Commentary on D&G’s Anti-Oedipus (Chapter 1.2: The Body without Organs)

56 min readMar 8, 2019

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’. In this post, all be focusing on the notoriously difficult section on the body without organs (BwO). I have already shared my thoughts on the first section of chapter one in a previous post. I highly recommend reading that one before this one. 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.

It’s important to remember that the BwO is not some actual thing (however, it is deeply connected to the actual). It is a virtual “body” or potential “object”. It is imperceptible, invisible, formless, imageless, etc. This means that we must think of it in terms of what it does and not get hung up on trying to picture it (strictly speaking, this is impossible). Even if we think of actual money as a body without organs, we must remember that it is the virtual side of money that makes it a BwO and not its pure actuality qua paper or metal. Strictly speaking, it is all of the virtual relations that makes money money. Money, in its virtuality, are all of those things it can make happen. Without them, it’s just fucking paper. Is a phenomenology of the BwO possible? Maybe. To a degree. But not in the way phenomenology normally deals with objects, e.g., Husserl on the adumbrations of the object. Let’s now turn to the text itself.

2 | The Body without Organs

An apparent conflict arises between desiring-machines and the body without organs. Every coupling of machines, every production of a machine, every sound of a machine running, becomes unbearable to the body without organs. Beneath its organs it senses there are larvae and loathsome worms, and a God at work messing it all up or strangling it by organizing it. “The body is the body/it is all by itself/and has no need of organs/the body is never an organism/organisms are the enemies of the body.” Merely so many nails piercing the flesh, so many forms of torture. In order to resist organ-machines, the body without organs presents its smooth, slippery, opaque, taut surface as a barrier. In order to resist linked, connected, and interrupted flows, it sets up a counterflow of amorphous, undifferentiated fluid. In order to resist using words composed of articulated phonetic units, it utters only gasps and cries that are sheer unarticulated blocks of sound. We are of the opinion that what is ordinarily referred to as “primary repression” means precisely that: it is not a “countercathexis,” but rather this repulsion of desiring-machines by the body without organs. This is the real meaning of the paranoiac machine: the desiring-machines attempt to break into the body without organs, and the body without organs repels them, since it experiences them as an over-all persecution apparatus. Thus we cannot agree with Victor Tausk when he regards the paranoiac machine as a mere projection of “a person’s own body” and the genital organs. The genesis of the machine lies precisely here: in the opposition of the process of production of the desiring-machines and the nonproductive stasis of the body without organs. The anonymous nature of the machine and the nondifferentiated nature of its surface are proof of this. Projection enters the picture only secondarily, as does counterinvestment, as the body without organs invests a counterinside or a counteroutside, in the form of a persecuting organ or some exterior agent of persecution. But in and of itself the paranoiac machine is merely an avatar of the desiring-machines: it is a result of the relationship between the desiring-machines and the body without organs, and occurs when the latter can no longer tolerate these machines.

