Rolando Perez On An (Archy) and Schizoanalysis

On An (a r c h y )
& SCHIZOANALYSIS
Ro l a n d o Per ez
AUTONOMEDIA
Copyright 1990
Rolando Perez
and Autonomedia
All rights reserved.
Special thanks to Sue Ann Harkey and Rolando Perez.
Illustrations from Optical and Geometrical Allover Patterns,
by Jean Larcher, courtesy Dover Publications, Inc.
Autonomedia
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C o n t en t s
Fir st P l at eau
1Nietzsche, An(archy), and Anti-psychiatry...................... 11
Se c o n d P l at eau
2 Au Revoir M, le Texte, or, the Body and An(archy)........29
Th ir d P l at eau
3 Toward a Non-Fascist or An(archical) Way of Life........49
Fo u r t h P l at eau
4 Molecular Revolution, Art, and An(archy)...................... 69
F if t h P l at eau
5 The Fascistic Structure of Reactive Desire, and its
Relationtothe Domination of Women....................95
Notes................................................................................... 121
Bibliography.......................................................................137
FIRST
PLATEAU
"[0]ur sentence does not sound severe. Whatever com
mandment the prisoner has disobeyed is written upon
his body by the Harrow. This prisoner, for instance"
the officer indicated the man"will have written upon
his body: HONOR THY SUPERIORS!"
Kafka
The Penal Colony
The body is the body, /it is alone/and has no
need of organs, /the body is never an organism/organ-
isms are the enemies of bodies, /everything one does
transpires by itself without the aid of any organ, /every
organ is a parasite, /it overlaps with a parasitic function
into existence which should not be there...It is/I/who/
will be/remade/by myself/entirely/...by myself/who am
a body/and have no regions within me.
Antonin Artaud
1
N iet zs c he, A n (a r c h y )
AND ANTI-PSYCHIATRY*
P erhaps i t seems odd that one s hould w rite an essay
associating Nietzsche w ith anarchy. H owever, the an(archy)
which I propose to attribute to Nietzsche is not the po litic al
anarchy which he wrote against.
M oreover it mus t also seem strange to have Nietzsche
associated w ith a movement in ps ychology that has come so
many years after his death and which remains even today a
fringe "movement." But I think there are certain connections
^Firstly, I have decided to to use the word "anti-psychiatry" as a generic
term to include both the type of analysis done by people like Laing and
Cooper and the "schizoanalysis" done by Deleuze and Guattari. And
secondly, 1 have spelled the word an(archy) to differentiate it from
traditional political anarchy.
24 N iet zs c he, A n (a r c h y ), & A nt i- ps yc hiat r y
to be made here between these mo de rn concepts and
Nietzsche. A nd so works by L aing, C ooper, and Deleuze
and G uattari w ill be used in order to establish this connec
tion.
W ith regard to an(archy), my intention herein is to:
(1) approach the topic via deconstruction, or more s pecifi
c ally via D e rrida , and (2) via Deleuz e's and G ua tta ri's
"s chizoanalys is " in order to demonstrate what i t is that I
mean by an(archy) and how this concept of an(archy) is
latently found in Nietzsche.
H owever, before we turn to the issue of an(archy), we
mus t firs t turn to the more primo rdia l issue o f Nietzsche's
concept o f "forgetfulnes s " and the "innocence of becoming,"
fo r w ith o u t these concepts the an(archy) propos ed by
Nietzsche is not possible at all.
1
R ight after Zarathus tra's prologue the firs t section we come
to is the section "O n the T hree M etamorphos es ." H ere
Nietzsche describes to us a certain change that mus t take
place i f we are to have a new beginning. He writes :
O f the three metamorphoses o f the s pirit I tell
you: ho w the s pirit becomes a camel, and the
camel a lion; and the lion, fina lly, a c hild.1
A s such, a change mus t take place, from that which is
phys ically big to that which is phys ically small and fro m that
which is fu lly grown to that whic h is about to grow. But
N iet zs c he, A n (a r c h y ), & A nt i- ps yc hiat r y 15
there is also a sense in which the s pirit like the camel has had
too much to bear that the weight has become such that
"the s traw has fina lly broken the camel's back." A t this point,
then, the lio n becomes the s pirit. T hat is, the s pirit that op
poses the s lo wly ro tting carcass of the camel in the desert
sun. A nd while the lio n is the "nay s aying" s pirit and the
s pirit of freedom (the s pirit which has renounced duty), he is
too old to be the s pirit of the beginning and the s p irit of
forgetfulness.
"T o create new values " says Nietzsche,
that even the lio n cannot do; but the creation of
freedom fo r oneself, fo r new creation, that is
w ith in the power of the Hon. The creation o f
freedom fo r oneself and a sacred "N o " even to
duty fo r that, my brother, the Hon is needed.2
Thus it is the liberating roar of the lio n whic h an
nounces the death of reactive morality, or what is us ually
referred to as "the mo ra lity o f habit." A nd the new ma n /
woman on the horiz on is the over(zvo)man (the active as op
posed to the reactive type) o r to put it another way the
"s pirit of the child." B ut why a child?
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new
beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a firs t
movement, a sacred "Y es ."3 (my italics).
A nd since part of a child's nature is to play,
play represents an ac tivity that does not aim at
any practical utilita ria n needs and ends, being
unconcerned w ith good and evil, truth and fal
s ity.4
16 Nietzsche, A n(arc hy), & Anti-psychiatry
I n summary, then, the child, this "self-propelled wheel"
moves forward, forever forward, dis seminating the old con
cepts of binary opposites. A nd at last, at last a mo ra lity
"jenseits von gut und bose"!
2
H ere, then, is where Nietzsche's an(archy) comes in. F or just
as Derrida's differance disseminates the hier(archical) binary
opposites, so does Nietzsche's "jenseits/ Hence the concept of
"jenseits" or "beyond" is not to be interpreted in a H egelian
manner, but more appropriately in the Derridean sense of
differance, i.e., in a disseminating manner. As Nietzsche writes:
H abit o f seeing opposites. The general im
precise way o f observing sees everywhere in
nature opposites (as e.g., "wa rm and cold")
where there are, not opposites but differences or
degrees...5(my italics).
I t is livin g in the ( / ) o f differance, that is, beyond... that
makes life dangerous, and yet it is precisely this that Nietzsche
challenges us to undertake.
The dangerous and uncanny po int has been
reached where the greater, more manifold, more
comprehensive life transcends and lives beyond
the old mo ra lity...6 (Nietzsche's italics).
Nietzsche, A n(archy), & Anti-psychiatry 17
One mus t live dangerously, says Nietzsche. One mus t
be w illin g to wa lk the rope over the abyss (Abgrund) and in so
doing deny the s pirit of the reactive forces that p u ll us down.
A nd fo r this one mus t have courage. Why? S imply because
to live beyond, in the ( / ) , is to live no-where: to live as a human
being independent o f the mo ra lity of exclusive binary oppo
sitions, foundations , and ins titutions . H owever, this is not to
say that Nietzsche's project involved the wholesale dis s olu
tion of moral hier(archical) oppositions.
W hat Nietzsche wanted above all was (1) to go beyond
moral hier(archical) oppos itions so as to disseminate them in
order to make them free flo wing rather than fixed; and (2) to
go beyond the ins cription of ins titutio na l hier(archical) s truc
tures in order to undermine the repressive coding o f ins titu
tions. I n addition to this , the affirmation of rank one finds in
Nietzsche's works serves as the best example that Nietzsche's
an(archy) was the firs t non-political an(archy) and, of course,
the firs t tru ly structureless an(archy) in the his tory o f p h i
losophy. The famous master-slave mo ra lity delineated by
Nietzsche makes it very d iffic ult fo r anyone to vie w an(archy)
as either an ideology of the R ight or o f the L eft especially
since it is the active, s elf-governing (and not necessarily "po
litic a l") in dividua l whom he values.
I n Nietzsche, the wo rd hierarchy has two senses.
I t s ignifies firs tly, the difference between active
and reactive forces, the s uperiority o f active to
reactive forces, and the complex organis ation
whic h results where the weak have con
quered, where the s trong are contaminated,
where the slave who has not appeared prevails
over the master who has stopped being one:
the reign of law and virtue. I f we compare the
18 Nietzsche, A n(archy), & Anti-psychiatry
two senses we see that the second is like the
reverse o f the firs t. We make the C hurch, mo
ra lity and the State the masters and keepers of
all hierarchy7 (my italics).
A nd i t is precis ely this second sense of hier(archy)
that Nietzsche is against. F or this is the hier(archy) o f ins titu
tions and eco-political frameworks set up by those who can
not lead or obey themselves: o f the weak and the slaves and
of those who need an outside hier(archical) a utho rity in or
der to act.
F or Nietzsche, then, slave mo ra lity is the mo ra lity of
paranoiac machines who inscribe all their fears onto the body
w ith o u t organs and turn the body w / o organs into a "body
o f laws ": in the name of "alliance" and community self-pres-
ervation.
T he law, the thoroughly realis tic f ormalization
of certain conditions fo r the self-preservation
o f a community, forbids certain actions directed
against the community: i t does not fo rbid the
dis pos ition that produces these actions fo r it
needs these fo r other ends, namely against the
enemies o f the c ommunity8(N 's italics).
T his ins cription or coding onto the social fie ld is the
product of the reactive fear to "live dangerous ly," to live in
the ( / ) of differance, which calls fo r a constant ques tioning
of all values: ending i f one may put it as such in a certain
"ethical an(archy)." T hat is to say, in a structureless, non
coded, non-ins cribed morality, or perhaps more appropri
ately "immo ra lity."
O n the other hand we have the community which sets
u p the despotic State machinery in order to "breed man." O r
as Nietzsche puts it:
M o ra lity is a menagerie. Its pres uppos ition is
that iron bars can be more profitable than free
dom , even fo r prisoners; its other pres uppos i
tion is that there exist animal trainers who are
not afraid of terrible means who kno w how
to handle red hot iron. T his frig h tfu l species
which takes up the fight against the w ild ani
mal is called the "p rie s t". . . 9
and one may very we ll add the "des pot" to this.
A ll the s tupidity and the arbitrariness o f the
laws, all the pain of the ins titutions , the whole
perverse apparatus of repression and education,
the red-hot irons, and the atrocious procedures
have only this meaning: to breed man, to mark
him in his flesh, to render him capable o f a lli
ance...10
A nd w h a t better example do we have o f this than
H itler? F or after all one does not o nly brand or inscribe (e.g.,
the numbers on the arm) in order to create alliance but also
and perhaps more impo rta ntly to differentiate those inside
the community from those outside. The outs ider is always a
threat, fo r i t is he or she the mis fit who us ually ques
tions the order of things. A nd as we all know everything must
always be 'nice, neat, and o rde rly" for a paranoiac machine,
and especially of course i f that paranoiac machine happens
to be military, political or economic. I n A lbert C amus' Caligula,
a ter C aligula has ordered the poets to read their poems he
20 N iet zs c he, A n ( a r c h y ), & A nt i- ps yc hiat r y
turns to Cherea and whispers: "you see, organization's needed
fo r everything, even a rt. "11 T hat's w hy the politic a l "w i l l to
order" is us ually a w i l l to violence and oppression.
A nd yet a wo rd of warning is needed: an(archy), the
diss emination of external hier(archical) structures, does not
imp ly an "anything-goes ideology," a violent thunderbolt
that w i l l create more violence than the ins titutions them
selves, after all this is what an(archy) as a project sets out to
prevent, i.e., the violent thunderbolt of State, C hurch, mental
ins titutions , etc.
Where the state ends lo o k there, my bro th
ers! Do you see it, the rainbow and the bridges
of the overman? 12(N 's italics).
F or the overman or over(wo)man is she who no lon-
gers needs the State, or any other ins titution, fo r that matter.
She is is her own creator o f values and as such the firs t true
an(archist). I n short, she rejects all external orders. She is her
own master.13She is the firs t renouncer of the tra ditio na l mo
ra lity which codes, inscribes, and fixes the "oppos itions " of
the w o rld in an exclusive hier(archical) framework so as to
make life safe when in fact "chaos is needed to offset the
tendency to s tagnation."14 A nd yet the over(wo)man is not
merely a type but more impo rta ntly a process, a flo w, a line
o f flight, a rhiz ome (Deleuz e/G uatarri).
H owever, one mus t beware of the danger that lies herein,
fo r there is always the pos s ibility that the unimpeded ("over-
(wo)man") process, the unres tricted flo w, the body witho ut
organs, may go in any direction, inc luding the opposite d i
rection desired. W hich is w hy the an(archical) release of the
over-coded, overins cribed flows of desire mus t come about
gradually rather than all at once. T he life that is live d in the
( / ) o f differance, in the "beyond," is a highly dangerous life
whose po s itivity is dependent upon the way that one comes
to it.
The violence unleashed by youth gangs and other mi
cro-fascist groups (G uattari) around the w o rld today is the
result of non-s tructured, non-coded, non-inscribed flows of
desire, but this is not what either Nietzsche, Deleuze, G uat
tari or L aing have in mind. As Deleuze and G uattari have
pointed out in On the Line:
There is desire as soon as there is... a body
w itho ut organs. But there are bodies w itho ut
organs that are empty, hardened envelopes be
cause the ir organic components have been
eliminated too quickly and forcefully, as in an
"overdos e." T here are cancerous o r fas cis t
bodies w ith o u t organs, in black holes or in
machines of abolition.15
A nd in The Death of the Family, C ooper also warns
against a too-sudden elimination of the coding or ins cribing
hier(archical) (familial) frameworks . The autonomy which
results from the process C ooper calls "E konia," "P aranoia,"
and 'A noia" can lead to disastrous effects i f i t is not achieved
gradually. H e writes :
There is, of course, much room fo r confus ion of
location between these stages, one of the most
dis as trous being the attempt to move fro m
ekonia and paranoia to anoia w ith o u t the
requisite of self-containing autonomy16
0r ^hat Nietzsche called "self-sovereignty.
T hus, in the end a new ps ychology is needed a ps y
chology that w i ll help us to undertake the task o f gradually
releasing our over-coded flows o f desire w itho ut putting us
back in a mental ins titution. I n sum, such ps ychology is anti
ps ychiatry, and wha t Deleuze and G uattari call "s chiz o-
analysis."
3
A nti- ps yc hiatry is the firs t an(archistic) ps ychology, and as
such the firs t to promote the breakdown of hier(archical)
ins titutio na l frameworks and the "fa mily" in particular. In
that vein Deleuze and G uattari's "s chizoanalys is " is a cri
tique and a going beyond of the F reudian O edipal s tructure
whic h determines the life of the individua l by making him
or her dependent on the internalized "mommy, daddy, and
me" s tructure. As the above authors see it: the O edipal s truc
ture is one o f the major causes o f schizophrenia.
Y et what is being opposed is not the child-parent
relations hip per se but the O edipaliz ation of such a relation
ship.
I t is not a question of denying the vita l impo r
tance o f parents or the love attachment o f chil
dren to their mothers and fathers. I t is a ques
tion of kno wing what the place and the func
tion o f parents are w ith in des iring-production,
rather than doing the opposite and forcing the
entire inte rpla y of des iring machines* to fit
w ith in (rabattre tout lejeu des machines desirantes
dans) the restricted code o f O edipus .17
T his s tructuraliz ation and control of desire is clearly
what Nietzsche is against, fo r we might recall that the child
is important fo r Nietzsche precisely because she is... always
free, non-coded, and non-inscribed. T he child is a body w ith
out organs and ins ofar as she has parents, her parents are
not those who bring her up, who inscribe upon her body the
ins cription inscribed upon them by their parents (and their
parents' parents, and so on).** The true child is she who
surpasses her parents, she who goes beyond them to such an
extent that eventually she leaves them behind as she walks
into the desert as the firs t true nomad: "the s elf-propelled
wheel" who does not look back. I n Zarathustra Nietzsche
writes:
Y ou shall create a higher body [a body w / o or
gans perhaps? ], a firs t movement, a s elf-pro
pelled wheel yo u s hall create the creator.
M arriage thus I name the w ill o f two to create
the one that is more than whose who created it.
Like a streetcar named "Desire," whose direction is controlled by
the lines which run beneath it, the restrictiveness of the Oedipal
structure leads to the control of desiring-machines and their
uncoded flows of desire. What we have in the end, then, is simply
another schizoprehenic Blanche DuBois and another despotic
Stanley Kowalski.
is complex familial overcoding of values is what R.D. Laing calls
he knots" which can eventually lead to schizophrenia.
24 N iet zs c he, A n ( a r c h y ), & A nt i- ps yc hiat r y
R everence fo r each other, as fo r those w illin g
w ith such a w ill is what I name marriage18(my
italics).
A nd the product o f such a marriage is a child who is not
afraid to smash all our repressive machines.19
"T he lights jigging like electric needles. The atoms going
crazy w ith lig h t and heat. A conflagration going on behind
the glass and nothing burns away," writes M ille r.
M en breaking their backs, men burs ting their
brains to invent a machine which a child w ill
manipulate. I f I could only find the hypotheti
cal child who's to n m this machine I 'd put a
hammer in its hands and say: S mash it! S mash
it!20
A nd yes, s he'll smash it alright. T his child is free... free of
guilt! (N o t because she does exactly wha t she has been
brought up to do, but rather because she has not been sub
jected to the kind o f b o dily and ps ychological overcoding
that mos t children are subjected to).
N o one is born w ith a sense of guilt. G uilt is the res ult
o f fa milia l ins cription or overcoding. H o w close one remains
to mommy and daddy or how far one strays from them de
termines the degree o f someone's sense o f guilt.* " I f there is
perfect coincidence between the values projected or alloted
to a range, everything is in its proper time and place," writes
L aing.
* The family turns the child's body (or body without organs) into a
"docile body" (Foucault) and a "soft machine" (Burroughs).
