The title, Schizoanalytic Ventures At the End of the World: Film, Video, Art, and Pedagogy, addresses the state of affairs in what is a precarious condition for our species living on the Earth , in terms of both an ecological crisis and a political crisis that shape contemporary global dynamics. While ‘end of the world’ sounds very dramatic, it is a call from the future that casts its shadow on us today. This call is a warning as to a final end that is projected if and when the Earth no longer becomes habitable; at the same time, it is also a call to the growing and overwhelming conditions that are giving rise to neo-fascism and its consequent dictatorships that are springing around the globe in various degrees of force, held together by populist politics that have enabled such a condition to emerge. As many have noted, democracies that shaped modernist thinking are failing, as a very small percent of the population is able to manipulate the political scene, supported by wealthy business interests. In both these senses, a suicidal course has been charted. As Deleuze and Guattari write in Anti-Oedipus : ‘the most disadvantaged, the most excluded members of society invest with passion the system that oppresses them, and they always find an interest in it, since it is there that they search for and measure it’ (A-O, 346).
Schizoanalysis comes from the process philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari , which interrogates the global capitalist economic formation by exploring the dynamics of its ongoing formations and transformations. It addresses the state of the global precarity that fluctuates between the capitalist poles of paranoia and schizophrenia . Both tendencies pull together and apart in every socius where the pretense to socialist democracy prevails as ennobled by a social justice agenda, yet capitalism sets the parameters for such a promising agenda. Schizophrenia is, by and large, a creative endeavor, both as a formation of the psyche and in its resistance to the socius (the set principles of the social order). It offers a form of ‘unlimited semiosis ’ that unhinges fixed meanings; Deleuze and Guattari identify with such an orientation as a source of transformative change. Given that the marketplace is driven by profit motivations based on stochastic quantitative analysis, a nation’s bottom line as to its health/wealth is calculated via employment statistics, GNP growth, stock market indicators, import-export calculations, and so forth, such an ‘objective’ tendency of measurement overrides any meaning and belief system that lays claims to its foundation. Religious orientations fall into line in support, be they evangelical Christians in the USA, Hinduism in India, and the rise of Political Islam in Turkey where Islam and capitalism are reconciled. The ‘American dream ’ is based on this fundamental economic tenet that is written on its currency: ‘in God we Trust .’ This schizophrenic side of capitalism enables a perpetual deterritorialization and decoding, a dismantling takes place so that new markets are always opening up, while others are shutting down. Global trade and expansion work on such a principle. The limits of this seem unlimited, except now that resources are becoming scare for future survival. New systems of currency are developing (cryptocurrencies) like bitcoin that claim to circumvent state and the central banking system to open up new venture capital—‘in Digital We Trust.’ Algorithmic computing and encryption software become potentially new forms to measure wealth, shifting to immaterial currencies and credit money.
On the other side of the ledger is paranoia —the resurgence of neo-fascist propensities in democratic states, which we are witnessing on a global scale; a retreat into protectionism, an attempt to control all meaning, a libidinal economy of capitalist desire based on lack as Lacan had argued, manifested via commodity forms. The return is to a mythical past, to traditionalism, to wall building, and a delineation of us-and-them mentality played along psychological, ideological, and material lines. It is thoroughly despotic—there is a growing list of dictators and authoritarian personalities: Trump (USA), Putin (Russia), Xi Jinping (China), Erdoğan (Turkey), Duterte (Philippines), Orbán (Hungry), Duda (Poland), Salvini (Italy), Maduro (Venezuela), Ortega (Nicaragua), Kim (North Korea), Netanyahu (Israel), and Bashar al-Assad (Syria); few countries seem exempt from this paranoiac wave . If schizophrenia is the dynamic of a permanent revolution to open more territory for profit, then paranoia is the archaic residue , its inertia, a propaganda machine based on centered modes of social organization governed by the pomp, display of extravagance, military might, lies, and a justice and military department working for whoever is in charge.
