Deleuze and Guattaris Conception of Desi PDF

Deleuze and Guattaris Conception of Desire: Its Philosophical Anthropological Implications and Political
Consequences. International Deleuze Conference Symposium 2012 Henan University, Kaifeng, PR China. Ed. Jihai Gao,
Paul Patton, and Jing Yin. Kaifeng: Henan University Press, 2014.
Author Information
Rockwell F. Clancy
UM-SJTU JI
rockwell.clancy@sjtu.edu.cn
Title
Deleuze and Guattaris Conception of Desire in Anti-Oedipus
Its Philosophical Anthropological Implications and Political Consequences
Keywords
desire, psychoanalysis, praxis, Freud, Lacan, Marx
Word count
4753 without title page, footnotes, or bibliography
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DELEUZE AND GUATTARIS CONCEPTION OF DESIRE IN ANTI-OEDIPUS
ITS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES
INTRODUCTION
Deleuze and Guattaris conception of desire stands at the heart of their criticisms of
psychoanalysis and the political program they develop in Anti-Oedipus. Although this notion
is clearly divorced from a commonsense understanding in terms of wish, want, demand, etc.,
without these as touchstones not only is it difficult to conceive what they mean by desire but
also desires political import. Despite the fact Deleuze and Guattaris conception of desire is
frequently referred to in secondary literature, it remains a stubbornly opaque notion.
Secondary works to date either largely dodge the issue, explaining how the concept
gets constructed and how it works rather than what desire means (Holland 2005, 53), or
explain Deleuze and Guattaris conception of desire in polymorphous, early (Freudian)
psychoanalytic terms, where the objects and aims of desire are variable. Although a
conception of this type is by no means foreign to Deleuze and Guattaris view, alone it fails
to capture sufficiently what they mean by desire.
To better understand this notion my paper focuses on two claims Deleuze and
Guattari make regarding the nature of desire in Anti-Oedipus. First, there is nothing
specifically psychical about desire. Second, desire and labor are the same in nature while
occupying different regimes. I argue these claims open onto two conceptions of desire,
implying different understandings of the relationship between mind and body and
supporting different understandings of the relationship between individuals and community.
I show not only that these two conceptions of desire imply fundamentally different
conceptions of philosophical anthropology i.e., accounts of human nature but also that
each supports a different understanding of the nature of political activity.
1. A REPRESENTATIVE ACCOUNT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS - MIND OVER BODY

In the first place it is necessary to explain how and why one would conceive of desire
as something specifically psychical. In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari associate a
conception of this type with psychoanalysis. Time and again they criticize what they refer to
as psychoanalysis representative account of the unconscious, an account I argue that implies
the superiority of mind over body. Insofar as Deleuze and Guattari equate the unconscious
with desire, this seems like an apt point of departure. What exactly it means for
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psychoanalysis to subscribe to a representative account of the unconscious, however, is less
than clear. For Deleuze and Guattari, I would argue, Freudian psychoanalysis supposes a
dualistic conception of the relationship between mind and body, one in which the mind is
given both ontological and explanatory priority that ultimately results in a kind of linguistic
idealism in the thought of Lacan. To understand this it is necessary to turn to Freuds
thought.
Freud subscribes to what might be described as a largely psychic, representative
account of the unconscious a conception modeled on and determined by the mechanisms
of primary or psychic repression based on neurosis as its starting point and touchstone.1
Freud conceives of the unconscious as something specifically mental that simply mirrors or
represents conscious content in an inverted fashion, a process understood in terms of
natural biological processes of actively giving up thoughts and behaviors that are adaptively
disadvantageous, which results in psychopathology if not sufficiently carried out. 2 To
understand how a psychoanalytic account of the unconscious constitutes a representative,
mirror-double of consciousness, one should keep in mind a description by Freud of the
contents of the unconscious: Indeed, of many of these latent states we have to assert that
the only point in which they differ from states which are conscious is just in the lack of
consciousness of them (Freud 1915, 112). These latent states are like images, and the
distinction between conscious and unconscious states is explained in terms of the amount of
consciousness attached to these images. In this description the contents of the unconscious
are the same as those of consciousness, except the former lack consciousness.
Although Freud is quick to point out especially in earlier works such as Interpretation
of Dreams that processes that govern the unconscious are different from those that govern
consciousness, his model of the unconscious is essentially that of a mirror where images in
the unconscious are just distorted representations of consciousness. The English novelist
D.H. Lawrence to whom Deleuze and Guattari frequently refer in Anti-Oedipus criticizes
a psychoanalytic account of the unconscious for precisely this reason: We have actually to
go back to our own unconscious. But not to the unconscious which is the inverted reflection
of our ideal consciousness (Lawrence 1921, 13). Deleuze and Guattaris criticisms of