There is no infringement of the rules on this set
of issues, and no need fo r g u ilt or anxiety on
these grounds... One is good oneself i f one has
good thoughts about what one is supposed to
think good about, and bad thoughts about what
one is supposed to think bad about.21
But what i f there is no "perfect coincidence" between the
values o f the child and the values o f the family? H o w can the
child break away then w itho ut feeling "guilty"? A fte r all, the
family overcodes, overinscribes and overmaps its values on
the child; and a ll the rules i t inscribes on him or her are
protected by meta-rules, meta-meta-rules and so on. W hich,
of course, makes the "re-evaluation" and the going beyond
of (traditional) fa mily values i f not impossible, extremely d if
ficult.
R ules govern all aspects o f experience, what we
are to experience, and what not to experience,
the operations we mus t and mus t not carry out,
in order to arrive at a permitted picture o f our
selves and others in the wo rld. But a special
s ituation exists i f there is a rule against examin
ing or ques tioning values: and beyond that, i f
there are rules against even being aware that
such rules exist, including this last rule (L aing's
italics).22
T his is w hy the breaking of rules, the going beyond of
raditional (family) morality is so very diffic ult. One mus t
somehow be able to see through the rules and all the restric-
diflfS behind them. A nd then to make matters even more
cult, one mus t be w illin g take a chance w ith one's so-
26 N iet zs c he, A n (a r c h y ), & A nt i- ps yc hiat r y
called "s a nity" in order to break the rules. N o wonder then
most tra ditio na l forms of anarchy have resorted to commu
nal arrangements in order to solve this problem.
"H o w do I disconnect witho ut losing my head? " "H o w
do I disconnect witho ut becoming a criminal? " I t is extremely
d iffic u lt to erase the emotional (albeit negative) attachments
inscribed by the family. A nd it is this feeling (the terrible
feeling o f guilt) which gives rise to communal arrangements.
U nfortunately, these communal arrangements us ually
do n't work. T he moment they ins titute a leader and most
of them do they also ins titute a hier(arehical) s tructure not
too different fro m that of most families.
C ooper's experiment w ith anti-ps ychiatric communes
as replacements fo r established ps ychiatric ins titutions failed
precisely because it set up a new ins titutio n in place of the
old one. Ins ofar as C ooper was the organizer of the com
mune he was, whether he liked i t or not, a "false leader," to
use his own terminology. H e was the ps ychiatris t and re
mained so whether he called hims elf a "member," a "com
rade" or an "equal." The problem of familialis m is exclu
s ively one of inte rio rity. I t is possible that one may live un
der the same ro o f w ith one's fa mily and not be fucked up by
it; on the other hand there are people who live in the S outh
P ole fo r whom the (internal) "fa mily" is always there regu
lating and overcoding their flows o f desire. T hat's why
even w ith the progressive or revolutionary sec
tors of ins titutio na l analysis on the one hand,
and anti-ps ychiatry on the other, the danger of
this familialis m is ever present, conforming to
the double impasse of an extended O edipus,
jus t as much in the diagnostic o f pathogenic
families in themselves, as in the cons titution of
therapeutic quasi-families [or communes].23
4
In the final analysis, the aim of anti-ps ychiatry, or more spe
cifically schizoanalysis, is to release the hier(achical) and in
ternal familial structures inscribed upon the body w itho ut
organs. "I n some families ," says L aing,
parents cannot a llo w c hildre n to break the
"fa mily" down within themselves, i f that is what
they want, because this is felt as the breakup of
the family, and then where w ill it end? 24
To which several answers come to mind, as fo r example:
action, desire, innocence, creativity, an(archy) and freedom!
But unfortunately fo r the child "the 'fa mily' may be an inter
nal structure more important than the 'breas t/ 'penis ,' or
'father7,"25These internal structures are inscribed by the family
on the child's psyche in order to diminis h the child's own
potential fo r self-directed action or what Nietzsche called the
innocence o f becoming."
As soon as we imagine someone responsible
fo r our being thus and thus... and therefore at
tribute to him the intention that we s hould ex
ist and be happy or wretched, we corrupt fo r
ourselves the innocence of becoming.26
A nd as soon as we incribe upon the child's body w ith
out organs the hier(archical) fa milia l s tructure, then he or
she becomes a reactive rather than a active individua l, a rigid
line rather than a line o f flight; and his or her pote ntia lity for
selfmastery and autonomy is denied. I n conclusion: what we
have here is a segmented and rig id line whic h overcodes and
overinscribes the rules and metarules by which the in d ivid
ual is to progress. "A s individua ls and groups ," writes De-
leuze,
we are made of lines, lines that are very d i
verse in nature. The firs t type of line (there are
many of this type) that form us is segmentary,
or rig id ly segmented: family/profes s ion; w o rk /
vacation; fa m ily / then s chool/ then a rmy/ then
factory /a n d then retirement. E ach time from
one segment to another, we are told, "N o w you
are no longer a c hild"; then at school "N o w
you are no longer at home"; then in the army,
"T his is n't school any more"... I n short, all kinds
o f well-defined segments, going in every direc
tion, whic h carve us up in every sense, these
bundles o f segmented lines.27
T hus what an(archy) and schizoanalysis aim at is the
replacement o f poor defenseless, guilt- ridde n puppets in in
ternal straight-jackets, w ith free, non-O edipaliz ed, u n c o d e d
individua ls .
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SECOND
PLATEAU
Language has always been the companion of empire.
6 Antonio de Nebrija
The letter kills the spirit... life in general is mobility itself.
Henri Bergson
Creative Evolution
To suggest that the signifier is everywhere (and that consequently
interpretation and transference are effective everywhere) is to miss the
fact that each of these encoding components (whether semiotic or not)
can gain power over the situation and objects confronting us. On the
contrary, I believe that one should not be dogmatic about which mode of
access has priority. Such priority can emerge only from analysing each
particular situation...Experts in linguistics and semiotics have gradually
come to consider that icons, or diagrams, or any other preverbal means
of expression (gestural, etc.) are dependent upon the signifying language
and are only imperfect means of communication. I believe that this is an
intellectualist assumption that becomes extremely shaky when applied to
children, the mad, the primitive or any of those who express themselves
in a semiotic register that 1would classify as a symbolic semiology.
Flix Guattari
Molecular Revolution
2
Au revoir M, l e Texte,
o r, the Body and An(a rc hy)
I t is no exaggeration to say that we have gone much too
far w ith our emphasis on the T ext, or what amounts to the
same, w ith the writte n Text. A long w ith this overdose, most
of i t whic h has come from F rance, we have forgotten the
body, the theater, the gesture, the breath (souffle) and the flesh.
P erhaps, then, it is time that we s tart giving the same impo r
tance to the body that we have given to the Text.
So let us attempt to examine the overlooked relation
between the writte n text and the body as a s ymbolic o r a-
s ignifying expression.* L et us take R oland B a rthe s as the
* We must keep in mind that by the word expression we mean something
completely different than what Saussure means by it or what Barthes or
Eco means by it. There is no content or signified (Saussure), no signifi
cation (Barthes), no sender and receiver (Eco), and in short no David
34 Au REVOIR M. LE TEXTE.
examplar o f those who have emphasized the former (i.e., the
writte n Text) and A rta ud as an examplar of the rare in d ivid
ual who emphasizes the body as expression, as breath, as
gesture. A nd in the process let us also make an attempt to
demonstrate the points on whic h they agree, as fo r example
their rejection of the A uthor- G od pos ition, their rejection of
repetition, and their concern w ith bringing either the R eader
(Barthes) or the S pectator (A rtaud) closer to the writte n Text
or the theater.
L et's vie w this problematic, then, in light o f a double
articulation,1namely in a non-exclusive and relative manner.
I t is in this respect that we say "au revoir M . le T exte." Which
is not to say that one is dogmatically dis mis s ing the Text
once and fo r all, but merely that a non-exclusive s hift in
emphasis is needed i f we are to recover our relation to our
bodies.
1
We s hould not take i t as a coincidence that w ith the death of
G od there s hould also have come the death o f the A uthor:
the C reator of Masterpieces. A rta ud was one o f the firs t to
Sarnoff here. And this type of expression does indeed exist. For in
stance, in reference to the Guayaki Indians that Pierre Clastres writes
about in Chronique de Indiens Guayaki, Guattari (Molecular Revol uti on)
notes that "The strata of expression are not regulated by a signifying
control that condemns every content to a rigorous formalization, a
residual or marginal representation; here, this poly vocal concept of the
Jaguar becomes the object of a fluid, uncertain, wavering denotation, a
denotation unsure of itself, in some cases even with no basis at all, a pure
denotation of denotation." (p 93).
.o r , t he Bo d y a n d A n (a r c h y )
35
have declared the A utho r dead. A nd in the last fifteen to
t w e n t y years he has been followed by such critics as R icoeur,
D e r r i d a , a n d R oland Barthes. As D errida has pointed out in
his essay "T he T heater of C ruelty," the
stage is theological for as long as its structure
fo llo wing the entirety of tradition, comports the
fo llo wing elements: an author-creator who, ab
sent and from afar, is armed w ith a text and
keeps watch over, assembles, regulates the time
or meaning o f representation, letting this latter
represent him as concerns what is called the
content of his thoughts, his intentions, his ideas.2
A rtaud responded to this calling fo r the death o f the
A uthor-C reator* by replacing the A utho r w ith the theater
and the "director."
I n this theater all creation comes from the stage,
finds its expression and its origin alike in a se
cret psychic impuls e which is Speech before
Words.3
The writte n wo rd becomes secondary and the A utho r
ls displaced by the voice which shouts and speaks. A rta ud
continues:
I t is a theater which eliminates the author in
favor of what we wo uld call, in our O ccidental
get the Father, forget Oedipus, forget even the Name-of-the-Fa ther. As
rando says in "Last Tango in Paris," "there will be no names here," no
amily history, and thus no referentiality.
36 Au REVOIR M. LE TEXTE,
theatrical jargon, the director, but the director
who has become a kind of manager of magic, a
master of sacred ceremonies. A nd the material
on which he works , the themes he brings to
throbbing life are derived not from him but from
the gods.4
T he director, therefore, is a shaman, not a C reator or hierar
chical figure but merely the mediator o f magic. R oland
Barthes, on the other hand, considered the A utho r dead but
the writte n T ext very much alive. I n fact, fo r Barthes the
A utho r dies not only in the name o f the R eader but more
impo rta ntly in the name o f the Text.
A s Barthes pointed out in "T he Death of the A utho r":
The removal o f the A utho r (...) is not merely an
his torical fact or an act o f writing; i t utte rly
trans forms the modern text (or which is the
same thing the text as henceforth made and
read in such a way that at all levels the author
is absent).5
A nd later in the same essay he writes :
We know now that the text is not a line of words
releas ing a s ingle theological meaning (the
"message" o f the A uthor-G od) but a m u ltid i
mensional space in which a variety of writings ,
none o f them original, blend and clash. The text
is a tissue o f quotations drawn from innumer
able centres o f culture.6
I n effect, the text is a non- originary plane o f multi-
37
licities, a fie ld of traces left "behind" by a mu ltip lic ity of
writers , none o f them belonging to any one particular tribe.
The problem w ith Barthes is that fo r him the w o rld becomes
Text and the T ext or S ignifier/S ignified relation is ex
alted to the place formerly occupied by the A uthor. The T ext
is now made God.
C onversely, fo r A rtaud, the death of the A utho r takes
place right along w ith the death of the writte n Text: the S ig
nifier, the W ord. F or A rtaud words cannot express that which
is most profound. I t is only the theater of cruelty the
theater o f life that can give expression to the human breath
and to the flesh. A s D errida has said: A rta ud's protest is
directed "agains t the dead letter which absents its elf far from
breath (souffle) and fles h."7
The classical Western stage defines a theater of
the organ, a theater of words , thus a theater of
interpretation, energistration, and trans lation, a
theater o f deviation from the gro undwo rk o f a
pre-established text, a table writte n by a G od-
A utho r who is the sole wielder of the prima l
wo rd.8
T his is precis ely what A rta ud was against. U nlike
Barthes and others A rta ud believed that both the A utho r
and the writte n T ext had to be s ubordinated to the theater of
the flesh. I n the second manifesto of "T he T heater of C ru
elty" he wrote: "W e shall renounce the theatrical s upers ti
tion of the text and the dictators hip of the w rite r. "9A rtaud did
not subordinate the A utho r w itho ut also s ubordinating the
Text.
M oreover, while R oland Barthes s ubordinated the A u
thor to the R eader o f the Text, A rta ud s ubordinated the A u
tho r to the spectator of the play. "T he reader," says Barthes,
is the place on which all the quotations that
make up a w ritin g are inscribed w itho ut any of
them being lost; a text's u n ity lies not in its
o rigin but in its des tination.10
The reader is given the place of the decipherer who
gives meaning to the text by his or her own interaction with
the text. Barthes' propos al to diminis h the distance between
the R eader and the T ext is analogous to A rta ud's proposal to
bring the specatator closer to the stage.
We abolish the stage and the a udito rium and
replace them by a single site, w itho ut partition
or barrier o f any kind, which w i l l become the
theater o f the action. A direct communication
w ill be re-established between the spectator and
the spectacle, between the actor and the specta
tor, from the fact that the spectator, placed in
the middle o f the action, is engulfed and phys i
cally affected by it. 11
The distance between the spectator and the actor is
obliterated in much the same way that Barthes obliterates
the distance between the A utho r and the R eader: by placing
the R eader at the place o f the Text. But, while Barthes is
erecting temples to his T ext A rta ud is burning them down:
to replace the G reat O ccidental temples of the T ext w ith the
theater of the flesh, the theater o f passion and des iring-pr'
duction, where expression is not linguis tic but hieroglyphs
and a-signifying in nature. A t last, then, we have the flaws o
the body replace the flows o f words . A nd linguis tic expreS'
.o r , t he Bo d y a n d A n (a r c h y ) 39
sion is replaced by the emotive a-signification o f "affective
athleticism." A fte r all, "i t has not been de finitely proved that
the language of words is the best possible language."12 A nd
gestures, dances, and shouts become the superseding alter
native to the kind o f semiotic (s ignifying) reading performed
by people like Eco and T odorov.
The gesture is always spontaneous, non-coded and non
inscribed; and it disappears like a musical note the moment
it is performed. B ut most importantly, unlike the despotic
and imperialis tic S ignifier i t does not refer back to anything;
i 1is not circular but linear. Y es, one may perhaps go so far as
to say that the body is a "te xt" fo r A rtaud, but it is certainly
not a linguis tic text. A rtaud hims elf called for the hieroglyphic
signs of the East which are always "metaphys ical" rather
than psychological and linguis tic in nature.
2
Again, A rtaud turned to the E ast in order to fin d there what
he found lacking in Western culture. T hat is to say, in order
to find his theater of "carnal and metaphysical signs." Barthes,
n the other hand, turned to the East in search o f his "C abi-
net of S igns," and found, in J apan his G reat E mpire of Signs.
N o w it happens that in this country [J apan] the
empire of the s ignifier is so immense, so in ex
cess of speech, that the exchange of signs re
mains a fas cinating richness, mobility, and sub
tle ty, des pite the o pa c ity o f the language,
s ometimes even as a consequence o f tha t
opacity.13
A rtaud, however, turned to the O rient to recover the human
relation to the flesh, the non-coded flows of desire, and the
expressive innocence of the gesture. "T he Balinese theater,"
he wrote, "has revealed to us a physical and non-verbal idea
of the theater..."14 A nd later: "F or the O ccidental theater the
W ord is everything, and there is no pos s ibility o f expression
w itho ut it, " therefore even " i f we res trict theater to what
happens between cues, we have s till not managed to sepa
rate i t from the idea of a performed text. "15
We have erected so many temples to the S ignifier that
the S ignifier has even illic itly entered the unconscious via a
certain po rt in F rance called Lacan. The Western w o rld has
become a w o rld of linguis tic signs in which reality has come
to equal the famous (or perhaps infamous) S ignifier-S ignified
relation.
The perfect example o f this obsession w ith words is
found in U mberto E co's A Theory of Semiotics where he goes
on to propose in an interes ting way a "possible w o rld " prob
lem in whic h snow wo uld be made of peanut butter. "E very
E nglis h speaker," says he,
can speak about snow and understand sentences
concerning s now because he possesses a cul
tura l competence assigning to the content u n it
's now' certain properties which do not include
that o f being made w ith peanut butter. I t is
possible that in a possible wo rld or in our future
wo rld, because of the increasing water po llu
tion, s now cold be exposed to such an ecologi
cal tragedy. B ut even though it happened, the
fact wo uld s till be s emiotically ridic ulo us .16
A nd then Eco goes on to say that the great problem
facing us under such circumstances wo uld be that of chang
ing our sign-system in order to accomodate the new phe
nomenon. T his, I think, is exemplary of the Western obses
sion with words which has reached its z enith w ith s tructu
ralism and pos ts tructuralis t lite ra ry criticis m no one ex
cluded.
In the West we have even used the unins cribed body (or
as Deleuze and G uattari call it "the body w itho ut organs ") as
a recording surface. "M erely so many nails piercing the flesh,
so many forms of to rture ."17 P erhaps a reminder o f K afka's
"I n The P enal C olony" is in order. Here the H a rro w inscribes
the body with piercing needles and the words "H O N O R T H Y
SUP ERIORS" are inscribed upon the body to create a mem
ory, a text, a masterpiece, to torture, to cause a s low and
painful death. A nd yet one finds someone like Barthes so
proud of this affair! "T he theatrical face," he says, "is not
painted (made-up), it is w ritte n . "18 A nd furthe r down: "i t is
the act of w ritin g which subjugates the pic torial gesture so
that to paint is never anything but to ins cribe."19A rta ud's en
terprise was, of course, different: he was concerned w ith the
gestural expressiveness o f the body, as opposed to the w ritin g
on the body that the hyperliterate Barthes so much admired.
