Michel Foucault wrote the preface to Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In the preface, Foucault discusses how ideas of Marx and Freud had become hindrances in mid-20th century France. He also discusses how Anti-Oedipus seeks to analyze the relationship between desire and reality in capitalist society. Finally, Foucault summarizes some of the principles of an "anti-Oedipal" way of living that is presented in Anti-Oedipus, such as freeing political action from totalizing ideas and proliferating thought through difference rather than systems.

1. POST SCRIPT
Foucault & Lyotard

2. Presented by
Will McPherson & Erin
Stubbs

3. The Preface to Anti-Oedipus* Michel Foucault
*Written by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1972 book by philosopher Gilles
Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second beingA Thousand
Plateaus.

4. Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

5. French philosopher most concerned with the
balance of knowledge and power, and how these
concepts affect social control and ethical action.
He was one of the founding scholars to use post
modern (or post structuralism) critical techniques.
Well known for his History of Sexuality volumes.

6. Preliminary Information on Anti-Oedipus
Authors:
Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher interested in psychological variables that affect the logic
of previous philosophical theories.
Peirre-Félix Guattari, a French psychoanalyst most noted for founding schizoanalysis, which
represents a branching out of former Freudian psychoanalytical techniques.

7. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
● Notable for the evolution of Post Structuralism
● Sought to analyze the relationship of desire to reality and
capitalist society
● Induced readers to withhold fascism through humor and
meaning rather than subversion.
Chapters:
● The Desiring-Machines
● Psychoanalysis and Familialism: The Holy Family
● Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men
● Introduction to Schizoanalyisis

8. “
So Long Semiotics
“One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams
stray too far from Freud. And one had to treat sign-systems -- the
signifier -- with the greatest respect. These were the three
requirements that made the strange occupation of writing and
speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time
acceptable”
(Foucault 380).
Foucault begins his Preface by suggesting that in mid 20th
century France, people had become so familiarized with Marx and
Freud, that their dominant ideas became a hindrance.

9. “
A Time of Change
Foucault then discusses Vietnam and French Imperialism as a cause for change
in French Society:
“Then came the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years. At the gates of
our world, there was Vietnam, of course, and the first major blow to the powers
that be. But here, inside our walls, what exactly was taking place? An amalgam
of revolutionary and anti-repressive politics? A war fought on two fronts:
against social exploitation and psychic repression? A surge of libido
modulated by the class struggle? Perhaps. At any rate, it is this familiar,
dualistic interpretation that has laid claim to the events of those years. The
dream that cast its spell, between the First World War and fascism, over the
dreamiest parts of Europe -- the Germany of Wilhelm Reich, and the France of
the surrealists -- had returned and set fire to reality itself: Marx and Freud in the
same incandescent light” (Foucault 380).

10. “
Challenge of Utopia
“Had the utopian project of the thirties been resumed, this
time on the scale of historical practice? Or was there, on
the contrary, a movement toward political struggles that
no longer conformed to the model that Marxist tradition
had prescribed? Toward an experience and a technology
of desire that were no longer Freudian” (Foucault 380).
Foucault sets us up for the necessity of Anti-Oedipus and
the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.

11. “
Disregard Old Regimes (In Philosophy)
Deleuze and Guattari are not just fighting the influence of Freud’s Oedipal family and
notions of desire. They disagree with R. D. Laing, Immanual Kant, Jean-Francois
Lyotard, and many others. They contextualize their societal claims with work by
artists such as Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, and Samuel Beckett.
However, Foucault cautions us not to take Anti-Oedipus as a new dominating
philosophy:
I think that Anti-Oedipus can best be read as an "art," in the sense that is conveyed
by the term "erotic art," for example. Informed by the seemingly abstract notions of
multiplicities, flows, arrangements, and connections, the analysis of the relationship
of desire to reality and to the capitalist "machine" yields answers to concrete
questions. Questions that are less concerned with why this or that than with how to
proceed. How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action?
How can and must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more
intense in the process of overturning the established order? Ars erotica, ars
theoretica, ars politica.

