Félix Guattari | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Pierre-Félix Guattari (1930-03-30)30 March 1930 Villeneuve-les-Sablons,Oise, France |
| Died | 29 August 1992(1992-08-29) (aged 62) Cour-Cheverny, France |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Academic work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School or tradition | Continental philosophy,[1]psychoanalysis,post-Marxism,post-structuralism,[2]institutional psychotherapy |
| Institutions | University of Paris VIII |
| Main interests | Psychoanalysis,Marxist philosophy,[3]political philosophy,[3]semiotics[3] |
| Notable ideas | Assemblage,desiring-production,deterritorialization,ecosophy,schizoanalysis[3] |
Pierre-Félix Guattari (/ɡwəˈtɑːri/gwə-TAR-ee;French:[pjɛʁfeliksɡwataʁi]ⓘ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a Frenchpsychoanalyst,political philosopher,[3]semiotician,[3]social activist, andscreenwriter. He co-foundedschizoanalysis withGilles Deleuze, and createdecosophy independently ofArne Næss. He has become best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notablyAnti-Oedipus (1972) andA Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical workCapitalism and Schizophrenia.[3]
Guattari was born inVilleneuve-les-Sablons, a working-class suburb of northwest Paris, France.[4] He engaged inTrotskyist political activism as a teenager, before serving as a French psychoanalystJacques Lacan's apprentice andanalysand in the early 1950s.[5] Subsequently, he worked at the experimentalpsychiatric clinic of La Borde (in the town ofCour-Cheverny) under the direction of Lacan's pupilJean Oury. He first met Oury at a private psychiatric clinic in Saumery in theLoire Valley at the suggestion of Oury's brother Fernand, who had been Guattari's high school teacher. Guattari followed Oury to La Borde in 1955, two years after it had been established.[6] At the time, La Borde was a venue for conversation among students ofphilosophy,psychology,ethnology, andsocial work.
One particularly novel orientation developed at La Borde consisted of the suspension of the classical analyst/analysand pair in favour of an open confrontation ingroup therapy. In contrast to theFreudian school'sindividualistic style of analysis, this practice studied the dynamics of several subjects in complex interaction. It led Guattari into a broader philosophical exploration of, and political engagement with, a vast array of intellectual and cultural domains (philosophy,ethnology,linguistics,education,mathematics,architecture, etc.).
From 1955 to 1965 Guattari edited and contributed toLa Voie Communiste (Communist Way), aTrotskyist newspaper.[7] He supportedanti-colonialist struggles as well as theItalian Autonomists. Guattari also took part in the G.T.P.S.I., which gathered many psychiatrists at the beginning of the 1960s and created the Association ofInstitutional Psychotherapy in November 1965. It was at the same time that he founded, along with other militants, the F.G.E.R.I. (Federation of Groups for Institutional Study & Research) and its reviewRecherche (Research), working on philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethnology, education, mathematics, architecture, etc. The F.G.E.R.I. came to represent aspects of the multiple political and cultural engagements of Guattari: the Group for Young Hispanics, the Franco-Chinese Friendships (in the times of thepeople's communes), the opposition activities with the wars inAlgeria andVietnam, the participation in the M.N.E.F., with the U.N.E.F., the policy of the offices of psychological academic aid (B.A.P.U.), the organization of the University Working Groups (G.T.U.), but also the reorganizations of the training courses with the Centers of Training to the Methods of Education Activities (C.E.M.E.A.) for psychiatric male nurses, as well as the formation of a Fellowship of Nurses (Amicales d'infirmiers) (in 1958), the studies on architecture and the projects of construction of a day hospital for "students and young workers".