N o longer should we speak solely of the G reat Text, but
we should begin to speak as we once did of the hieroglyph
ics of gestures... of the body... and o f the flesh. N o longer
wus t we apply "piercing needles" to the body. The expres-
on of cruelty w ill be a "metaphys ical" and s ymbolic ex-
as opposed to a physical one. The rigo r of the neces-
need^ take place right before one's eyes w itho ut the
a H a rro w" or pen. There w ill be no s purt of blood
J VS w hich are not the res ult of a puncture. Gestures
| a e the place o f words inscribed upon the body without
organs. The gesture w ill replace the even and calculated speech
of the West which no longer expresses anything alive. A nd
unlike one o f Beckett's characters we w ill not say " I shall
remain s ilent" and continue to speak. Gestures w i l l displace
the emptiness of the spoken S ignifier. Barthes' voyage to the
L and of S igns where he finds the S ignifier even in an eyelid
is pos itiona lly replaced by A rtaud's voyage to the flesh. But
we mus t keep in mind, however, that this is only a tempo
rary voyage. We are the enemies o f colonialism. A nd we are
not propos ing an E mpire of the Body.
N o more masterpieces, no more masters (forget Hegel!),
no more writing. "A ll w ritin g is pigs hit."20 Why? Because our
innermos t feelings are untrans latable and linguis tic a lly inex
pressible, "and people who leave the obscure and try to define
whatever i t is that goes on in their heads are pigs ."21A nd
those fo r whom certain words have a meaning,
and certain manners o f being; those who are so
fussy; those fo r whom emotions are classifiable,
and who quibble over some degree or other of
the ir hilarious classifications; those who s till
believe in 'terms '; those who brandis h what
ever ideologies belong to the hierarchy o f the
times... those who fo llo w paths , who dro p
names, who f i l l books w ith screaming headlines
are the wors t kind of pigs.22
Y et A rta ud d id not want to do way w ith the language
of words altogether. W hat he wanted was to libertate our
psyches and our bodies from the state of hyperliteracy which
has made us schizophrenic indidviduals .
"T he literate man when we meet him in the G reek wo rld
is a s plit man," says M ars hall M cL uhan, "a schizophrenic, as
.o r , t he Bo d y a n d A n (ar c h v ) 43
all me.i have been since the in ve n tio n o f the phonetic alpha
bet."23 Thus, i t is Barthes' s plit w o rld , i.e., the w o rld of the
Text a id w o rld of the body, tha t A rta ud finds c ultura lly and
exis teiitially objectionable.
A rtaud attempts to de s tro y a his tory, the his
tory of the dualis tic meta-phys ics ... the dua lity
of the body and the s oul whic h supports, se
cretly of course, the d u a lity of speech and exis
tence, o f the text and the b o d y, etc.24
In his essay "F rom W o rk to T ext" Barthes states that
"the theory of the text can o n ly coincide with a practice of
writing."25 T his is clearly not th e case for A rtaud. I n fact,
implia t in A rtaud's enterprise w e find the non-exclus ivity of
a doulle-articulation, or better ye t, a multi-articulation a la
Bergscn. The body is a hie ro glyphic or a-signifying "te xt" a
des irirg-s ign whic h gives rise th ro u g h its gestures to alter
native forms o f expression. A nd ye t Barthes has the audacity
to say at the end of The Pleasure o f the Text that i t is w ritin g
"vocal w ritin g " that A rta ud recommends .
I f i t were possible to imagine an aesthetic of
textual pleasure, i t w o u ld have to include: writ
ing aloud. T his vocal w ritin g (whic h is nothing
like speech) is not practiced, but i t is doubtless
what A rta ud recommended...26
The problem w ith this inte rpre ta tio n o f A rta ud is that
it places w ritin g at the center o f A rta ud's enterprise when it
wri:ing that becomes non- exclus ive ly secondary to the
gesture and the shout. Barthes, ho we ve r, much to his credit,
tries his best in The Pleasure of the Text to dissociate hims elf
44 Au r evo ir M. l e Text e.
from the despotic S ignifier and the T ranscendental S ignified,
but returns to i t again and again as the linguis tic ally O edi-
paliz ed child (of L acan) who returns to the R eferent
mommy and daddy fo r more authority.*
F or Barthes, as fo r someone like Heidegger, reality is
defined in terms o f language, and language is held to be
me ta phys ic a lly autonomous and p rimo rd ia l. "L anguage
speaks." A nd here lies the essential difference between Barthes
and A rtaud. F or the latter it is the flesh, the body, whic h is
"authentica lly" or "exis tentially" expressive; and i t achieves
its expressiveness through the a-signification o f its affective
athleticism..
3
O ne o f the important aspects of w ritin g is the way in which
i t turns thoughts and concepts into repeatable and estab
lis hed texts. N either Barthes nor A rta ud approved o f repeti
tion. Barthes attacked the repetition o f meaning in mass cul
ture because he found such repetition to be des tructive to the
Text.
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated
re pe titio n. C ontent, ideological schema, the
b l u r r i n g o f c o n tra d ic tio n s thes e are
repeated..."27
* Contrary to Julia Kristeva: the death of the Referent does not lead to
"identification with a totalitarian leader," but to the very oppositeto
an(archy). (Desire in Language, Columbia University Press, p. 139).
Barthes, then, held the repetition of signs to be a social
phenomenon which degraded the T ext by turning the T ext
into a stereotypic expression of bourgeois culture.
B ut fo r A rta ud the case was much different. A rtaud was
opposed to the writte n T ext on the very grounds that writte n
texts made repetition possible. A fte r all, literary masterpieces
are established by repetition. T hat is to say, i t is the repeti
tion of reading and performance that establishes the T ext as
a fixed expression, or as the Masterpiece that i t is. There are
no materpieces in oral cultures. T he Masterpiece is w ho lly a
Western import.
In his essay "N o M ore Masterpieces" A rta ud writes:
One of the reasons fo r the as phyxiating atmos
phere in which we live w itho ut possible escape
or remedy and in which we all share, even
the most revolutionary among us is our re
spect fo r what has been written, formulated,
painted, what has been given form, as i f ex
pression were not at last exhausted... we mus t
have done w ith this idea of masterpieces...28
Masterpieces are like tombstones traces of words we
once uttered. So w hy repeat what has already been said as
though one could recapture the freshness of the in itia l ex
pression? E nough w ith hermeneutics!
L et us leave textual criticis m to graduate s tu
dents, formal criticis m to esthetes, and recog
nize that what has been said is not s till to be
said; that an expression does not have the same
value twice; does not live two lives...29
46 Au r evo ir M. l e Text e.
Texts are to be read or performed once and then burnt
(including this one). "W e mus t get rid of our s uperstitious
valuations of texts and writte n po e ty/' says A rtaud. "W rit
ten poety is wo rth reading once, and then s hould be de
s troyed."30A nd the mime, the dance, and the non-coded ges
ture s hould replace the meaningless repetition of the Text
and the violence o f repetition.
F or instance, the violence performed by the "H a rro w "
in K afka's "I n The P enal C olony" is the res ult o f the repeti
tive function of the ins cribing machine its elf.* T he "H a rro w "
works by turning the body o f the pris oner into an unforge-
table text or masterpiece at the expense o f the pris oner7s
life. B ut this doesn't apply to the "H a rro w " alone. M os t forms
of punis hment employ the use o f repetition to "correct" be
havior.** Teachers, fo r example, w il l sometimes command
their "u n ru ly" students to write something like "I shall not
ta lk in class" a thous and times on paper. A nd in Ionesco's
"T he L esson" we have a professor who kills his s tudent by
repeating the wo rd "knife " over and over again.
"W hat is tragic," says Derrida, "is not the impos s ibil
ity but the necessity of re pe titio n."31 T his is the reason why
A rta ud wanted to replace the writte n T ext w ith the body
and the theater. T he theater is the only place in the wo rld
where a gesture, once made, can never be made the same
way twic e ."32T he theater is the only place where one can
* For an interesting account of the violence of representation see Nietzsche's
second essay in The Genealogy of Morals, wherein he attributes the violence
of inscriptive repetition on the body to (1) the will to create a memory
and (2) the will to make human beings calculable and reactive.
** For a fascinating look at the use of repetition in the "treatment" of sex
deviants, see Sylvere Lotringer's Overexposed (Pantheon Books, 1988).
47
escape the violence o f ins cription which kills the the human
s pirit by us ing the wild body as a recording surface. T his is
what J orge A mado's bo dily "G abriela" ins tinc tively realized,
and w h y she preferred the circus to the s tuffy, hyperliterate
atmosphere o f the lecture room where the T ext and not the
body is allowed expression.33
So let us fo llo w G abriela into the theater. L et us dance!
E nough w ith words ! "T he letter kills the s p irit. "34 A nd a non
exclusive s hift in emphasis is needed i f we are to recover
the affective expressiveness o f our bodies.
V i
THIRD
PLATEAU
"...The excitement of traveling in a train to meet
your lover, knowing he was traveling, just as excitedly,
towards you. I used to think quite a lot about that."
"Yes!" admitted her mother, smiling sadly.
"Converging lines moving across the map! Sick
with desire hardly able to wait!"
D.M. Thomas
The White Hotel
"When we look at the powerlessness of the indi
vidual and the small face-to-face group in the world to
day and ask ourselves why they are powerless, we have
to answer not merely that they are weak because of the
vast central agglomerations of power in the modern,
military industrial state, but that they are weak because
they have surrendered their power to the state.
"...the punitive, interfering lover of order is usu
ally so because of his own unfreedom and insecurity."
Colin Ward
Anarchy In Action
3
To w a r ds a No n -Fa sc ist o r
A n (a r c hic a l ) Way o f Lif e
T his essay concerns its elf w ith a certain kind o f affec
tive experience which Deleuze and G uatarri have come to
call a schizo stroll. T hat is to say, the kind of affective "vo y
age," i f you w ill, taken by such exceptional individua ls as
H lderlin, Nietzsche, K leis t, N erval, and A rtaud. T his is also
the s tro ll o f the an(archist): the s troll o f someone who is light
on his or her feet. Take Berenger in Ionesco's "A S troll in the
A ir, " fo r example. Berenger begins by taking a S unday s troll
and ends up becoming in the most lite ra l sense a line of
flight.
The problem facing us, however, is that we have fo r
gotten how to be light on our feet: we have forgotten what
it7s like to dance like a star in the night sky. O r is i t possible
that perhaps we haven't even tried? W ell, in any case, this is
the problem addressed in this essay. A nd, o f course, this is
52 To w a r d a N o n -Fas c is t o r A n (a r c h ic h a l ) W a y o f Lif e
also the problematic addressed in Anti-Oedipus. So let us
begin by cons idering Anti-Oedipus a how-to-book, a book for
all and no one, a book whic h may be entered as one enters a
map: from a mu ltip lic ity of directions. A nd furthermore let
us agree w ith F oucault and call Anti-Oedipus a "book of eth
ics." F or i t is "ethics " or more s pecifically what i t means
to lead an a non-fascist way o f life, which w i l l concern us
here.
T his essay w ill therefore treat an(archy) as an attitude
towards the wo rld. A nd not as a "po litic a l" theory or base.
I t w i l l begin where Anti-Oedipus begins: w ith a discussion of
desiring-production and desiring-machines; and it w ill develop
these concepts to demonstrate their relation to an(archy) or
the an(archical) way of life.
1
Schizoanalysis begins at that po int where R eich's political
ps ychology ended. T hat is, it begins by trying to answer
R eich's question concerning the des irability of the masses to
oppress themselves. As R eich saw it, the modem fascist State
has been established not by outside forces but rather by the
masses themselves. F or Reich, G erman fascism was successful
precisely because the ps ychological structures of the masses
coincided w ith those o f their political leaders and their ide
ologies. F or example, in speaking o f H itle r's success, Reich
put i t as follows :
T he inves tigation of H itle r's mass ps ychologi
cal effect has to proceed from the propos ition
that a fiihrer, or the champion o f an idea, can be
successful (...) only i f his personal point of view,
To w a r d a Non-F ascist o r A n(a rc hic ha l) Way o f Life 53
his ideology, or his program bears a resem
blance to the average structures o f a broad cate
gory o f individua ls .1
T his is a different way of looking at fascism. F or it
addresses its elf firs t and foremost to the ps ychological struc
tures which make i t possible in the firs t place, and then only
secondarily, does it turn to the "is s ue" of fascism as a subject
for political discourse or the o ry*
What this means ps ycho-politically is that State revolu
tions are preceded by revolutions of the mind. P irs ig in Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance says the fo llo w ing con
cerning revolutions:
To tear down a factory or to revolt against a
government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle
because i t is a system is to attack effects rather
than causes; and as long as the attack is upon
effects only, no change is possible. T he true
system, the real system, is our present construc
tion of systematic thought its elf, ra tionality i t
self, and i f a factory is torn down but the ra
tionality which produced it is left standing, then,
that ra tio na lity w ill s imply produce another
factory. I f a revolution destroys a systematic
government, but the sys tematic patterns o f
thought that produced that government are left
asth ^ yunderstoo^t^1^sinthe^thcentury.Onemaywrywellread TheRepublic
fa, C 1151kok on political psychology. What concerned Plato was the relation
of h ee* ePsycê the State. In other words, the socio-political management
CP 1!! feôw Greeks flows o f desire. See Foucualts The Use o f Pleasure
pantheon Books, New York).
54 T oward a Non-F ascist o r A n(arc hic hal) Way o f Life
intact, then those patterns w ill repeat themselves
in the succeeding government. There's much
ta lk about the system. A nd so little under
s tanding.2
B ut the one thing that R eich's political psychology overlooked
was the place of desire in the fascist pers onality. A nd it is at
this po int that schizoanalysis and an(archy) begin. Y et, they
begin w ith a whole new vie w o f desire, i.e., they pos it desire
as active rather than reactive.
Desire fo r Deleuze and G uattari is always productive. I t
is an active, non-referential linear flo w very s imilar to that
experienced by A rtaud; and doubtless, this is what A rtaud
had in mind when he spoke of affective athleticism. There is no
lack here. W hat there is is production: desire producing desire,
energy producing energy, and capital producing capital as it
happens in capitalis t society.
A s M arx notes, what exists in fact is not lack,
but passion, as a "natural and sensous object."
Desire is not bolstered by needs, but rather the
contrary; needs are derived from desire: they
are the counterproducts w ith in the real that
desire produces. L ack is a countereffect of de
sire; i t is depos ited, dis tribute d, vacuoliz ed
w ith in a real that is natural and social.3
T hus desire manifests its elf at the molecular level, at I
the libidina l level, at the orgone level, at the active level, where
one produces a flo w as oppposed to a series of sporadic an J
regimented squirts. T he an(archist) is he or she whose active
desire is not regimented, not hier(archized) by family, church/
T oward a Non-F ascist o r A n(a rc hic ha l) W ay o f Life 55
hool, army, wo rk, etc. L et us say, then, that in essence, an
n(archist) is an uns tructured body, a body iv/o organs.
But perhaps we are getting a b it ahead o f ourselves. As
yje just said above, desire like capital s hould be unders tood
in terms of flows , as fo r instance, flows o f shit, flows of se
men, flows o f desire, etc. H owever, there is a catch here.
While the flows of desire emanate (in a non- originary manner)
from a body w / o organs, the flows o f capital emanate from a
hier(archical) and arborescent body, i.e., from the coded body
of the C apitalis t Socius. A nd a double process operates at the
molar level of the economic system itself. I n other words ,
capitalism works by ins cribing, coding and re-directing the
flows of desire so that they may correspond w ith the flows
of capital at the stock market. T his double process is the
process of deterritorialization (degrounding) and territorializa-
tion (grounding). Desire is firs t deterritorialized by capital: al
lowing certain aspects o f the schizophrenic process to mani
fest themselves, and then it territorializes them: whenever there
is some danger that these flows may take their own lines of
flight. Which is to say, whenever an an(archical) or rhizomatic
act is possible. C apitalis m "can only exist by liberating ge
neric production while at the same time containing it w ith in
êll-defined limits so that it doesn't flee in all directions and
escape everywhere."4
The F ilm F orum in N ew Y ork C ity plays anti-establish-
ment and communis t propaganda films , despite the fact that
ae funders is E xxon. Why? Because even though E xxon
Car)>VVS reêase certain an(archical) flows of desire, it
Hxx aS eas^ P ut an enc^ them at a well-defined point.
wi]1 * allow you to open your mouth and shout, but it
Am a-S S'*1Ut ^ moment ^ funds a revolution in C entral
same"1^' ^ a leftis t film on N icaragua at the very
fo m e n t that it w ill contribute money to furthe r the
oppression of the Nicaraguan people by a fascist leader. I n
N ew Y ork C ity people who sell things on the streets are
often made to close down by the police. The system will
allo w and even encourage the flows as long as those flows
are regimented and coded. The street vendor is a threat be
cause he steps out o f the system: because he has taken to the
streets "w ith o u t a license," w itho ut the baptis m of the sys
tem. T he cop who closes down the street vendor is nothing
more than the monkey wrench who puts an end to the unre- I
s tricted and noncoded flows . "T he monarch of the mind,"
says M ille r, "is a monkey wrenc h."5 We may add, so is the
"monarch of desire."
A nd yet the system not only works by a subtle subtrac
tion but also by a subtle a ddition by an axiomatic.
The s trength of capitalism resides in the fact
that its axiomatic is never saturated, that it is
always capable of adding a new axiom to the
previous ones.6
C apitalis m then appropriates whatever it finds to be a
threat. I t does this by grounding whatever is free-flowing
and marginal. E M I, the B ritis h recording company, produced
the "S ex P is tols " not because the executives at "the" com- i
pany like d them but rather because i t was easy to turn them
into a commodity (an "unlimite d s upply"), and s trip them oi
what little threat they may have posed to the system. " P u n k
was finis hed the moment it became a movement with its j
own signifying semiotic and its own language and dress code- j
T oday one finds grandmothers everywhere with tWj j
"punk lo o k" the same way one found the "exis tentialis t look
in the pseudo-intellectuals of P aris in the 1950s.