1 See Freud 1923, 15 concerning the repressed as a prototype of the unconscious. Regarding neurosis as
psychoanalysis starting point and touchstone, see Deleuze 2001, 24 and Deleuze 1990, 15.
2 See Van Haute and Geyskens, 107 and 128 concerning repression as a natural biological process.
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psychoanalysis thus concern a conception of the unconscious as a mirror double of
consciousness, where its defining characteristic would be psychical activity representing the
contents of consciousness in a different fashion.
However, if psychoanalysis were simply a therapeutic practice with a set of
somewhat outlandish axioms to explain its practice, it is unlikely psychoanalysis would
arouse the perennial interest and disgust it does. Rather, psychoanalysis most important
contribution to the history of thought is a conception of human nature. Unique to and
especially interesting and disturbing about this account is the centrality of madness, sexuality,
irrationality, violence, etc. a far cry from either Plato or Aristotles accounts of human
beings as gregarious and contemplative. 3 It seems the target of Deleuze and Guattaris
criticisms in Anti-Oedipus is less psychoanalysis as such than the much broader and more
influential conception of human nature it implies, and that their engagements with
psychoanalysis should be understood from the perspective of human nature. Central to this
account are metaphysical suppositions regarding the priority given to mind over body. To
understand this though one should turn to Deleuzes account of power in Nietzsche and
Philosophy.
There Deleuze distinguishes Nietzsches philosophy of power from Hobbes and
Schopenhauers. Both Hobbes and Schopenhauer, says Deleuze, conceive of power in terms
of representation. This claim implies more basic assumptions regarding the nature of power
and the primacy of mind over body. Both Hobbes and Schopenhauer conceive of power as
an object as a thing. Since one can acquire things one would also be capable of acquiring
power. One would first have an idea or mental representation of power as an object, and
then attempt to acquire it in reality. This framework is central to the account of desire
Deleuze and Guattari criticize in Anti-Oedipus.
With respect to a conception of desire in these terms, they write that, the traditional
logic of desire is all wrong from the very outsetmaking us choose between production and
acquisition. From the moment that we place desire on the side of acquisition, we make desire
an idealistic (dialectical, nihilistic) conception, which causes us to look upon it as primarily a
lack: a lack of an object, a lack of the real object (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 25).
Conceiving of desire as the movement towards the acquisition of an object one lacks thus
supposes psychical processes of ideation and mentalization. For this reason, although

3 See Van Haute and Geyskens, xi-xxii for a fuller elucidation of this account.
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Deleuze and Guattari credit Kant with formulating a productive conception of desire, they
criticize his account for being purely mental. The reality of the object, insofar as it is
produced by desire, is thus a psychic reality (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 25), one that
supposes a conception of human nature where psychical processes are given ontological and
explanatory priority.
With respect to psychoanalysis, this results in the following: The whole of desiring-
production is crushed, subjected to the requirements of representation, and to the dreary games
of what is representative and represented in representation. And there is the essential thing:
the reproduction of desire gives way to a simple representation, in the process as well as
theory of the cure. The productive unconscious makes way for an unconscious that knows
only how to express itself express itself in myth, in tragedy, in dreams (Deleuze and
Guattari 1972, 54). However, not only is this account of desire significant for the
relationship between mind and body it implies, but also the relationship between individuals
and community it supports.
2. DESIRE AS LACK GOAL-DIRECTED ACTIVITY

