Commentary on D&G’s Anti-Oedipus (Chapter 1.1: Desiring-Production)

I have recently been doing a very detailed study of the first chapter of Deleuze and Guattari’s famous book Anti-Oedipus. One way I approach studying my favorite texts is by writing line-by-line commentaries on them or, at least, on their most significant parts (I’ve written a number of these exegeses over the years). My commentary remarks are my spontaneous interpretations of difficult passages, which means that they are far from authoritative. If I was to ever attempt to publish them, then I would definitely have to rework them. However, some of my fellow theory junkies have requested that I post my thoughts on the first chapter of A-O, so I’ve decided to go ahead and do that. Just know that what follows is a work in progress (consider it a very rough rough draft). Here, I’m only focusing on the first section of Chapter One entitled ‘Desiring-Production’. The format is simple. I quote a paragraph from A-O and, then, I supply my break down of it. D&G’s words are always in bold, whereas mine are not. I say upfront that I know that some of my interpretations miss the mark and that D&G scholars would take issue with some of them for different reasons. I am not a D&G scholar. I am simply someone greatly interested in their thinking and want to understand it to the best of my ability. What follows is my attempt to do just that. Forgive me if I missed any typos.

1 | Desiring-Production

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines — real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts. The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it. The mouth of the anorexic wavers between several functions: its possessor is uncertain as to whether it is an eating-machine, an anal machine, a talking-machine, or a breathing machine (asthma attacks). Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines. For every organ-machine, an energy-machine: all the time, flows and interruptions. Judge Schreber has sunbeams in his ass. A solar anus. And rest assured that it works: Judge Schreber feels something, produces something, and is capable of explaining the process theoretically. Something is produced: the effects of a machine, not mere metaphors.

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. The “it” here is essentially desire or desiring-production, which is D&G’s materialist reconception of the Freudian id or libido (this is the bedrock of their new concept of the unconscious). I think the reason they say that it was a mistake to have ever said “the id” is because the the, the definite article, makes it seem as though the id is a single “thing”, whereas “the id” (desiring-production) is actually the connectivity between multiple machines. The id is not a thing but a process of connective production. By saying “the id” we conceal the machinic plurality of “it” and, instead, substantialize it qua stand-alone individual or pure force. Desire, sexuality or libido does not exist outside of the connections between desiring-machines (partial-object plus a flow). There is no desire without desiring-machines. In saying “the id”, we abstract desire from its materialist foundations (desiring-machines) and, thereby, form an idealist, monist, ethereal and free-floating concept of it. “Idealist” and “monist” in the sense that desire is not essentially and heterogeneously connected to material and concrete reality, but, rather, is a homogenous and incorporeal “substance” that resides in the fantasies of ideality as a free-floating impulse. To say “the id” is to de-materialize desire. As D&G say, “it is machines”, that is, desire is materialistically plural — not a single seething cauldron of a dark animalistic instinct. Everywhere it is machines — real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts. The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it. The mouth of the anorexic wavers between several functions: its possessor is uncertain as to whether it is an eating-machine, an anal machine, a talking-machine, or a breathing machine (asthma attacks). Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines. For every organ-machine, an energy-machine: all the time, flows and interruptions. Desire (desiring-production) is material, real machines. It is the various connections certain of our organs, e.g., mouth, eyes, ears, hands, etc., make to partial objects and the flows they produce. Notice the usage of the words “driving” and “driven”. D&G will go on to say that “drives are simply the desiring-machines themselves” (p. 35). Desiring-machines are drives. Drive (Trieb) is one of Freud’s big contributions and is one of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis according to Lacan in Seminar XI. Each drive or desiring-machine is dyadically comprised two machines: the one that produces a flow and the one which breaks into the flow, i.e., one gives the flow the other receives it. Picture a power chord being plugged into an electrical socket. Now, a single machine, i.e., the mouth, can be both the organ-machine (receiver) and energy-machine (giver) depending on the circumstance. The mouth as organ-machine can receive the flow of milk but can also produce the flow of spittle and also voice. These machines are partial objects, which means that they are not the “property” of whole persons or “global” personalities. The “self” qua individual person is produced as the after effect or residuum of the materialist unconscious (the three syntheses). Desiring-production is geared towards partial objects (desiring-machines) and not whole persons. Now, of course, desire does come to desire whole persons or Imaginary others or alter-egos (Lacan), but D&G’s point is that this is not desire’s default setting and is forced into desiring global persons by way representational schemes, e.g., Oedipus. Our concepts, representations, rules, standards, laws, principles, Symbolic matrixes, codes, overcodes, etc., are what mutilate desire by forcing it to desire the whole instead of the part. This occurs when representation bends the syntheses of the unconscious/desire into illegitimate modes of operation. For now, suffice it to say, desire is a series of partial-actual connections between real-bodily machines and other real-energy machines. The concept of flow is important. Think of flows as flows of energy, flows of substances, e.g., milk, and flows of libidinal satisfaction. This concept is inspired, in part, by Bataille concept of general economy. For Bataille, there is an excess of solar energy that circulates on planet Earth. Human beings are forced to find ways to expend our excess energy, that is, waste it, destroy it. In The Accursed Share, Bataille discusses the various ways in which this expenditure has occurred throughout history. There is always a leftover or remainder of a flow (if the flow is a proper one). And every flow is ultimately rooted in solar energy. Without solar energy there would be no flows of milk, of shit, etc. Every flow is essentially connected to the “whole” of Nature. Given the connection between a flow and Nature (solar energy) it is no coincidence that D&G use the German judge named Daniel Paul Schreber (a paranoid schizophrenic) and his “solar anus” as their preferred example. Judge Schreber has sunbeams in his ass. A solar anus. And rest assured that it works: Judge Schreber feels something, produces something, and is capable of explaining the process theoretically. Something is produced: the effects of a machine, not mere metaphors. Schreber described his second battle with schizophrenia in his book Memoirs of a Nervous Illness. Freud would go on to give a famous psychoanalytic interpretation of this text. Schreber’s anus-Sun machine exemplifies the structure of every desiring-machine. In interrupting a flow, a machine is connecting to Nature as such, that is, the “whole” relational circuitry of Nature as engine of production (Heidegger’s physis). Schreber’s disorder constructed its own cosmology. One facet of it was what he called “rays”, which were semi-sentient beings and these are the “sunbeams in his ass”. Now, Freud famously claimed that Schreber’s disorder was essentially about his father and his brother. According to Freud, in Schreber’s cosmology, God is a metaphor for his father and his physician Dr. Flechsig is a metaphor for his brother. However, D&G reject this metaphorical schema of interpretation. Schreber’s cosmology is not one of metaphor or representation but of the production of desire, of desiring-machines. In other words, it was the attempt of Schreber’s desire to escape of familial representation (desire of whole persons) altogether. Of course, D&G are not saying that the illness of schizophrenia is desirable, that it ought to be our goal. No! Rather, they think that this illness highlights the true nature of desire before it comes to be mangled, distorted and disfigure by social repression and its representational mechanisms. Schreber was not attempting to metaphorically express some deadlock within unconscious representations — he was attempting to free himself of representation and produce new machinic connections to the world.

A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world. Lenz’s stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Buchner. This walk outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with his pastor, who forces him to situate himself socially, in relationship to the God of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his mother. While taking a stroll outdoors, on the other hand, he is in the mountains, amid falling snowflakes, with other gods or without any gods at all, without a family, without a father or a mother, with nature. “What does my father want? Can he offer me more than that? Impossible. Leave me in peace.” Everything is a machine. Celestial machines, the stars or rainbows in the sky, alpine machines — all of them connected to those of his body. The continual whirr of machines. “He thought that it must be a feeling of endless bliss to be in contact with the profound life of every form, to have a soul for rocks, metals, water, and plants, to take into himself, as in a dream, every element of nature, like flowers that breathe with the waxing and waning of the moon.” To be a chlorophyll- or a photosynthesis-machine, or at least slip his body into such machines as one part among the others. Lenz has projected himself back to a time before the man-nature dichotomy, before all the co-ordinates based on this fundamental dichotomy have been laid down. He does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together. Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all of species life: the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever.