An apparent conflict arises between desiring-machines and the body without organs. The key word here is “apparent”. Is the conflict real and obvious or merely apparent? From what follows, D&G do indicate that there is a certain conflict between desiring-machines and the BwO. The two exist in a certain tension, but this is precisely the motor of new production, which affirms the process (becoming). There is a conflict of sorts between the two but one that serves the overall process of desiring-production. Every coupling of machines, every production of a machine, every sound of a machine running, becomes unbearable to the body without organs. Beneath its organs it senses there are larvae and loathsome worms, and a God at work messing it all up or strangling it by organizing it. The desiring-machines desire their connections. They get off on these actual connections. But the BwO (potential energy) cannot stand the body being organ-ized in this way. The body, its energy, in a sense, gets trapped or captured through actual connections, patterns of satisfaction. Now, even though D&G did not speak in these terms, I think that part of what they’re getting at with the concept of the body without organs is the law of diminishing returns or something like it. They already said that the BwO is constructed through the activity of desiring-machines. The actual charges or flows of satisfaction of desiring-machines construct a BwO that pries the organ-machine apart from the energy-machine. For example, say the mouth is connected to a flow of ice cream (the pint container of ice cream being the energy-machine). This coupling is the production of a new desiring-machine. One scoop is great. The second scoop is still good. The third scoop is just okay. The fourth scoop is a task. The little process, this little desiring-machine, produces its own antiproduction or body without organs, that is, a force that seeks escape from and de-actualization of this connection. The connection begins to rot, to decay, that is, it has “larvae and loathsome worms” just like a rooting animal carcass. This organization becomes oppressive, which is why they say that there is “a God at work messing it up”. In A Thousand Plateaus, they equate God with organization, structure, etc. Why? Because, in traditional theology, God is that which imposes organization, form and structure on things. This is what God does in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis. God (organ-ization) is messing up the free flow of desire by capturing it in actual connections. Desiring-machines and their organization basically capture the body, which desire to be freed up. The BwO, in part, is the force or drive that propels desire away from actual connections. “The body is the body/it is all by itself/and has no need of organs/the body is never an organism/organisms are the enemies of the body.” This quote comes from Artaud. It’s just reiterating what they just said. The body is not just its actual side (organs, organization, organism, solidity). The body is also its BwO (virtual singularities, potential, fluidity). Merely so many nails piercing the flesh, so many forms of torture. On the one hand, desiring-machines fill the body with satisfaction, on the other, it tortures the body by trapping it in connections with flows that necessarily stagnate and rot. That fourth scoop of ice cream is a nail “piercing the flesh”. Again, think along the lines of the law of diminishing returns. In order to resist organ-machines, the body without organs presents its smooth, slippery, opaque, taut surface as a barrier. The question concerns the location of this “barrier” qua BwO. Is it the barrier produced between the organ-machine and the energy-machine? I think so. It is this “wet”, “slick”, “slippery”, “smooth” barrier that allows and propels the organ-machine to slip out of its connection to the energy-machine. In other words, the BwO gets between the two machines and slips them away from each other. The BwO involves a certain counter-energy that wells up within the actual connections between machines and pries them apart, i.e., it is a “barrier”. The barrier is smooth in the sense of producing easy and effortless disconnections. “Well, that’s enough ice cream. Time for a cigarette.” This is essential to the process of new production because, otherwise, the two machines would just remain connected forever. For every connection, a disconnection (thanks to the BwO). In order to resist linked, connected, and interrupted flows, it sets up a counterflow of amorphous, undifferentiated fluid. Now, is this fluid a literal, actual fluid like water? No, I don’t think so. I take it that they are conceiving of the virtual, of potentiality, in terms of “liquidity”. There is a certain energy in the body the builds up as a result of a given connections between desiring-machines. These machines are solid or sedimented, that is, they station desire (libido) in a certain relative fixity. It’s like taking water and freezing it so as to impose a fixed form on it. But for every actual flow of satisfaction, a “counterflow of amorphous, undifferentiated fluid”. In Difference and Repetition, the term “indi-drama-different/ciation” articulates the whole process through which virtual singularities get actualized in time and space. In that book, differentiation has to do with the differing of the virtual multiplicity, whereas differenciation is reserved for actualities — it refers to the actualization of actual things. Right here, however, undifferentiated seems to mean undifferenciated, that is, non-actualized. Notice that the “it” is the body without organs. The BwO is a kind of mechanism with a “mind” of its own. It does things. It makes things happen. It is a sort of agency. But, remember, that it is an unconscious aspect of desire. The BwO is a “part” of desire — be it a virtual one (D&G referred to it as an “undifferentiated object”. As Nick Land says, “Machinic desire is the operation of the virtual; implementing itself in the actual, revirtualizing itself, and producing reality in a circuit” (‘Machinic Desire’, Fanged Noumena, p. 327). But we are probably okay in identifying the “fluid” it produces with it itself, since both the BwO and the fluid are qualified as “undifferentiated”. To be differentiated, according to Saussure, is to exist within a certain organization or structure (langue). I take it that D&G have something like this in mind considering their next example. In order to resist using words composed of articulated phonetic units, it utters only gasps and cries that are sheer unarticulated blocks of sound. These sounds are the sounds of virtual potential. They are not units of language proper, since they are undifferentiated, that is, they lack a position in the differential structure of langue. They alert us to the reality of the virtual. In this case, the virtual of the body or the BwO. In a sense, these gasps and cries pry the mouth away from the energy-machine that is language and sends the mouth in the direction of the BwO. The BwO says to the mouth, “You do a lot of talking but is that all you can do? I bet you can do a lot more than just talk. Let’s find out what else you’re capable of!” We are of the opinion that what is ordinarily referred to as “primary repression” means precisely that: it is not a “countercathexis,” but rather this repulsion of desiring-machines by the body without organs. “Primary repression”, the construction of the mechanism of repression, occurs when something gets between an organ-machine and an energy-machine and separates them. This is usually said to be the function of the father. This is the real meaning of the paranoiac machine: the desiring-machines attempt to break into the body without organs, and the body without organs repels them, since it experiences them as an over-all persecution apparatus. If an organ-machine seeks to preserve itself by connecting to the body without organs, then it will be repelled, since the latter rejects desiring-machines and their organ-ization. Paranoia has to do with the fear of things becoming unravelled, of them breaking down or coming apart. The paranoid subject is the one that fears its own undoing and dismantlement. Thus we cannot agree with Victor Tausk when he regards the paranoiac machine as a mere projection of “a person’s own body” and the genital organs. The genesis of the machine lies precisely here: in the opposition of the process of production of the desiring-machines and the nonproductive stasis of the body without organs. The paranoiac machine is produced in the tension between desiring-machines and the BwO. It is not the product of projection. Tausk wrote a whole book about this, but, to my knowledge, it has not been translated into English. The anonymous nature of the machine and the nondifferentiated nature of its surface are proof of this. Projection enters the picture only secondarily, as does counterinvestment, as the body without organs invests a counterinside or a counteroutside, in the form of a persecuting organ or some exterior agent of persecution. But in and of itself the paranoiac machine is merely an avatar of the desiring-machines: it is a result of the relationship between the desiring-machines and the body without organs, and occurs when the latter can no longer tolerate these machines. In other words, the paranoiac machine is produced as the tension between the desiring-machine and the BwO intensifies. The paranoiac machine is a desiring-machine in a state of break down, that is, it is a modification or avatar of a certain desiring-machine. Projection is a mental operation, which has no bearing here. Judge Schreber was diagnosed as paranoiac by Freud. For Lacan, paranoia is a kind of schizophrenia or psychosis. Freud viewed paranoia as a defense against homosexual desire, but Lacan rejected this theory. For Lacan, paranoia is structurally related to foreclosure. No bullshit — this passage is difficult to make sense of without having access to Tausk’s book.

If we wish to have some idea of the forces that the body without organs exerts later on in the uninterrupted process, we must first establish a parallel between desiring-production and social production. We intend such a parallel to be regarded as merely phenomenological: we are here drawing no conclusions whatsoever as to the nature and the relationship of the two productions, nor does the parallel we are about to establish provide any sort of a priori answer to the question whether desiring-production and social production are really two separate and distinct productions. Its one purpose is to point out the fact that the forms of social production, like those of desiring-production, involve an unengendered nonproductive attitude, an element of antiproduction coupled with the process, a full body that functions as a socius. This socius may be the body of the earth, that of the tyrant, or capital. This is the body that Marx is referring to when he says that it is not the product of labor, but rather appears as its natural or divine presupposition. In fact, it does not restrict itself merely to opposing productive forces in and of themselves. It falls back on (il se rabat sur) all production, constituting a surface over which the forces and agents of production are distributed, thereby appropriating for itself all surplus production and arrogating to itself both the whole and the parts of the process, which now seem to emanate from it as a quasi cause. Forces and agents come to represent a miraculous form of its own power: they appear to be “miraculated” (miraculés) by it. In a word, the socius as a full body forms a surface where all production is recorded, whereupon the entire process appears to emanate from this recording surface. Society con- structs its own delirium by recording the process of production; but it is not a conscious delirium, or rather is a true consciousness of a false movement, a true perception of an apparent objective movement, a true perception of the movement that is produced on the recording surface.

