Schizoanalysis

Schizoanalysis was first introduced in 1972 by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Oedipus. Its formulation was continued in their follow-up work, A Thousand Plateaus. Schizoanalysis acquires many different definitions during the course of its development in their collaborative work and individually in the work of Guattari.

Schizoanalysis was developed over a long period of time as a response to the perceived shortcomings in the basic premises of analytic practice. Guattari was directly confronted with such problems in the work of Sigmund Freud -- namely, the use of the Oedipus Complex as a starting point for the analysis, and the authoritarian role of the psychoanalyst in relationship to the patient. Guattari was interested in a practice that could derive from given systems of enunciation and preexisting subjective structures new "assemblages [agencements] of enunciation" capable of forging new coordinates of analysis and to bring into existence unforeseen propositions and representations.

In Chaosmosis, Guattari explains that "rather than moving in the direction of reductionist modifications which simplify the complex," schizoanalysis "will work towards its complexification, its processual enrichment, towards the consistency of its virtual lines of bifurcation and differentiation, in short towards its ontological heterogeneity."

Components

Schizoanalysis can be represented by four circular components that bud and form rhizomes:

1. The generative component: the study of concrete mixed semiotics; their mixtures and variations. Making a tracing of the mixed semiotics.
2. The transformational component: the study of pure semiotics; their transformations-translations and the creation of new semiotics. Making the transformational map of the regimes, with their possibilities for translation and creation, for budding along the lines of the tracings.
3. The diagrammatic component: the study of abstract machines, from the standpoint of semiotically unformed matters in relation to physically unformed matters. Making the diagram of the abstract machines that are in play in each case, either as potentialities or as effective emergences.
4. The machinic component: the study of the assemblages that effectuate abstract machines, simultaneously semiotizing matters of expression and physicalizing matters of content. Outlining the program of the assemblages that distribute everything and bring a circulation of movement with alternatives, jumps, and mutations.

Schizoanalysis is also analysis of "non human sex" on sexuality.

1. Anywhere the microscopic transsexuality, which makes women contain man, and man woman, being able to enter each others, in relation to the desiring production that turn away the statistical order of sex. Making love is not act by one, even two sexes, but act of hundred thousand. The desiring machines or non human sexes are. The schizo-analysis is the varitable analysis of the n... sexes in a subject, beyond the anthropomorphic representation that the society imposes this subject and with which it represent its own sexuality. The schizo-analysic slogan of the desiring revolution will first of all to each own sexes.
2. It will be to new regions where connections are always partial and non personal, the conjunctions, nomads and polyvinvl, disjunction closed, where homosexuality and heterosexuality would not be distinguished; mode of transversal communication, where the non human sex reaches at last to be confused with flowers, new earth where the desire functions according to their elements and their molecular current.

See also

• Desiring-production
• Plane of immanence
• Anti-psychiatry
• Queer theory

Sources

• Abou-Rihan, Fadi. 2008. Deleuze and Guattari: A Psychoanalytic Itinerary. London: Continuum.
• Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1972. Anti-Œdipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of L'Anti-Oedipe. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476953.
• ---. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476945.
• Guattari, Félix. 1984. Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0140551603.
• ---. 1989. Cartographies Schizoanalytiques. Paris: Editions Galilee.
• ---. 1992. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1995. Trans. of Chaosmose. Paris: Editions Galilee. ISBN 0909952256.
• ---. 1995. Chaosophy. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1570270198.
• ---. 1996. Soft Subversions. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Trans. David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1570270309.
• Holland, Eugene. 1999. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis. Oxford: Routledge.
• Massumi, Brian. 1992. A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. Swerve editions. Cambridge, USA and London: MIT. ISBN 0262631431.

External links

• The Psychoanalytic Field by Fadi Abou-Rihan on re-figuring schizoanalysis as not simply a critique of but also a contribution to psychoanalytic theory and practice.