A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world. A schizo out for a walk a better model of what? It’s a better model of the basic nature and functionality of desire or desiring-production. The neurotic on the analyst’s couch is just going to go on and on about desire as filtered through repressing representations, as fixated on whole persons (parents), as mediated by fantasy and lack, etc. The neurotic’s desire has been mutilated, crippled and maimed by Oedipus (the matrix of familial representation. The literal schizo’s desire, on the other hand, is far closer to desire in its natural mode of operation (pre-coded, pre-othered, pre-wholed, pre-familial, etc.). The neurotic’s desire is suffocated and enclosed in the space of Oedipus (the nuclear family, daddy-mommy-me, the triangle cell). Neurotic desire, try as it might, finds no contact with the outside, with that which escapes the oedipal triangle wherein everything is about my father (brother), or my mother (sister) or me. However, the schizo connects to the “whole” of Nature. Schizo desire gives zero fucks about the schizo’s family. The connections to Nature (the outside) produced by the schizo’s desiring-machines are not mediated or driven by relations to the nuclear family. The schizo is all about making new connections to things whereas the neurotic is attempting to sort through the parental metaphors in his or her mind/unconscious. Basically, the analytic setting traps us in a closed system of representations: x is a metaphor for your mother, y is a metaphor for your father (the analyst serves to reaffirm our oedipalization via psychoanalytic interpretation). The neurotic does not make any new connections — everything is reduced back to the arborescent point (root) of the Oedipus narrative between “mommy, daddy, me”. However, the schizo is out walking in Nature with the ability to form all kinds of desirous connections to a whole plethora of things — none of which are metaphors for the schizo’s parents — which have no representational (oedipal) mediation. Lenz’s stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Büchner. This walk outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with his pastor, who forces him to situate himself socially, in relationship to the God of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his mother. While taking a stroll outdoors, on the other hand, he is in the mountains, amid falling snowflakes, with other gods or without any gods at all, without a family, without a father or a mother, with nature. “What does my father want? Can he offer me more than that? Impossible. Leave me in peace.” The novella fragment Lenz was authored by Georg Büchner in 1836. The story is based on real evidence about a man named Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (he was one of Goethe’s friends). This story is about the mental illness Lenz suffered from. D&G use it as a way of showing how anoedipal (non-oedipal) desire functions. The reference to the dynamic between Lenz and the pastor obviously mirrors that of the neurotic and the analyst. Lenz is forced by the pastor (as the agent of social repression) to position himself within a network of global representations (God, father, mother). However, while out for a stroll, Lenz’s desire functions in relation to partial objects instead of whole persons. This is desire’s natural default setting. Lenz’s desire has no family, that is, it is not concerned with the Oedipus. His eyes connect to parts of the mountains, which give him a charge (a flow or rush of wonder, excitement, awe). His ears connect to various sounds. His hands touch this and that. He is, via his desiring-machines, connecting directly to Nature as an ongoing process of production of new connections. This is why he remarks about his father’s desire. Lenz’s desire is not the desire of the Other (father). Lacan’s three fathers (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real) have no significant bearing on the free play of Lenz’s desiring-production. “Leave me in peace!” This suggests that his father’s desire is of no concern to him. Lenz understands that his desire isn’t really his, either. Meaning that his desire is not governed by his ego/subject (the residuum of the third synthesis as we shall see). Desire is the desiring-machine’s desire — not the Other’s desire and not even the subject’s desire). D&G’s model of desire is not top-down, that is, desire does not originate with the subject, which dictates the parts of the body (drives). Instead, desire works from the bottom (desiring-machines) on up (the residual subject of the third synthesis). Everything is a machine. Celestial machines, the stars or rainbows in the sky, alpine machines — all of them connected to those of his body. The continual whirr of machines. The schizo was a certain way of perceiving nature, of interacting with it, which mirrors the structure of desire proper. Nature, or its very process of becoming, is what the schizo/desire plugs into when forging connections between organ machines and energy machines. The eyes qua drive (organ machines) connect to the stars, rainbows and mountains (“alpine” means related to high mountains). This is similar to how Heidegger describes Dasein’s relation to Being (physis). However, D&G are claiming that this relation fundamentally occurs at the level of partial objects. It’s as if a desiring-machine is a “molecular” Dasein. The reference to the “continual whirr of machines” indicates the identity of the production of the process and the product of the process. That is, desire produces, it makes new connections, and it does so in accordance with the dynamics of nature as itself a process of production. At rock bottom, human desire is not fundamentally separated from Nature, the Real (the pre-Symbolic Real), the body, but, instead, fundamentally attuned to it. Desire is not essentially what is produced through socialization, Law, name-of-the-father, culture, etc. Desire is not the result of some fundamental rift that is turn into by the signifier (language, custom, Law, culture). No! Desire (the unconscious) is natural at its materialist foundation of the desiring-machine. Back to Lenz. “He thought that it must be a feeling of endless bliss to be in contact with the profound life of every form, to have a soul for rocks, metals, water, and plants, to take into himself, as in a dream, every element of nature, like flowers that breathe with the waxing and waning of the moon.” To be a chlorophyll- or a photosynthesis-machine, or at least slip his body into such machines as one part among the others. Lenz has projected himself back to a time before the man-nature dichotomy, before all the co-ordinates based on this fundamental dichotomy have been laid down. He does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. A chlorophyll-machine and a photosynthesis-machines, i.e., parts of plants, are those that connect to the process of Nature, to the sun and its solar energy. The schizo/desire is all about making connections of this type. If the schizo makes a connection to a flower, produces a desiring-machines (product), then this is a new connection to Nature itself, since the flower is already a set of machines (chlorophyll-machine, photosynthesis-machine, etc.) plugged into parts (machines) of the sun, light, soil, rain, and so on. Again, this dynamic undermines the very distinction between humankind (culture, society, industry) and nature — there is just one overall process of becoming that holds sway here. Human desire functions at a level beneath the “co-ordinates” of Law, name-of-the-father, rules, prohibitions, the Symbolic order, etc. What D&G are seeking to establish is the reality of a desire beneath the type of desire produced by the Symbolic order. Society as a regime of representation radically modifies our basic schizo-desire rooted in desiring-machines (drives). Whereas Lacan makes a distinction between drives and desire, D&G appear to identify the two. When they say that Lenz (schizo/desire) “does not live nature as nature”, he’s saying that the nature/society distinction does not even exist for him. He does not relate to nature through the concept of it we created via the binary distinction. It is not something out there, something foreign or Other. Lenz is one with Nature. He is just tapped into it as the production of new desiring-machines, which is what schizo-desire is attuned to as well. The illness of schizophrenia unconceals the process of schizophrenia. There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together. Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all of species life: the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever. D&G assert the identity of humankind and nature in an overall process of production (creation of the new, i.e., becoming). If desiring-machines are the most basic elements of the unconscious, and if desiring-machines are fundamentally plugged into nature, then the unconscious is fundamentally natural (but not the natural of the nature/society distinction). Desire, at its most basic, is not the desire of a subject. The very distinction between subjective and objective, self and non-self, is not operative here. It’s not even meaningful to employ this distinction in the relation between desire and nature — both produce in the same process. Desire is just a product of the overall process it takes part in. Desire is operative long before the “cut of the signifier” (entry into language).