Conceived in terms of lack, this conception of desire supports an understanding of
the relationship between individuals and community in terms of goal-directed activity, where
the constitution of groups and the integration of individuals into community would be part
of one and the same process animated by mutual interests and common goals. In the first
place this can be understood in terms of Hegels thought. A tacit yet sustained critique of
Hegel runs throughout the whole of Anti-Oedipus of much more importance for an
understanding of this work than has been recognized to date that would exclude any
understanding of Deleuze and/or Deleuze and Guattaris thought in terms of a 19th century
conception of dialectic. This connection can be established through the influence of
Alexandre Kojves reading of Hegel on Lacan. More specifically, Kojves attribution of an
end-of-history thesis to Hegels thought.
For Hegel the actualization of ones individuality consists in a dialectical process
whereby the particular recognizes as its ground the universal. Concretely this process
consists in a persons recognition of and proper orientation within a wider social milieu
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as its ground.4 As actual substance, it [Spirit] is a nation, as actual consciousness, it is the citizens
of that nation. This consciousness has its essence in simple Spirit, and the certainty of itself
in the actuality of this Spirit, in the nation as a whole; it has its truth, therefore, not in
something that is not actual, but in a Spirit that exists and prevails (Hegel, 267). The social
milieu to which Hegel refers is specific, the political order of the 19th century Prussian state
significant here is the fact that Kojve associates this with Western liberal democracy. This
connection links Deleuze and Guattaris tacit criticisms of Hegel via Lacan in Anti-Oedipus to
their explicit criticisms of opinion and consensus in What is Philosophy?
One can here identify two distinct yet related conceptions of goal: first, individuality
as the outcome of ones proper orientation within a wider social milieu, second, the coming
to fruition of a political order as the realization of historys march. For Hegel these are part
of one and the same movement towards the realization of Spirit a persons development
towards individuality supposes and is conditioned by this development of the community,
just as the development of the community supposes and is conditioned by a persons
development towards individuality. Connecting these processes are mutual aims and shared
interests, where relations between individuals and community would be based on sundry
attempts to acquire that which one does not possess ultimately supported by an understanding of
desire in terms of lack. The tacit critique of Hegel that runs throughout Anti-Oedipus can be
established via similarities between Hegel and Lacans conceptions of desire.
Lacans conception against which Deleuze and Guattari rail throughout Anti-Oedipus
is, in fact, modeled on Hegels. In the first place this concerns the role desire plays in the
relation between individuals and community. In the second place it concerns the non- or a-
biological nature of desire. Versus either need or demand in Lacan or consumption in
Hegel the aim of a uniquely human desire (desire of desire) is not the fulfillment of
biological need. Rather, the most human form of desire is the desire to be desired (Lacan,
436). Lacan says, for instance, that the human child depends on its mothers love (desire of
desire) much more than biological satisfaction (Lacan, 463). A desire of this type can have as
its consequence precisely the opposite of the organisms survival as is evident in Hegels
master-slave dialectic. For this reason it is not surprising that Lacan associates desires

4For a discussion of the way in which this takes place in terms of the dialectic where the slave as the
particular and the master as the universal give rise to the citizen as individual see Kojve, 59-60 and 234 ff.
and Findlay, 321.
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movement with the insistence of the signifier, which he also associates with the death drive
both of which result from this conception of desire.5 According to Deleuze and Guattari,
however, this conception of desire is itself socially and historically conditioned. They touch
on this in their discussions of capitalism in Anti-Oedipus.
Capitalisms ultimate goal is the production of capital producing and exchanging
goods to extract surplus value for the sake of producing capital (Marx, 254). For this reason,
says Marx, capitalisms ultimate product is money (Marx, 247). Unlike basic needs that
have specific, concrete points of termination as their goal, capitalisms goal is general,
abstract, and interminable in nature (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 248). 6 It exists for itself
alone, having neither meaning nor purpose beyond itself. Through this process capitalism
introduces lack where there is always too much, by effecting the absorption of
overabundant resources that ensures the integration of groups and individuals into the
system (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 235-236).
Despite its abstract nature, capitalism structures the whole of reality, giving meaning
to things and activities in relation to this goal, thereby affecting the integration of individuals
into community. Explaining this process in terms of desire, Deleuze and Guattari write that
the welding of desire to lack is precisely what gives desire collective and personal ends,
goals or intentions instead of desire taken in the real order of production, which behaves
as a molecular phenomenon devoid of any goal or intention (Deleuze and Guattari 1972,
342). Conceiving of desire in terms of lack thus results in an understanding of the relation
between individuals and community in terms of goal-directed activity.
A line of continuity thus runs from Hegel through Lacan and Habermas, one in
which relations between individuals and community would be a result of the natural
outgrowth of a potential in individuals that finds its ends in a particular relation with a
community variously explained in terms of the development of Spirit in Hegel, a proper
understanding of desire in Lacan, or the end speech-acts have to truth in Habermas. One
could argue that, at bottom, Deleuze and Guattari are critical of Hegel, Lacan, and
Habermas for similar reasons, conceiving of relations between individuals and community in
these terms. All of these imply a tacit commitment to a thought based on the theological