In 1967 he appeared as one of the founders of OSARLA (Organization of solidarity and Aid to the Latin-American Revolution). In 1968, Guattari metDaniel Cohn-Bendit,Jean-Jacques Lebel, andJulian Beck. He was involved in the large-scaleFrench protests of May 1968, starting from theMovement of 22 March. It was in the aftermath of 1968 that Guattari metGilles Deleuze at theUniversity of Vincennes. Then he began to lay the groundwork forAnti-Oedipus (1972), whichMichel Foucault described as "an introduction to the non-fascist life" in his preface to the book. In 1970, he createdCenter for the Study and Research of Institutional Formation [fr]), which developed the approach explored in theRecherches journal. In 1973, Guattari was tried and fined for committing an "outrage to public decency" for publishing an issue ofRecherches on homosexuality.[8] In 1977, he created the CINEL for "new spaces of freedom" before joining theenvironmental movement with his "ecosophy" in the 1980s.
Together with Frenchpost-structuralist philosopherGilles Deleuze, Guattari asserted that the institution ofpsychoanalysis has become acenter of power and that itsconfessional techniques resemblethose included and utilized within theChristian religion.[9] Their most in-depth criticism of the power structure of psychoanalysis and its connivance withcapitalism are found inAnti-Oedipus (1972)[10] andA Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical workCapitalism and Schizophrenia.[3] InAnti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari take the cases ofGérard Mendel,Bela Grunberger, andJanine Chasseguet-Smirgel, prominent members of the most respected psychoanalytical associations (including theIPA), to suggest that, traditionally, psychoanalysis had always enthusiastically enjoyed and embraced apolice state throughout its history.[11]
Guattari viewed the primary commodity produced undercapitalism as subjectivity itself.[12]: 254 According to Guattari, producing consuming subjects with novel desires satisfiable through continuing purchase of commodities and experiences is the precondition to creating a consumer society.[12]: 254 In his last book,Chaosmosis (1992), Guattari returned to the question of subjectivity: "How to produce it, collect it, enrich it, reinvent it permanently in order to make it compatible with mutant Universes of value?" This concern runs through all of his works, fromPsychoanalysis and Transversality (a collection of articles from 1957 to 1972), throughYears of Winter (1980–1986) andSchizoanalytic Cartographies (1989), to his collaboration with Deleuze,What is Philosophy? (1991). InChaosmosis, Guattari proposes an analysis of subjectivity in terms of four functors: (1) material, energetic, and semiotic fluxes; (2) concrete and abstract machinicphyla; (3)virtual universes of value; and (4) finite existential territories.[13] This scheme attempts to grasp the heterogeneity of components involved in the production of subjectivity, as Guattari understands it, which include both signifyingsemiotic components as well as "a-signifyingsemiological dimensions" (which work "in parallel or independently of" any signifying function that they may have).[14]
On 29 August 1992, two weeks after an interview for theGreek television curated byYiorgos Veltsos,[15] Guattari died inLa Borde from a heart attack.[16][17]
In 1995, the posthumous release of Guattari'sChaosophy published essays and interviews concerning Guattari's work as director of the experimental La Borde and his collaborations with Deleuze. The collection includes essays such as "Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring Machines," cosigned by Deleuze (with whom he had coauthoredAnti-Oedipus andA Thousand Plateaus), and "Everybody Wants To Be a Fascist." It provides an introduction to Guattari's theories on "schizoanalysis", a process that developsSigmund Freud'spsychoanalysis but which pursues a more experimental and collective approach towards analysis.
In 1996, another collection of Guattari's essays, lectures, and interviews,Soft Subversions, was published, which traces the development of his thought and activity throughout the 1980s ("the winter years"). His analyses of art, cinema, youth culture, economics, and power formations, develop concepts such as "micropolitics," "schizoanalysis," and "becoming-woman," which aim to liberate subjectivity and open up new horizons for political and creative resistance to the standardizing and homogenizing processes of global capitalism (which he calls "Integrated World Capitalism") in the "post-media era." For example, he used the term "micropolitics" to delimit a certain level of observation of social practices (theunconscious economy, where there is a certain flexibility in the expression of desire and institution) and, practically, to define, in asegregated world, the field of intervention of "people who work to interest themselves in thediscourse ofthe other."[18]
Note: Many of the essays found in these works have been individually translated and can be found in the English collections.
Other collaborations
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