T o w a rd a N o n -Fas c is t o r A n (a r c h ic h a l ) W a y o f Lif e 57
As the s ubculture begins to s trike its own emi
nently marketable pose, as its vocabulary (both
vis ual and verbal) becomes more and more
familiar, so the referential context to which it
can be most coveniently assigned is made in
creasingly apparent. E ventually the mods, the
punks, the glitte r rockers can be incorporated,*
brought back into line, located on the preferred
"map o f the problematic and social re a lity"
(Geertz, 1964) at that point where boys in lip
stick are "jus t kids dressing up," where girls in
rubber dresses are "daughters jus t like yours ..."
The media, as S tuart H a ll (1977) has argued,
not only record resistance, they "situate it within
the dominant fra me wo rk o f meaning," and
people who choose to inha bit a spectacular
youth culture are s imultaneous ly returned, as
they are represented on T.V. and in the news
papers, to the place where common sense would
have them f i t . . . 7
C apitalism is able to function axiomatically because
| e so-called "marginal language" eventually becomes estab-
ed, codified, and s emiotically s ignifying. The only way to
0 ve this problem is fo r the an(archist) to des troy his or her
Wn form of expression immediately, so as to make repeti-
n and incorporation impossible.
fr *S P a rtly what A rta ud had in mind when he called
e end of masterpieces or writte n texts. W hat he
Cenrurvn-10 f0rm ^ a body (corPus- a body). (Websters New Twentieth
Û P h F lCt'onary)That which is rhizomatic or an(archic) is brought into the
y 0 the Socius is formed into a body.
58 T oward a Non-F ascist o r A n(a rc hic ha l) W ay o f Life
wanted in the language of G uattari was an a-signifyine
semiotic:8 a flo w of non-repeatable signs that wo uld make it
impos s ible fo r the system (or culture), or in this case capita},
ism, to incorporate them or bring them into its own body
"A n yth in g that stands fo r more than ten seconds is evil"
says the lyrics o f a song by the punk group "B lack Flag."
A nd one finds the same idea in Ionesco's "T he Lesson," where
one of the characters is kille d by her professor who keeps
repeating the wo rd "knife " over and over again. T his is also
how K afka's despotic machine (the "H a rro w ") works. This
process o f overcoding stems fro m the S tate's fear of unre
stricted desire, and certainly from capitalis m's fear of cer
tain types of desiring-machines. A nd so it employs an arrange
ment o f fascist desiring-machines to regiment and monitor
the an(archical) desiring-machines.
N o w, we mus t unders tand desiring-machines w ith in a non
exclusive context. T hat is to say, we mus t understand them
as negative or fascist machines of repression, as reactive ma
chines, as we ll as pos itive or an(archical) machines un'
regimented and free-flowing. B ut what right do we have,
you may ask, to call human beings "machines" or even
"des iring-machines "? D id we not leave those concepts be-
hind w ith Descartes and Hobbes? Y es and N o. We only le
them behind ins ofar as we are no longer compelled to vie j
machines in bina ry oppos ition to a life process (vitalism)- J
Machines s hould be unders tood in connection ^ J
desiring-production: w ith active desire, w ith desire as the I
of energy that all machines produce, from a motorcycle to |
human being. "M an is sick because he is badly constructs /
1
Toward a Non-F ascist o r A n(a rc hic ha l) W ay o f Life 59
tes A r t a u d .3 A nd H enry M ille r writes :
E very man, woman, and child in a mocking-
tosh has adenoids, spreads catarrh, diabetes,
whooping cough, meningitis . E verything that
stands upright, that slides, rolls, tumbles, spins,
shoots, teeters, sways and crumbles is made of
nuts and bolts .10
And desiring-machines wo rk by s lowing down, breaking
down, starting over, coughing, s hitting, fucking, pissing, etc.
Desiring-machines... continually break down as
they run, and in fact, run only when they are
not functioning properly: the product is always
an offs hoot o f pro duc tio n, impla nting its e lf
upon it like a graft, and at the same time, the
parts of the machine are the fuel that makes it
run.11
N ow, there are basically two types o f machines. One,
the desiring-machines which we have dealt w ith here. A nd
two, the technical machines we deal w ith on a day-to-day ba
sis like P irsig's motorcycle. So let us consider P irs ig and
motorcycle together, and let us call P irs ig a desiring-ma-
lne' ar|d his motorcycle a technical machine. A nd further-
ore let us unders tand that what differentiates technical
mes from desiring-machines is not their size or struc-
6/. ut their use. O r, as Deleuze and G uattari put it, their
regime."12
ther ^ aplin, hi the mids t of the machine, can become ei-
nal h ** anârc^l^c) machine or a despotic machine or an infer-
esiring-machine, becoming attached to the technical
60 T oward a Non-F ascist o r A n(a rc hic ha l) W ay o f Life
machine, as a tool o f capitalis t anti-production and technology
T echnology presuposes social machines and
desiring-machines, each w ith in the other, and
by its elf, has no power to decide which w i l l be
the engineering agency, desire or the oppres
sion o f desire.13
I t is le ft open to C haplin to use the monkey-wrench,
either to re-adjust (territorializ e) the despotic or technical
machine of oppression, or to let loose its nuts and bolts that
like a "s chiz ophrenic s h irt"14are tied far too tight around his
neck. I t is up to C haplin to deterritorializ e the flows of de
sire. I n brief, then, the manner in which one plugs into an
other machine determines the outcome of desire. The Ger
man proletariat that put H itle r in power, that desired Hitler's
despotic machine, were able to be effective because they
plugged themselves into a despotic desiring-machine but
a "des iring-machine" nonetheless. M oreover, desiring-ma-
chines may w o rk both as an(archic) pa rtia l objects or as
hier(archichal) partial objects: as oppressive machines con
nected to other oppressive machines. P irs ig coupled to his
motorcycle is a true desiring-machine, a true an(archist), a
partial object, in the pos itive sense o f the word. T his is also
what B ukows ki's and A cker's literary machines are about.
T hat is, an(archic) desiring-machines desiring other an(archic)
des iring machines... desire des iring desire.
O n the other hand, we can find despotic desiring-^13
chines. K leis t's Prince Friedrich of Homburg is a good case &
point. T he P rince is a des iring-machine coupled to a desp0*^
or hier(archical) machine. I n fact, the P rince surrenders
the L aw o f the State in much the same way that the neuro
surrenders hims elf or herself to the O edipal L aw. The P rince ;
T o wa rd a Non-F ascist o r A n(arc hic hal) Way o f Life 61
tv i s o n l y made possible in a triadic relations hip: that
h i m s e l f , t h e E lector (the mediator of the L aw), and the
S t a t e M o m m y p l a y s the role of the State, D addy the punis h-
n r e d i a t o r . I t is only after completely s urrendering to the
S t a t e t o t h e L aw, to the despotic machine, to the overcoding
m a c h i n e , t h a t t h e P rince can at last be foregiven by the Elec-
to r t h e F a t h e r . * F urthermore, we mus t remember that even
t h o u g h t h e P rince was a hero for having defeated the Swedes,
t h e State n e v e r t h e l e s s found its elf obligated to sentence him
to d e a t h f o r h a v i n g disobeyed his orders, his superiors, the L aw,
a n d f o r h a v i n g taken a line of flight, for having taken a schizo
s t r o l l , f o r h a v i n g become a temporary an(archist), a true
d e s i r i n g - m a c h i n e and body witho ut organs.
Desiring-machines w o rk at the molecular level, at the
m i c r o p h y s i c a l level. C ontradis tinctly, the socius works at the
m o l a r l e v e l , a t the level o f technical machines of repression and
o p p r e s s i o n . A nd jus t as P resident S chreber was plugged in
t o a d e s p o t i c machine, so was K leis t's P rince. I n both cases,
t h e c o u p l i n g occurred at the molar and hier(archical) level.
3
,.e m l ecular level, one finds the schizophrenic process,
5^. e f^ght, and the flows o f desire. N erval takes a
hi Str ^ search of "A ure lia " and ends up hallucinat-
IJ iip S 0vvn wo rld, painting the wo rld his own color, in
(GeomV^n SamC surrender 111 Kafkas The Judgment, wherein the son
Father ^ 0yed by completely surrendering to the despotic Law of the
ln the Name of the Father.
62 To w a r d a N o n -F as c is t o r A n (a r c h ic h a l ) W a y o f Lif e
much the same way as the P ink P anther who paints the en
tire w o rld pink.15 A nd in both the P ink P anther and Nerval
resides the an(archist) par excellence: Deleuze and Guattari's
body w itho ut organs and N ietzche's "s elf-propelled wheel."
The an(archist) is a body w itho ut organs who needs
no one to determine his or her existence. I n essence, an
an(archist) is someone like Berenger (Rhinoceros), who is
forever destined to remain moving, forever destined to remain
(internally) active. "T he great affair is to mo ve /' said Robert
L ouis S tevenson, uttering the maxim o f every an(archist).
B ut let us be clear about this . N o t every kind of
movement is an(archical). I t is speed which turns points into
lines.
When G lenn G ould speeds up the performance
of a piece, he is not s imply being a virtuos o; he
is trans forming the mus ical points into lines,
and making the ensemble proliferate.16
A nd when S eicho M atus omoto's Detective Torigai
(Points and Lines) sets out to solve the murder of a prominent
official he does so by turning the points of a train schedule
into lines o f flig h t of an airplane trajectory. "I 've got it!" he
says. By plane the murderer could "leave Hakata at 8 A.M- j
and arrive at S apporo at fo ur in the afternoon."
C ontrary to P aul V irilio , then, speed its elf is not vio jj
lence. I n fact, the opposite may very easily be true. The State/ |
the slowest of all machines, works precisely by being slow- 1
works best when its speed is near zero. Speed leads to câ0j | |
a certain kind o f chaos and change, whereas order a j j
slowness lead to a static pos ition (a point) and a st r u c tu |
R ichard S ennett (The Uses of Disorder), like the Sex P is to^H
finds the city to be the only place where an(archy) is P I
T o wa rd a Non-F ascist o r A n(arc hic hal) W ay o f Life 63
for it is here that we find the movement and Nietzsch-
S1 chaos that is needed to lead an an(archical) and non
fascist life. The an(archist) is a nomad a nomadic des iring
machine that plugs hims elf/hers elf into other des iring-ma-
hines: never remaining dependent on any one des iring-ma-
chine in particular. P art objects (M elanie K lein) are important
for him or her only as points o f connections leading to lines
of intensities: to thousands o f plateaus, to thous ands of
affective states.
The an(archist's) relations hip w ith others is an active
relationship. He neither treats others as receptacles nor allows
himself to be treated as a receptacle fo r others. H is /h e r con
nections are always binary* but never parallel. She never
belongs to a party, a nation, or any other kind of triba l a lli
ance. She's always moving.** A nd she never remains in any
one place long enough to be made a "c itiz e n" (to be te rrito ri
alized). The an(archist) creates hims elf or hers elf everyday,
from scratch.
As A rtaud put it: "I , A nto nin A rtaud, am my son, and
my father, my mother, my s elf..."17 S imilarly, Nietzche u t
tered:
I am P rado, I am also P rado's father. I venture
to say that I am also Lesseps... I wanted to give
*ny P arisians, whom I love, a new idea that
of a decent criminal. I am also C hambige
also a decent criminal... The unpleas ant thing,
filSlll machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of
I f vemingassocia*:lons: one machine is always couple with an-
er- (Anti-Oedipus, p. 5).
* Al
yS 0n the road/' like Jack Kerouac.
and one that nags at my modesty, is that at
root every name in his tory is I . 18
I, says Nietzche, am the wo rld, and I am such because f
in creating mys elf I create the wo rld.
H owever, let us be careful here: fo r i t is important
that we do not interepret Nietzsche as propos ing some kind
of raving individua lis m. When Nietzsche says "I " and even
when A rta ud says "I " the "I " of which they speak, the "I" !
whic h they utter, is the "I " of rhiz omatic, an(archical) rela
tions hips. N o t the "I " o f a paranoiac or a fascist, subjugating |
others. W hat concerned Nietzsche above all was the possibil
ity of affective connections between all kinds of human beings.
A nd what he asked from human beings themselves is that
they be as affectively intense as they could pos s ibly be. Even
his w ritin g style betrays this longing fo r a rhizomatically
intense life.
We can easily unders tand his aphorisms not as concep- ;
tual fragments reflecting a conceptual, non-emotive, non-
passionate life, but as plateaus... as lines o f intens ity which ,
connect at no specific place but everywhere. When Nietzsche i
says that he's P rado, P rado's father, C hambige, Cesare Bor
gia and ultima te ly the wo rld what he's doing is (1) creating a
w o rld and (2) connecting w ith that w o rld affectively.
I t is a question of... ide ntifying races, cultures,
and gods w ith fields of intens ity on the body
w ith o u t organs, ide ntifying personages with
states that w ill f i l l these fields, and w ith effects
that fulgurate w ith in and traverse these fields .19
There is no O edipus here. So it is not a matter J l
ide ntifying w ith some kind o f F ather figure. Instead/ tt jj
T o wa rd a N o n -Fas c is t o r A n (a r c h ic h a l ) W a y o f Lif e 65
of "creating" worlds and individua ls in order to con-
^ tw ith them as fields of intens ity, affectively. (C hildren do
06 all the time w ith their "cartoon idols ," and it's not be
muse they're looking fo r a F ather or M ommy figure). The
n(archist's) desire is not a circular, referential desire, but a
linear desire.
4
In Godard's "A lpha ville ," the signs of violence and State
oppression are circular (e.g., the emblem in the police cars).*
C onradistinctly, the signs o f freedom and escape (as in a line
of flight or escape) are linear. T hat's because an(archy) mani
fests itself at the linear level... at the level of flight... at the
molecular level... at the quantum phys ical level... at the suba
tomic level. The circle, however, is a closed geometrical fig
ure, and therefore a s ymbol (and sometimes even an ins tru
ment) of oppression and repression: o f boundaries and lim
its, and of referentiality. The an(archist), therefore, is some
one who does not lead his or her life according to some u n i
versal R eferent: according to a rig id ly segmented set of
boundaries and territorialities . Instead, he or she is someone
who actively creates his or her own w o rld every morning
afresh.
th b rid g e C leaver, w ritin g in Soul on Ice, says that that
j l ere came a po int in his life when he could no longer be-
gl^ve in the "knowledge" of those whom he had considered
Dve him. "I had thought," he says,
* A
con th eXamPê violence of circularity is found in the panopti-
I I l i t a v * Foucault talks about in Discipline and Punish (Vintage Books,
66 T oward a Non-F ascist o r A n(a rc hic ha l) Way o f Life
that, out there beyond the horiz on of my own
ignorance, una nimity existed, that even though
I mys elf d id n 't know what was happening in
the universe, other people certainly did. Y et
there I was dis covering that the whole U.S .A.
was in chaos of disagreement over segregation/
integration. I n these circumstances I decided
that the only safe thing fo r me to do was go for
myself. I t became clear that i t was possible for
me to take the initiative: instead of s imply re
ac ting I c o uld act. I c o uld u n ila te ra lly
whether anyone agreed w ith me or not re
pudiate all allegiances, morals, values even
while continuing to exist w ith in this society.20
N o w here you have someone who, w itho ut ever hav
ing read a wo rd of Nietzsche, is more Nietzschean, i.e., more
an(archical), than any academic, Nietzschean scholar.
A n(archy) cannot be taught. I t is not a theory. I t is a way
of life, a way of being in the wo rld, an attitude. Sylvere
L o tringer is an an(archist). T he I talian "autonomis ts " are
an(archists). A nd the R astafarians, w ith their own language
(patois) and lifes tyle, are also an(archists). A n(archy) takes as
many forms as there are individuals .
Anti-Oedipus is a Nietzschean book o f ethics in that it
is writte n fo r all and no one s imultaneous ly. T his is why
Deleuze, in a letter to one of his critics, says that they "
meaning hims elf and G uattari do not care what we as
individua ls do w ith Anti-Oedipus. "W e consider a book,
writes Deleuze,
as a s mall a-s ignifying machine: the only prob
lem is Does it wo rk and how does i t work?
T o wa rd a N o n -Fas c is t o r A n (a r c h ic h a l ) W a y o f Lif e 67
H ow does it wo rk fo r you? I f it does n't func
tion, i f nothing happens, take another book. This
other way o f reading is based on intensities:
something happens or doesn't happen. There is
nothing to explain, no thing to unders tand,
nothing to interpret. I t can be compared to an
electrical connection. A body w itho ut organs: I
know uneducated people who unders tood this
immediately, thanks to their own "habits ."21
In a word, it all comes down to what kind affective
connections we can make w ith the w o rld at large. C an we
still be light on our feet? C an we dance? A nd then: can we
dance with others? A re we s till capable of taking afternoon
strolls with other desiring-machines? Berenger tried. He re
ally did. But his fa mily wo uld not fly w ith him.
Someone asked me recently what my de finitio n of
an(archy) was. I had no response: because an(archy) is life.
FOURTH
PLATEAU
BEFORE TAKE-OFF
(1) Cabin Doors LATCHED.
(2) Flight Controls FREE AND CORRECT.
(3) Elevator Trim TAKE-OFF.
(4) Fuel Shutoff Valve ON.
(5) Brakes SET.
(6) Throttle1700 RPM.
(a) MagnetosCHECK (RPM drop should not
exceed 150 RPM on either magneto or 75
RPM differential between magnetos).
(b) Carburetor Heat CHECK (for RPM drop).
(c) Engine Instruments & Ammeter CHECK.
(d) Suction Gage CHECK.
(7) Flight Instruments and Radios SET
(8) Throttle Friction Lock ADJUST.
(9) Wing Haps 0 degrees.