Now that we have had a look at this stroll of a schizo, let us compare what happens when Samuel Beckett’s characters decide to venture outdoors. Their various gaits and methods of self-locomotion constitute, in and of themselves, a finely tuned machine. And then there is the function of the bicycle in Beckett’s works: what relationship does the bicycle-horn machine have with the mother-anus machine? “What a rest to speak of bicycles and horns. Unfortunately it is not of them I have to speak, but of her who brought me into the world, through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct.” It is often thought that Oedipus is an easy subject to deal with, something perfectly obvious, a “given” that is there from the very beginning. But that is not so at all: Oedipus presupposes a fantastic repression of desiring-machines. And why are they repressed? To what end? Is it really necessary or desirable to submit to such repression? And what means are to be used to accomplish this? What ought to go inside the Oedipal triangle, what sort of thing is required to construct it? Are a bicycle horn and my mother’s arse sufficient to do the job? Aren’t there more important questions than these, however? Given a certain effect, what machine is capable of producing it? And given a certain machine, what can it be used for? Can we possibly guess, for instance, what a knife rest is used for if all we are given is a geometrical description of it? Or yet another example: on being confronted with a complete machine made up of six stones in the right-hand pocket of my coat (the pocket that serves as the source of the stones), five stones in the right-hand pocket of my trousers, and five in the left-hand pocket (transmission pockets), with the remaining pocket of my coat receiving the stones that have already been handled, as each of the stones moves forward one pocket, how can we determine the effect of this circuit of distribution in which the mouth, too, plays a role as a stone-sucking machine? Where in this entire circuit do we find the production of sexual pleasure? At the end of Malone Dies, Lady Pedal takes the schizophrenics out for a ride in a van and a rowboat, and on a picnic in the midst of nature: an infernal machine is being assembled. “Under the skin the body is an over-heated factory,/ and outside,/ the invalid shines,/ glows,/ from every burst pore.”

Now that we have had a look at this stroll of a schizo, let us compare what happens when Samuel Beckett’s characters decide to venture outdoors. Their various gaits and methods of self-locomotion constitute, in and of themselves, a finely tuned machine. And then there is the function of the bicycle in Beckett’s works: what relationship does the bicycle-horn machine have with the mother-anus machine? “What a rest to speak of bicycles and horns. Unfortunately it is not of them I have to speak, but of her who brought me into the world, through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct.” So now D&G are going to connect Beckett’s work to Büchner’s Lenz. In this quote, the character is somehow relating the bicycle-horn machine to the mother-anus machine. Is the former a metaphor for the latter? Perhaps the horn is a metaphor for the anus. The character seems to be implying that the talk about bicycles and horns was really talk about the mother and her anus. Understanding this quote really necessitates more context, i.e., actually reading Beckett’s story. However, the relation between these two machines appears to be Oedipal insofar as D&G immediately transition into a discussion of Oedipus. It is often thought that Oedipus is an easy subject to deal with, something perfectly obvious, a “given” that is there from the very beginning. But that is not so at all: Oedipus presupposes a fantastic repression of desiring-machines. Oedipus is something very complicated. It’s origin involve a huge context. Oedipus is not a simple given, but, instead, a historical and social construction designed to repress desiring-machines, to force them to operate in an imposed and unnatural way. As we’ll see, Oedipus proper belongs strictly to the capitalist machine (capitalist society). D&G express the complicatedness of Oedipus in a series of perplexing questions, which they will attempt to answer in the rest of the book (it would be a good idea to go about providing answers to each of these questions, since that would amount to a basic summary of D&G’s argument). And why are they repressed? Desiring-machines are repressed for different reasons in different societies (tribal, despotic, capitalist). In capitalism, they are repressed, in part, in order to train us and condition us for capitalist exploitation in the work place. Oedipus involves the same sort of asceticism (self-denial of drive satisfaction) and deferral of pleasure of that a wage laborer. Oedipus trains desire (desiring-machines) for life under the reign of capital. To what end? Again, in capitalist society, the end is compliance with capital accumulation. Is it really necessary or desirable to submit to such repression? D&G will argue that it is not necessary or desirable to repress desire (desiring-machines) in order to have a functional society. They talk of a post-capitalist society in which desire would be freed from repression and Oedipus. They call this new world the “new earth” and “permanent revolution”. And what means are to be used to accomplish this? The means involve a whole array of social dynamics including codes, overcodes, decoding and recoding, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, specific forms of representation, illegitimate use of the three syntheses of the unconscious, etc. What ought to go inside the Oedipal triangle, what sort of thing is required to construct it? Well, for starters, only whole persons, global figures, e.g., Mommy, Daddy and Me, go inside it. Oedipus represses partial objects (desiring-machines) by forcing desire to attach itself to whole persons, which is unnatural for it. Oedipus is constructed out of various aspects of tribal and despotic societies as well as by new economic dynamics introduced by capitalism, e.g., the total privatization of reproduction, that is, capitalism isolates reproduction (nuclear family) from social production in a way that is unique to it. Are a bicycle horn and my mother’s arse sufficient to do the job? This is a little tricky. Maybe it’s saying that Oedipus is achieved once the child’s desire becomes metaphorical and global (representational of whole persons). Maybe it means the moment when we perceive partial objects as belonging to whole persons. I think they’re alluding to the becoming-repressed, becoming-metaphorical, becoming-representational, becoming-molar, becoming-global, etc., of desire (desiring-machines). Aren’t there more important questions than these, however? D&G suggests that there are more important questions pertaining to the relation between desire and Oedipus. Namely, is desire essentially Oedipus? No! Can we have a society in which desire is no longer Oedipally repressed? Yes! However, it is possible to argue that D&G’s take on desire is too romantic. Given a certain effect, what machine is capable of producing it? Capitalism is the machine that produces Oedipus itself. And given a certain machine, what can it be used for? Again, the capitalist machine uses Oedipus to prepare us for a life of exploitation. Can we possibly guess, for instance, what a knife rest is used for if all we are given is a geometrical description of it? Or yet another example: on being confronted with a complete machine made up of six stones in the right-hand pocket of my coat (the pocket that serves as the source of the stones), five stones in the right-hand pocket of my trousers, and five in the left-hand pocket (transmission pockets), with the remaining pocket of my coat receiving the stones that have already been handled, as each of the stones moves forward one pocket, how can we determine the effect of this circuit of distribution in which the mouth, too, plays a role as a stone-sucking machine? Where in this entire circuit do we find the production of sexual pleasure? I don’t get whatever it is that they’re getting at here. I take it that this is another example from Beckett’s work. They do seem to be transitioning back to a discussion of schizo desire instead of Oedipal desire. I think they are implying that the whole circuit (process) produces sexual pleasure, which is how schizo desire works. Maybe this interpretation is off the mark. At the end of Malone Dies, Lady Pedal takes the schizophrenics out for a ride in a van and a rowboat, and on a picnic in the midst of nature: an infernal machine is being assembled. “Under the skin the body is an over-heated factory,/ and outside,/ the invalid shines,/ glows,/ from every burst pore.” I take it that the infernal machine is nature itself qua productive process. It’s noting that Beckett’s work took a major turn in style and structure in Malone Dies, which is arguably “schizo”.

This does not mean that we are attempting to make nature one of the poles of schizophrenia. What the schizophrenic experiences, both as an individual and as a member of the human species, is not at all any one specific aspect of nature, but nature as a process of production. What do we mean here by process? It is probable that at a certain level nature and industry are two separate and distinct things: from one point of view, industry is the opposite of nature; from another, industry extracts its raw materials from nature; from yet another, it returns its refuse to nature; and so on. Even within society, this characteristic man-nature, industry-nature, society-nature relationship is responsible for the distinction of relatively autonomous spheres that are called production, distribution, consumption. But in general this entire level of distinctions, examined from the point of view of its formal developed structures, presupposes (as Marx has demonstrated) not only the existence of capital and the division of labor, but also the false consciousness that the capitalist being necessarily acquires, both of itself and of the supposedly fixed elements within an over-all process. For the real truth of the matter — the glaring, sober truth that resides in delirium — is that there is no such thing as relatively independent spheres or circuits: production is immediately consumption and a recording process (enregistrement), without any sort of mediation, and the recording process and consumption directly determine production, though they do so within the production process itself. Hence everything is production: production of productions, of actions and of passions; productions of recording processes, of distributions and of co-ordinates that serve as points of reference; productions of consumptions, of sensual pleasures, of anxieties, and of pain. Everything is production, since the recording processes are immediately consumed, immediately consummated, and these consumptions directly reproduced. This is the first meaning of process as we use the term: incorporating recording and consumption within production itself, thus making them the productions of one and the same process.