If we wish to have some idea of the forces that the body without organs exerts later on in the uninterrupted process, we must first establish a parallel between desiring-production and social production. To understand how the BwO functions properly, we must see the connection between desiring-production and social production. Remember, desiring-production has to do with the production of desiring-machines. Yes, desiring-machines are ultimately plugged into society, but this doesn’t means that there isn’t a certain kind of distinction between desiring-production and social production. Social production has to do with the production of society — as in Marx’s modes of production (slavery, feudalism, capitalism). As a preliminary exercise, think of desiring-production as micro-production and social production as macro-production, and, then, take the distinction and throw it straight to hell. Why? Because the process of production is ultimately a single process. We intend such a parallel to be regarded as merely phenomenological: we are here drawing no conclusions whatsoever as to the nature and the relationship of the two productions, nor does the parallel we are about to establish provide any sort of a priori answer to the question whether desiring-production and social production are really two separate and distinct productions. The parallel between desiring-production and social production is “phenomenological”, i.e., it’s rooted in how we see things. It gives us something to go off of. D&G are just trying to find a way for us to get a hold on what they’re going to say. In short, use this parallel like a Wittgensteinian ladder — kick it away after you climb it. Its one purpose is to point out the fact that the forms of social production, like those of desiring-production, involve an unengendered nonproductive attitude, an element of antiproduction coupled with the process, a full body that functions as a socius. So here’s the parallel: both types of production involve antiproduction and a “full body” (a virtual “body”). The full body of desiring-production is the body without organs and the full body of social production is the socius. Both types of production involve a counterforce of antiproduction rooted in their respective full bodies (virtuality). This socius may be the body of the earth, that of the tyrant, or capital. The socius, like the BwO, is itself produced in the process. Yet the socius is essentially the “ground”, “foundation” or “a priori structure” of society. Now, what’s strange about this is that the fundamental, orientating, virtual mechanism of antiproduction at the “center” of society is itself produced within the process itself. The “a priori” or transcendental function is immanent and not transcendent. It is produced inside of the process. This is Deleuze’s metaphysics of immanence (virtuality, pure difference). The earth is produced within the process. The despot is produced within the process. Capital is produced within the process. Just as desiring-production nessitates a BwO (mechanism of antiproduction) to ensure new production, production of production, so, too, social production nessitates a socius (mechanism of antiproduction) to ensure future social production. This is the body that Marx is referring to when he says that it is not the product of labor, but rather appears as its natural or divine presupposition. For Marx, capital is something produced by society and organized labor, but it ends up being the “ground” or “surface” of society and organized labor. It becomes positioned in such a way as to be the transcendental “foundation” of society. In fact, it does not restrict itself merely to opposing productive forces in and of themselves. It falls back on (il se rabat sur) all production, constituting a surface over which the forces and agents of production are distributed, thereby appropriating for itself all surplus production and arrogating to itself both the whole and the parts of the process, which now seem to emanate from it as a quasi cause. So the socius is something produced within society that ends up becoming society’s “quasi cause”. The socius, like the BwO, ends up distributing things. It positions certain things and flows in certain relations. It overlays a kind of virtual structure or grid on the whole of production. This is not the actual organ-ization of bodies but the virtual matrix through which they are distributed, dealt out in shares, allocated, etc. For example, capital distributes flows in such a way us to produce capital accumulation. This socius (social body of virtual relations) channels and deals out flows of energy, time, labor, information, electricity, etc., in certain ways that produce certain effects — more and more capital. Think of the socius as that point in society at which surplus value, surplus production, excess, wealth, abundance, the extra, accursed share, etc., accumulates. The socius is the focal point of society in which all surplus energy gathers. Nick Land writes, “Social organization blocks-off the body without organs, substituting a territorial, despotic, or capitalist socius as an apparent principle of production, separating desire from what it can do” (‘Circuitries’, Fanged Noumena, p. 304). So while there is a certain parallel between the body without organs and the socius (both are mechanisms of antiproduction), there is also a conflict that arises between them. The socius ends up constricting and limiting the body without organs of desiring-production. Forces and agents come to represent a miraculous form of its own power: they appear to be “miraculated” (miraculés) by it. In other words, the socius and all of its parts and factors take on a “miraculated” form. It’s as if they are little miracles. I think this is somewhat similar to Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. Commodities have a certain miraculous presence. The socius itself is miraculous insofar is it becomes the “quasi cause” of the society that produced it. In a word, the socius as a full body forms a surface where all production is recorded, whereupon the entire process appears to emanate from this recording surface. Here, D&G start talking about the socius as a “recording surface”, which is also how they talk of the body without organs. In recording production, in registering it, the socius can, then, virtually arranged it in certain relations and dynamics (distributions), which makes it miraculously appear to be the “transcendent” cause behind production. In reality, the socius is a immanent product of production that ends up becoming positioned as its transcendent ground. We end up thinking everything produced is owed to the socius instead of the socius owing all to production. Society constructs its own delirium by recording the process of production; but it is not a conscious delirium, or rather is a true consciousness of a false movement, a true perception of an apparent objective movement, a true perception of the movement that is produced on the recording surface. I think they’re saying that the problems (delirium) society produces is the result of its own functioning, of the way it virtually organizes and distributes production. To quote Land again, “Between the socius and the body without organs is the difference between the political and the cybernetic, between the familial and the anonymous, between neurosis and psychosis or schizophrenia. Capitalism and schizophrenia name the same desocialization process from the inside and the outside, in terms of where it comes from (simulated accumulation) and where it is going (impersonal delirium). Beyond sociality is a universal schizophrenia whose evacuation from history appears inside history as capitalism” (‘Circuitries’ Fanged Noumena, pp. 304–5). D&G point out that none of this shit is occurring at the level of consciousness. All of this is unconscious. One more Land quote: “Within the framework of social history the empirical subject of production is man, but its transcendental subject is the machinic unconscious, and the empirical subject is produced at the edge of production, as an element in the reproduction of production, a machine part, and ‘a part made up of parts’” (‘Machinic Desire’, Fanged Noumena, p. 322).

