EXTRACT from The Catastrophe of Postmodernism - Deleuze, Guattari & Baudrillard
Gilles Deleuze's `schizo-politics' flow, at least in part, from the
prevailing pm refusal of overview, of a point of departure. Also called
`nomadology', employing "rhizomatic writing," Deleuze's method champions
the deterritorialization and decoding of structures of domination, by which
capitalism will supersede itself through its own dynamic. With his sometime
partner, Felix Guattari, with whom he shares a specialization in
psychoanalysis, he hopes to see the system's schizophrenic tendency
intensified to the point of shattering. Deleuze seems to share, or at least
comes very close to, the absurdist conviction of Yoshimoto Takai that
consumption constitutes a new form of resistance.
This brand of denying the totality by the radical strategy of urging it to
dispose of itself also recalls the impotent pm style of opposing
representation: meanings do not penetrate to a center, they do not
represent something beyond their reach. "Thinking without representing," is
Charles Scott's description of Deleuze's approach. Schizo-politics
celebrates surfaces and discontinuities; nomadology is the opposite of history.
Deleuze also embodies the postmodern "death of the subject" theme, in his
and Guattari's best-known work, Anti- Oedipus, and subsequently.
`Desiringmachines', formed by the coupling of parts, human and nonhuman,
with no distinction between them, seek to replace humans as the focus of
his social theory. In opposition to the illusion of an individual subject
in society, Deleuze portrays a subject no longer even recognizably
anthropocentric. One cannot escape the feeling, despite his supposedly
radical intention, of an embrace of alienation, even a wallowing in
estrangement and decadence.
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