This does not mean that we are attempting to make nature one of the poles of schizophrenia. What the schizophrenic experiences, both as an individual and as a member of the human species, is not at all any one specific aspect of nature, but nature as a process of production. The schizo/desire experiences nature as a process and not as this or that set of properties or aspects. Nature is not trees, rivers, valleys, mountains, etc. Instead, nature is the process that produced such things (which is what Deleuze was analyzing in Difference and Repetition). In other words, the schizo/desire is attuned to nature, one with it, insofar as both are all about the process of the production of the new, i.e., making new connections. Desire in its individuality and its species-being is all about producing the new, which is not fundamentally mediated by language, signifier, representation, metaphor, Oedipus, etc. Desire is not about the quest for the impossible lost object (das Ding, the Thing) its comes to lack. No! It’s about producing. But what is meant exactly by “process”? What do we mean here by process? It is probable that at a certain level nature and industry are two separate and distinct things: from one point of view, industry is the opposite of nature; from another, industry extracts its raw materials from nature; from yet another, it returns its refuse to nature; and so on. Obviously, nature and industry are processes that produce — they are production processes. D&G agree that we can make a certain distinction between them, but, ultimately, they are going to argue that they really form one overarching process. But there are traditionally different ways of opposing them. Industry (culture, society, humanity, transsubjective cooperation) is said to be the opposite of nature. Industry is that which extracts resources from nature so as to make unnatural products. Finally, industry returns its trash, waste (refuse) to nature. More principles of the nature/industry could be given. Even within society, this characteristic man-nature, industry-nature, society-nature relationship is responsible for the distinction of relatively autonomous spheres that are called production, distribution, consumption. But in general this entire level of distinctions, examined from the point of view of its formal developed structures, presupposes (as Marx has demonstrated) not only the existence of capital and the division of labor, but also the false consciousness that the capitalist being necessarily acquires, both of itself and of the supposedly fixed elements within an over-all process. The basic distinction between nature and industry/society is what leads to us dividing society into various regions, orders, etc., e.g., production, distribution and consumption. However, these social distinction are not essential to society. They stem from capital and its the division of labor, from how it organizes society for the sake of capital accumulation, from the ideology capital institutes that warps our perceptions of ourselves and of society. In other words, the threefold division of capitalist society is ideological, i.e., bullshit. The point is that this division is not absolute. For the real truth of the matter — the glaring, sober truth that resides in delirium — is that there is no such thing as relatively independent spheres or circuits: production is immediately consumption and a recording process (enregistrement), without any sort of mediation, and the recording process and consumption directly determine production, though they do so within the production process itself. Hence everything is production: production of productions, of actions and of passions; productions of recording processes, of distributions and of co-ordinates that serve as points of reference; productions of consumptions, of sensual pleasures, of anxieties, and of pain. Fundamentally speaking, for schizo/desire (delirium), these divisions, spheres or circuits do not exist. All of these “spheres” are immediately integrated into each other. Notice that D&G associate distribution with the recording process (second synthesis, BwO). My question concerns whether or not what they about the three “spheres” also applies to the three syntheses. Production (process) does tend to be the key category, since all three “spheres” are themselves produced. D&G’s metaphysics is one of production as in Difference and Repetition. All three “spheres” are produced via the process of forging connections between bodies (actions, passions), of recording distributions (flows, libidinal charges, satisfactions) in the form of a mnemonic co-ordinate system, of unified sensations, intensities and moods “belonging” to the “subject”. It does seem that D&G are linking of the three “spheres” with the three syntheses — all of which take part in the overarching process of nature. Again, what is at stake here is a metaphysical, psychical, natural and social view that sees desire, nature, society, the individual subject, etc., as aspects of one process. This means that having desire does not necessarily mean being alienated from the Real (nature, body, jouissance, etc.). This goes against Lacan’s whole “metaphysics” of desire qua alienation, cut of the signifier, castration. To be a desiring subject is not synonymous with being a castrated, lacking, Oedipal subject. If this is true, then a new approach to therapy must be produced — enter schizoanalysis. Everything is production, since the recording processes are immediately consumed, immediately consummated, and these consumptions directly reproduced. This is the first meaning of process as we use the term: incorporating recording and consumption within production itself, thus making them the productions of one and the same process. The first meaning of process is that everything is production. There are no absolute distinction between production, distribution and consumption. Society and every aspect of it is fundamentally integrated into the one process of production (becoming). Also, it’s very interesting how they say here that all three syntheses (and their correlative “spheres) all work inside of each other. I take it, then, that D&G’s presentation of the three syntheses involves a sort of logical or conceptual abstraction, since each one is taken on its own terms. In reality, however, they are all operative at the same time and always interacting together.

Second, we make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species. Industry is then no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of man and by man. Not man as the king of creation, but rather as the being who is in intimate contact with the profound life of all forms or all types of beings, who is responsible for even the stars and animal life, and who ceaselessly plugs an organ-machine into an energy-machine, a tree into his body, a breast into his mouth, the sun into his asshole: the eternal custodian of the machines of the universe. This is the second meaning of process as we use the term: man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other — not even in the sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation, ideation, or expression (cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather, they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product. Production as process overtakes all idealistic categories and constitutes a cycle whose relationship to desire is that of an immanent principle. That is why desiring-production is the principal concern of a materialist psychiatry, which conceives of and deals with the schizo as Homo natura. This will be the case, however, only on one condition, which in fact constitutes the third meaning of process as we use the term: it must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely — which, strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely — is what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and independent entity. D. H. Lawrence says of love: “We have pushed a process into a goal. The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. . . . The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish.” Schizophrenia is like love: there is no specifically schizophrenic phenomenon or entity; schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines, universal primary production as “the essential reality of man and nature.”