Capital is indeed the body without organs of the capitalist, or rather of the capitalist being. But as such, it is not only the fluid and petrified substance of money, for it will give to the sterility of money the form whereby money produces money. It produces surplus value, just as the body without organs reproduces itself, puts forth shoots, and branches out to the farthest corners of the universe. It makes the machine responsible for producing a relative surplus value, while embodying itself in the machine as fixed capital. Machines and agents cling so closely to capital that their very functioning appears to be miraculated by it. Everything seems objectively to be produced by capital as quasi cause. As Marx observes, in the beginning capitalists are necessarily conscious of the opposition between capital and labor, and of the use of capital as a means of extorting surplus labor. But a perverted, bewitched world quickly comes into being, as capital increasingly plays the role of a recording surface that falls back on (se rabat sur) all of production. (Furnishing or realizing surplus value is what establishes recording rights.) “With the development of relative surplus-value in the actual specifically capitalist mode of production, whereby the productive powers of social labour are developed, these productive powers and the social interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from labour to capital. Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labour’s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself.” What is specifically capitalist here is the role of money and the use of capital as a full body to constitute the recording or inscribing surface. But some kind of full body, that of the earth or the despot, a recording surface, an apparent objective movement, a fetishistic, perverted, bewitched world are characteristic of all types of society as a constant of social reproduction.

Capital is indeed the body without organs of the capitalist, or rather of the capitalist being. Capital is the socius of capitalist society but it is also the BwO of the capitalist. It is what gives the capitalist certain potentials. But as such, it is not only the fluid and petrified substance of money, for it will give to the sterility of money the form whereby money produces money. Capital is what turns money into money that augments itself (Marx’s formula for capital was M-C-M’). It is what takes a given actuality and sets it in a process of becoming (accumulation). The body without organs, though repulsed by the actual, opens up new and potential actualizations, which, in turn, alters the body without organs. It produces surplus value, just as the body without organs reproduces itself, puts forth shoots, and branches out to the farthest corners of the universe. Capital/BwO is a virtual process that reproduces itself by continuously connecting to the actual in differing ways. The BwO produces surplus potential (or something like that). The BwO (capital) takes a sterile desiring-machine (money) and turns it into something productive. It makes the machine responsible for producing a relative surplus value, while embodying itself in the machine as fixed capital. This is a way of saying that the BwO seeks to make desiring-machines produce more than their actual connections. Something extra is produced, which is the potential for new productions. Machines and agents cling so closely to capital that their very functioning appears to be miraculated by it. Everything seems objectively to be produced by capital as quasi cause. The BwO (capital) seems to be the miraculous source of all things (commodities, social relations, entertainment, pop culture, etc.), when, in fact, the BwO is produced by the actual. Now, this means that there is, strictly speaking, a big difference between the virtual of Difference and Repetition and the BwO of Anti-Oedipus. Now, machines appear “miraculated” when they seem to spontaneously emerge from the BwO. As Marx observes, in the beginning capitalists are necessarily conscious of the opposition between capital and labor, and of the use of capital as a means of extorting surplus labor. But a perverted, bewitched world quickly comes into being, as capital increasingly plays the role of a recording surface that falls back on (se rabat sur) all of production. (Furnishing or realizing surplus value is what establishes recording rights.) As the movements of the economy become “recorded” or virtually registered, they come to be the effects instead of the causes. The “perverted, bewitched world” sounds very similar to the inverted word of religion as Marx put it — the effects become the causes. It’s also similar to commodity fetishism. “With the development of relative surplus-value in the actual specifically capitalist mode of production, whereby the productive powers of social labour are developed, these productive powers and the social interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from labour to capital. Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labour’s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself.” The quote comes from Marx’s Capital. Again, labor involves the actual and desiring-machines, whereas capital relates to the virtual or the BwO. Deleuzo-Guatterians act like the BwO is just some great “thing” through and through, but it has its issues. It leads us to see things in a distorted and inverted manner. This becomes a very serious issue in concrete, social reality. For example, in America, we are taught that we owe all things to capital, i.e., “job creators” (BwO, socius), when, in fact, capital (BwO) owes all to labor (actual production). Remember, the BwO (and the socius by extension) is derived from actual production between machines. Miraculation involves an inversion in perception. In other words, it falsifies things. What is specifically capitalist here is the role of money and the use of capital as a full body to constitute the recording or inscribing surface. So the BwO involves a full body and a surface of inscription. I think this amounts to something akin to the differentiation of the virtual in Difference and Repetition. The full body is an kind or pure, potential energy and “on” it gets “inscribes” a kind of coordinate system. This is how a virtual network or apparatus is constructed. Now, I agree with Eugene W. Holland that D&G have something like Freud’s concept of memory traces or screen memories in mind. Freud wrote about this in his essay ‘A Note upon the “Mystic Writing Pad”’. What gets “inscribe”, “written”, “registered”, etc., on the full body (pure, potential, free, fluid, wild, unactualized energy) is “memories” of past satisfactions or connections between organ-machines and energy-machines. Each actual “charge” leaves a mnemonic trace (Bergson greatly influenced Deleuze and Bergson argued that memory was a virtual multiplicity of sorts). The body (organs and BwO) comes to learn of a whole range of potential connections, unactualized productions. This multifaceted “thing” called the body without organs arranges or orients these potentialities into networks of relations, i.e., virtual multiplicities. The BwO says, “Well, if we take this connection and mix it with that other one, or if we follow it up with a different one, then new experiences of satisfaction will occur. The new will be produced.” But some kind of full body, that of the earth or the despot, a recording surface, an apparent objective movement, a fetishistic, perverted, bewitched world are characteristic of all types of society as a constant of social reproduction. So society as such inverts things. This occurs by way of the BwO and the socius. The two are not the same but closely related — the latter piggybacks on the former while also constricting and limiting it. The socius, e.g., earth, despot, capital, is primarily a virtual “body” and not an actual one. The despot is less a concrete person and more the center of virtual arrangements that organize actual bodies in certain ways for certain ends. The despot is not a despot in his actuality (physical person) but in his virtuality (system of social relations). Social reproduction, the perpetuation of a given society, entails miraculation. This mechanism bends the actual (labor) into accepting exploitative power relations.