12. How does one introduce desire into thought,
into discourse, into action?
ars theoretica
ars politica
ars erotica

13. RichardLindner's"BoywithMachine"
(1954)
“A painting by Richard
Lindner, "Boy with Machine,"
shows a huge, pudgy,
bloated boy working one of
his little desiring-machines,
after having hooked it up to
a vast technical social
machine—which, as we shall
see, is what even the very
young child does” (Deleuze
and Guattari 7).

14. Three Adversaries
Poor
Technicians of
Desire
Political Ascetics Fascism

15. “
Anti-oedipal or non-fascist way of life
I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of
ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time
(perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular
"readership": being anti-oedipal has become a lifestyle, a way of thinking
and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially)
when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do
we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of
fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our
behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh
lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part,
pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body” (Foucault 382).

16. “
This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present
or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles
which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book
into a manual or guide for everyday life:
● Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.
● Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation,
juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and
pyramidal hierarchization.
Living counter to fascist principles

17. “
● Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative
(law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought
has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to
reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over
uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over
systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but
nomadic.
● Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant,
even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the
connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the
forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force.

18. “
● Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor
political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of
thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and
analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the
intervention of political action.
● Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the
individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is
the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize"
by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse
combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting
hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-
individualization.

19. “
DO NOT BECOME ENAMORED OF POWER
“It could even be said that Deleuze and Guattari care so little for power
that they have tried to neutralize the effects of power linked to their
own discourse. Hence the games and snares scattered throughout the
book, rendering its translation a feat of real prowess. But these are not
the familiar traps of rhetoric; the latter work to sway the reader without
his being aware of the manipulation, and ultimately win him over
against his will. The traps of Anti-Oedipus are those of humor: so many
invitations to let oneself be put out, to take one's leave of the text and
slam the door shut. The book often leads one to believe it is all fun and
games, when something essential is taking place, something of
extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from
the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that
constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives” (Foucault
383).

20. CONCEPT WORDS
Proliferation
noun. A rapid increase in
numbers
Subdivision
noun. The action of subdividing
or being subdivided
Disjunction
noun. A lack of correspondence
or consistency. The relationship
between two distinct alternatives
Juxtaposition
noun. The fact of two things
being seen or placed close
together with contrasting effect
Hierarchization
noun. To have been arranged in
a hierarchy

21. b. 1924 - d. 1998
French philosopher,
sociologist, and literary
theorist
Founded the
International
College of
Philosophy with
Jacques Derrida,
François Châtelet,
and Gilles Deleuze.
He is best known
for his articulation
of postmodernism
after the late 1970s
and the analysis of
the impact of
postmodernity on
the human
condition.
LYOTARD

22. “By doing this, I do not want to close the debate but rather to
situate it, in order to avoid confusion and ambiguity.”
“I have just three points to make.”
“I would like to pass on to you a few thoughts that are merely
intended to raise certain concerns with the term ‘postmodern,’
without wanting to resolve them.”
A Note* on the Meaning of ‘Post-’ Jean-François Lyotard
The ‘note’ was written to Jessamyn Blau, Milwaukee, May 1, 1985

23. Three Points
TechnoscienceArchitecture Thought

24. First
The Modern Movement in Architecture
1

25. “
The opposition between postmodernism
and modernism … would be better
characterized by the following feature:
the disappearance of the close bond that
once linked the project of modern
architecture to an ideal of the
progressive realization of social and
individual emancipation encompassing
all humanity.

26. “
Postmodern architecture finds itself
condemned to undertake a series of
modifications in a space inherited from
modernity, condemned to abandon a
global reconstruction of the space of
human habitation.

27. “
There is no longer any horizon of
universality, universalization, or general
emancipation to meet the eye of the
postmodern man, least of all the eye of
the architect.

28. THE FOUNTAINHEAD
by ayn rand
“Freedom (n): To ask nothing. To expect
nothing. To depend on nothing.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you’re
thinking seriously of building that way,
when and if you are an architect?”
Yes.
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
That’s not the point. The point is, who will
stop me?

29. “
One point about this perspective is that
the ‘post-’ of postmodern has the sense
of simple succession, a diachronic
sequence of periods in which each one is
clearly identifiable. The ‘post-’ indicates
something like a conversion: a new
direction from the previous one.

