I mean we are living in some guise, whether or not as bodies without organs; but we find ourselves trapped in associations both molar and molecular: all the while feeling for stones in our pockets as we're prohibited from lounging on the turf outside. show less

An acid trip that has you straddling thought through its junctions of philosophy, art, and science. Even though I read the English translation, Deleuze's prose shines through and profoundly carries you through the chaos of being and existence.

One small pointer: this is not an intro to philosophy. I definitely recommend reading widely on philosophy, preferably even wider than philosophy as Deleuze constantly refers to significant figures from the above three disciplines.

Easily one of the show more most thought-provoking and creative pieces of philosophy I've ever read. I particularly enjoyed Deleuze's vivid use of artists', philosophers', and scientists' works to drive home his points. One minute you're looking at the deeply theoretical through Hume and Einstein, the next you're looking at the art of sensation through Kafka and Joyce. I'll certainly be returning to this work throughout my life. show less

I've plowed through this abstruse text because I've been hanging out with critical theory kids (who make videos à la ContraPoints) about such things, and I quickly realized "Oh man, I'm getting 10% of this...!" Well, it's my 10%...!". Much of it seems like mental masturbation, as in a monkey idiosyncratically masturbating with its left foot, but then you read a paragraph about Proust, say, which drops into a niche in your soul, and that's depositive. An "introduction to the nonfascist show more life," according to none other than Michel Foucault. P.S. Finished this in a psychiatric hospital after a psychotic break, appropriately enough. show less