Second, we make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species. Just as there is no internal division between production, distribution and consumption within society (first meaning of process), so, too, is there no fundamental division between society and nature (second meaning of process). Both nature and society are conceptualized in terms of a productive process. The human essence, our “species-being”, as Marx put it, is to be a creative being. One that produces new things. Is this not the essence of nature as well? In a counterintuitive sense, humankind is the most natural of the species, since we are so tapped into the production of the new. Industry is then no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of man and by man. In other words, industry is all about the production of new things in a way that is aligned to nature’s production process (again, Heideggerian physis). If we view industry in terms of the concept of utility, then we distanced ourselves from the real essence of it (industry). Utility, that is, viewing things in a way that brings there usefulness to mind places us in an exterior position to that of industrial process. Simply put, we primarily make things to make things, to let desire flow, to forge creative connections, to let becoming become, to experiment, and not because we intend for the new to be use-values. D&G are breaking with one of the basic presuppositions of bourgeois economics (the principle of the primacy of use-value). The concept of utility leads us to have an alienated relation to the process and to desire. Not man as the king of creation, but rather as the being who is in intimate contact with the profound life of all forms or all types of beings, who is responsible for even the stars and animal life, and who ceaselessly plugs an organ-machine into an energy-machine, a tree into his body, a breast into his mouth, the sun into his asshole: the eternal custodian of the machines of the universe. Though worded differently, the spirit of here is that of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein’s relation to Being (Nature). Yes, D&G put the emphasis on desiring-machines (parts of the body) instead of on Dasein (qua whole person), but all three thinkers are saying that human beings have a unique relation to Nature owing to how we are tapped into it. Heidegger famously ignored the body in Being and Time as well as in his later work, but we could maybe say that D&G are providing us with a very materialist interpretation of Dasein’s relation to Nature — “eternal custodian of the machines of the universe” sounds similar to the “shepherd of Being”. Again, to make one connection, one desiring-machines, is to be plugged into the “whole” process of Nature itself. The moment that the mouth (organ machine) connects to the flow of the river (energy machine) is the moment the mouth drinks in the universe. This is the second meaning of process as we use the term: man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other — not even in the sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation, ideation, or expression (cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather, they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product. Here we get the second meaning of process. It is the identity of nature and industry (humankind, society, culture, etc.). We are not opposed to nature and nature is not opposed to us. Again, D&G sound Heideggerian. It’s similar to his thoughts on es gibt (it gives, i.e., Being gives). However, Levinas would counter all this with his concept of il y a (there is). For Levinas, nature is the heartless play of elements that humans must escape via dwelling. Anyway, for D&G, humankind is not the opposite of nature. Nature as cause and humankind as effect doesn’t really work, since we simply carry on the cause, that is, we do what the cause does — process of production. We are not fundamentally ideational subjects that stand opposed to natural objects, since thought piggybacks on desire. And we are not merely the expression of the great Expresser, since we just continue the same act of expressing. The dyad between expresser and expression, producer and product, is not really appropriate here. Why? Because human beings are less objects and more the process of desire-production — producer-product. There is a circle at work. Production produces the product and the product produces production. Production as process overtakes all idealistic categories and constitutes a cycle whose relationship to desire is that of an immanent principle. This creative process of production, this cycle of the new, is the immanent and fundamental principle of desire. Desire, at its core, is not concerned with some lost object (the maternal Thing, das Ding), i.e., the old, but, rather, seeks the production of the new. D&G’s creative principle of the new goes against psychoanalysis and its privileging of the old, the past, the lost. That is why desiring-production is the principal concern of a materialist psychiatry, which conceives of and deals with the schizo as Homo natura. Schizoanalysis or materialist psychiatry seeks ways to get desire freed up from fixations on the old (mom, dad, brother, sister, etc.). It seeks to get the human being attuned to the basic dynamics of desire — schizo desiring-production of the new, which is what makes us Nature-Human (our true essence). This will be the case, however, only on one condition, which in fact constitutes the third meaning of process as we use the term: it must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. Schizoanalysis can only pull this off if it views the process of nature and desire in non-teleological terms. This is the third meaning of process. It has no ultimate goal or purpose and neither does it seek to infinitely perpetuate itself. In other words, the process neither seeks some end or conclusion nor does it seek to prolong itself forever. Neither end nor endless. Just as above, D&G are rejecting any project that yearns to squeeze the process into some binary opposition. Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely — which, strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely — is what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and independent entity. Both ended the process and prolonging it have troubling effects. They are what cause clinical schizophrenia. Psychoanalysis, psychology, psychiatry, have only served to separate the clinical schizo from his or her connection to nature (desiring-production), which brings on the autistic behavior we see mental wards. Cutting the clinical schizo off from nature is catastrophic. D. H. Lawrence says of love: “We have pushed a process into a goal. The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. . . . The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish.” Schizophrenia is like love: there is no specifically schizophrenic phenomenon or entity; schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines, universal primary production as “the essential reality of man and nature.” Schizophrenia is really just a process of desire and not some specific phenomenon, some symptom, some illness. It is merely desire attuned to nature qua process. Schizoanalysis seeks to realign desire to the productive process of nature. This is desire’s freedom from the representations of repression. Notice that D&G’s take on desiring-machines does not view they functionality in terms of signs, language, symbolic castration, signifiers, law, etc. This materialist base of desire is not fundamentally mediated by the “cut of the signifier”.

Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature: “and . . .” “and then . . .” This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow (the breast — the mouth). And because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction. Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows. “I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund.” Amniotic fluid spilling out of the sac and kidney stones; flowing hair; a flow of spittle, a flow of sperm, shit, or urine that are produced by partial objects and constantly cut off by other partial objects, which in turn produce other flows, interrupted by other partial objects. Every “object” presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object. Doubtless each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything — speaking, understanding, shitting, fucking — in terms of seeing. But a connection with another machine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one machine interrupts the current of the other or “sees” its own current interrupted.

Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature: “and . . .” “and then . . .” This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow (the breast — the mouth). This is the connective synthesis, productive synthesis or first synthesis of desire. This synthesis links up and connects series of desiring-machines. The mouth connects to steak . . . and then to wine . . . and then to lips . . . and then to air . . . and then to breasts . . . and then to cigarettes . . . and so on. This synthesis is what produces new things, i.e., production. One machine connects to another. One organ-machine (input) connects to an energy-machine and its flow (output). This is the materialist foundation of desire’s production of the new. The “binary law or set of rules governing associations” is more or less the first synthesis. And because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction. When my mouth connects to the air, it is also connected to the machines that produce the air. It what sense they mean that the “binary series is linear in every direction” is hard to determine. I think it means that the connections between desiring-machines is what produces the flow of linear temporality. I wonder if this has to do with the first synthesis of time (habit) in Difference and Repetition. Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows. Desire is essentially dynamic and productive. It flows. It becomes. This is opposed to the psychoanalytic concept of desire — desire that fixates on the past, the lost object, the mother, the father, etc. Lacan put forth the concept of the fundamental fantasy, which is like the anchor of desire, desire’s orientating principle. For D&G, desire is not structured around a single interpersonal dynamic that it amounts to repetitiously live out. The schizoanalytic concept of desire rejects the idea that there is some single, arborescent, anchoring representation, the fundamental fantasy, that serves as the root cause of desire. No! Desire is a rhizome — not a tree. That is, desire produces new connections in every direction that flow on and on; it does not seek to repetitiously play out some root fantasy established early on in life (however, desire does get trapped in representations like this, but only through the intervention of repressive operations). It sounds rather simple to say that desire produces to new connections between fragments (parts), new desiring machines, but this materialist concept of desire’s foundational dynamic stands opposed to psychoanalysis’ concept of it (which can be traced back to Plato). “I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund.” This quote comes from Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Flows make the world go round. Flows are the agents of becoming. Desire would not make news connections without there being flows to connect to. Flows of energy. Flows of sensations. Flows of satisfaction. Flows of information. Flows of traffic. Flows of digital data. Flows of water, of air, of light, of money. Amniotic fluid spilling out of the sac and kidney stones; flowing hair; a flow of spittle, a flow of sperm, shit, or urine that are produced by partial objects and constantly cut off by other partial objects, which in turn produce other flows, interrupted by other partial objects. D&G now list the sorts of flows they have in mind. Notice that their current examples are all related to the biosphere. However, the concept of flow will be extended to the movements of social phenomena as well. Every “object” presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object. D&G are basically working out an ontology of machines. The reason why “object” is in scare quotes is because, for D&G, every “object” is a machines, or many machines, which means that its parts are more essential to it than its “wholeness”. This machinic ontology goes against classical substance ontology as created by Aristotle. “Objects” (machines qua partial object and flow) are not stand alone substances that are what they are independent of all other objects. Also, machines are more processes than they are objects proper. yes, they do involve actual things, e.g., eyes, ear, but what is important is the process that are part of. Levi Bryant developed this type of machinic ontology in his book Onto-Cartography: An Ontology of Machines and Media. Another way to talk about machines is to call them assemblages, which D&G do in A Thousand Plateaus. Doubtless each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything — speaking, understanding, shitting, fucking — in terms of seeing. But a connection with another machine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one machine interrupts the current of the other or “sees” its own current interrupted. I take it that they’re saying that each drive or organ machine, e.g., the eyes, can only relate to the world within its own parameters. I don’t really get what the sticking point of this is. It seems like some random observation. The fact that each organ machine “interprets” the world suggests a certain sentience on their part. The eyes have a mind of their own. The penis has a mind of its own. However, other machines interrupt the flows of other machines. All the eye does is see, everything it relates to is related to in terms of seeing, but the eye is not the only organ machine. For example, the eye is interrupted by the ears, which means that the ear or acoustic desiring-machines related themselves to optic desiring-machines. D&G start off the next paragraph with “hence”, so they’re building off of what they just said.