TAKE-OFF
(1) Wing Haps 0 degrees.
(2) Carburetor Heat COLD.
(3) Throttle FULL OPEN.
(4) Elevator ControlLIFT NOSE WHEEL (55 MPH).
(5) Climb Speed 70-80 MPH.
Instructions from The Owner's Manual
of a 1975 Cessna 150.
We work week in and week out. Until each one of the four of us sympathetically
eels what the other one is doing, without ever saying it... Each of us just link, just
gradually link together as a component of a huge machine. And that's what we
a ways strive for. Later you can put little breaks into it, and structure it by
Putting points of interest in. But the basic thing is always the same-it's just four
People striving to get the hugest... striving to get bigger and harder, until those
wheels just come down hard^H!
Test Department, Interview in "Terminal"
by Andy Darlington (No. 16/17)
Mo l ec ul a r Rev o l utio n ,
A r t a n d A n (a r c hy)
P rocesses everywhere, the dynamic flows o f suba
tomic interactions , chemical flo ws a ll processes, a ll
an(archic) processes emanating from everywhere... like the
flows in Bergson's Creative Evolution, F reud's libido , R eich's
orgone energy, M onod's D N A , etc., etc. A nd then, of course,
the flows of desire o f artists and their art:* their passion,
their schizo strolls, which are again, an(archic) flows of de
sire, lines of flight, as fo r example the lines of flig h t found in
* harsh brus h strokes of V an G ogh and Bacon, and in the
tographic plates depicting subatomic interactions.
I A nd yet, what has any of this to do w ith art and
i f f 1? *% )? W hat do we mean by molecular revolution? Is it
i f --------- -
* B
K e Word "art," we mean to include here not only visual art or
I kUt a^so Poetry, literature, music, film, etc. And the same
I Pplies to the word "artist."
M o l ec u l ar Re v o l u t io n , A r t a n d A n (a r c h v )
another I vo ry T ower term? A fte r all, how do we connect the'
D N A code to the State, to the fascist body, to the body in
fected w ith organs (or micro-powers)?
A mere madness? B ut then, o f course, we know better
than to call this or that "ma d" as opposed to "sane." Don't
we? We no longer believe in categories, fuck Aristotle! If
Nietzsche and D errida have shown us anything, it is that
there is no longer a s olitary and absolute pos ition to hold
but a mu ltip lic ity of positions , constantly in flux. These mo
lecular flows , these flows o f desire, are a-topic, i.e., they are
nomadic and w itho ut a place. I f we could localize them, they
wo uld immediately become points : States, churches, dicta
tors, dogmas, ideologies, etc. N o, we want none of that. That
whic h is static is violent and oppressive, and we have had
our f i l l o f both. T his essay w ill find as its concern the connec
tions to be made, here and there, between the molecular
flows and the flows o f desire found in an(archic) artists and
their art.
"T he biologis t who makes a model of the R N A and DNA
chains is trans pos ing these structures into a system of signs/
thus producing an entirely new basis o f expression," say
G uattari in Molecular Revolution.1 A nd we find this to be the
case w ith someone like J acques M onod. F or M onod the D
code is an invariant, te rrito ria liz ing structure, as of cur^j
all structures are. I n fact, the different varieties o f biolog*
organisms in nature are the res ult o f such an i n v a r i a n c e
the D N A code. M . M onod proposes that chance and nece
s ity are not exclusive binary opposites, but in rather
exclusive laws of nature.
M o l ec u l ar Re v o l u t io n , A r t a n d A n (a r c h y ) 73
The univers al components the nucleotides
on the one side, the amino acids on the other
are the logical equivalents of an alphabet in
which the s tructure and consequently the spe
c ific as s ociative fu n c tio n s o f pro te ins are
spelled out. I n this alphabet can therefore be
written all the divers ity of structures and per
formances the biosphere contains. More, w ith
each succeeding cellular generation it is the ne
varietur reproduction of the text, writte n in the
form of D N A nucleotide sequences, that guar
antees the in va ria n c e o f the s pe c ie s ...2
(M onod's italics).
H o we ve r, the a ppa re nt a n(a rc hy) o f chance in
Monod's D N A code is jus t that apparent. T he seemingly
free molecular flows are anything but free; they belong to a
hier(archy) in which the despotic D N A determines the out
come. One can clearly see the H egelian-M arxis t influence
here, which is to say, the all-encompassing overdetermina-
tion of all the elements absorbed, and carried "fo rw a rd " by
Absolute Reason. The only difference is that M onod calls
solute Reason by a different name or more precisely,
A. I n any case, M onod's molecular flows are made fascist
^ er the banner of liberal socialism... which turns every
anc* every line of flig h t into a State. A nd let us not be
exist^ ^ rhetoric: ^ *s a ê to say that there exists or can
f 1.te*nPorary States, which later turn into flows and lines
States" f even i f these S tates are called "pro le ta ria n
âde Ûrthermore, the invariance of the D N A s tructure is
P ssible only by appealing to what is easiest for Rea
74 M o le c ula r R evolution, A r t and A n(archy)
son to unders tand. M onod remarks:
I t may be asked, o f course, whether all the in
variant, cons ervations , and symmetries that
make up the texture of s cientific discourse are
not fictions subs tituted for reality in order to
obtain a workable image of it an image par
tia lly emptied o f substance, but accessible to
the operations o f a logic its elf founded on a
pu re ly abs tract "c o nve ntio na l" prin c ip le of
ide ntity a convention which, however, hu
man reason seems incapable o f doing w ith
out.*3
T hus, M onod appeals to Reason fo r s upport of his
invariance theory. A nd in this respect, M onod's theory of
invariance resembles C homsky's. I n effect, M onod himself
says the following:
A c c o rding to C homs ky and his school, in-
depth linguis tic analysis reveals, beneath their
boundless divers ity, one basic "fo rm" common
to all languages. T herefore C homs ky feels this
form mus t be considered innate and character
is tic of the species. C ertain philosophers or an
thropologis ts have been scandalized by this
thesis, in i t dis cerning a return to C artesian
metaphysics. P rovided its imp lic it biological
f I
* A good example of asymmetry is the exclusive left-handedness o .
trinos. As Chen Yang and Tsung Dao Lee have proved, neu JM
have only a left-handed spin, a fact that violates the parity conse ^
tion theory of nature. For an interesting discussion on this toplC/~|
- - t , 0 17 . 9 1 8 ).
M o l e c u la r Re v o l u t io n , A r t a n d A n (a r c h y ) 75
content be accepted I see nothing wrong w ith it
whatsoever.4(M onod's italics)
And further down:
I f these are correct assumptions, the linguis tic
capacity that declares its elf in the course of the
brain's epigenetic development is today part of
"human nature," its elf defined w ith in the ge
nome in the radically different language of the
genetic code.5(my italics)
F urthermore, one can easily find a one-to-one corre
spondence between their theories of invariance and their po
litical views. F or C homs ky, his theory of linguis tic inva ri
ance, or what he calls "univers al generative grammar," al
lows for the range in which "uncaused," creative, linguis tic
competence is to be found.
B ut as Deleuz e and G u a tta ri have po inte d o ut,
Chomsky's univers al generative grammar (like M onod's in
variant D N A code) is a source o f power, and a uthority a
fascist machine, so to speak.
The grammaticality of C homs ky, the categori
cal symbol S, is firs t a marker of power before
being a syntactic marker: you w ill form gram
matically correct sentences, you w ill separate
each statement into a nominal syntagm and a
verbal syntagm (the firs t dichotomy).6
fore course' y u read and write as told. There-
y u have here is a despotic S tructure which deter-
re irnet 6 ^^recôn and flo w of all the elements w ith in its
76 M o l ec u l ar Re v o l u t io n , A r t a n d A n (a r c h y )
M oreover, notice whence both M onod and Noam
C homs ky argue their points . We do not need a ma g n ify^
glass to see that what is fundamentally at stake here is tM
old P latonic-K antian Reason again. I n both M onod's DlSf^
and in C homs ky's generative grammar, we fin d a hier
a rc h y) (the tree and the chain) in which the free-flowing
elements w ith in their respective S tructures are regulated a nd
channeled: (1) you w ill write as such, and only as such, a nd
(2) you w i l l understand creation in terms o f C ode, and only
in terms o f C ode. As such, C homs ky territorializ es the flow
of words , and M onod territorializ es the genetic flows.
I n either case, P lato's R ational part of the soul is du
plicated in a somewhat diffe re nt mold. The free-flowing
flows o f desire and lines of flight are regimented and con
tro lle d by both M onod and C homs ky, in a manner similar to
P lato's. T hat is, the flows o f desire, the molecular flows, etc.,
are all subsumed under paranoiac, insomniac Reason. Zeus
w il l not be allowed to fuck H era on the steps of the temple...
he w i ll have to wa it u n til he's inside. R estrain yourself, man!
The D N A 's despotic nature w ill determine the outcome of
everything; and most clearly, there w i ll be no disorder, but
o nly hier(archical) organization.
I t is irrelevant whether we find the hier(archy) |n
the tree or in the chain. I n the end, the tree and the chain
amount to the same namely, Reason. The employment J
too many strings in an ins trument leads to an(archy), saJ |
P lato in The Republic. M us ic mus t be ordered and harmofljj
ous, there mus t be no dissonance or discord. I n answer |
the O ne /M a ny problem, P lato chose the One over the
and Being over Becoming. A nd two thousand years later, 1
encounter the same move in M onod and C homs ky, the ^ >
difference is that Being and the O ne have been given 1^
ent names namely, D N A and generative grammar- ||
is Reason: the guiding S tructure of a ll structures, the
6 hires that makers it possible to see the w o rld in terms of
tortures- A nd w ha t is the Many? The many is the non-
9 oinary instincts: the passions, desires, etc., all that is no
madic and a-iopic: a ll that is fre e- flowing and non-local-
izable, lines instead o f points, movement instead o f states.
As Bergson pointed out, we deal w ith "states" only
because Reason needs to freeze movement in order to under
s t a n d t h e phenomenon. M ovement does not correspond to
R e a s o n , b u t to the affects, to flows of desires, to desiring-pro-
duction, t o the passions, which are always active. I f M onod
and C homsky tell you that creativity is possible in necessity,
that c h a n c e is possible in necessity, that freedom is possible
in a universal S tructure, do n't you believe i t at least, not
any more than you s hould believe that freedom is possible in
a political State. L et us not forget that a state is s imply a
frozen moment. A nd a moment froz en by Reason in order to
keep a l l the elements w ith in i t manageable, coded, and of
c ou r s e , f i x e d .
Camus, fo r example, was we ll aware of the fact that
the State works through Reason, and that State oppression is
always the res ult o f Reason.* A nd, as L yotard remarks in
Driftworks:
Reason and power are one and the same thing.
Y ou may disguise the one w ith dialectics or
prospectiveness, but you w i l l s till have the
other in a ll its crudeness: jails, taboos, public
seêct*on' genocide.7
F or g-j.
iwi accurate and interesting critical treatment of Reason and the
h f . K a t i e s and logic of State oppression, see Albert Camus'
ta anc* "State of Siege" (Caligula and Three Other Plays) (Vin-
&e Books).
78
M o l ec u l ar Re v o l u t io n , A r t a n d A n (a r c h y )
T oo many strings? T hat is a problem! H o w does onj'
code the mu ltip lic ity of strings, of flows? H o w does one t er
rito ria liz e (or ground) the desires in such a way so that t heJl
remain subservient to the Master, Reason? P erhaps the mill
s tallation o f a te rrito ria liz ing machine is the answer, as for
example, P lato's educatio nal machine. P lato's machine
worked, firs t by deterritorializing the passions (yes, you may
fuck i f you want), and secondly by reterritorializing them at a
certain po int (no, you may not fuck Hera on the steps t o t he
temple). A ll is we ll as long as the te rrito ria liz ing machine is
in place, as long as the content is there; which is to say, t he
D N A code, univers al generative grammar, dialectic, Abso
lute K nowledge, noumena, phenomena, the Transcendental
S ignfied, G od, etc., etc.
T he non-coded flows o f desire mus t be turned into
referential and s ignifying units and they mus t be made to
refer back to a content, to an authority, call it D N A , univer
sal grammar, or O edipus. I n any case, order must be im
posed. (Words mus t correspond to things in the world, a s in
F oucault's Les mots et les choses, they mus t not be a-signify-
ing, as in the case of B urroughs or e.e. cummings). Yes, mu
sic as expression mus t have a content, it mus t not be ra il
dom, atonal, or dys functional, i t mus t refer back to som
ordering sign, jus t as the different varieties o f b i o l o g i c a l o j
ganisms in the biosphere mus t refer back to the D N A coom
R andom notes, dys functional music, and a s i g n i f y i n g eXPre| |
sion, are the enemies o f authority. A fte r all, what i f ^ er B
no O edipus, no D N A code, no generative grammar, w .
there is no G od, no H oriz on, no R eferent, asks the paran ^
trembling. A nd Hobbes answers. M olecular flows mu:s ^
regimented fo r the paranoiac. To live in the post-mo ^
wo rld, which is to say in a Nietzschean wo rld, one m j
M o le c ula r R evolution, A r t and A n(archy) 79
e n o u g h to sail in a vast ocean whose horiz on has been
* * V6d away by a sponge. These men C homs ky and
S ^) d __are afraid to navigate w itho ut a compass. A nalytic
hiiosophy, cognitive ps ychology, behavioris m a ll these
are a f t e r - e f f e c t s of the death o f the R eferent. A nd the kind of
art which results from such fear is fascist art: art in whic h the
flows of desire are represented, circulariz ed, and regimented.
The moment that art and artists become a-signifying
they become free and independent o f any hier(archical)
framework. A-signifying art is one of the many manifesta
tions o f desiring-production.
Desire does not "w a nt" revolution, it is revolu
tionary in its own right, as though invo lunta r
ily, by wanting what i t wants .8
Thus des iring production, or active desire, is a threat
to the body infected w ith organs (or contents) and an(archic)
art, being a manifestation o f such, is also a threat. I n fact,
true 'revolutionary a rt" does not even call its elf by that
name, fr to do so is to give its elf a name, a referent, a local-
1Zable point, an origin... all that is reactive as opposed to
3 ve free. A n(archic) art is precisely that because it
on ^ t0 a^ ^ any name. S o-called an(archic) art is
rga6 many manifestations of active desire. I t does not
jg * a S tructure, it does not refer back to an authority, it
inv W êsfre, like the free molecular flo w w itho ut the
C hon^,nCe code. O r, in the langua ge o f
. y. a language witho ut a universal generative grammar.
80
2
A l l these processes, all these molecular flows take place on
the body w itho ut organs, on the plane of consistency {Milk
Plateaux). A nd yet certain o f these molecular flows are ar
rested by molar aggregates, and grounded to the body in
fected w ith organs, to the fascist body. The deformed infant
in Eraserhead is an arrangement of organs witho ut a body:
the product of a bad connection made between two desiring-
machines. The s emi-formed embryos squashed by the mon
strous s inging woman... an inferno of desire, and mean
while the sounds of fascist indus tria l machines in the back
ground the same machines that one also encounters in
D avid L ynch's later film, The Elephant Man. A gain, the mon
s tros ity occurs at the molar level, at the level o f the organs,
not the body. The infant is deformed because it does not
have a body. Instead, it has its organs wrapped inside a
s mall sheet o f cloth. D avid L ynch is concerned w ith the or
gans attached to the body: the tumors o f the singing w o m a n
in Eraserhead, the tumors of J ohn M e rric k in The Elephant
Man, and fina lly, a body of flows in his film version of F r a n k
H erbert's Dune. Here at last we have a desert instead o f in'
dus trial machines... a body w itho ut organs to be crossed;
and flows (of water) to be released. The despot comes frop^J
the desert to territorializ e the flows on the body a nd1111
the end we even have a certain kind of pro fit. O r more Pr^|
cisely, here we encounter an economy, like c a pita lis t/ J
whic h the flows of water instead of the flows o f capita* J
territorializ ed. (S chizophrenia is arrested as a process, J
turned into a state.) The flows of desire are guided and c ^ ^
neled in a certain direction. T hey are made to conform 1
M olec ular R evolution, A r t and A n(arc hy) 81
t A nd again, here we encounter the most heinous
te 0f violence and perversion. H ere mons tros ity takes
. The tube connected between two anuses in M ichael
Gira's "Some Weaknesses," is the perfect example.
When one o f us takes a s hit, the pres sure
builds in the tube and the s hit s lowly works its
way up the others' ass. She's berating me. (I
can tell by the expression of hunger-anger on
her face) fo r not s hitting more often. She wants
my s hit up her ass. I have the a bility to hold it
in. She knows this. T hat's why she plugged my
mouth and ears, so it wo uld eventually have to
come out o f my ass. B ut I won't. R ight now I
can feel it crawling up my throat, and it's going
to start coming out of my nos trils any second,
firs t in s low drips , then in a quic k bro wn
double-stream I 'l l aim at her ugly, selfish face.9
Q.: A nd what is this all about? A.: A connection be
tween two desiring-machines who wis h to have their flows
pounded to something anything. Y es, s hit w ill flo w, but
it will have its destination. I n G ira's case, the des tination is
e wouth and the nostrils . (In the language o f psychoanaly-
g1S' problem of "anal retention," finds here a partial
||P |r-) I n any case, the flows we encounter in G ira are
erent from the flows we encounter in Beckett. The mouth
diff,
in
jfP tT speaks w itho ut a referent, w itho ut a s ignified, or
^ ere we have free flows of words and desires.
vice fh SCreamS/ it shakes our very being because it is a
Crsses trave^s out into space, out into the desert, and
voiCe f body w itho ut organs never to return again. I t is a
82
a te rrifying mouth because of its solitariness. O n the oth
hand, while G ira's mouth disgusts us, i t does not ma ke 1
tremble... we see the tube whic h connects A to B, but where'
the larynx in Beckett's mouth? Beckett's mouth is the mouth
o f the nomad who shouts in the middle of the desert. I t is not
a voice that aims at anything in particular, but simply a
voice a te rrifying voice; the same voice we hear when we
listen to recordings o f A rta ud chanting a voice that is not
so much a voice as a sound, and a very "cruel" sound at that.
