Pierre-Félix Guattari (; French: [ɡwataʁi]
(listen) ; April 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992)
was a French psychotherapist, philosopher,
semiologist, and activist.
He founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy,
and is best known for his intellectual collaborations
with Gilles Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus
(1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the
two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
== Biography ==
=== Clinic of La Borde ===
Guattari was born in Villeneuve-les-Sablons,
a working-class suburb of north-west Paris,
France.
He trained under (and was analysed by) the
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in the early 1950s.
Subsequently, he worked all his life at the
experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde
under the direction of Lacan's pupil, the
psychiatrist Jean Oury.
La Borde was a venue for conversation among
many students of philosophy, psychology, ethnology,
and social work.
One particularly novel orientation developed
at La Borde consisted of the suspension of
the classical analyst/analysand pair in favour
of an open confrontation in group therapy.
In contrast to the Freudian school's individualistic
style of analysis, this practice studied the
dynamics of several subjects in complex interaction;
it led Guattari into a broader philosophical
exploration of, and political engagement with,
a vast array of intellectual and cultural
domains (philosophy, ethnology, linguistics,
architecture, etc.).
=== 1960s to 1970s ===
From 1955 to 1965, Guattari edited and contributed
to La Voie Communiste (Communist Way), a Trotskyist
newspaper.
He supported anti-colonialist struggles as
well as the Italian Autonomists.
Guattari also took part in the G.T.P.S.I.,
which gathered many psychiatrists at the beginning
of the sixties and created the Association
of Institutional Psychotherapy in November
1965.
It was at the same time that he founded, along
with other militants, the F.G.E.R.I.
(Federation of Groups for Institutional Study
& Research) and its review Recherche (Research),
working on philosophy, mathematics, psychoanalysis,
education, architecture, ethnology, etc.
The F.G.E.R.I.
came to represent aspects of the multiple
political and cultural engagements of Guattari:
the Group for Young Hispanics, the Franco-Chinese
Friendships (in the times of the people's
communes), the opposition activities with
the wars in Algeria and Vietnam, the participation
in the M.N.E.F., with the U.N.E.F., the policy
of the offices of psychological academic aid
(B.A.P.U.), the organisation of the University
Working Groups (G.T.U.), but also the reorganizations
of the training courses with the Centers of
Training to the Methods of Education Activities
(C.E.M.E.A.) for psychiatric male nurses,
as well as the formation of Friendly Male
Nurses (Amicales d'infirmiers) (in 1958),
the studies on architecture and the projects
of construction of a day hospital for "students
and young workers".
In 1967, he appeared as one of the founders
of OSARLA (Organization of solidarity and
Aid to the Latin-American Revolution).
In 1968, Guattari met Daniel Cohn-Bendit,
Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Julian Beck.
He was involved in the large-scale French
protests of 1968, starting from the Movement
of March 22.
It was in the aftermath of 1968 that Guattari
met Gilles Deleuze at the University of Vincennes
and began to lay the ground-work for the soon
to be infamous Anti-Oedipus (1972), which
Michel Foucault described as "an introduction
to the non-fascist life" in his preface to
the book.
In 1970, he created Center for the Study and
Research of Institutional Formation), which
developed the approach explored in the Recherches
journal.
In 1973, Guattari was tried and fined for
committing an "outrage to public decency"
for publishing an issue of Recherches on homosexuality.
In 1977, he created the CINEL for "new spaces
of freedom" before joining in the 1980s the
ecological movement with his "ecosophy".
=== 1980s to 1990s ===
In his last book, Chaosmosis (1992), Guattari
returned to the question of subjectivity:
"How to produce it, collect it, enrich it,
reinvent it permanently in order to make it
compatible with mutant Universes of value?"
This concern runs through all of his works,
from Psychoanalysis and Transversality (a
collection of articles from 1957 to 1972),
through Years of Winter (1980–1986) and
Schizoanalytic Cartographies (1989), to his
collaboration with Deleuze, What is Philosophy?
(1991).