Hence the coupling that takes place within the partial object-flow connective synthesis also has another form: product/producing. Producing is always something “grafted onto” the product; and for that reason desiring-production is production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine. We cannot accept the idealist category of “expression” as a satisfactory or sufficient explanation of this phenomenon. We cannot, we must not attempt to describe the schizophrenic object without relating it to the process of production. The Cahiers de l’art brut are a striking confirmation of this principle, since by taking such an approach they deny that there is any such thing as a specific, identifiable schizophrenic entity. Or to take another example, Henri Michaux describes a schizophrenic table in terms of a process of production which is that of desire: “Once noticed, it continued to occupy one’s mind. It even persisted, as it were, in going about its own business. . . . The striking thing was that it was neither simple nor really complex, initially or intentionally complex, or constructed according to a complicated plan. Instead, it had been desimplified in the course of its carpentering. . . . As it stood, it was a table of additions, much like certain schizophrenics’ drawings, described as ‘overstuffed,’ and if finished it was only in so far as there was no way of adding anything more to it, the table having become more and more an accumulation, less and less a table. . . . It was not intended for any specific purpose, for anything one expects of a table. Heavy, cumbersome, it was virtually immovable. One didn’t know how to handle it (mentally or physically). Its top surface, the useful part of the table, having been gradually reduced, was disappearing, with so little relation to the clumsy framework that the thing did not strike one as a table, but as some freak piece of furniture, an unfamiliar instrument . . . for which there was no purpose. A dehumanized table, nothing cozy about it, nothing ‘middle-class,’ nothing rustic, nothing countrified, not a kitchen table or a work table. A table which lent itself to no function, self-protective, denying itself to service and communication alike. There was something stunned about it, something petrified. Perhaps it suggested a stalled engine.”

Hence the coupling that takes place within the partial object-flow connective synthesis also has another form: product/producing. Producing is always something “grafted onto” the product; and for that reason desiring-production is production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine. Since “objects” or products are always entering into new connections, they are always undergoing production. To use Deleuze’s terms from Difference and Repetition, think of the product as the actual and producing as the virtual-intensive. For Deleuze, there is no radical cut or separation between the actual and the virtual-intensive. The three all exists in a single dynamic process. The product is always being produced and production is always becoming a product. This dynamic is somewhat analogous to that of the hermeneutic circle. In the case, the actual is the virtual-intensive and the virtual-intensive is the actual. The product is never finished, since new production (becoming) is always being “grafted onto” it. In other words, there is no such thing as a final and fully actualized product. In Heideggerian terms, every being has a surplus of Being, which, in the context, refers to a withdrawn reservoir of potential. Dasein stands open to a very limited unconcealment (truth) of a given being. All things have a hidden depth of potential changes or becomings (virtual singularities). Insofar as production is always being grafted onto the product, the product is always being grafted onto production. To talk of the production of production is to talk of the circular process of becoming between the product (actual) and production (virtual-intensive). Desiring-production is this circle that produces the new. We cannot accept the idealist category of “expression” as a satisfactory or sufficient explanation of this phenomenon. I think they have Plato in mind. Particular entities (actualities) are said to be expressions or instantiations of the Forms (eternal essences or identities). Desire or desiring-production is not about actualizing the eternal, the old, a stable identity, a fixed essence. No! On the contrary, desire produces the new — not a copy, not a metaphor, not a representation. We cannot, we must not attempt to describe the schizophrenic object without relating it to the process of production. The schizo object is not some copy of an original psychical representation (a repressed idea, a fundamental fantasy). The schizo object is that which undergoes a series of changes, augmentations, modifications, experimentations, etc. This object is free-associational similar to that of the surrealist object. It has no blueprint, no arborescent origin, no representational base. The schizo object does not express. It is creation of the new and not expression of the old. The Cahiers de l’art brut are a striking confirmation of this principle, since by taking such an approach they deny that there is any such thing as a specific, identifiable schizophrenic entity. Cahiers de l’art brut was a “series of monographs, issued periodically, containing reproductions of art works created by inmates of the psychiatric asylums of Europe.” What artworks by clinical schizos show is that there is no single type of schizo object. Instead, there is a schizo process. There is no one sort of object that expresses the illness of schizophrenia. This art expresses nothing. Instead, we can see in it is the dynamics of schizo desire. Or to take another example, Henri Michaux describes a schizophrenic table in terms of a process of production which is that of desire: “Once noticed, it continued to occupy one’s mind. It even persisted, as it were, in going about its own business. . . . The striking thing was that it was neither simple nor really complex, initially or intentionally complex, or constructed according to a complicated plan. Instead, it had been desimplified in the course of its carpentering. . . . As it stood, it was a table of additions, much like certain schizophrenics’ drawings, described as ‘overstuffed,’ and if finished it was only in so far as there was no way of adding anything more to it, the table having become more and more an accumulation, less and less a table. . . . It was not intended for any specific purpose, for anything one expects of a table. Heavy, cumbersome, it was virtually immovable. One didn’t know how to handle it (mentally or physically). Its top surface, the useful part of the table, having been gradually reduced, was disappearing, with so little relation to the clumsy framework that the thing did not strike one as a table, but as some freak piece of furniture, an unfamiliar instrument . . . for which there was no purpose. A dehumanized table, nothing cozy about it, nothing ‘middle-class,’ nothing rustic, nothing countrified, not a kitchen table or a work table. A table which lent itself to no function, self-protective, denying itself to service and communication alike. There was something stunned about it, something petrified. Perhaps it suggested a stalled engine.” Henri Michaux was a writer, poet and painter. He was born in Belgium but become a citizen of France. He wrote in French. The quote is from his work called The Major Ordeals of the Mind. His description of the schizo table is now a famous example of Deleuzoguattarian desire. The table isn’t constructed on the basis of a plan, model, original, arborescent point, blueprint, etc., nor is based on a goal, function, utility or purpose. It is production (producing-product) for the sake of production. Creation for the sake of creation. It is an ongoing process of connections, modifications, experimentations. The desire behind it is free or free-associational. It follows no rules or guidelines. It simply forges new connections. It is not mediated through representations. This is productive desire.

The schizophrenic is the universal producer. There is no need to distinguish here between producing and its product. We need merely note that the pure “thisness” of the object produced is carried over into a new act of producing. The table continues to “go about its business.” The surface of the table, however, is eaten up by the supporting framework. The nontermination of the table is a necessary consequence of its mode of production. When Claude Levi-Strauss defines bricolage he does so in terms of a set of closely related characteristics: the possession of a stock of materials or of rules of thumb that are fairly extensive, though more or less a hodgepodge — multiple and at the same time limited; the ability to rearrange fragments continually in new and different patterns or configurations; and as a consequence, an indifference toward the act of producing and toward the product, toward the set of instruments to be used and toward the over-all result to be achieved. The satisfaction the handyman experiences when he plugs something into an electric socket or diverts a stream of water can scarcely be explained in terms of “playing mommy and daddy,” or by the pleasure of violating a taboo. The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production. 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.