I t is a dis turbing s ound fo r we do not kno w whence it
comes, and where its headed. I n any case, what is at stake
here is the as ignification of the voice, i.e., its an(archic) na
ture, and its non-referential possibilities.
The problem concerning an(archic) expression comes
in when the voice is connected or coupled to a social organ
ism, that is to say, to an established language w ith its own
invariant (D N A ) code and univers al generative grammar.*
F or example, the youth gang in A nthony Burgess' A Clock
work Orange is a micro-fascist group, precisely because all it
does is to s ubs titute one code fo r another, or more precisely,
one dress code, one linguis tic code fo r another, and hence all
i t replaces is one system of s ignification, one universal gen
erative grammar f o r another. I n s hort, the m i c r o - f a s c i s t
youth gang in Burgess' A Clockwork Orange remains within
its own s ignifying semiotic register; and as much a part oj
the established code as the police. The police are able j
deprogram A lex because all they have to do is s imply inv
the code to read its opposite, a s imple enough project w
f code
This is precisely why someone like Eco is a fascist: his t h e o r y
production is a theory of (fascistic) linguistic invariance, whic n ^
rebellion against the established order or code impossible. 0i
one must always remain a model reader, and never a scram |
M o le c ula r R evolution, A r t and A n(arc hy) 83
co d e is merely transferred from one side of the / to the
H from disobedience to obedience, from disrespect to
0t lect from desire to lack of desire, and so on. A ll that was
eeded in the case of A lex was a s imple device to force the
eyes to remain open.
The problem here is the body as limit, the body as
wall and of course, the body as S tructure as in K afka's
"The Great W all o f C hina." One needs to break walls , to
shatter them to bits , but never to w a il before them. The im
pact of a body hitting a w a ll always creates another casualty,
another H lderlin, another Nietzsche, another A rta ud, an
other Van G ogh, etc. T oo many casualties! A nd the wa ll, of
course, is always a lim it, whether it be language, G od,
mommy, daddy, O edipus, or anything else. C asualties occur
sometimes even at the end of a s troll, perhaps even as a
result of a woman (called "A ure lia "), or an E gyptian queen,
as with N erval. W hy is i t that certain o f these individua ls
like D. H. L awrence, H enry M ille r, J ack K erouac, A lle n
Ginsberg, etc., never continue to cross the body w ith o u t or
gans?10As Deleuze and G uattari po int out in Anti-Oedipus, it
1S êar which prevents them from going all the way... fear
that they may never be able to return. "T he majority draw
near the wa ll and back away h o rrifie d . "11 To take a schizo
s oil, one mus t be w illin g to take a considerable chance w ith
nes ^ e- I n brief, one mus t be w illin g to sail w itho ut a
IP npass, to enter unexplored lands, as another B owman in
e midst of a s olitary universe.
to th U u tr ^ ^ s "M a ldo ro r," fo r example, comes close
6 however, in the end, he merely leaves the wo rld
cho 6 fo r the w o rld of the Sea... only to create a psy-
o *nversi n the former. Who cares whether G od
s itjoj^p ^ rc>ne or on a P ê shit? W ho cares fo r the oppo-
J l d /E v il? We left that behind us long ago. A nd
M o l ec u l ar Re v o l u t io n , A r t a n d A n (a r c h v )
whether M a ldo ro r becomes man or shark is irrelevant in
either case, men and sharks have the ir own codes. Maj
doror's code is s imply the opposite o f the code "G ood." it js
interes ting that like his F rench compatriot, the Marquis de
Sade, all he has done is to replace one code w ith another. He
has replaced the code o f "G ood" w ith the code o f "E vil,"
as de Sade replaced the bourgeois code o f his day with the
code of "libertinage." De Sade wanted the w o rld to become
libertine, M a ldoror wanted the w o rld to become E vil: the
former wanted the w o rld as a House of L ibertinage, and the
latter, the w o rld as Sea... as a Sea o f infinite blood. Both
L autramont and de Sade wanted something to remain in
variant, s omething to remain divine a d ivin ity steeped in
blood perhaps, but nevertheless a divin ity. I n the end, they
were both concerned w ith states of being as opposed to
processes o f becoming.
M oreover, they were both concerned w ith a counting-
body. M a ldo ro r was concerned w ith the logic and mathemat
ics o f E vil, and de Sade w ith the logic and mathematics of
sex. The old body count: "ho w many have I killed? " and
"ho w many have I fucked? " Y es, mathematics and the fascist
body are always connected. The body count and the count-
ing- body belong to the fascist formation, as fo r instance,
H emingway's body: the body o f a paranoiac machine hold'
ing a gun in his hand, proud of his hunting trophies that sit
on a table in the background like the L ogan brothers
bo wling trophies .12 J
A nd then we have S tanley K owals ki's b o d y - sU
good measurements, such good biceps.
N o w what are all these furs doing here, how
about these pearl,s S tella? W here are y o u r
pearls, Stella?
He wants someone to come in and appraise Blanche's
s s e s s i o n s . " S tanley K owals ki wants numbers, figures , he
never good in E nglish. H o w could Blanche have los t
W*11 R e v e ? B ut poor Blanche, she knows nothing of num
bers; she had s imply been taking a s tro ll long ago, and d id n 't
ee the wall in time to avoid it. Blanche's body is not a count-
ne-body. A nd S tanley, how is he to deal w ith a non-count
ing body, w ith a body w itho ut organs? W ell, he mus t demar
cate it, he must measure the territory, he mus t territorializ e
Blanche's flows of desire. I n the state of L ouis iana, there is a
Napoleonic code that says that what belongs to the husband
also belongs to the wife, and vice-versa. Napoleon, the des
pot, is g o i n g to make sure that he doesn't get s windled, that
the mathematics are correct, and i f they are not, well, poor
Blanche must be put away. T hat is w h y S tanley has her
taken to a mental ins titution. There w i l l be no an(archic)
de s i r in g - m a ch in e here perhaps they are contagious
that is his fear. The paranoiac mus t lock up the little des ir
ing-machine from Belle Reve. There w i l l be no processes in
Stanley's territory, only states: everything mus t remain as it
ls: the b o w l i n g games, the heavy drinking, the poker game,
and work at the factory. N o, desiring-machines "mus t" not
soft, they "mus t" be rigid, and w o rk exclus ively w ith in
* eir prescribed regime. T hat is the reason w h y S tanley
ôwalski tells M itc h everything about Blanche's life he
not want another soft des iring-machine around. Ma-
sj. es mus t" be made o f metal, like M a rk P auline's de-
lea h 1Ve anC^âsci sti c des iring-machines ... whic h he un-
public places: machines whic h in fact have hurt
P e. These machines, these bodies, are the enemies of
*vJ Ws.
s irin^WeVer/ tbere are an(archic) bodies, and an(archic) de-
S'machines, like the ones we find in the literature of
86
H enry M ille r. H is bodies are concerned w ith flows, WJ
processes, and in his hand we always find a monkey wrench
ready to release the flows o f the body w itho ut organs, and
the flows o f desire. M ille r's bodies are always active bodies
bodies in motion, bodies fucking away, releasing flows of
sperm, ejaculating, regardless o f the place. F or M ille r there is
no sacred place fo r the sex act, he w ill fuck (Hera) anywhere
sacred places belong to paranoiacs. T his is why Wyndham
L ewis ' "w ild bodies " never seem quite w ild enough in
fact, they even seem static their wildness , their "dyna
mis m" is always contextualized, they are w ild bodies in Brit
tany, w ild bodies in S pain, always w ild bodies some place in
particular, and hence, they are not w ild at all. A truly wild
body, a body w itho ut organs, does n't belong to anything, it
has no mo mmy- po ppy, and no country or land that it calls
its own. The body w ith o u t organs is merely an undifferenti
ated surface, a plane of consistency, always a-topic. I t is a sur
face fo r desiring-machines: the kind o f desiring-machines we
encounter in D. M . T homas' The White Hotel, and their flows
o f milk, flows o f sperm, flows of blood. A nd also the kind of
desiring-machines we encounter in J . G. B allard's The Unlim
ited Dream Company. Blake is a desiring-machine who beginl
by taking a s tro ll and ends up taking a line of flight- a
Cessna 150 whose des tination is a Dionysian wo rld of desif|
where human beings become birds , where bodies becoojj
passionate, weightles s , and defy the s p irit o f gravity-
Blake's wo rld, there is no mommy, daddy, children, etC-'of_
differentiated subjects all we have are bodies withou |i
gans in constant motion.
[S /Iolecular R evolution, A r t and A n(archy) 87
es n o t points, that's what we are concerned with. U nlike
G e o r g e s S eurat, we define reality in terms o f lines instead of
ijrts. We interpret light in terms o f waves, not particles or
ho t o n s . A nd like C harles B ukows ki, we are interested only
in l i n e s . N either his "periods " nor his "commas " belong to
C h o m s k y ' s grammatical tree.*' What you find in the litera
ture >f Bukowski, from his poetry to his prose, is a certain
kind of rhizomatic or linear w riting, in which grammatical-
ity a n d structure is dismissed.
C ommas s uggest re la tio n, order, s tructure;
here what needs to be brought out is the brute
facts themselves, and they mus t be left as un
structured as possible.14
This is also the case w ith the poetry of J ohn Cage, and
e.e. cummings. C ommas, periods , s emi-colons , all these
grammatical devices make affective expression impossible
they turn affectivity into linguis tic expression, replacing it
Wlth the plas ticity o f language.
<>ne ê firs t artists to have noticed this problem
vôu r*stan T zara. T zara wanted expres s ion to remain
affective; he wanted to leave language unadorned,
B jifF tured, and free from the despotism of consciousness.
4 "Go
3 tree' ^y 5 Jhn Cage in X. And the tree is always a
know) h hier(archy} and oppression, as for example, the tree of
Powe^ Nj 6/wh*ch as we know from Foucault is always connected to
fre, R We do not want trees, but rhizomes instead. Let us not
BSP*^hespierre's "planted trees" and want they led to.
This was the whole idea behind the dadaist movement '
to be confused w ith the s urrealis t movement. One 0t
not
interested in proper grammar, one did not care for the des- ^
potis m of a univers al generative grammar, one did not car I
about proper beginnings or proper endings... one never be
gan a piece o f w riting, one s imply entered an already mov
ing process, and one always did so from a multiplicity off
directions, the same way one enters a map.
One finds this kind of linear w ritin g in A rtaud and
B ukows ki. There are no beginnings or endings in the writ
ings of A rta ud and B ukows ki, and certainly no orgasm or
climax. The entirety o f their writings are composed of pla
teaus, thousands of plateaus, lines o f intensities, and unlike
mainline literary w ritin g they are not orgasmic; that is, they
do not employ endings, but rather processes, lines of intensi
ties, more intense than any orgasm, more intense than any
climax. L ife is imp lic it in lines, whereas death is implicit in
points , in the orgasm. The orgasm is a conclusion, an end-
res ult, a period, a point... very much like death. There is
even a certain deflation in i t that is easily associated with
death, as fo r instance, the orgasm-death in Oshima's "In tf l | l
R ealm o f the Senses." T here are people who have h î l
themselves to achieve an orgasm. A n orgasm is like the cap j j
talis t idea o f a "vacation": temporary intens ity, and tM lP
there is w o rk again or death. T his is also why Nietzsc^
wrote aphorisms. Nietzsche was concerned with intens j | |
w ith flows of desire, w ith linearity, and as such, his ap
risms s hould be read as plateaus, as lines of intensities
as so many manifestations o f affectivity. A nd the same ^
plies to La R ochefoucauld, and Basho's haikus: this
proper way to read a haiku. B ut in the West, we
everything under L anguage and Reason. T his is why ^
i------ a to tVio F ast to practice his "affective athleticism-
m0w let us take a look at R avel's Bolero. Here we find
f f e c t i v e - m a c h i n e , and a certain way of becoming-intense
311 i r - i n t e n s e V5 through the increase of speed. R avel's Bo-
may begin either "fas t" or "s lo w," and its duration is
d e t e r m i n e d by the conductor accordingly. T hus the Bolero
serves as a good example of what Deleuze and G uattari call
d e v e n i r - i n t e n s e o r becoming-intens e (Mille Plateaux). T he
oblem with the Bolero is that it ends w ith an explosion,
with a climax, w ith an orgasm, and as such, it is arborescent
rather than rhizomatic. A fte r all, this was the reason that the
bolero was used in the A merican sex-comedy "10." I n brief,
the Bolero resembles capitalis m far too much. The flows de
territorialized in the beginning of the Bolero are also re- terri
torialized i n the climactic and explos ive conclus ion. The
process released at the beginning is arrested in the end. (L et
us not forget that R avel hims elf was a "fa ile d" pilot.) T his
double process of deterritorializ ation and reterritorializ ation
is found mos t e x p l i c i tl y in the q u a s i- a to n a lity o f
Schoenberg's compositions. S choenberg was never able to go
all the way with his attempts at composing dissonant music.
The very few times that he allowed for dissonance in his
music, he only did so w ith the intention of grounding it to a
s cture i n t h e end. As a res ult, every single one o f his
impositions remained very much w ith in the harmonious
so 6 musicology/ and his pieces, regardless of how "dis -
Mth*1 r ' dys functional" they became, always remained
tieve^ câss^ca* siaê f harmony. I n a wo rd, he was
| f r * k to break away from P lato's musical harmonics.
I * âctv S choenberg resembles both C homs ky and
j\ist thatm t b e a P P a r e n t an(archy) of his compositions is
sehj2o i apparent. S choenberg was never interested in the
Phrerij^ renia of music as a process, but rather the schizo-
f music as a state (the harmony/dis s onance dichot-
90
omy). S choenberg believed in S tructure jus t as much
M onod and C homsky. H e wanted flows to be regimetJ B
and channeled in a certain direction, and like A guirreM
H erz og's Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he wanted to be the dir j
tor. S choenberg hims elf said the following:
I was continually preoccupied w ith the inten
tion o f grounding the structure of my music con
sciously on a unifying idea that wo uld produce
not only other ideas but also regulate their ac
companiment and the chords , the "harmo
nies." (my italics )16
W hat he wanted, like C homs ky and M onod, was for
s omething to remain invariant. I t is in this respect that the
music o f S choenberg resembles capitalism: the schizophrenic
process imp lic it in dissonance is arrested and turned into a
state: the flows o f desire that P lato feared so much are terri
torializ ed or grounded to the body infected w ith organs, to
the capitalis t body, or, what amounts to the same, to the
fascist body. S choenberg like P lato allows us to take a schizo
s troll, but never too far. He is afraid that we may attempt to
escape (like Blake) in a Cessna 150 so the only kind o |
s troll that he w i l l a llo w us to take is a suburban Sunda|
s troll, a S hepperton s troll. J
"A lig h t tension is created by a tin y dissonance,
it is washed away w ith a tonic c ho rd."17 A gain, this J | |
way capitalis m works : points are turned into lines onlyt0
turned into points again.
One finds this to be the case w ith the literate
L ouis -F erdinand C line (Guignol's Band, for example) ^
nol's Band is a paranoiac machine that, by s howing the J
Id
as chaos, as dissonance, aims to subsume chaos and
under the R ule of L aw. T his is what C line craved for:
nar*orld of authority and L aw. L yotard tells us in Driftworks
a "t "dysfunction creates a desire to restore to good fo r m / '18
nd this was the reason w hy C line wrote the way he wrote,
po not be fooled by his an(archic) style he was far from
being anything of the sort. H is reasons fo r w ritin g were not
the same as those of B ukows ki, as much as this may seem to
be the case. O ur paranoid fascist wanted order above all. He
wanted a wo rld which had los t its H oriz on to be coded
again. He craved fo r the resurrection o f the dead R eferent,
w]-. >se death Nietzsche had celebrated years earlier. B ukow
ski, on the other hand, takes pleasure in s crambling the
codes, and his writings , like those o f Nietzsche, celebrate the
end of our H oriz on, or what may also be called the end of
the old, established order.
We have had our fi l l w ith order, "we do not want
more order, a music that is more tonal, more unified, more
rich, more elegant. We want less order, more circulation by
chance, by free wandering..."19 T hat is correct, we want less
elegance, we are tired o f over-produced, over- written music,
art, literature, etc. We wa nt the punk mus ic o f A ma ury
erez s 'A mor F ati," recorded w ith a $15.00 mike, we want
y underground music... no reproductions please! We
ofth 0 ^ 0r musiC/ ê a P 001 theater," but w ith o u t any
cdes found in the latter (in G rotows ki). We want
^hich scramb*es the codes, free molecular music, music
Plac re*eases the flows of desire, music which takes us
^ lnspires us to take our s trolls , like that o f the Sex
rriusic\\UUâus' etc- O h yes, we want fast, dissonant music...
SPfr y at disturbs metallic music even, like N ic k Cave,
Grists 2(ff/ Einstiirzende Neubaten, and Throbbing
Sic: ban Ut US n0t StP êre' E very ne should make mu-
a drinking glass w ith a knife and fo rk and record it,
cut a fart and record it, brus h yo ur teeth and record i t __y I
all that may s imply be called "nois e," but noise is music
O nly one mus t learn to lis ten w ith a th ird ear. E ven the Sex I
Pistols te ll us that what they have is noise, but so what?
us b lo w P lato to smithereens.