5See, for example, Kojve 45 and 248 regarding suicide for a further discussion of these points.
6See Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 254 regarding the disappearance of enjoyment as an end in the process of
consumption.
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notion of final causality, which supports a conception of the political that consists in the
creation of agreement or consensus.
On this score Kojve says the following of Hegel: Generally speaking: the historical
movement arises from the Future and passes through the Past in order to realize itself in the
Present or as temporal Present (Kojve, 136). Spinozas thought is central to Deleuze and
Deleuze and Guattaris, and Spinoza is of course highly critical of final causality.7 Given the
centrality of these suppositions to Western thought, it is apparent that the import of Deleuze
and Guattaris conception of desire in Anti-Oedipus reaches far beyond psychoanalysis as
such.
3. A PRODUCTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS DESIRE AS PRAXIS

In the second place it is necessary to explain how and why desire and labor would be
considered the same in nature. This open onto a second, positive conception of desire
Deleuze and Guattari develop in Anti-Oedipus, similar in nature to Marx and Engels account
of praxis. This consists in an undifferentiated (neither subjective nor objective) productive
power in terms of which human beings fashion themselves at the same time they fashion
their environments. 8 Taking schizophrenia as its starting point and touchstone, this
conception is creative and somatic in nature, determined by mechanisms of secondary or
social repression. 9 It is again necessary to turn to Deleuzes discussion of power in
Nietzsche.
He says that for Nietzsche power is productive in nature, a creative force close to
what Spinoza means by conatus (Deleuze 1962, 57-59). In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, Deleuze
equates desire, conatus, and power (Deleuze 1980, 58-62 and 97-104). This is not a power for
which one strives, wills, or wishes which would be to understand power in terms of
representation and acquisition but a power everyone always already possesses. Instead of