The body without organs now falls back on (se rabat sur) desiring-production, attracts it, and appropriates it for its own. The organ-machines now cling to the body without organs as though it were a fencer’s padded jacket, or as though these organ-machines were medals pinned onto the jersey of a wrestler who makes them jingle as he starts toward his opponent. An attraction-machine now takes the place, or may take the place, of a repulsion-machine: a miraculating-machine succeeding the paranoiac machine. But what is meant here by “succeeding”? The two coexist, rather, and black humor does not attempt to resolve contradictions, but to make it so that there are none, and never were any. The body without organs, the unproductive, the unconsumable, serves as a surface for the recording of the entire process of production of desire, so that desiring-machines seem to emanate from it in the apparent objective movement that establishes a relationship between the machines and the body without organs. The organs are regenerated, “miraculated” on the body of Judge Schreber, who attracts God’s rays to himself. Doubtless the former paranoiac machine continues to exist in the form of mocking voices that attempt to “de-miraculate” (démiraculer) the organs, the Judge’s anus in particular. But the essential thing is the establishment of an enchanted recording or inscribing surface that arrogates to itself all the productive forces and all the organs of production, and that acts as a quasi cause by communicating the apparent movement (the fetish) to them. So true is it that the schizo practices political economy, and that all sexuality is a matter of economy.

The body without organs now falls back on (se rabat sur) desiring-production, attracts it, and appropriates it for its own. The BwO, on the one hand, repels desiring-machines and desiring-production, and on the other, it attracts them, that is, it attracts the production of the new or connections. It frees up libido in order for it to get new charges. The BwO enables libido to explore the world by making new regions of it attractive. To say that the BwO attracts desiring-production means that actual body parts come to be attracted and drawn to their potential productions and not their current ones. If you really want to see the BwO at work, then just watch small children. They want to try everything there is to try. The type of excitement they have for new experiences is a manifestation of a BwO that is still extremely free and unhindered. The organ-machines now cling to the body without organs as though it were a fencer’s padded jacket, or as though these organ-machines were medals pinned onto the jersey of a wrestler who makes them jingle as he starts toward his opponent. Again, this amounts to saying that the organ-machines latch onto the BwO (virtuality). They do so because this is the path toward new actual connections (new experiences of libidinal satisfaction). The imagery is good right here. The jingling of the medals represents the excitement and expectation organ-machines buzz with when approaching new energy-machines for the first time. An attraction-machine now takes the place, or may take the place, of a repulsion-machine: a miraculating-machine succeeding the paranoiac machine. The BwO transforms current and actual desiring-machines into repulsion-machine and potential desiring-machines into attraction-machines (that Jay-Z song called On to the Next One). But what is meant here by “succeeding”? The two coexist, rather, and black humor does not attempt to resolve contradictions, but to make it so that there are none, and never were any. In other words, “succeeding” shouldn’t be taken too strictly. D&G isolate the three syntheses for the sake of analysis, but they ultimately operate simultaneously. I take it that the black humor refers to how D&G proceed as if these syntheses occur in isolation or one after the other, when, in fact, they all are happening at the same time. It’s like when someone at the bar is drinking and smoking. The alcohol and the cigarette constantly vacillate back and forth between being repulsion-machines and attraction-machines. The body without organs, the unproductive, the unconsumable, serves as a surface for the recording of the entire process of production of desire, so that desiring-machines seem to emanate from it in the apparent objective movement that establishes a relationship between the machines and the body without organs. The BwO records or registers all of the past connections of desiring-machines. In doing so, in becoming a virtual mapping system of coordinates, it takes on the appearance of being the cause of desiring-production. In reality, desiring-machines remain the materialist foundation, however. The process originates with the initial desiring-machines, but its movement and development make it seem that the body without organs is the source of desiring-production. It is not! The organs are regenerated, “miraculated” on the body of Judge Schreber, who attracts God’s rays to himself. It’s the aspect of of the BwO dealing with attraction that make desiring-machines seem to miraculously appear from the BwO (the virtual body). Doubtless the former paranoiac machine continues to exist in the form of mocking voices that attempt to “de-miraculate” (démiraculer) the organs, the Judge’s anus in particular. I guess that the paranoiac machine seeks to be separated from the body without organs. But the essential thing is the establishment of an enchanted recording or inscribing surface that arrogates to itself all the productive forces and all the organs of production, and that acts as a quasi cause by communicating the apparent movement (the fetish) to them. How is the BwO the “essential thing”? I take it it’s essential insofar as it’s what keeps the process of desiring-production incorporating the new. There is a sense in psychoanalysis where memory-traces (signifiers) take on more libidinal investment than the actual experiences of jouissance. The difference would be that, for D&G, the memory system orients desire towards the future instead of the past, the new instead of the old. So true is it that the schizo practices political economy, and that all sexuality is a matter of economy. Somehow D&G are combining Freud and Marx here. This is their version of libidinal economy. The energy of the body ends up getting distributed in various ways like how goods do in an economy.

