Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Deleuze and Guattari state that reading a text is never a scholarly exercise in search of meaning. Instead, “it is a productive use of the literary machine, a montage of desiring-machines, a schizoid exercise that extracts from the text its revolutionary force” (106). I want to use this reading practice in order to extract the liberatory force within the literary machines constructed in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Although they center on “the revolutionary” as a driving force in their project, I argue that the term “liberatory” is more appropriate. While reading this set of books can be at times a disorienting process with seemingly disparate ideas floating throughout, there are certain concepts that share similar qualities and functions. The schizophrenic and becomings are two concepts which possess a freeing potential and that allow for an escape of rigid, oppressive, molar structures. Even though the oppressive structures that Deleuze and Guattari are trying to dismantle vary throughout Capitalism and Schizophrenia —the first volume geared towards psychoanalysis as opposed to the expanded focus of the second volume—the schizo and becomings have a unique role within their politics of subversion. I am interested in tracing the co-presence of the concepts of the schizophrenic and becomings in these volumes. While the concept of the schizophrenic is heavily present in Anti-Oedipus, it does not completely disappear in A Thousand Plateaus. Conversely, the concept of becoming as well as the rhizome are already at work in Anti-Oedipus. Given that Deleuze and Guattari associate several writers and their literary machines to these concepts, I will trace these connections using the continuous references to Artaud in both of the volumes, along with literary examples of Proust, ending with a consideration of the presence of Joan of Arc in these works to note how these concepts might transform throughout Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and the ways in which they contribute to Deleuze and Guattari’s liberatory project.
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