N o more harmonics please! M us ic, like every other
kind of art s hould be libidina l, music s hould be intense, like
a P ollock painting a conflagration of colors, a multiplicity
of colors, none having dominance over the others. J azz is like
that: there is no domination in it, even i f it is over-coded as a
kind of musical expression. P erhaps its only drawback is a
certain lack of dynamis m, a certain lack of Dionysian energy
the kind o f Dionys ian energy one finds in the harsh and
deep brus h strokes of V an G ogh, and I am specifically think
ing o f "S tarry N ight." We want structureless flows , and wild
and passionate flows of desire. A nd like Blake (The Unlimited
Dream Company) and Berenger (A Stroll in the Air) we want to
take a flight. We want to become birds ; we are interested in
the process of becoming-animal, becoming-bird, not beetle.
T here are runways everywhere, one only needs to use them.
Blake began by coupling w ith another desiring-machine (a
Cessna 150) and ended up coupling w ith the whole town of
S hepperton. The higher one flies, the easier i t becomes. Whaijj
prevents most people from taking Blake's flight, from taking
flyin g lessons, is fear... fear that they may enjoy themselves,
fear that they may feel alive fo r once. A s the Sex Pistols te
us, fo r most people, "it's too much fun being alive."
We leave you then, w ith eas y-to-follow ins tructiofl'ffl
learn how to fly. T his is what molecular revolution, art a ^
an(archy) is all about. There was never anything more ^
than this. F orget M arx, B akunin, K ro po tkin and the res
v b e a r d e d men. A nd we've had i t up to our necks w ith
10 ded men. These men belong to his tory, and we've had it
with history. F uck H is tory, we are sick of the stench that
emanates from the dead! We want a nomadology instead.
VVe aim to move, to dance, to fly, to live!
mkimmsm
mmmm
i W f
FIFTH
PLATEAU
It is the inherited burden of being condemned to
live out the role of "the Other." The fault should
not be seen as existing primarily in victimized
individuals, but rather in demonic power struc
tures which induce individuals to internalize
false identities.
Mary Daly
Beyond God the Father
The Women's Liberation movements are correct
in saying: We are not castrated, so you get
fucked.... it should be recognized that Women's
Liberation movements contain, in a more or less
ambiguous state, what belongs to all require
ments of liberation: the force of the unconscious
itself, the investment by desire of the social field,
the disinvestments of repressive structures.
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari
Anti-Oedipus
I 5
|| The Fa sc istic Str uc tur e
o f Rea c tiv e Desir e, a n d
It its Rel a tio n to the
Do mina tio n o f Wo men
F or the last two thousand years, philos opher after
jjP ilosopher and ps yc hologis t after ps yc hologis t (and I
'elude P lato as the firs t ps ychologis t) have to ld us that
||| e is the irrational and obsessive wis h to have something
gpc *. A nd as good, obedient students and consumers of
of d P hilosophy and psychology, we have bought this view
I f . ^"e ^q u e s tio n in g ly a view of desire whic h has been
*ech rm ^ ato to the pos t-modern w o rld of advertis ing
| Q ôlogies, to control and regulate the lives o f human
beCo^' as theY see fit. I n brief, then, this vie w o f desire has
I e a fascist tool, and a monkey wrench o f oppression.
98 The F ascistic S tructure o f Reactive Desire.
I n fact, i t even led earlier in this century to H itler's
s olution." A ll that H itle r had to do was convince the Gernj f
people that what they desired, and, of course, lacked w *
"clean" G ermany... a G ermany devoid of the "J ewish filth "*
A gain, what is imp lic it in this view, and what is ' J l
portant fo r us here, is the oppressive characteristic of reactd
desire. F or our purposes, we w ill concentrate on what rol
this vie w o f desire plays in relation to F reud's concept of
"penis envy," and the we ll- known "O edipal complex," and
its re pres s ive- oppres s ive character. M oreover, we will
pro vide an alternative theory o f desire. T hat is, we will
postulate desire as active and productive, as opposed to
reactive and oppressive, as in F reud.
We s tipulate here that this other way of understand
ing desire is the only revolutionary, and hence, constructive
way of vie wing desire. T hus, given this view of desire, i.e.,
active desire, and its feminis t implications , we w ill also offer
an alternative way of looking at human beings. F or we ref
use to adopt, or sanction in any way whatsoever, the old
subject-object, s elf-other, pers onological model of human
beings, and their relations hips w ith each other. Instead, we
offer an an(archic) vie w of human relationships, i n which
power does not play a role. I n the language of D e l e u z e an
G uattari, we wis h to treat human beings as c o n n e c t i n g
ing-machines, fo r whom relations hips are not vertical
hier(archical), but horiz ontal and an(archical). This view*
completely unlike the vertical and hier(archical) Freu j|g
view, which finds its articulation and exemplary form tf11
repressive-oppressive hier(archy) o f the O edipal tnang |
a n d it s R elation to the Domination o f Women 99
1
re-
ording to F reuds' theory of "penis envy," little girls
j[ze" at approximately the age o f three, that they "la c k"
omething- A nd the fu ll realiz ation of what this is comes
about when they compare their genitals to those o f their sex
ual counterparts. As a res ult the little girls feel that they have
been castrated, and they envy the uncastrated boys for hav
ing the penises the y thems elves lack. T he ir c lito ris e s
represent for them reminders o f that whic h they do not
have. In turn, they deal w ith this complex framework by
sublimating their
wish for a penis in the wis h for a child, that is,
becoming a normal woman, or by the develop
ment of neurosis, or by a character change de
scribed as the masculinity complex* a type of
character which seeks to deny that any lack exists1
(my italics).
Notice how normality and abnormality have been de-
*** A "normal" woman is defined as a woman who has
^cepted the "fact" that she envies and desires a penis; an
Wom0^ma^, W0Inan' on th e other hand, is defined as a
man who denies the "fact" that she lacks, envies, and
Slres a penis.
Thus, at the center o f women's oppression we find a
6
ef elucidation of the "masculinity complex," see Freud's essay,
^^K P W y , in the Standard Edition (New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-
|P S1S and Other Works, ed. James Strachy, Hogarth Press).
100 The Fas c is t ic St r uc t ur e o f Reac t ive D esir e.
phallocentric view o f the wo rld, grounded on reactiv j l
sire. C ons equently, any woman who refuses to vie 6 ^
w o rld in terms of the phallus , is held to be neurotic or hi v!^
unrealis tic. L ying at the root o f phallocentris m, we ha vf
what D errida has come to call a "metaphysics of presence " *
W hat this means fo r women is that reality is defined
in terms o f a presence/absence dichotomy, and that of
course "wo ma n" corresponds to the latter side of this divt
sion .
We fin d this to be the case from P lato and Aristotle to
F reud and S artre. F or P lato, woman represented the appeti
tive and infe rio r part o f the soul, whic h needed to be subor
dinated to the s uperior, R ational pa rt o f the soul, since
woman lacked Reason. I n fact, in the allegory of the "ti-
mocratic man" (Book V I I I ), P lato blames the young man's
mother fo r being a bad influence on her son. The young
man's father, on the other hand, is portrayed as a Rational
man who cares neither fo r honors nor for wealth.2
N ow, fo r A ris totle, as C aroline W hitbeck has pointed
out, woman is defined as a partial man... lacking in pnuma or
semen: the life-creating movement and force. "According to
A ris totle, women, and likewis e the females of other species,
have less intrins ic, vita l or soul heat than men, or the m f
of the species."3T hus what is lacking, or absent in womanJ|
the movement and process that is present in the nature ^
man's semen. A ris totle hims elf says the following:
The female in fact is female on a c c o u n t of an
ina bility o f a sort, viz ., it lacks the power to
concoct semen out of the fina l state of n o u r i s h
me nt...4(my italics).
,hile ^
A nd as such, woman is defined as passive, w
a n d it s Rel at io n t o t he Do min a t io n o f W o me n 101
d as active. But more on this later.
6 T u r n i n g to our near contemporary, J ean-P aul S artre,
d e f i n e s woman in terms of a certain kind of lack or
l i p 1' rp In a word, he defines woman as hole. H e remarks:
T h e obscenity of the feminine sex is that of eve
rything whic h gapes open. I t is an appeal to
being as all holes are. I n herself woman ap
peals to a strange flesh which is to trans form
her into a fullness o f being by penetration and
dis s olution. C onvers ely, woman senses her
condition as an appeal precisely because she is
in the form of a hole. T his is the true origin of
Adler's complex. Beyond any doubt, her sex is
a mouth and a voracious mouth which devours
the penis a fact which can easily lead to the
idea of castration.5 (S artre's italics)
A ccording to S artre, then, woman is that absence of
s u b s t a n ce whose nature is to devour and eat up anything
outside i t . Woman, in brief, is desire, i.e., the wis h to possess
and devour what i t does not by nature possess. W oman is a
consuming,* reactive hole, which, like quicksand, devours,
Cuts off/ e a t s , buys, etc.
Woman, says S artre, is a gaping mouth that eats up
Wa r^' ^ at consumes the wo rld, because this is the only
l i ttf t ^ S^8' aS ak sence' can become anything at all. F reud's
The blames her mother fo r her castrated penis /clitoris .
haps ~COnsuming voracious and devouring mother has per-
I U t it off. T his gaping hole, which S artre defines as
-------- -------
'AdlVertis ^
ffljijjBeuf rS are very well aware of this myth. That is why most advertise-
F are directed at woman: "the devouring and consuming sex."
woman in such terms o f disgust, mus t o f course, be finJ I
The absence o f substance, o f content, inherent in woma j l |
hole, mus t be fille d in w ith the penis or as Sartre tells
in Being and Nothingness, it mus t be plugged up.*
T he idea o f the hole is then an excavation
which can be carefully molded about my flesh
in such a manner that by squeezing myself into
i t and fittin g mys elf tig h tly ins ide it, I shall
contribute to making a fullness o f being exist in
the wo rld. T hus to plug up a hole means origi
na lly to make a sacrifice of my body in order
that the plenitutde o f being may exist...6
I mp lic it in the above passage is the idea that woman
as hole, as absence, is nothingness, and that man as plenitude
is the fillin g flesh (penis), and the content and substance
whic h fills the "ga ping" hole o f nothingness. In a word,
woman is nothingness, man is being. T hus, even an ontology
o f woman is defined in terms of lack.
A nd the same may be said o f F reud's ontology of
s exuality. F or F reud (as fo r most o f the Western tradition),
not only does woman lack and desire a penis, but furtfljM
more, she also lacks movement or motion. T hat is, w0j B
are conceived as passive human beings. T hey are the
jects (in the s trictes t H obbes ian terms ) of active ûin^
beings or men.
i '*C
This desire to plug up a woman's vagina, is the desire ofa par3nenergy,
plug up woman's flows of desire, woman's libido, woman ssex ^<1
which is, of course, always active; and to make woman a rec Y ê,
flows instead of an active agent of flows. That is, to make e
and her desire reactive, and dependent upon another s ^fis
's. This is the whole idea behind the Freudian denial o man
iJ-----l ;l ~
a n d it s Rel at io n t o t he Do min a t io n o f W o me n 103
"When you say 'mas culine'/' says F reud, "yo u usu-
cnean 'active/ and when you say 'fe minine / you
ually mean 'pas s ive'."7 A nd later:
The male s ex- cell is a c tive ly mo b ile and
searches out the female one, and the latter, the
ovum, is immobile and waits passively. T his
behavior o f the elementary sexual organisms is
indeed a model fo r the conduct o f sexual in d i
viduals during intercourse. The male pursues
the female fo r the purpos e o f sexual union,
seizes hold of her, and penetrates into her.8
As such, then, men are conceived in terms o f move
ment or motion, and women in terms o f stasis. A nd in rela
tion to the last passage from Being and Nothingness, we can
readily see how woman is equated w ith death, and ho w man
is equated w ith life. L et us not forget that fo r A ris totle, life
was the result of men's vita l sperm.
One o f the most interes ting challenges made against
this tradition is found in R obin M organ's The Anatomy of
Freedom. M organ, like Deleuze and G uattari, appeals to the
Molecular level of reality, and finds there the (Bergsonian)
ytfalism needed to counter a passive conception of woman.
er appeal to quantum physics is an appeal to a vitalis tic
| f i ê w o rld , and thus an appeal to energy to
ip â n, to action, to movement, etc. There is no absence of
in black holes. As M organ points out, black holes are
Posed of "energy-dense pockmarks in dis tant space,"9
tive tê*r suctin is unders tood only in relation to the ir crea-
holee? er y' which sometimes goes by the name of "white
P hysicists say: Holes are not the absence of par
ticles , b u t particles going fas ter than light
H ying anuses, rapid vaginas, there is no castra
tion.10(my italics)
T hat is correct, not even as hole can woman be defined
as absence o r lack: woman is energy, constant movement
flo w, and her denied clitoris is just as active as the penis'
releasing flows of desire which may shatter the established
codes.
M organ, like Deleuze and G uattari, is aware that de
sire is active, that desire is revolutionary, and that a philoso
phy of feminis m mus t take this into account. In the end,
Deleuze and G uattari's emphasis on the importance of a mi
cro-politics of desire is also M organ's . "F reedom," she tells
us, "equals E nergy times the square of the velocity of Trans
fo rma tio n."11
2
P olar orientations (active and initia ting versus
pas s ive and re c e ptive ) s h o uld emerge in
heterosexual relations hips whose goal is repro
duction (thus, genitality is the goal fo r both
sexes, and genital means vaginal fo r women).
The above passage, by N ancy C hodorow, d ear^^, , s
s uccinctly describes the kind o f territorializ ation of vv o _ .
desires made necessary by the despotism of the ||
>a n d it s Rel at io n t o t he Do min a t io n o f W o me n 105
L lex P rior to reaching the O edipal stage o f "develop-
c0 * ,,* little girl mus t firs t undergo the "realiz ation"
m "lacks" a penis, and secondly, the penis envy which
û lts from such "realiz ation." I n po int o f fact, the O edipus
ro lex becomes the end-res ult o f the little girl's penis
envy The little g irl firs t turns to the mother, but since her
mother cannot provide her w ith the penis, she emerges out
of her pre-O edipal relations hip w ith the mother, and enters
the triangulation (or better yet, s trangulation) o f the O edipal
relationship w ith the F ather. The little girl, in turn, abandons
clitoral masturbation, and replaces the clitoris as an object of
her sexual identity w ith the vagina, w ith whic h she now
identifies herself. A nd while the castration complex leads to
the dissolution of the O edipus complex in boys, the opposite
is true for girls. I t is precisely because she "lacks " a penis
that she enters the O edipal relations hip, and turns to the
Father to provide her w ith the "mis s ing" or "castrated" penis.
She is then made to give up her fe minity by trans ferring her
area of sexual excitation from the clitoris to the vagina. The
flows of desire released by the clitoris , and hence the active
and productive character of her s exuality is replaced by the
passive and reproductive character of her sexuality.
Women's s exuality is territorializ ed by psychoanaly-
J , and a te rrito ry namely, the vagina is demarcated
r er: a line is drawn between the deterritorializ ed flows of
Ifcnite6 - n^ keêve in stages (or states of being). We believe in linear
|1|L l-t*. j 68' *n flws of desires, not in spurts. And no, we do not believe
sive]1 f ! masculine in nature, any more than it might be exclu-
fact ^ the sexual character of the libido is unbounded, in
it at alieare evenârc* Put t0 sPeak its character. But if one must define
is no ' We it is flow, it is process, but a process without a telos. There
|f goal here, but simply, nomadic and a-topic lines of flight.
106 The F ascistic S tructure o f Reactive Desire,
the clitoris and the territorializ ed flows o f the vagina. In the
end, a "N o T respassing" sign is placed over the former. And
as our paranoiac, S artre, describes it, the vagina becomes a
receptacle, a voracious mouth, a thief, a hole that must be
fille d, and a te rrito ry to be colonized. A nd it is only when
the hole is "fille d , " and the te rrito ry colonized, that Woman
qua Woman is defined for Man.
I n her novel Blood and Guts in High School, K athy
A cker has a dra wing o f a woman's legs spread apart, and
above it, the fo llo wing ins cription: "G IR L S W I L L DO A N Y
T H I N G F OR L O V E ," thus po inting out the violence perpe
trated on women as passive entities. T his reminds us of
H erz og's "A guirre " re-directing all those flows , and raping
all that land the only difference is that our "A guirre " calls
hims elf "O edipus ."
G irls w i l l spread their legs fo r love, complains K athy
A cker: but love here means need, a necessary condition that
mus t be fu lfille d or more precisely, a certain kind of ex
change that mus t take place in the phallocentric S tock Ex
change of s exuality and relationships. A nd as J udith Van
H e rik remarks : "N o rma l fe min in ity remains ever in the
s hadow of, and in need of love from a parental fig u re "13(my
italics).
A nd as such, Woman as S lave remains dependent
upon her Master*... a M aster who can either provide or with
hold affection.
* Let us keep in mind Pauline Reage's The Story of O, de Sade's Justine,
Jean de Berg's Anne in The Image whose flows are territorialize
even in a public park. What is most important for us here, in terms of o
last example, is Anne's triangular (or Oedipal) relationship with
other two characters, Claire and Jean. Her domination takes p
~ A-----'><' rwiinalized woman, becomeS
.and its R elation to the Domination o f Women 107
G iven what we have said above, love and the phallus
become one and the same fo r women. A nd the place of the
Father in the O edipal triangle, is the place o f the provider,
the place o f the active agent, on which woman depends,
janey in Blood and Guts, depends completely on her father to
provide her w ith her ide ntity as a woman, even despite the
fact that she has sex w ith her father regularly. "J aney,"
K athy A cker tells us, "regarded her father as boyfriend,
brother, sister, money, amusement, and fa the r."14 T hus the
Father becomes a figure o f authority, the L aw its elf, and
the eternal R eferent. We cannot emphasize enough the sig
nificance o f this s eemingly innocent word, "P rovider." The
father is a provider precisely because woman is defined as
lack, absence, and hole. I n brief, M an is what W oman is not.
