Summary: Anti-Oedipus, the book by Deleuze and Guattari, goes beyond Marxian and Freudian traditions to analyse the relationship between desire and reality (and thus capitalism). It positions itself against both “sad militants” and “technicians of desire”, and it answers practical questions of how to best enter political discourses and overturn the status quo, but it is mainly a book against fascism and it tracks down fascism in all of its forms. There is a fascism in us all and in our behaviour “that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us”. What we need is political action without paranoia. We need to leave negative and fixed categories like law, limit, lack, unity, system etc behind and look towards positive different multiplicities and flows. We need to act, think, and desire in multiple, diverse ways of juxtaposition, in mobile nomadic arrangements.We need a politics that intensifies thought and analysis and thus multiplies the forms of intervention and political action, and ultimately multiplies persons to achieve de-individualisation. We need to realise the political and revolutionary power of the relationship between desire and reality. We need to stop looking for and loving power.

Source: Michel Foucault (1972) Against fascism. Preface to “Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe”. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972. English translation “Anti-Oedipus” by Hurley, Seem, and Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

(Full text at cnqzu.com [2MB PDF], English)

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