The schizophrenic is the universal producer. There is no need to distinguish here between producing and its product. We need merely note that the pure “thisness” of the object produced is carried over into a new act of producing. In other wards schizo desire, desire proper, is the universal producer insofar as each new connection made is connected to the universe itself. And, again, we do not have to use the dyad between producing (production) and product, since production produces products and products produce new production. The “thisness”, haecceity, singularity, etc., of the product serves as a kind of motor force for new productive augmentations. The product’s singularity is located in the becomings or productions it makes possible. The table continues to “go about its business.” The surface of the table, however, is eaten up by the supporting framework. The nontermination of the table is a necessary consequence of its mode of production. The product, e.g., the table, is a series of productions, that is, its singularity is located in its ongoing production. Products are always being produced — they are never finished. Consider a work of art. Of course, we can say that a work of art is finished in a certain sense. Its termination occurs once the artist deems it finished and ceases to modify it. However, the artwork continues to be produced in other ways. The way viewers relate to it produce it, change it, modify it. History itself can change the artwork. Different contexts change art. Now, perhaps D&G would say that my example fails to do justice to the schizo’s producing-product, but it does reveal how the artwork perpetually becomes or continues to get produced even though it is not being physically changed. The producing-product of schizo-desire is never finished, however. It has no termination. It is always awaiting new production. This is “its business” given its “mode of production”. When Claude Lévi-Strauss defines bricolage he does so in terms of a set of closely related characteristics: the possession of a stock of materials or of rules of thumb that are fairly extensive, though more or less a hodgepodge — multiple and at the same time limited; the ability to rearrange fragments continually in new and different patterns or configurations; and as a consequence, an indifference toward the act of producing and toward the product, toward the set of instruments to be used and toward the over-all result to be achieved. D&G make reference to Lévi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage because their concept of desiring-production or producing-product sounds familiar to it. The word bricolage is now defined as “construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.” Indeed, schizo-desire is basically an engine of bricolage. It’s a desire that is freed from ends or purposes — it is creation for creation’s sake. It connects all things in all ways. Desire is not seeking some lost object or playing out some old dynamic between itself and its parents. No! Schizo-desire or desiring-production has no parents. The satisfaction the handyman experiences when he plugs something into an electric socket or diverts a stream of water can scarcely be explained in terms of “playing mommy and daddy,” or by the pleasure of violating a taboo. Desire needs to parent drama, no repressed sexual desire for the parents, no incest taboo to violate, no Oedipus, in order to function. Desire functions all the more without any of these familial, oedipal ideas. The enjoyment I got from playing Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros., etc., had nothing whatsoever to do with my libidinal relations to my mom and dad. The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production. Production is always being added to an already produced product, which is itself the production of a new act of production. This is a fundamental principle of how desire proper operates without being saddled by a bunch of repressive mechanism — this is pure desire. On a critical note, what worries me about this is that it tends to be a variation on the myth of the fall from the Bible. It’s as though there once was some pure desire and, then, repressive representations came along and fucked everything up. Yes, I know that D&G think that schizo-desire is still inside of us in some kind of imprisoned form just awaiting the day it can break free, but the real issue concerns their seeming romanticism of desire. What? Things will just work out great if no restraints are placed on desire? Isn’t this naive? Is pure desire really this innocent? Are all of the atrocities we see in the world (cruelty, rape, torture, exploitation) the effects of repressed desire? So if we let desire run wild, it would just naturally not harm others? Nevertheless, this does seem to be D&G’s take on desire. 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. This painting so reminds me of the younger version of myself. In having my desiring-machines (eyes, ears, hands) hooked up to my Nintendo, I was actually plugged into the capitalist society (machine) that produced the game console. I was producing the product of the capitalist machine. Every desiring-machine (commodity + drive) produced by the capitalist machine connects us to the whole of capitalist society. The point here is that every child is directly linked to society through the products it consumes, plays with, gets satisfaction from. This means that the child’s desire is fundamental social. It does not have to be made social through accepting the father’s forbiddance of the mother, that is, socialization does not come from the symbolic castration of the father’s NO! (name-of-the-father) or from the Law. Our bodies (organ-machines) are plugged into the social machine before we can even speak.

Producing, a product: a producing/product identity. It is this identity that constitutes a third term in the linear series: an enormous undifferentiated object. Everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place — and then the whole process will begin all over again. From a certain point of view it would be much better if nothing worked, if nothing functioned. Never being born, escaping the wheel of continual birth and rebirth, no mouth to suck with, no anus to shit through. Will the machines run so badly, their component pieces fall apart to such a point that they will return to nothingness and thus allow us to return to nothingness? It would seem, however, that the flows of energy are still too closely connected, the partial objects still too organic, for this to happen. What would be required is a pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interruption, streaming over the surface of a full body. Desiring-machines make us an organism; but at the very heart of this production, within the very production of this production, the body suffers from being organized in this way, from not having some other sort of organization, or no organization at all. “An incomprehensible, absolutely rigid stasis” in the very midst of process, as a third stage: “No mouth. No tongue. No teeth. No larynx. No esophagus. No belly. No anus.” The automata stop dead and set free the unorganized mass they once served to articulate. The full body without organs is the unproductive, the sterile, the unengendered, the unconsumable. Antonin Artaud discovered this one day, finding himself with no shape or form whatsoever, right there where he was at that moment. The death instinct: that is its name, and death is not without a model. For desire desires death also, because the full body of death is its motor, just as it desires life, because the organs of life are the working machine. We shall not inquire how all this fits together so that the machine will run: the question itself is the result of a process of abstraction.

