The Machine at the Heart of Desire:
Felix Guattari's Molecular Revolution [part 4 of 4]
_Works & Day_ 2.2 (1985): 63-85
Charles J. Stivale
Wayne State University
4. "Mecanosphere": Schizoanalysis and the "Global" Molecule
While Guattari devotes the one hundred and forty pages of "Semiotic
Scaffoldings to condemning structuralizing modes of interpretation
and to developing numerous concepts of "schizo-analysis," there are
but a few sections of _La Revolution moleculaire_ in which he
provides actual examples and results of such an approach: the
untranslated essays included in the section entitled "le Cinema: Un
Art Mineur" (Cinema: A Minor Art), particularly "Les cinemachines
desirantes" (Desiring Cinemachines), offer a fruitful glimpse at
schizo-analysis applied to one form of artistic expression, the
mostly untranslated essays subtitled "Devenir enfant, voyou,
pede..." (Becoming Child, Punk, Gay...) all reveal some aspect of
the concept of "becoming" elaborated in "Concrete Machines" (cf. MR
154-62). \19
This essay and another, "Becoming a Woman" (1975; MR, section 3),
already announce the next phase of Guattari's work, that of
completing the elaboration of the schizo-analytic concepts and
simultaneously putting them into practice. For example, Guattari
defines "concrete machines" as the mode of authority used by the
strata of power (for example, the capitalistic system) "to tolerate,
and to turn to its own advantage, the lines of escape (_lignes de
fuite_) inherent in the development of productive forces and the
de-territorialization of production relations" (MR 156). In other
words, Guattari calls for "a politics of inter-stratification" which
functions in one manner or another:
"Either an action will close in and become stratified, or it will
open out onto diagrammatic lines of escape [_lignes de fuite_]. The
concrete machine opens up the possible, either in the form of
signifying circles, centred perhaps on the features of faciality, or
in the form of post-signifying spirals that let the lines of escape
go off at a tangent. In the worst case, the concrete machine
develops heavy, figurative territorialities, operating on at least
two dimensions; in the second, it disperses a de-territorialized
line in particle signs that tend to elude the dimensions of time and
space altogether." (MR 157) \20
This inter-stratic process, the possibilities of concretization or
of liberation of flows, is a 'becoming' which Guattari calls
_visage'ite'_ (faciality) and which functions "to enable the system
to gain semiotic control of individuals, to connect them with a
decoded flux of work.... Capitalist faciality always exists to serve
a signifying formula; it is the means whereby the signifier takes
control, the way it organizes a certain mode of individuated
subjectivation, and the collective madness of a machine that creates
consciousness without any content, and of a becoming that cannot be
perceived" (MR 162). \21
Likewise, Guattari proposes the term "becoming-woman" or in
molecular opposition to the molar definition of homosexuality as
perversion. Whereas the libido on the social body is identified as
being male, phallocratic, and binarizing all values, on the sexual
body the libido "is engaged in a becoming-woman.... It's because it
is not too far from the binarism of phallic power that
becoming-woman can play this intermediary role, this role as
mediator in relation to other sexed becomings" (my translation; cf.
MR 234). Rather than defining some "eternal feminine," Guattari
insists that "becoming-woman" manifests itself in numerous modes as
the necessary step for an individual to break with "the phallic rat
race inherent in all power formations" and to move on to subsequent
forms of becoming: "becoming-animal, cosmos, letter, color, music"
(MR 234).
Two years after the publication of this collection of essays,
Guattari continued his elaboration of schizo-analytic concepts with
the untranslated _L'inconscient machinique, essais de
schizo-analyse_ (The Machinic Unconscious, Essays on
Schizo-analysis). \22 However, in _Molecular Revolution_, the reader
is left to guess what the subsequent direction of Guattari's work
might be on the basis of two essays. On the one hand, in a set of
notes "on minority thinking" entitled "Plans for the Planet," \23 he
outlines several hypotheses for the development of world economic
and social relations. Here, he calls for resistance to "integrated
world capitalism" through the "proliferation of marginal groups,"
i.e. the micro-political struggle which he had previously proposed
and in which he was directly involved into the early 1980s on behalf
of the Italian _autonomia_ movement.