The F ather is C apital, the F ather is M oney, the F ather is the
System, the F ather is the W ord, the F ather is G od,* the Fa
ther is C reator, the F ather is the A utho r of Woman, and, last
but not least, the F ather is the W orld. A nd as a res ult,
women mus t give up their clitoris as an organ o f the ir sexu
ality. O f course, there is no po int in resisting: hiding in the
pocket of every patriarch we always find a knife. P atriarchs
in primitive tribes have always used them, but o f course, in
all fairness, we mus t not forget our own "c iviliz e d" F reud:
he had one also, and he used it... only the technique was
different.
M an declares: there exists only One S ubject, and only
One Self; woman is object, and woman is O ther; moreover,
^presentation of women and signified subject, and as a result Man will
t use both the knife and the whip.
0r an interesting treatment of the oppression of women by patriarchal
religions, see Mary Daly's classic, Beyond God the Father: Toward a
Philosovhv of Women's Liberation (Beacon Press, 1973).
there exists only One flo w of desire (or libido), and ' I I
course, is masculine. The fascism o f phallocentrism dem ^
that there only be O ne source o f libidina l energies. Oh - J
women's flows of desire "mus t" be territorializ ed d *
cated, and grounded, in such a way that they are only
sible by coupling to the body o f the One, the paranoiac' o l
fascist. Women's flows of desire mus t only take place in
vertical or hier(archical) coupling: the M an on top, the Man
penetrating. A fte r all, says F reud, this is what woman wants
and this is what woman as lack desires. The Oedipal struc
ture and its despotic and fascistic nature is only the articula
tion o f such desire.
N o, we do not even accept good old Oedipus as a
des cription o f human relations hips O edipus is fascist, re
gardless o f whether we vie w it as a mere description, or
more forcefully, as a pres cription. The internalization has
already taken place through the s ymbolic order, and the
hier(archical) frameworks have already been inscribed upon
the body and psyche o f women.
We want to des troy the economy o f F reud's neurosis
factory. L ike C haplin in Modem Times, we intend to use the
monkey wrench we hold in our hands. We aim to liberate
women's flows of desire because we've had it with fascism
O edipus is everywhere: O edipus is the company Boss
who harrasses women on the job, O edipus is that
p ric k" called the "ps ychoanalys t," O edipus is the P ^B
despot, O edipus is the fascist Teacher, O edipus is
O edipus is the oppressive P riest, O edipus is the brut ^
O edipus is... any figure of authority. A nd las tly, Oe ip ^
the A u th o r o f reactive desire. O edipus , as Deleuze ^
G uattari po int out, introduces lack into desire, an ^ a
imperialis m o f O edipus is founded here on an abs ent' ^
fic titio u s absence, a s ymbo lic absence, a mytno |
3
Gather round boys and girls. I t is s tory time.
N ow listen: Once upon a time, there live d in
ancient Greece a pla ywright, whose name was
Sophocles. T his pla ywright wrote a nice little
play which he called Oedipus Rex. T wo thou
sand years later in a dis tant land called Vienna,
there lived a G erman ps ychiatris t whose name
was S igmund F reud. F reud read this nice little
play, and s uddenly he got a b rillia n t idea!
he was going to invent a theory of s exuality
and psychology based on Oedipus Rex which
he did, even though i t took him many, many
years. H e called it the "O edipus complex."
A nd in the end, do you know what happened?
He turned everybody into a little O edipus !
A nd everybody has lived messed up lives ever
since.
Perhaps what is most s triking about the O edipus
M g * * *s its lack of any coherent basis and its total discon-
from the Real. I t is a theory based on myth and rep-
ijjl 'n afrn. I t draws from the pre-rehearsed theater of antiq-
dish With established codes and cues. B ut what is most
king is that anyone at all s hould believe it.
<lUate ^ l0 say s â t dream, tragedy, and myth are ade-
oftre t0 formations of the unconscious, even i f the wo rk
fr0ri.ansÔrma,:i on is taken into account? "16H o w does one go
psyCho? iCe Play t0 a highly s tructuraliz ed theory o f the
H i p - Where is the blue print in Oedipus Rex for all those
110 The F ascistic S tructure o f Reactive Desire,
nuts and bolts so tig h tly fastened in the structure of m'l
O edipus complex? H o w does one jump from the world ^^
representation to the w o rld of psychological generativ J f |
variance? A nd most importantly, how is it that we hav l
lowed our dear beloved F reud and company to crush ani
referentializ e our desire, i.e., our active desire or desirin
production? W ith the O edipal structure, the "whole of desk
ing- production is crushed, subject to the requirements of
repres entation."17O edipus telling us how to live who will
believe this a hundred years from now: that there was a time
when human beings were s tructuraliz ed according to a nice
little play? Anti-Oedipus already reads like science fiction.
F reud was never interested in production at all. What
he wanted above all was to re-produce the same old scenario
on the same old stage. A nd hence in Oedipus he found the
kind o f ps ychological generative invariance that would gen
erate the same s tructure throughout every single aspect of
life. T his way there wo uld always be L ack and the Father.
"I t is as i f F reud had drawn back from this world of wild
production and explosive desire, wanting at all costs to re
store a little order there, an order made classical owing to
the ancient G reek theater."18As F oucault remarks in TheH&i
tory of Sexuality:
We mus t not forget that the dis covery of the
O edipus complex was contemporaneous with
the juridic a l organiz ation of loss of parental au
tho rity (in F rance, this was formulated in the
laws o f 1889 and 1898). A t the moment when
F reud was uncovering the nature of Dora s de
s ire and a llo w in g i t to be p u t into words/
preparations were being made to undo those
reprehensible proximities in other social sec
tors: on the one hand, the father was elevated
into an object of compuls ory love, but on the
other hand, i f he was a loved one, he was at the
same time a fallen one in the eyes of the la w.19
A nd yet, the question remains: why make women the
vict ims of this paranoia? W hy referentializ e and repress
women's desiring-production? P erhaps the answer is quite
simple; perhaps, as G uattari has said, F reud s imply "de
spised women." B ut in any case, what is important fo r us to
reali/, is that what we fin d in F reud is nothing more than
representation and myth a s ymbolic order, and the b it
about castration, penis envy, O edipus, and the phallus , is
nothing more than a s ymbolic construct. F or instance, what
is the phallus, i f not a fic tion (like G od), a representation, an
imaginary construct, endowed w ith a kind of power that it
does not at all possess. T he phallus is not the penis but a
symbolic generative invariant that reproduces its elf in every
aspect of life, s inging the same old time.
In F reudian doctrine, the phallus is not a phan
tasy, i f what is understood by that is an imagi
nary effect. N o r is it such an object (part inter
nal, good, bad, etc...) insofar as this term tends
to accentuate the reality involved in a relation
ship. I t is even less the organ, penis or clitoris ,
which it symbolises. A nd it is not incidental
jj that F reud took his reference from the s imula
crum which i t represented fo r the A ncients .20
W L T * * * phallus is a despotic s ignifier or R eferent before
c0mes^ an object of oppression. I n effect, the phallus be-
p powerful" and hier(archical) at the moment when
the mere s ymbolic register is trans formed into actual des'
Hence we refuse to buy O edipus, the phallus J
envy, castration, etc. We lack none of them, neither a s ^0***
nor as women. We kno w very we ll what lies behind all thes^
s ymbolic and linguis tic constructs. We caught F reud t hrow
ing the anchor over-board. T hat is to say, territorializ ing andf
grounding des iring-production. A nd again, we refuse to ac
cept O edipus as any kind of univers al R eferent, descriptive
or otherwise.
E very fa mily pattern is completely different,
depending on its particular context. Y ou don't
find the same relations hip to paternal authority
in a s hantytown in A bidjan as you find in an
in d u s tria l to wn in G ermany. N o r the same
O edipus complex, nor the same homosexual
ity. I t seems s illy to have to say anything so
obvious, yet one is continually faced w ith dis-
engenuous assumptions o f this kind: there is no
such thing as a universal s tructure of the mind,
or o f the lib id o !"21(G uattari's italics).
A ny claim to a univers al structure o f the mind stems
from the reactive desire to make life mathematical, c a l c u l a b l e ,
and simple, as in a s tory w ith a necessary beginning an
necessary ending. H owever, relations hips between huma ^
beings are a lo t richer than that. There are as many kin s
relationships as there are individuals . We are not even J
ing that there exists O edipal relationships. B ut Oedipus
not come firs t, and it is not the univers al R eferent for a j
tions hips . sfre
Woman never desired the F ather's penis because^^
never lacked it to begin w ith there is nothing l aC
a nd its R elation to the Domination o f Women 113
However, what woman as a human being (not a
'V0<rtiistic or symbolic category) has always desired is the
l l f l u t i o n of the univers al generative R eferent that grounds
life to the phallocentric hier(archy).
Desire is not bolstered by needs, but rather the
contrary; needs are derived from desire: they
are counterproducts w ith in the real that desire
produces.22
This is what most of the Western philos ophical tradi
tion has failed to unders tand, and yet what capitalis m has
always understood so well.
Advertisers have always known how to create myths ,
how to make people dependent on those myths , and las tly,
how to make people feel that they lack, and o f course, desire
something. I n effect they have always known that desire is
productive; this is w hy they have been so successful at regu
lating lives. I n short, advertisers have always known that
lack is a countereffect of desire," and that it is "pos ited,
distributed, vacuolized w ith in a real that is natural and so
cial."23 "N o w ladies, no more rings around the collar for
yur husbands," and "Y ou're not tru ly a woman u n til you
^ Chanel N o. 5 perfume." R eactive desire then "becomes
s abject fear of lacking s omething."24B ut what i f you don't
Ck anything? W hat i f a woman says to her s hrink that she
jjjê r envies nor feels that she lacks a penis? W hat then?
!pus collapses, and the psychoanalyst's phallus shrivels
Heaven help us! "A fte r all, we always tho ught that
IQ*en were passive."
f <^>Ur favorite example of rebellion against this vie w is
V9riei m C hristine, the protagonis t of Bette G ordon's film
pry* C hristine turns the wo rld of pornographic represen
tation back on itself: she becomes an "intrude r," observm
men observing "women." C hris tine enters a porno shop anf
through her presence there she destroys the semblance of
reality in the pornographic representation of women. Oh no
a real woman! A nd s lowly they (the men) place the maga'
zines back on the racks.
C hris tine, then, dis rupts the established order, in
much the same way as someone who brings a tape recorder
into the psychoanalyst's office.* C hris tine refuses to be refer-
entializ ed and grounded on representation: she does not al
lo w desire to be produced for her, but instead produces her
own desire. A s Bette G ordon informs us:
There is no representation of C hris tine having
sex in the film. She has sex by speaking it and
by voyeuris tically fo llo wing, [one o f the pa
trons o f the porno theater she works in]. She
describes what she sees on the screen at first,
but goes on to describe what she wants to see, con
structed from her own desire... She speaks her
fantasies, which silence men: they can't deal
w ith her desire being spoken.25(my italics)
A nd they certainly can't deal w ith her desire being
active. T hey want to speak of woman, they want to m
woman an object o f dis curs ive practice, but never a llo w J |j
to speak. H owever, C hris tine knows better, she knows J
to shatter the codes. She knows how to destroy Oe ip f lf j
*Jean-Jacques Abrahams was institutionalized for bringing a tape
into his psychoanalyst's office. That is, for disrupting the soo a
For an interesting article by him, see Semiotext(e), " S c h i z o - c u l t u r e
The article is titled, "Fuck the Talkies," 178-188.
.and its R elation to the Domination o f Women 115
is active, productive, she lacks nothing i f anything,
II cr e a te s the wo rld. H er boyfriend is outraged by her fan
gle s arid in him O edipus lurks . L as tly, C hris tine is a revo
lutionary, a rebel, who liberates women's flows o f desire,
because active desire is always revolutionary.
Desire does not threaten a society because it is
a desire to sleep w ith the mother, [or sleep
with the father], but because it is revolutionary.
A nd that does not at all mean that desire is
something other than s exuality, but that sexu
ality and love do not live in the bedroom of
O edipus , they dream ins tead o f wide- open
spaces, and cause strange flows to circulate
that do not let themselves be stocked w ith in an
established order. Des ire does not "w a n t"
revolution, it is revolutionary in its own right,
as though invo lunta rily, by wa nting what it
wants.26
There is no predetermined regime for desire: yes, it
dreams of open spaces, and i t is only free in wide-open
spaces. I t is only when desire is territorializ ed and demar-
? ed that it becomes repressive-oppressive, as in the case of
U(^ and his te rrito ria liz a tio n o f women's desire. The
^fison of women's desire is the phallocentric hier(archical)
j | F % , and her freedom is fo u n d in the a c tu a lity o f
and horiz ontal relations hips , whether they be
ôrn êr women/ or men. I m p lic it in the freedom of
b ilit 60 *S tîe ^ree<ôm f humanity w itho ut it, the possi-
|| a non-fascist or an(archical) way of life is nil.
4
A nd yet, how are we to begin? H o w are we to transform the
vio le n c e o f p h a llo c e n tris m in to the non- violenc e of
an(archical) relationships? F or we are not concerned with
replacing one hier(archical) order w ith another. That is to
say, we are not interes ted in going fro m patriarchy to
matriarchy not even temporarily: the memory of Marx's
"temporary" proletarian dictators hip remains fresh in our
minds .
The women's movement is more than a group
governed by central a uthority in conflict with
other such hierarchical groups. I f it were only
this , i t w o u ld be o nly one more s ubgroup
w ith in the all-embracing patriarchal "family."
W hat we are about is the human becoming of
that ha lf of the human race that has been ex-
27
eluded fro m humanity by sexual definition.
(Daly's italics)
Hence we aim to create new definitions , not so 11111.
through words , but through actions, through our an(a
cal) attitudes. We deny that there is any a priori reality
s ignifier: words , and s pecifically certain words , are no ^
more than elements w ith in an established semiotic ne '
and its R elation to the Domination o f Women 117
e r e p e a t , like so many other feminists, that there is no
ch thing as a "timeless female essence."28 We are among
the first anti-metaphysicians.
The terms "wo ma n" and "female bo dy" are...
free floating signifiers... which lack any con
stant meaning.29
No, we do not believe in essences, ultimate reality,
Truth, or the d ivin ity o f language (we are aware o f the des
potic nature of the S ignifier). L ike Derrida, we are aware of
the dictatorship o f the copula: Woman is... not pas s ivity,
lack, absence, hole, etc. Woman "is " becoming, woman "is "
process, woman "is " movement, etc. The copula is always
despotic, its assumption is that o f essences, and states, rather
than flows and movement. H uman beings are not s imply
"this" or "tha t," and human relations hips , regardless o f
Oedipus, or any other fascistic s tructure, are not one dimen
sional. A life liv e d on one s ide o r the o th e r o f the
hierarchical) d ivid in g line is a life lacking in richness. A nd
as Mary Daly informs us, we can only rebel by giving up
colonialization, and livin g on the boundary of human rela
tions.
Real boundary living, [she says], is a refusal of
tokenism and absorption, and therefore it is
genuinely dangerous.30
I^r ^he State and other oppressive ins titutions are not
^ eatened by M arxis ts , fanatics, etc., but by people who ref-
conform to any hier(archy) whatsoever. The most po-
lisâ y threatening act against the State and other estab-
! 0rders is the act that refuses to set u p another
hier(archical) framework, the act that refuses to let it-c u
a a ei* be
coded.
"T e ll us that you want to castrate men," they ^ ii!
"D o anything you want, but let us see you, show us y ^j
guns, we want to see where you stand."
B ut what i f we don't have "one" particular position
what i f we do not allow ourselves to be positioned on one
side or the other of the hier(archical) dividing line? What
then? The established order begins to tremble.
T his is why we said at the beginning of this study
that we refuse to accept the s elf-other, subject-object person-
ological model o f relations hips . A nd furthermore, this is
why we have attacked F reud and his repressive-oppressive
generative machine (O edipus) so vigorous ly.
I t is rather sad that one s hould have to resort to sci
ence fic tio n (and we are not saying anything against science
fiction) to find an example of the kind of an(archic) relation
ships being proposed above. We are now thinking of Ursula
K . L eG uin's The Dispossessed. Is the future of this possibility
that is, an an(archic) w o rld where women (and other indi
viduals ) are not oppressed so very distant? O r better yet,
does it have to be so distant? ,:'j
F or S artre, hell was other people: this is b e c a u s e he
viewed a ll human relations hips in terms o f power anil
hier(archy). A nd the same applies to F reud, of course. F r e j
was concerned w ith pres erving the old fa mily tree: all th^H
branches (boys and girls ) depending on their root (Oe ip 1u|J j
the F ather, the P hallus). , j |
A s an alternative we propose the rhizome: ôrlZJ iern
lin e s o f c o nne c tio ns and re la tio n s , none of ^
hier(archical). T here is no reason to believe that
beings can only have vertical relations hips , or reâtl nceIi'
solely in terms of power. T his is another myth of the
.a n d its R elation to the Domination o f Women
119
ret" Western tradition. I f something does not have a cen
sure enough there is always O edipus lurking in the back-
* und *n one ôrm or anthe r ready to subsume what
ever it is under a univers al structure. "E verything mus t be
yen its own domain. I f it doesn't fit by its elf, w e 'll make it
L " Women "mus t" be such and such, and men "mus t" be
such and such.
In conclusion, then, our concern here is w ith proc
esses, becomings, movements, not stasis, structure, code, or
Being As we have seen, the generative invariance o f the
Oedipal structure, and the structure of the desire it imposes
on women and other individua ls , is the reason fo r the vio
lence perpetrated by psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts:
the agents of Oedipus.
O edipus , as N a o mi G oldenberg has p u t it, is a
"prison."31 There is no univers al s tructure of the mind, of
relationships, of sexuality, etc., any more than there is an
eternal essence of Woman or Man. I n the end we speak
together and say: we are becoming... Woman... Man... A n i
mal... all.

Rolando Perez On An (Archy) and Schizoanalysis

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Rolando Perez On An (Archy) and Schizoanalysis

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On An (a r c h y )

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