Producing, a product: a producing/product identity. It is this identity that constitutes a third term in the linear series: an enormous undifferentiated object. The third term is the new act of production on the already existing product. This is the engine of production (producing-product). Below, we will learn that this “enormous undifferentiated object” isn’t just the bricolage object spoken of above — although, the schizo table will have much in common with it. This “object” will turn out to be the body without organs. Everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place — and then the whole process will begin all over again. Production is not about constant perpetuation of itself. It works in terms of conclusions, stops, breaks. Then producing starts again. Production functions in accordance with moments on non-production. From a certain point of view it would be much better if nothing worked, if nothing functioned. Never being born, escaping the wheel of continual birth and rebirth, no mouth to suck with, no anus to shit through. Will the machines run so badly, their component pieces fall apart to such a point that they will return to nothingness and thus allow us to return to nothingness? It would seem, however, that the flows of energy are still too closely connected, the partial objects still too organic, for this to happen. Will total non-production occur? Will things break down entirely? It seems that human drives are too biologically oriented for this to come to pass. There is too much will to life or will to power inside of them. Too much instinct. There is basically a magnetic relation to life and production within the desiring-machines even though they do have moments of break down, disconnection, detachment, etc. However, desiring-machines are not the only components of our ontology. There is also the BwO and it is what propels us toward disconnection, break down, suspension of connection to flows. Remember, desiring-machines are actualities or “solids”, whereas the BwO is a virtual multiplicity or “fluids”. What would be required is a pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interruption, streaming over the surface of a full body. Desiring-machines make us an organism; but at the very heart of this production, within the very production of this production, the body suffers from being organized in this way, from not having some other sort of organization, or no organization at all. This is a key statement. The desiring-machines tend towards patterns, habits, stabilities, organizations, routines and fixities, whereas the BwO tends toward radical freedoms, disconnections, divergences, escapes, lines of flight, etc. To talk of the production of the new is to talk about desire seeking new connections. But what causes desire to abandon its current connections to satisfying flows, to the excitement experienced in connecting to energy-machines? This tendency toward disconnection from energy-machines is, thus, a different aspect of desire. Some other aspect of the body seeks the destruction of actual connections. It cannot stand the body being organized or organ-ized, that is, the body as a pattern or organization of desiring-machines. In everyday terms, some tendency (BwO) of desire hates routine satisfaction. For example, eating the same types of food, seeing the same sights, watching the same shows, hearing the same sounds, listening to the same songs, same touches, same experiences, same connections. Part of the body finds patterns of satisfaction to be utterly repulsive and dissatisfying. It seeks to pry apart desiring-machines, to free organ-machines from the routine connections to life and nature. This tendency is the BwO. The pure body of potentiality (virtuality). The BwO is a reservoir of the virtual (the potentially new). But why call this aspect of the body the body without organs? It’s very simple. The body with organs is the actual body or what the actual body does on a regular basis. The body with organs or the organ-ized body is the actual body and its parts (organ-machines) as existing in an organization, pattern or routine of actual connections to the actual world. However, the BwO is the virtual potentials within the body waiting to be actualized. However, these new actualizations presuppose the abandonment, disconnection, de-actualization of the body’s current connections (current desiring-machines). Virtual multiplicities can be considered bodies. Imagine standing in front of a window and imagine you’re holding a rock. If you throw the rock hard enough, then a crack pattern will emerge in the window. You will have actualized one of a vast number of crack patterns that were in the the window. Before throwing the rock, the crack pattern was in the window but only in a virtual sense. The whole multiplicity of crack patterns can be thought of as a body, but not an actual body. Our physical bodies have both actual aspects and virtual (potential) aspects. Desiring-machines have to do with the actual aspects of the body and the BwO has to do with the virtual aspects of the body. Now, in this case, the pure BwO is basically a body of potential energy that lures desire away from actual connections. This is why D&G emphasize the importance of the third term of desiring-production. This moment of break down is what serves to renew production in new ways. Otherwise, desire would get trapped in routine. “An incomprehensible, absolutely rigid stasis” in the very midst of process, as a third stage: “No mouth. No tongue. No teeth. No larynx. No esophagus. No belly. No anus.” The automata stop dead and set free the unorganized mass they once served to articulate. This “statis” is what actually brings about new connections. New connections presuppose disconnection from old ones. To say “No mouth” amounts to say that the mouth has momentarily ceased to connect to all energy-machines. The mouth has retreated to the BwO, i.e., a state of potentiality. The automata are the organ-machines and their stop is their disconnection from energy-machines. This serves to “set free the unorganized mass they once served to articulate”, which means, I think, that the energy (BwO, unorganized mass) of the body is now freed up to make new connections, to experiment, to try new things. The full body without organs is the unproductive, the sterile, the unengendered, the unconsumable. So we almost need to think of the BwO as a kind of continuum. There are degrees to which we are “on” the BwO. Going to the limit, going to the extreme, when it comes to the BwO, involves mute autism. Think of the people in moments wards that are basically unresponsive even though not being brain dead. Absolute disconnection from actual connections, full retreat “on” the BwO, can be quite a terrible thing. But with the BwO, we would be like animals trapped inside the rigid confines of instinct (instinctual, fixed connections). What makes us unique among the species is just how developed our BwO is and how we are able to interact with it. To be clear, the pure BwO, the BwO at its limit, is totally unproductive. This is why D&G will come to associate it with the death drive. Antonin Artaud discovered this one day, finding himself with no shape or form whatsoever, right there where he was at that moment. The death instinct: that is its name, and death is not without a model. For desire desires death also, because the full body of death is its motor, just as it desires life, because the organs of life are the working machine. We shall not inquire how all this fits together so that the machine will run: the question itself is the result of a process of abstraction. The point is that desire requires both a life drive (desiring-machines) and a death drive (BwO) in order to continue to function. Desiring-production involves both tendencies. If desire did not desire death (break down, de-actualization, the BwO), then desiring-production would wither way and no new connections would be forged. For D&G, life is death and death is life, the actual is the virtual and the virtual is the actual, antiproduction is production and production is antiproduction. The death they speak of is the virtual (non-actual) and not pure nothingness. It is in this sense that “the full body of death is” desires “motor”.

Desiring-machines work only when they break down, and by continually breaking down. Judge Schreber “lived for a long time without a stomach, without intestines, almost without lungs, with a torn oesophagus, without a bladder, and with shattered ribs; he used sometimes to swallow part of his own larynx with his food, etc.” The body without organs is nonproductive; nonetheless it is produced, at a certain place and a certain time in the connective synthesis, as the identity of producing and the product: the schizophrenic table is a body without organs. The body without organs is not the proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality. Above all, it is not a projection; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the body itself, or with an image of the body. It is the body without an image. This imageless, organless body, the nonproductive, exists right there where it is produced, in the third stage of the binary-linear series. It is perpetually reinserted into the process of production. The catatonic body is produced in the water of the hydrotherapy tub. The full body without organs belongs to the realm of antiproduction; but yet another characteristic of the connective or productive synthesis is the fact that it couples production with antiproduction, with an element of antiproduction.

Desiring-machines work only when they break down, and by continually breaking down. Again, break down or antiproduction is essential to the renewal of production. It is what produces production. Judge Schreber “lived for a long time without a stomach, without intestines, almost without lungs, with a torn oesophagus, without a bladder, and with shattered ribs; he used sometimes to swallow part of his own larynx with his food, etc.” In other words, Schreber fully retreated to the BwO. He totally disconnected from life (production). He would break down his own desiring-machines (organs) for the purpose of escaping them. Obviously, this can get way out of control in certain situations. The body without organs is nonproductive; nonetheless it is produced, at a certain place and a certain time in the connective synthesis, as the identity of producing and the product: the schizophrenic table is a body without organs. The BwO is constructed in the sense that virtual potentials can only be such if they are not one’s current desiring-machines. The virtual body is conditioned by the actual body. We can make ourselves a BwO by place the body in actual scenarios. D&G talk about this is the famous “chapter” on the BwO in A Thousand Plateaus. A virtual connection is virtual because of the actuality of the body (the organ-ized body). This virtual body, this virtual “fluid”, is somewhat different from the virtual Deleuze analyzed in Difference and Repetition. Here, it concerns a virtuality that desire produces. There is a sense in which the actual is primary when it comes to desire, since the BwO (producing-product) piggybacks off of desiring-machines. The schizo table is an actual thing but it has constructed a BwO insofar as its current actuality (product) has produced a vast array of virtual potentials (ways new production can augment it). The body without organs is not the proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality. Above all, it is not a projection; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the body itself, or with an image of the body. It is the body without an image. The BwO is not a pure nothing — it is the virtual (positive bout not actual). It is also not the missing piece that would complete desire. It is not some lost object that the “totality” of desire seeking to be absolutely total. No! It is not the object of fantasy (objet petit a). It is also not a mere projection of the mind. It is not pure imagination. The BwO is real — just not actual. It is not the actual body in its actuality. It is the virtual body that stands in relation to the actual body. The virtual has no form or image. It does not resemble its actualizations, e.g., the virtual crack pattern in the window does not look like the actual crack pattern. This imageless, organless body, the nonproductive, exists right there where it is produced, in the third stage of the binary-linear series. The real BwO is produced through the actualizations produced by desiring-machines and their connective syntheses. The BwO is as real as the eyes are. It is perpetually reinserted into the process of production. The BwO is not made once and for all. It, too, is always undergoing new production (variation, becoming, updating, augmentation). The catatonic body is produced in the water of the hydrotherapy tub. The full body without organs belongs to the realm of antiproduction; but yet another characteristic of the connective or productive synthesis is the fact that it couples production with antiproduction, with an element of antiproduction. Production produces antiproduction, which, in turn, produces new production. In a since, antiproduction is the essential motor of production (becoming), but it does not negate production, since it is virtually oriented (it is not nothing) and ultimately serves to affirm the production of the new (creation). When you think antiproduction, think the BwO — they are concepts interconnected at the most fundamental level. In this section, D&G showed how we get from desiring-machines, production, connective synthesis, etc., to the BwO, antiproduction. In the next section, we will learn more about the BwO, antiproduction and their relation to the disjunctive (second) synthesis of desire.