In Chaosmosis, Guattari proposes an analysis
of subjectivity in terms of four dimensions:
(1) material, energetic, and semiotic fluxes;
(2) concrete and abstract machinic phyla;
(3) virtual universes of value; and (4) finite
existential territories.
This scheme attempts to grasp the heterogeneity
of components involved in the production of
subjectivity, as Guattari understands it,
which include both signifying semiotic components
as well as "a-signifying semiological dimensions"
(which work "in parallel or independently
of" any signifying function that they may
have).On 29 August 1992, two weeks after an
interview for Greek television, curated by
Yiorgos Veltsos, Guattari died in La Borde
from a heart attack.
Some three years later, on 4 November 1995,
his friend and research partner Gilles Deleuze,
chronically suffering from respiratory ailments
and incapable of simple tasks such as writing,
would commit suicide.In 1995, the posthumous
release of Guattari's Chaosophy published
essays and interviews concerning Guattari's
work as director of the experimental La Borde
clinic and his collaborations with Deleuze.
The collection includes essays such as "Balance-Sheet
Program for Desiring Machines," cosigned by
Deleuze (with whom he coauthored Anti-Oedipus
and A Thousand Plateaus), and "Everybody Wants
To Be a Fascist."
It provides an introduction to Guattari's
theories on "schizoanalysis", a process that
develops Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis but
which pursues a more experimental and collective
approach towards analysis.
In 1996, another collection of Guattari's
essays, lectures, and interviews, Soft Subversions,
was published, which traces the development
of his thought and activity throughout the
1980s ("the winter years").
His analyses of art, cinema, youth culture,
economics, and power formations, develop concepts
such as "micropolitics," "schizoanalysis,"
and "becoming-woman," which aim to liberate
subjectivity and open up new horizons for
political and creative resistance to the standardizing
and homogenizing processes of global capitalism
(which he calls "Integrated World Capitalism")
in the "postmedia era."
== Works ==
=== Works translated into English ===
Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics
(1984).
Selected essays from Psychanalyse et transversalité
(1972) and La révolution moléculaire (1977).
The Machinic Unconscious (1979)
Schizoanalytic Cartographies (1989).
The Three Ecologies (1989).
Translated into English 2000.
Chaosmosis: an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (1992).
Psychoanalysis and Transversality (2015).
Collected essays and interviews from 1955-1971.
Chaosophy (1995).
Collected essays and interviews from 1972
- 1977.
Soft Subversions (1996).
Collected essays and interviews from 1977
- 1985.
The Guattari Reader (1996).
Collected essays and interviews.
The Anti-Oedipus Papers (2004).
Collection of texts written between 1969 and
1972.
Machinic Eros: Writings on Japan (2015).
In collaboration with Gilles Deleuze:
Anti-Oedipus (1972).
Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975).
A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
On the Line (1983).
Contains translation of "Rhizome" (1976).
Nomadology: The War Machine.
(1986).
Translation of chapter 12 of A Thousand Plateaus.
What is Philosophy?
(1991).
Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium (1995).Other
collaborations:
Communists Like Us (1985).
With Antonio Negri.
Republished under a different title as New
Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty (2010)
Molecular Revolution in Brazil (1986).
With Suely Rolnik.
The Party without Bosses (2003), by Gary Genosko.
Features a 1982 conversation between Guattari
and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former
President of Brazil.
=== Untranslated works ===
Note: Many of the essays found in these works
have been individually translated and can
be found in the English collections.
La révolution moléculaire (1977, 1980).
The 1980 version (éditions 10/18) contains
substantially different essays from the 1977
version.
Les années d'hiver, 1980-1985 (1986).
Un Amour d'UIQ.
Scénario pour un film qui manque, edited
and with a visual essay by Graeme Thomson
& Silvia Maglioni (Paris, Editions Amsterdam,
2012.
The edition contains various screenplays and
a selection of unpublished archives)Other
collaborations:
L’intervention institutionnelle (Paris:
Petite Bibliothèque Payot, n. 382 - 1980).
On institutional pedagogy.