7 For instance, see Ethics IV Pref., as well as the way in which this constitutes a fundamental rejection of a
theological worldview in Deleuze 1980, 20 and 60.
8 Concerning the way desire shows itself as a process of disorganized and haphazard production in
schizophrenia, see their discussion of Henri Michauxs description of the schizophrenic table and Lvi-Strausss
characterization of bricolage (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 6-7). Buchanan says that, for Deleuze and Guattari,
desiring production exists everywhere but is only visible in its pure state in schizophrenia (Buchanan, 43).
9 Regarding schizophrenia as a starting point, Deleuze and Guattari write that the relationships of neurosis,
psychosis, and also perversion depend on the situation of each one with regard to the process, and on the
manner in which each one represents a mode of interruption of the process Each of these forms has
schizophrenia as a foundation; schizophrenia as a process is the only universal (Deleuze and Guattari 1972,
136).
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basing their conception of desire on need, wish, want, etc. central to which are psychical
operations that entail giving priority to the mind over the body Deleuze and Guattari base
the conception of desire they develop in Anti-Oedipus on this Nietzschean account of power,
about which there is nothing specifically psychical. Desire is something one does, a part of
each and every action one takes.
Further, at various points throughout Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari equate
desiring-production with social-production: The truth of the matter, they say, is that social
production is purely and simply desiring-production itself under determinate conditionsthat libido has no
need of any mediation or sublimation, any psychic operation, any transformation, in order to
invade and invest the productive forces and the relations of production (Deleuze and
Guattari 1972, 29). For these reasons Deleuze and Guattaris conception of desire should be
understood in terms of Marx and Engels conception of praxis a productive force through
which human beings change themselves while changing their environments: By producing
their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. This mode
of production must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical
existence of individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite
form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their
life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what
they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the
material conditions determining their production (Marx and Engels, 114). Referring to this
understanding by Marx and Engels, Deleuze and Guattari write that the objective being of
desire is the Real in and of itself. There is no particular form of existence that can be labeled
psychic reality. As Marx notes, what exists in fact is not lack, but passion, as a natural and
sensuous object (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 26-27).
Hence, so as not to confuse what Deleuze and Guattari mean by desire with need,
wish, demand, etc., every time they refer to desire one might replace the term with praxis. On
this view, desire and the unconscious would be anything not specifically conscious, including
pre-, non-, or a-conscious phenomena. Hence, they write that in reality the unconscious
belongs to the realm of physics; the body without organs and its intensities are not
metaphors, but matter itself (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 283). Deleuze and Guattari make
clear not only that there is nothing specifically psychical about the unconscious in fact,
they say the opposite, that it belongs to physics but also that the body without organs
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and intensities are themselves a part of the unconscious and physical in nature. They are
constitutive of this undifferentiated process of production: Structures do not exist in the
mind, but in the real; there is nothing mental about desire (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 97).
Here Deleuze and Guattari clearly have Lacan in mind when they refer to the real
versus the registers of the imaginary and symbolic. They elsewhere write that Dlire was at
work in reality, we saw only reality all around us, taking the imaginary and the symbolic to be
illusory categories (Deleuze 1990, 144). 10 Their frequent claims that desire and the
unconscious are productive rather than representative in nature should be understood in
these terms. This helps to explain the primary role they give to secondary-social (rpression)
rather than primary-psychic repression (refoulement) in Anti-Oedipus.
Deleuze and Guattari seemingly endorse Wilhelm Reichs position that one can
identify a turn for the worse in Freuds work when psychic repression is given precedence
over social repression, when Freud accepts the idea of a primary anxiety that supposedly
touches off psychic repression in an endogenous manner (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 117).
Rather than basing their conception of the unconscious and desire on primary-psychic
repression understood in terms of a natural, biological process of giving up thoughts and
behaviors that are adaptively disadvantageous secondary-social repression stands at the
center of Deleuze and Guattaris account. More specifically, whereas for Freud primary-
psychic repression determines the nature of psychical organization that in turn determines
the nature of social organization, for Deleuze and Guattari secondary-social repression
determines the nature of social organization that in turn determines the nature of psychical
organization (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 118-119).11 To understand this one should again
turn to Nietzsche and Philosophy, specifically, Deleuzes discussion of the role of the
philosopher as symptomatologist.
As a symptomatologist, the philosopher uncovers the types of wills and forces that
animate phenomena, the modes of existence implied by statements, thoughts, and feelings
(Deleuze 1962, 78). What this supposes it that the things people think, feel, and believe are
the result of the wider milieus or modes of existence to which they belong. Through social

10 Further, see Holland 1999, 13 regarding desire as power, and power as labor in connection with the thought
of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, Buchanan, 48 for a discussion of desire as something one does, as well as Negri
1982, 10 where the conception of power puissance (potentia) versus pouvoir (potestas) Negri develops in the
thought of Spinoza is described as the productive activity of labor.
11 See Holland 1999, 10 regarding social repression as determinative of psychical repression.
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organization then secondary-social repression determines individuals as specific sets of
relations individuals as relations between thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. However,
just as there is nothing specifically psychical about desire, neither is there anything
specifically human or organic about desire. The unconscious is Rousseauistic, being man-
nature, an undifferentiated process of production that involves the transformation of
subjects as much as of objects, of culture as much as of nature (Deleuze and Guattari 1972,
112). Desire concerns and involves non-human nature and artifacts as much as human
beings and living creatures, conceived as a vast reservoir of productive power that involves
living things as much as inorganic stuff.12 At bottom they develop and argue for the view
that the world one inhabits and the way it is perceived results from the organization of this
power.
After writing Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari say their notion of assemblage
(lagencement) is meant to replace that of desiring-machines from Anti-Oedipus. As opposed to
characterizing this relation as one of replacement, however, it seems more accurate to say
their notion of assemblage more clearly brings out what is already at stake in their notion of
desire. One should understand their conception of desire retrospectively through that of
assemblage, such that when they say assemblages are hodgepodges and Hodgepodges are
combinations of interpenetrating bodies, one should understand the nature of desire in
terms of interpenetrating bodies (Deleuze 2001, 177). Hence, just as this conception of
desire implies an understanding of the relation between mind and body, so too does it
support an account of the relation between individuals and community.
4. VIBRATIONS SYMPATHY
As opposed to conceiving relations between individuals and community in terms of
goal-directed activity based on an idealistic understanding of desire as lack, Deleuze and
Guattari conceive of these in terms of what I call sympathy. In the first place this can be
understood in terms of Deleuzes claim in his reading of Spinoza that a things
perfection consists in its capacity for affection (Deleuze 1980, 97-104 and 124-127), and that