Deleuze and Guattari differentiate different kinds of group formations: ‘subject–groups ’ and ‘subjugated groups .’ Each is libidinally invested in these two poles: schizophrenia and paranoia . Subject groups are characterized by their investment in schizophrenic forms of ‘progress,’ while subjugated groups invest their preconscious affects by following paranoid forms of closure. This is never a simple either-or. In capitalist formations, ambivalence manifests itself that combines the freedom of economic production (an affirmative force), along with the tyranny of despotic power (a negative force). Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic project is to forward what they see as a ‘permanent revolution.’ By this, they mean an attempt to eliminate power and paranoia to enable schizophrenic free play, a form of delirium that releases ‘life’ in ways that has been entrapped by what they call ‘molar ’ investments, the prevailing social norms that support ‘gregarity ’ or ‘herd instinct .’ This refers back to the paradox mentioned earlier as to why desire and passion for one’s own oppression can come about: Desire and interests do not always line up, but can be at odds with one another: Unconscious libidinal investment (desire) precedes, and then interest follows. As they succinctly write: ‘The schizoanalytic argument is simple. Desire is a machine, a synthesis of machines, a machine arrangement—desiring-machines. The order of desire is the order of production: all desire is at once desiring-production and social-production ’ (A-O, 325, emphasis in the original).
The fourth part of Anti-Oedipus is entitled, ‘Introduction to Schizoanalysis .’ It is Deleuze and Guattari’s rambling attempt to provide an outline for such an endeavor. Reading this section presents difficulties for any reader, just like the book itself. In 1982, I travelled to New York for a conference. Having a strong interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis , I had read that Anti-Oedipus was a must read as it offered a ‘critique’ of psychoanalysis. New York, as is well known, is famous for its bookstores, or was so at the time. I did find the book, which I still own. The physical joy that went into finding it still lingers (like this memory). There was no Internet available at the time, no Amazon with its instant reach to whatever book you want or can afford. I had to search for it from bookstore to bookstore. The cover still remains vivid: the title spread over what looks like broad-brush strokes of purple water paint. First, published in 1977 by Viking press in New York, I recall opening it up, seeing the picture on its inside cover (Boy with Machine, Richard Lindner 1954), and then eagerly trying to consume its first few pages. The effort was short-lived; I had no idea what (the hell) I was reading. I had no way into it. It did not speak to me. I closed its covers and put it on my bookshelf to collect dust before it was to be reawakened yet again.
Since then, I have no idea as to the extent which I have been able to find my way back into its mysteries that were hermetically sealed from me back then. Along the way, I found out that Deleuze and Guattari had not made a complete break with Lacan ; their critique was cleverly disguised without disparaging the master (Dosse 2010). A more complete break was to come with the publication of their second volume to Capitalism and Schizophrenia , Thousand Plateaus. The chapters that follow are my way of addressing the difficulties with schizoanalysis . I am under no illusion that these ‘ventures ’ are on the mark, as they say, and take solace with the following review of a number of well-known Deleuzians who have addressed ‘what is schizoanalysis?’ I start there and then return to what I think I have tried to do in this book in answer to that distant but vivid memory.
Exploring ‘What Is Schizoanalysis?’
Ian Buchanan is a central figure in Deleuze and Guattari Studies, in both the journal and the founder of an annual international conference and ‘Deleuze camp’ that explores the ‘applications’ of both Deleuze and Guattari to various aspects of the social order and the arts. The successful book series, Deleuze Connections published by Edinburgh press, has made a significant contribution in exploring schizoanalytic applications. There is a long list in fact, of titles that state: Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of … Art, Ecosophy, Literature, Religion, Cinema, Machinic Unconscious . One quickly learns that each book in this series is a singularity in its own write/right.
In ‘Schizoanalysis : An Incomplete Project’ (2013), Buchanan provides an important and useful exposition of schizoanalysis, furthering his more truncated overview in his earlier book, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus : A Reader’s Guide (2008). Buchanan clearly points out that there really is no method, formula, or model to follow with any assurances, only guidelines of exploration. Guattari , in his latter writings, struck out on his own, calling on ‘metamodeling’ as another way of developing schizoanalysis. Again, metamodeling has no easy articulation as to what it is, only Guattari’s own ‘diagrams’ as he works out his own problems. Both Janell Watson (2008) and Brian Holmes (2009) have developed their own interpretations of Guattari’s particular direction. According to Watson, metamodeling riffs...