On the other hand, the final essay of _Molecular Revolution_,
"Capitalistic Systems, Structures and Process," co-authored by Eric
Alliez \24 is an outline of a project of analyzing capitalist
"semiotization" and six modes of "capitalist valorization," which
are here examined from the perspective of the relationships among
each dominant economic semiotic "cluster":
-- the "Priorities of the Market" (Commercial proto-capitalism,
world economies centered on a network of Cities; liberal
capitalism);
-- the "Priorities of the State" (Asiatic mode of production,
Nazi-type war economy; State capitalism); and
-- the "Priorities of Production" (Colonial monopoly economy;
integrated world capitalism).
While this essay certainly can stand alone on the strength of its
analytical clarity, readers attentive to the development of the
schizo-analytic project will also identify its theoretical bases,
already present in _Anti-Oedipus_ (particularly, chapter 3), but
enhanced by the refined conceptual apparatus presented in
_L'inconscient machinique_ and _Mille plateaux_, which aims at
nothing less than a global analysis of what Deleuze and Guattari
call the "mecanosphere" or machinic universe.
As the "only game in town" for anglophone readers [NB: and now
(1994) no longer so since MR is out of print] interested in
exploring the mind which is just as responsible for
"schizo-analysis" as Gilles Deleuze, the translations collected in
_Molecular Revolution_ are the starting point for considering
Guattari's original and challenging mode of reflection. However, my
ambivalence toward this edition should be quite evident: the
objectionable editorial choices and weaknesses in translations are a
result, at best, of a poor understanding of the linguistic,
philosophical, psychoanalytic, and political implications of
Guattari's overall project. Thus, the time has not yet come [NB:
still true in the mid-1990s!] when Anglo-American readers can fully
judge the importance of "schizo-analysis" and "micro-politics" for
contemporary thought. But if Guattari's recent work is any
indication of present and future directions, \25 the time has
certainly come for recognizing what his analyses may offer us for
escaping the impasses of post-capitalism, post-Marxism and
post-structuralism.
Notes
19/ Both the essay "J'ai meme rencontre' des travelos heureux" (I
Have Even Met Happy Travellos) and "Becoming-Woman" are translated
in "Polysexuality" _Semiotext(e)_ 4.1 (1981). On problems which this
concept of "becoming-woman" poses for feminist studies, see Jardine.
20/ Guattari provides some interesting exampes of this process:
"Consider the practice of transcendental meditation so fashionable
in the United States: we may find it developing into an organless
body opening desire out onto an a-signifying world, or, equally,
clos-ing in upon a signifying activity that alienates the
individuals in line with the values of authority. In most cases,
transcendental mediators are doing both things at once.... In
Hitler's fascism, for in-stance, at a molar level, there were
concrete machines - military, police, aesthetic, etc. - managing the
conjunction of a longstanding, indeed an archaic, stratified
authority with abstract machines that were still 'feeling their way'
along highly de-territorialized paths: thus such modeern themes as
State capitalism and science came paradoxically to be associated
with completely regressive ideas like 'rapacious Jews taking over
the world', 'purity of blood' and so on. Similarly, we can see the
conjunction between Stalin, the little father of the people, Ivan
the Terrible, and the running of a bureaucratic planned State. The
concrete machines metabolize the conjunction of semiotic, material
and social fluxes independently of the relationships of causality or
genealogy that may belong to the various strata redundancies" (MR
157).
21/ In discussing how he and Guattari worked together, Gilles
Deleuze has elaborated the derivation of the concept of "faciality":
"Felix was working on black holes; this notion from astronomy
fascinates him. The black hole is what captures you and doesn't let
you go.... Meanwhile, I was working on a white wall: what is a
_white wall_, a screen, how can one smooth out a wall, and let a
line of flight pass through? We didn't join the two notions, we
noticed that each tended toward the other by itself, but precisely
to produce something that wasn't in either one. So black holes on a
white wall is precisely a face, a wide face with white cheeks,
pierced with black eyes, it doesn't yet resemble a face, it's rather
the assemblage or the abstract machine which is going to produce a
face. Suddenly the problem rebounds, politically: what do societies,
civilizations need to make this machine function, that is, need to
produce, to 'overcode' the entire body and head with a face, and for
what purpose? It's not a given, the face of the loved one, of the
boss, the facialization of the physical and social body... That's a
multiplicity, with at least three dimensions, astronomical,
aesthetic, political.... We use deterritorialized terms, that is,
torn from their field, in order to reterritorialize another notion,
the 'face,' 'faciality' as a social function" _Dialogues_ 24-25; my
translation).