30. BIG CONCEPT
“One point about this perspective is that
the ‘post-’ of postmodern has the sense of
simple succession, a diachronic sequence
of periods in which each one is clearly
identifiable. The ‘post-’ indicates something
like a conversion: a new direction from the
previous one.”

31. A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
“The disappearance of the
idea that rationality and
freedom are progressing
would explain a ‘tone,’ style,
or mode specific to
postmodern architecture.”

32. This idea of a linear chronology is itself perfectly ‘modern.’
“We now suspect that this ‘rupture’ is in fact a way of forgetting
or repressing the past, that is to say, repeating and not
surpassing it.”
“This destiny of repetition and/or quotation whether it is taken up
ironically, cynically, or naively -- it is in any event obvious.” Trans-
avantgardism, Neo-expressionism, Etc.
“The very idea of modernity is closely correlated with the principle
that it is both possible and necessary to break with tradition and
institute absolutely new ways of living and thinking.”

33. Second
Technoscientific Development
2

34. “
This idea of a possible, probable, or
necessary progress is rooted in the belief
that developments made in the arts,
technology, knowledge, and freedoms
would benefit humanity as a whole.

35. “
Technoscientific development has
become a means of deepening the
malaise rather than allaying it. It is no
longer possible to call development
progress. Human entities -- whether
social or individual -- always seem
destabilized by the results and
implications of development.

36. “
We could say there exists a sort of
destiny, or involuntary destination toward
a condition that is increasingly complex.

37. BIG CONCEPT
“The needs for security, identity, and
happiness springing from our immediate
condition as living beings, as social beings,
now seem irrelevant next to this sort of
constraint to complexify, mediatize,
quantify, synthesize, and modify the size of
each and every object. ”

38. LET’S REVIEW SOME TERMS
Complexify
transitive verb. To make
complex
Mediatize
transitive verb. To bring (a
prince or state) down to the rank
of mediate vassal from that of
the immediate vassal of the Holy
Roman Empire
Quantify
verb. To express or measure the
quantity. To define the
application of a term or
propositionSynthesize
verb. To combine (a number of
things) into a coherent whole
Modify
verb. To make partial or minor
changes to (something), typically
so as to improve it or to make it
less extreme

39. WE ARE LIKE GULLIVERS
IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOSCIENCE...
our class
Lyotard’s
house
“...sometimes too big, sometimes
too small, but never the right size.”

40. HUMANITY IS DIVIDED INTO TWO PARTS*
A B
One faces the challenge of
complexity
The other faces that
terrible challenge of its
own survival
*Lyotard argues that this is a failure of postmodernism, to divide humanity into two sides, whereas universality was a principle of
modernism.

41. Third
Expressions of Thought
3

42. “
The question of postmodernity is also, or
first of all, a question of expressions of
thought: in art, literature, philosophy, and
politics.

43. THE DOMINANT VIEW TODAY IS THAT THE
GREAT MOVEMENT OF THE AVANT-GARDES
IS OVER AND DONE WITH
“It has, as it were, become the
done thing to indulge or deride
the avant-gardes -- to regard
them as the expression of an
outdated modernity.”

44. BIG CONCEPT
“The ‘post-’ of ‘postmodern’ does not
signify a movement of comeback,
flashback, or feedback -- that is, not a
movement of repetition, but a procedure in
‘ana-’: a procedure of analysis, anamnesis,
anagogy, and anamorphosis that
elaborates an ‘initial forgetting.’”

45. DEFINITIONS
Analysis
noun. Detailed examination of
the elements or structure of
something, typically as a basis
for discussion or interpretation
Anagogy
noun. A mystical interpretation of
a word, passage, or text,
especially scriptural exegesis
that detects allusions to heaven
or the afterlife
Anamnesis
noun. Recollection, in particular
the remembering of things from
a supposed previous existence
(often used with reference to
Platonic philosophy)
Anamorphosis
noun. A distorted projection or
drawing that appears normal
when viewed from a particular
point or with a suitable mirror or
lens

46. Thanks!
ANY QUESTIONS?

47. CREDITS
Special thanks to all the people who made and
released these awesome resources:
◦ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
◦ Lucy, Niall. Postmodern Literary Theory: An
Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. PP.
380-383, 409-412.