12See Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 285 for their discussion of Butlers claims that human beings constitute the
reproductive organs of vapor-engines just as vapor-engines constitute the reproductive organs of human
beings, Deleuze 1990, 178 regarding his conception of a non-organic life taking place through silicon rather
than the organic life of carbon, and Deleuze 1996, 52 concerning the role the stirrup plays in the assemblage to
which it belongs transforming the medieval world.
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the Ethics can be considered an ethnology of man and animal, insofar as it considers their
capacity for being affected (Deleuze 1980, 27). This capacity is central to the formation of
what Lawrence in his reading of Whitman refers to as the soul, a condition for the way
in which the self develops with others: He says sympathy. Feeling with. Feel with them as
they feel with themselves. Catching the vibration of their soul and flesh as we pass
(Lawrence 1923, 181).
Lawrences conception of sympathy and its relation to an American mode of
existence supposes, first and foremost, experimentation experimentation with new modes
of existence, ways of affecting ones body and mind and being affected by other bodies and
minds in turn. The emphasis is on random encounters and chance events. In this manner
one achieves the fullest-potentiality for affection. Relations between individuals and
community as ones of sympathy can be understood in terms of this development, and can
be defined as relations of shared perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.13 To understand the
metaphysical underpinning of this position, it is necessary to turn to Deleuze and Guattaris
conception of the body without organs and its related notions of individuality and
community.
The body without organs is similar in nature to Spinozistic substance. Deleuze and
Guattari write that, the body without organs is substance itself, and the partial objects, the
ultimate attributes or elements of substance (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 309). Rather than
the organism, central to which are the notions of substance and teleology, their model of the
body without organs jettisons these notions and emphasizes the productive, material nature
of reality.14 On this understanding the subject is neither a substance nor a locus of agency,
one with a fixed identity that would be determined by an end towards which it is tending.
Rather, they write that in the third synthesis, the conjunctive synthesis of
consumptionthe body without organs is in fact an egg, crisscrossed with axes, banded
with zones, localized with areas and fields, measured off by gradients, traversed by
potentials, marked by thresholds Phenomena of individuation and sexualisation are
produced within these fields (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 84-85). It is a strange subject,
however, with no fixed identity, wandering about over the body without organs (Deleuze

13 For his further characterization of this relation, see Lawrence 1923, 183-184 as well.
14 See Deleuze 2001, 191 where Spinozas thought is characterized as one in which finality plays no role, as well
as Negri, 130 where Spinoza is described as an anomaly precisely because he does away with the idea of
finalism.
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and Guattari 1972, 16). In On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature, Deleuze
refers to individuals as unique chances, packets of thoughts, perceptions, and feelings
determined by chance encounters with the environments they inhabit and other individuals
with whom they interact (Deleuze 1996, 30).15
Not only subjectivity but also communities are individuals conceived along these
broadly Spinozistic lines16 unique sets of relations, chance occurrences that result from the
interaction of what Deleuze and Guattari refer to in Anti-Oedipus as partial objects and flows:
in reality, it is a question of encounters or conjunctions, of derivatives and resultants
between decoded flows (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 267). 17 On this view communities
would be larger, further-reaching aggregates of modes and alterations of a single, all-
encompassing substance than are individuals sets of relations that mutually reinforce and
strengthen each other. In Anti-Oedipus they write that, neither men nor women are clearly
defined personalities, but rather vibrations, flows, schizzes, and knots. The ego refers to
personological co-ordinates from which it results, persons in turn refer to familial co-
ordinates The task of schizoanalysis is that of tirelessly taking apart egos and their
presuppositions; liberating the prepersonal singularities they enclose and repress; mobilizing
the flows they would be capable of transmitting, receiving, or intercepting; establishing
always further and more sharply the schizzes and the breaks well below conditions of
identity; and assembling the desiring-machines that countersect everyone and group
everyone with others (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 362).18
This same conceptual framework is evident when Deleuze describes the relationship
between Heathcliffe and Catherine in Wuthering Heights as one of interpenetrating intensities
(Deleuze 1990, 116), as well as his description of the body and the web of the spider forming