22/ Guattari points out that although he composed this study alone,
"these essays are inseparable from the work that Gilles Deleuze and
I have been carrying on for several years.... Cf. our book in
collabora-tion, _Mille plateaux_" (15). While an examination of this
second volume of _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ is impossible here,
Guattari and Deleuze elaborate the schizo-analytic concepts as
related to the domains of psychoanalysis, ethics, linguistics,
pragmatics and semiotics, literature, music, politics, ethnology,
technology, mathematics, physics, and aesthetics. For essays related
to _Mille plateaux_, see _SubStance_ 44/45 (1984) [and _SubStance_
66 (1992)].
Guattari explains the organization of _L'inconscient rnachinique_ in
the introduction: after situating various problems and terms in an
in-troductory "synthetic glossary of a few essential conclusions,"
he presents six chapters and two annexes:
"- some questions of a linguistic and semiotic order whose
examination appeared to me essentially preliminary to any review of
the theory of the unconscious and especially the way the problem of
pragmatics is presently being addressed": chapter 2, "Sortir de la
langue" (Leaving Language);
"- some questions relating to assemblages of enunciation and to
pragmatic fields considered from the angle of unconscious phenomena
in the social field": chapter 3, "Agencements d'enoncia-tion,
transformations et champs pragmatiques" (Assemblages of enunciation,
transformations and pragmatic fields);
"- two fundamental categories of redundancies of the machinic
unconscious: the traits of faciality and refrains": chapter 4,
"Visage'ite' signifiante, visage'ite' diagrammatique" (Signifying
Faciality, Diagram-matic Faciality), and chapter 5, "Le temps des
ritournelles" (The Time of Refrains);
"- the bases on which we can construct a schizo-analytic pragmatic,
bases which are irreducible in relation to political and
micro-political problems": chapter 6, "Reperes pour une
schizo-analyse" (Reference Points for a Schizo-Analysis);
" - a machinic genealogy' of the aggregate of semiotic entities
presented throughout this work and which, to me, seem capable of
functioning in the framework of a pragmatic that would no longer be
in the exclusive province of linguistics and semiotics": chapter 7,
"Annexe. La traverse'e moleculaire des signes" (Annex. The
molecular crossing of signs);
" - the trajectory of traits of faciality and of refrains in the
work of Marcel Proust": "Les ritournelles du Temps Perdu" (The
Refrains of Lost Time).
23/ This essay also appears in translation as "The Proliferation of
Margins," in "Italy: Autonomia," _Semiotext(e)_ 3. 3 (1980).
24/ This essay appears in the first issue of _Change International_
(Fall 1983), of which Guattari was a member of the editorial group.
In some ways, this quarterly is a journal of schizo-analysis and
micro-politics, as revealed by certain "letters" of its introductory
"Alphabet du _Change International_": "_F_Iows, a thousand images, a
thousand mean-ings. Between the points, between the fields. Without
visible end... _N_omadism... _R_esisting and deterritorializing.
Resisting the ebb... _Z_ero: the zero point where we are. In order
to invent. In the word, in the body, in things. _The play which
changes alphabets" (2-3).
25/ Guattari has recently indicated that he will soon be publishing
three new books: a new collection of essays entitled _Les annees
d'hiver_ (The Years of Winter), a book on political theory
co-authored with Toni Negri entitled _Les nouveaux espaces de la
liberte') (New Spaces of Freedom), and an essay on his experience
with schi-zoanalysis in clinical practice [published as
_Cartographies schizoanalytiques_ (Schizoanalytic Cartographies);
see also his final works, _Les trois e'cologies_ (The Three
Ecologies), and _Chaosmose_].
------------------