Production is not recorded in the same way it is produced, however. Or rather, it is not reproduced within the apparent objective movement in the same way in which it is produced within the process of constitution. In fact, we have passed imperceptibly into a domain of the production of recording, whose law is not the same as that of the production of production. So the production of production works differently than the recording of production. These processes have different formats. The usage of the word “imperceptibly” indicates the passage to the virtual. The law governing the latter was connective synthesis or coupling. But when the productive connections pass from machines to the body without organs (as from labor to capital), it would seem that they then come under another law that expresses a distribution in relation to the nonproductive element as a “natural or divine presupposition” (the disjunctions of capital). Connections go from actual desiring-machines to the virtual BwO, that is, actual experiences of satisfactions become “memories” of them. Labor involves actual bodies in actual relations, but the transformation of labor into capital involves virtuality. Capital is virtual labor (virtual traces of actual acts of labor). Machines attach themselves to the body without organs as so many points of disjunction, between which an entire network of new syntheses is now woven, marking the surface off into co-ordinates, like a grid. In connecting to the body without organs, each organ becomes related to the others. The organ-machines enter into a kind of virtual relationality. Now the organs pursue satisfaction in terms of one another. The “either . . . or . . . or” of the schizophrenic takes over from the “and then”: no matter what two organs are involved, the way in which they are attached to the body without organs must be such that all the disjunctive syntheses between the two amount to the same on the slippery surface. The disjunctive synthesis combines all of the virtual options the organs have. It builds up all of the various permutations of satisfaction the body can seek out. The BwO is a system of differences just like Saussure’s langue is a system of differences. These systems make new actual acts of satisfaction and acts of speech possible. What is unique about the BwO is that it is automatically produced by the body itself. This whole process is auto-productive or autopoietic. The body does not require literal parents, symbolic parents, parental functions, the Law or the big Other to produce desire or engage in desiring-production. This unconscious is a bodily one that generates itself automatically — no symbolic castration, no name-of-the-other, no imposition of language (signifier), no socialization, etc., is required in this process. All the disjunctive syntheses (inclusive options) between the organs “amount to the same on the slippery surface”. I take it that this means that they all are virtual potentials for future satisfactions. Whereas the “either/or” claims to mark decisive choices between immutable terms (the alternative: either this or that), the schizophrenic “either . . . or . . . or” refers to the system of possible permutations between differences that always amount to the same as they shift and slide about. The Oedipus complex, for example, will force desire to make a choice between the mother or the father. This is an exclusive or absolute disjunction. You must choose one at the expense of the other. This sort of disjunction is not intrinsic to the nature of desire. It is imposed from the outside. It is lodged into the skin like a splinter. Desire does not require this rigid sort of either/or in order to function. Actually, in fact, this exclusive distinction poisons desire in its natural form. It’s like a kind of virus that makes desire sick. It contaminates desiring-production. The inclusive either/or says, “Either try this or try that or that or this. Experiment with them. Try them all before it’s over.” Again, this will “always amount to the same”, that is, to the virtual, to the production of the new, to becoming, etc. As in the case of Beckett’s mouth that speaks and feet that walk: “He sometimes halted without saying anything. Either he had finally nothing to say, or while having something to say he finally decided not to say it. . . . Other main examples suggest themselves to the mind. Immediate continuous communication with immediate redeparture. Same thing with delayed redeparture. Delayed continuous communication with immediate redeparture. Same thing with delayed redeparture. Immediate discontinuous communication with immediate redeparture. Same thing with delayed redeparture. Delayed discontinuous communication with immediate redeparture. Same thing with delayed redeparture.” This quote describes how the mouth and the feet experiment with each other. Trying out new experiences in relation to one another. As basic and mundane as this sounds, this is how the body produces new connections, new experiences of satisfactions. The body is slightly modifying itself in order to text out new sensations. This quote is actually very helpful. What D&G are describing are all of the virtual potentialities between the mouth and the feet (talking and walking) synthesized by the BwO qua agent of the production of inclusive disjunctions or disjunctive syntheses. This is a series of either . . . or . . . or . . . or. The mnemonic traces of actual experiences of talking and walking get “inscribed” on the BwO or stored in the virtual “memory” bank and, from there, this BwO constructs a system of potential differences or modifications between the actual experience of talking and the actual experience of walking. The BwO says, “Hmm, well, the mouth talks and the feet walk. What are all of the various modifications of the relation between the two organs can I come up with? What are all of the different ways talking and walking can actualize themselves in new experiences? Let me draw up a grid or virtual network of these potentials.” All of these potential permutations constructed by the BwO (virtual synthesizer of potential permutations or disjunctive synthesis) do not exclude the others. They all can follow each other in a play of experimental actualization. This is like a Deleuzo-Guattarian version of the fort/da game: actual, virtual, actual, virtual. It vacillates or teeter-totters between the actual and the virtual. However, instead of re-actualizing, regaining, re-presencing some lost object from the past (psychoanalysis), this game actualizes the new (schizoanalysis). This game is productive instead of nostalgic. Oriented towards the future instead of fixated on the past. These virtual permutations are “distributions” of mouth-talking and feet-walking. They are ways to distribute the relations between these two organ machines.