With Jacques Ardoino, G. Lapassade, Gerard
Mendel, Rene Lourau.
Pratique de l'institutionnel et politique
(1985).
With Jean Oury and Francois Tosquelles.
Desiderio e rivoluzione.
Intervista a cura di Paolo Bertetto (Milan:
Squilibri, 1977).
Conversation with Franco Berardi (Bifo) and
Paolo Bertetto.
== See also ==
Deleuze and Guattari
History of capitalism
Becoming
== References ==
== Sources ==
=== Primary sources ===
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari.
1972.
Anti-Oedipus.
Trans.
Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane.
London and New York: Continuum, 2004.
Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
2 vols.
1972-1980.
Trans. of L'Anti-Oedipe.
Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
ISBN 0-8264-7695-3.
---. 1975.
Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature.
Trans.
Dana Polan.
Theory and History of Literature 30.
Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P,
1986.
Trans. of Kafka: pour une littérature mineure.
Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
ISBN 0-8166-1515-2.
---. 1980.
A Thousand Plateaus.
Trans.
Brian Massumi.
London and New York: Continuum, 2004.
Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
2 vols.
1972-1980.
Trans. of Mille plateaux.
Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
ISBN 0-8264-7694-5.
---. 1991.
What Is Philosophy?.
Trans.
Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson.
London and New York: Verso, 1994.
Trans. of Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?.
Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
ISBN 0-86091-686-3.
Guattari, Félix.
1979.
The 
Machinic Unconscious: essays in schizoanalysis.
Trans.
Taylor Adkins.
Los Angeles, CA : Semiotext(e), 2011.
Trans. of L'inconscient machinique: Essais
de schizo-analyse.
Paris: Recherches.
ISBN 2-8622-201-08
---. 1984.
Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics.
Trans.
Rosemary Sheed.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
ISBN 0-14-055160-3.
---. 1989a.
Schizoanalytic Cartographies.
Trans Andrew Goffey.
London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Trans. of Cartographies schizoanalytiques.
Paris: Editions Galilée ISBN 978-2718603490.
---. 1989b.
The Three Ecologies.
Trans.
Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton.
London and New York: Continuum, 2000.
Trans. of Les trois écologies.
Paris: Editions Galilée.
ISBN 1-84706-305-5.
---. 1992.
Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm.
Trans.
Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP,
1995.
Trans. of Chaosmose.
Paris: Editions Galilee.
ISBN 0-909952-25-6.
---. 1995.
Chaosophy (Texts and Interviews 1972 to 1977
). Ed.
Sylvère Lotringer.
Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser.
New York: Semiotext(e).
ISBN 1-57027-019-8.
---. 1996.
Soft Subversions (Texts and Interviews 1977
to 1985).
Ed.
Sylvère Lotringer.
Trans.
David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener.
Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser.
New York: Semiotext(e).
ISBN 1-57027-030-9.
---. 1996.
The Guattari Reader.
Ed.
Gary Genosko.
Blackwell Readers ser.
Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
ISBN 0-631-19708-7.
---. 2006.
The Anti-Oedipus Papers.
Ed.
Stéphane Nadaud.
Trans.
Kélina Gotman.
New York: Semiotext(e).
ISBN 1-58435-031-8.
Guattari, Félix and Toni Negri.
1985.
Communists Like Us: New Spaces of Liberty,
New Lines of Alliance.
Trans.
Michael Ryan.
Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser.
New York: Semiotext(e), 1990.
Trans. of Nouvelles espaces de liberte.
Paris: Bedon.
ISBN 0-936756-21-7.
Guattari, Félix, and Suely Rolnik.
1986.
Molecular Revolution in Brazil.
New York: Semiotext(e), 2008.
Trans. of Micropolitica: Cartografias do Desejo.
ISBN 1-58435-051-2.
== External links ==
Fractal Ontology (with unpublished, English
translations of Guattari and others)
Chimeres site on Guattari (in French)
"Desire Was Everywhere" by Adam Shatz, London
Review of Books, Vol. 32 No. 24 · 16 December
2010
