- Desiring-production
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Desiring-production is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Œdipus (1972). They oppose the Freudian conception of the unconscious as a representational "theater", instead favoring a productive "factory" model: desire is not an imaginary force based on lack, but a real, productive force. They describe the mechanistic nature of desire as a kind of "desiring-machine" that functions as a circuit breaker in a larger "circuit" of various other machines to which it is connected. Meanwhile, the desiring-machine is also producing a flow of desire from itself. Deleuze and Guattari imagine a multi-functional universe composed of such machines all connected to each other: "There are no desiring-machines that exist outside the social machines that they form on a large scale; and no social machines without the desiring machines that inhabit them on a small scale."
The concept of desiring-production is part of Deleuze and Guattari's more general appropriation of Friedrich Nietszche's formulation of the Will to Power. In both concepts, a pleasurable force of appropriation of what is outside oneself, incorporating into oneself what is other than oneself, characterizes the essential process of all life. Similarly, a kind of reverse force of "forgetting" in Nietzsche and the body without organs in Deleuze and Guattari disavows the Will to Power and desiring-production, attempting to realize the ideal of an hermetic subject.
Thenceforth, while very interested by Wilhelm Reich's fundamental question — why did the masses desire fascism? — they criticized his dualist theory leading to a rational social reality on one side, and an irrational desire reality on the other side. Anti-Œdipus was thus an attempt to think beyond Freudo-Marxism; and Deleuze and Guattari tried to do for Freud what Marx had done for Adam Smith.
Published in the same year as Anti-Œdipus, Guy Hocquenghem's Homosexual Desire re-articulated desiring-production within the emergent field of queer theory.
See also
Sources
- Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1972. Anti-Œdipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of L'Anti-Oedipe. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476953.
- ---. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476945.
- Guattari, Félix. 1984. Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0140551603.
- ---. 1995. Chaosophy. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1570270198.
- ---. 1996. Soft Subversions. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Trans. David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1570270309.
- Hocquenghem, Guy. 1972. Homosexual Desire. Trans. Daniella Dangoor. 2nd ed. Series Q Ser. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. ISBN 0822313847.
- Massumi, Brian. 1992. A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. Swerve editions. Cambridge, USA and London: MIT. ISBN 0262631431.
- Holland, Eugene W.. 1999. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415113182.
Deleuze - Guattari Concepts
and theoriesAffect • Arborescent • Assemblage • Body without organs • Conceptual character • Desiring-production • Deterritorialization • Difference • Haecceity • Immanent evaluation • Individuation • Line of flight • Minority • Molar and molecular • Multiplicity • Noosphere • Plane of immanence • Reterritorialization • Rhizome • Schizoanalysis • Society of control • Subjectification • Transcendental empiricism • VirtualCapitalism and Schizophrenia (Anti-Oedipus • A Thousand Plateaus) • Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature • Rhizome • Nomadology: The War Machine • What is Philosophy? Works by Deleuze Empiricism and Subjectivity • Nietzsche and Philosophy • Kant's Critical Philosophy • Proust and Signs • Nietzsche • Bergsonism • Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty • Difference and Repetition • Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza • The Logic of Sense • Spinoza: Practical Philosophy • The Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault1 • Dialogues2 • Superpositions3 • Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation • Cinema 1: The Movement Image • Cinema 2: The Time-Image • Foucault • The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque • Périclès et Verdi: La philosophie de Francois Châtelet • Negotiations • Essays Critical and Clinical • Bartleby, la formula della creazione4 • Pure Immanence • Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 • Two Regimes of MadnessWorks by Guattari Psychanalyse et transversalité • Molecular Revolution • Desire and Revolution5 • L'inconscient machinique. Essais de Schizoanalyse • L’intervention institutionnelle6 • Les années d'hiver • Pratique de l'institutionnel et politique7 • Communists Like Us8 • Molecular Revolution in Brazil9 • The Three Ecologies • Cartographies schizoanalytiques • Chaosmose • Chaosophy • Soft Subversions • The Guattari Reader • The Anti-Œdipus Papers • Chaos and ComplexityRelated topics L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze • La Borde clinic • A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity1 with Michel Foucault • 2 with Claire Parnet • 3 with Carmelo Bene • 4 with Giorgio Agamben • 5 with Franco Berardi and Paolo Beretto • 6 with Jacques Arodino, Georges Lapassade, Gerard Mendel and Rene Lourau • 7 with Jean Oury and François Tosquelles • 8 with Antonio Negri • 9 with Suley RolnikCategories:- Postmodern theory
- Philosophical concepts
- Gilles Deleuze
- Félix Guattari
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