Thus the schizophrenic, the possessor of the most touchingly meager capital — Malone’s belongings, for instance — inscribes on his own body the litany of disjunctions, and creates for himself a world of parries where the most minute of permutations is supposed to be a response to the new situation or a reply to the indiscreet questioner. Schizo desire is all about inscribing or synthesizing a network of differences or permutations the body can pursue and experiment with. This is the default setting of desire — it engineers the production of the new. Think about. When we see a literal schizophrenic doing what he does, there appears to be some intense, frantic, abundant drive towards to the new. See that, touch this, taste that over there. It’s a relation to the world that operates in a type of overdrive. We cannot keep up with it. It defies any of the limits we seek to impose on it. The schizo’s responses to our inquiries are creative and spontaneous — even playful. The disjunctive synthesis of recording therefore comes to overlap the connective syntheses of production. That is, both syntheses end up operating together. Both are aspects of desiring-production. They form a kind of feedback loop, but one the feeds the production of the new. Yes, there is a certain tension between desiring-machines and the BwO, but it is a tension that serves the creation of new desiring-production. The process as process of production extends into the method as method of inscription. In other words, the BwO, the recording surface, antiproduction, all work to further the process. To make production continue to produce. The BwO is a method insofar as it is the procedure that frees up organ-machines for the production of new desiring-machines and produces a virtual system of potential relations between the organ-machines (the grid). Or rather, if what we term libido is the connective “labor” of desiring-production, it should be said that a part of this energy is transformed into the energy of disjunctive inscription (Numen). The energy of the body is libido (sexual energy). Primarily speaking, libido is the energy involved in the production of desiring-machines (actual connections), but, as we saw, desiring-machines produce a counter-energy (BwO) that breaks them apart. D&G ultimately identify both types of energy as libido. However, the counter-energy of the BwO is a kind of modification of libido, which is why they give it its own name, i.e., Numen. If libido is the energy that drives the production of actual connections, then Numen is the counter-energy that drives the production of virtual disjunctions (networks of potential differences). Also, “Numen” means the spirit or divine power presiding over a thing or place. Numen is divine energy. A transformation of energy. Numen (BwO) involves a transformation of energy insofar as this turns desire-for-the-actual into the desire-for-the-virtual. Numen itself is a transformative energy insofar as it drives the transformation or creation of the body. It produces the drive toward the new, the as of yet unactualized, the not yet experienced. To desire the new is to desire both the actual and the virtual, the play between them. The human body is unique because of how it is able to continuously expand and augment its virtual side (BwO), which produces new actual connections. The circuitry between libido and Numen, the “cycle” of the two driving energies of desire, is what enables human beings to be so creative and productive. This is not repetition of the same but the repetition of difference (production of new desiring-machines and new BwOs). But why call this new form of energy divine, why label it Numen, in view of all the ambiguities caused by a problem of the unconscious that is only apparently religious? In other words, if the unconscious isn’t essentially religious in the standard sense, then why call the energy of the BwO by the name “Numen” (divine energy)? One could argue that the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious is “religious” insofar as it is subject to the absolute authority of the father. And, for Freud, God is father. God comes to replace the father as the child becomes an adult. But D&G’s concept of the machinic unconscious does not involve this sort of paternal religiosity, so why call the BwO a divine energy? I assume it is because God does what the BwO does. Both of them are creative and they create by way of disjunction (division). In the Book of Genesis, God performs a series of disjunctions, divisions, separations, creations, etc. And God’s disjunctions are inclusive, they are all aspects of the “body” of creation. God takes all of the energy/matter he produced and distributes it in various ways. This is what the BwO does. Yes, of course, the analogy has its limits like any analogy, but D&G use it to give us something to go off of. They will return to the analogy of God in A Thousand Plateaus when they discuss double articulation (the whole thing about God being a lobster — fuck off, Peterson!). The body without organs is not God, quite the contrary. They go out of their way to say that we should not confuse the BwO with God. They are not producing some new materialist theology. They are not literally saying that the BwO is God. In fact, it is the opposite of Judeo-Christian God insofar it is (1) not personal, (2) immanent to the plane of time and space, (3) the product of nature, (4) subject to change and modification, etc. But the energy that sweeps through it is divine, when it attracts to itself the entire process of production and serves as its miraculate, enchanted surface, inscribing it in each and every one of its disjunctions. This is the analogous relation between the BwO and God. The BwO is the “source” of production (even though it’s really not — desiring-machines are) like God is the source of creation (even though he’s really not — he’s the product of creation, i.e., human imagination). But, Numen, the energy of the BwO, is what keeps production producing. It is what attaches desire to virtual potentials, makes it attracted to virtual multiplicities and produces (inscribes) these virtual relations. The energy is miraculous because it seems as though new things magically appear out of nowhere (BwO, virtuality) just like how God creates ex nihilo. “Where the fuck did that come from?” Alan Grant in Jurassic Park: “How’d you do this?” Hence the strange relationship that Schreber has with God. It would take greater familiarity with Schreber’s book and Freud’s interpretation of it to get what they are referring to here. To anyone who asks: “Do you believe in God?” we should reply in strictly Kantian or Schreberian terms: “Of course, but only as the master of the disjunctive syllogism, or as its a priori principle (God defined as the Omnitudo realitatis, from which all secondary realities are derived by a process of division).” The Latin phrase Omnitudo realitatis means the All or All of reality. D&G “are” theists only insofar as they hold that an essential function of God, the disjunctive synthesis, is operative in nature and especially in human desire. God creatively divides things into inclusive relations and this is precisely what the BwO does. The reference to Kant is lost on me (I need to go back and revisit Kant’s concept of God). The BwO, though actually produced by the desiring-machines, is what keeps production producing the new or is the “source” or “quasi-cause” of all “secondary realities”.

Hence the sole thing that is divine is the nature of an energy of disjunctions. Schreber’s divine is inseparable from the disjunctions he employs to divide himself up into parts: earlier empires, later empires; later empires of a superior God, and those of an inferior God. Freud stresses the importance of these disjunctive syntheses in Schreber’s delirium in particular, but also in delirium as a general phenomenon. “A process of decomposition of this kind is very characteristic of paranoia. Paranoia decomposes just as hysteria condenses. Or rather, paranoia resolves once more into their elements the products of the condensations and identifications which are effected in the unconscious.” But why does Freud thus add that, on second thought, hysterical neurosis comes first, and that disjunctions appear only as a result of the projection of a more basic, primordial condensed material? Doubtless this is a way of maintaining intact the rights of Oedipus in the God of delirium and the schizoparanoiac recording process. And for that very reason we must pose the most far-reaching question in this regard: does the recording of desire go by way of the various stages in the formation of the Oedipus complex? Disjunctions are the form that the genealogy of desire assumes; but is this genealogy Oedipal, is it recorded in the Oedipal triangulation? Is it not more likely that Oedipus is a requirement or a consequence of social reproduction, insofar as this latter aims at domesticating a genealogical form and content that are in every way intractable? For there is no doubting the fact that the schizo is constantly subjected to interrogation, constantly cross-examined. Precisely because his relationship with nature does not constitute a specific pole, the questions put to him are formulated in terms of the existing social code: your name, your father, your mother? In the course of his exercises in desiring-production, Beckett’s Molloy is cross-examined by a policeman: “Your name is Molloy, said the sergeant. Yes, I said, now I remember. And your mother? said the sergeant. I didn’t follow. Is your mother’s name Molloy too? said the sergeant. I thought it over. Your mother, said the sergeant, is your mother’s — Let me think! I cried. At least I imagine that’s how it was. Take your time, said the sergeant. Was mother’s name Molloy? Very likely. Her name must be Molloy too, I said. They took me away, to the guardroom I suppose, and there I was told to sit down. I must have tried to explain.”