15 Regarding the schizophrenic identity as one organized on the organless body as a proper name or unique set
of relations, see Deleuze 2001, 26.
16 Spinoza writes that if we precede in this way to infinity, we shall easily conceive that the whole of nature as
one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change to the whole
individual (IIL7S). In a sense ones body is a community as is the Milky Way galaxy. From this we
understand how it can happen that we love or hate some things without any cause known to us, but only (as
they say) from sympathy or antipathy (IIIP15S).
17 Further, see Deleuze 1980, 40 & 125 regarding experimentation in Spinozas thought. On Deleuzes reading,
random encounters and chance events are necessary in the move from knowledge of the first to knowledge of
the second kind. It is only through being effected favorably by another body that one seeks to inquire what it is
about that other body that agrees with ones own their commonality that causes and allows one to discover
the common notions. See Deleuze 1980, 54-58 and Deleuze 2001, 192 for this.
18 See Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 351 where they refer to Lawrences account of sexuality as a matter of flows,
where people consist in vibrations.
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one and the same machine, where the slightest vibration causes the spider to spring
(Deleuze 2001, 158). Elsewhere Deleuze refers to individuals as proper names, unique sets
of relations (Deleuze 2001, 158). Both individuals and communities result from the
productive processes of connecting, coding, and conjuncting according to the syntheses of
the unconscious; our choices in matters of love are at the crossroads of vibrations, which
is to say that they express connections, disjunctions, and conjunctions of flows that cross
through a society, entering and leaving it, linking it up with other societies, ancient or
contemporary, remote or vanished, dead or yet to be born (Deleuze and Guattari 1972,
352).19
However, when and where this takes place in relation to which flows and partial
objects is undetermined.20 One could say then that sympathy consists in shared thought,
perceptions, and feelings,21 and insofar as philosophy and art create new ways of thinking,
perceiving, and feeling, the conception of desire Deleuze and Guattari develop in Anti-
Oedipus supports a conception of the political that consists in the creation of genuinely new
modes of existence.
CONCLUSION
In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari discuss two different conceptions of desire.
The first is idealistic in nature, where the mind is given priority over the body, which they
associate with a psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious as representative and
desire in terms of lack. This first conception of desire supports an understanding of goal-
directed activity as providing the basis for relations between individuals and community,
which in turn supports an understanding of political activity as one consisting in the
production of consensus. The second conception of desire Deleuze and Guattari develop in
Anti-Oedipus is productive and material in nature, which I argued should be understood in
terms of Marx and Engels conception of praxis. On this account sympathy would lie at the

19 See Buchanan, 95 concerning subjects and communities being formed in one and the same way, as
amalgamations of syntheses.
20 Further, see Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 289 and 309 regarding the chance nature of these occurrences.
21 This supposition lies as the heart of Spinozas claim as well as one of a similar nature in Hobbess thought
(Hobbes, 120) that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be
good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it
(IIIP9S).
14 of 17
basis of relations between individuals and community, supporting an understanding of
political activity as one consisting in the production of new modes of existence.
15 of 17
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_____ 1980. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia vol. II. Trans. Brian Massumi.
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Deleuze and Guattaris Conception of Desire: Its Philosophical Anthropological Implications and Political

1. A REPRESENTATIVE ACCOUNT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS - MIND OVER BODY

2. DESIRE AS LACK GOAL-DIRECTED ACTIVITY

3. A PRODUCTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS DESIRE AS PRAXIS

where people consist in vibrations.

Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Guattaris Anti-Oedipus. London: Continuum, 2008.

Findlay, J.N. Hegel: A Re-Examination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

_____ 1900. Interpretation of Dreams. SE IV and V.

_____ 1923. The Ego and the Id. SE XIX.

Hobbes. Leviathan. London: Penguin, 1985.

_____ 1923. Studies in Classic American Literature. London: Penguin, 1977.

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