Hence the sole thing that is divine is the nature of an energy of disjunctions. D&G associate the creative drive of the virtual disjunctions produced by the BwO with God qua the great divider. This mechanism is the only “God” they recognize, which is to say, no God at all. Schreber’s divine is inseparable from the disjunctions he employs to divide himself up into parts: earlier empires, later empires; later empires of a superior God, and those of an inferior God. Once again, Schreber is their go-to example. The energy in Schreber that drove him to continuously divide himself up is what they consider to be the BwO and its disjunctive syntheses (production of virtual permutations or potential relations between organ-machines). Freud stresses the importance of these disjunctive syntheses in Schreber’s delirium in particular, but also in delirium as a general phenomenon. It’s definitely worth reading Freud’s interpretation of Schreber to get a better understanding of what they have in mind here. In some way, their concept of the BwO and the disjunctive synthesis is piggybacking off of Freud’s work. Remember, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze links up one of his passive syntheses with a synthesis he sees at work in Freud’s work. “A process of decomposition of this kind is very characteristic of paranoia. Paranoia decomposes just as hysteria condenses. Or rather, paranoia resolves once more into their elements the products of the condensations and identifications which are effected in the unconscious.” This quote comes form Freud’s Psycho-Analytic Notes. This stuff about the differences between paranoia and hysteria needs to be researched. Freud’s work on paranoid schizophrenia can help clarify the disjunctive synthesis. Paranoia “decomposes” but what does it decompose? What’s confusing is that D&G seek for us to have a paranoia-free desire. Desire that is not paranoid. At least, that’s what Eugene Holland has led me to think. So I’m unsure on how the paranoid side of paranoid schizophrenia (illness) relates to schizophrenia as process/desire. Okay, if hysteria involves extreme condensations and identifications of the elements of the unconscious, then paranoia takes these assemblages and breaks them down back go to their elements or parts. Hysteria assembles and paranoia disassembles. Paranoia deconstructs the unconscious. But why does Freud thus add that, on second thought, hysterical neurosis comes first, and that disjunctions appear only as a result of the projection of a more basic, primordial condensed material? But Freud ends up giving primacy to hysteria and not to paranoia? He gives priority to the condensations (assemblages) of the unconscious and not to that which takes them apart (paranoia). Let’s find out. Doubtless this is a way of maintaining intact the rights of Oedipus in the God of delirium and the schizoparanoiac recording process. Somehow, making hysteria primary and foundational serves to protect Oedipus. It is a way of arguing that schizophrenia is subject to the structure of Oedipus, that is, derived from the Oedipus complex in some way, shape or form. Schizo-paranoia is Oedipus gone wrong. But if that’s true, then it is still taking its cues from Oedipus, still a reaction to the complex. But does schizo recording, the disjunctive synthesis of desire proper, really operate on the basis of Oedipus? And for that very reason we must pose the most far-reaching question in this regard: does the recording of desire go by way of the various stages in the formation of the Oedipus complex? Disjunctions are the form that the genealogy of desire assumes; but is this genealogy Oedipal, is it recorded in the Oedipal triangulation? Do the disjunctions (options, virtual potentials, etc.) of desire have their origin in Oedipus? Does the genealogy of desire (the history of all of its choices) trace back to the fundamental divisions and choices within the Oedipal triangle? Is Oedipus the source of all of desire’s recordings in its self-generating coordinate system? Of course, D&G will argue that it is not. Is it not more likely that Oedipus is a requirement or a consequence of social reproduction, insofar as this latter aims at domesticating a genealogical form and content that are in every way intractable? In other words, isn’t Oedipus really some external mechanism of representation imposed on desire from the outside? They’re hinting at the possibility of Oedipus being something arbitrarily forced on desire and not its necessary mold. For D&G, desire does not necessitate Oedipus in order to come into being. In fact, Oedipus is imposed on desire by (capitalist) society for certain purposes (mainly for capital accumulation). The true form and content of desire (it’s schizo play and autopoiesis) is “intractable”, that is, it is hard to control and manage, which is why society forces Oedipus under the skin of desire like some horrible, poisonous splinter. Capitalist society lodges Oedipus in desire for the sake of domesticating it. For there is no doubting the fact that the schizo is constantly subjected to interrogation, constantly cross-examined. Precisely because his relationship with nature does not constitute a specific pole, the questions put to him are formulated in terms of the existing social code: your name, your father, your mother? Psychoanalytic interpretation (interrogation) seeks to make the schizo conform to Oedipus, to whole identities (mom, dad, me). It says to schizo desire, “You must desire in accordance with your place in Oedipus.” In the course of his exercises in desiring-production, Beckett’s Molloy is cross-examined by a policeman: “Your name is Molloy, said the sergeant. Yes, I said, now I remember. And your mother? said the sergeant. I didn’t follow. Is your mother’s name Molloy too? said the sergeant. I thought it over. Your mother, said the sergeant, is your mother’s — Let me think! I cried. At least I imagine that’s how it was. Take your time, said the sergeant. Was mother’s name Molloy? Very likely. Her name must be Molloy too, I said. They took me away, to the guardroom I suppose, and there I was told to sit down. I must have tried to explain.” Molloy’s desire does not operate according to the parameters of social representations and codings (oedipal identities). The matrix of social representation is fucking up the fun of schizo desire. Sometimes, it will go along with it for its own kicks, but usually it is a hindrance. Something that breaks down the playful process of desire and makes things become unready-to-hand. In this quote, Molloy’s desire/unconscious is essentially saying, “Why the fuck do you keep bringing up my mother? What the fuck does she have to do with anything? Why do you want me to orient myself in terms of her so goddamn much?”

I don’t believe in father

in mother,

got no papamummy

We cannot say that psychoanalysis is very innovative in this respect: it continues to ask its questions and develop its interpretations from the depths of the Oedipal triangle as its basic perspective, even though today it is acutely aware that this frame of reference is not at all adequate to explain so-called psychotic phenomena. The psychoanalyst says that we must necessarily discover Schreber’s daddy beneath his superior God, and doubtless also his elder brother beneath his inferior God. The problem with psychoanalysis is that it orients everything in terms of Oedipal categories. All human behavior, desire, action, etc., is interpreted through the mommy-daddy-me matrix. This is overly simplistic and it cannot help people suffering from psychosis or the illness of schizophrenia. It actually makes things worse by constantly forcing schizo desire into semiotic, representational capture. “Take that flowing desire and cram it in this little triangle.” At times the schizophrenic loses his patience and demands to be left alone. Other times he goes along with the whole game and even invents a few tricks of his own, introducing his own reference points in the model put before him and undermining it from within (“Yes, that’s my mother, all right, but my mother’s the Virgin Mary, you know”). Sometimes, the schizo goes along with oedipal interpretation just for kicks. The schizo takes these categories and plays with them. Going along with some interpretation about one’s mother, but, then, stating that one’s mom is the Virgin Mary. Good times. One can easily imagine Schreber answering Freud: “Yes, I quite agree, naturally the talking birds are young girls, and the superior God is my daddy and the inferior God my brother.” But little by little he will surreptitiously “reimpregnate” the series of young girls with all talking birds, his father with the superior God, and his brother with the inferior God, all of them divine forms that become complicated, or rather “desimplified,” as they break through the simplistic terms and functions of the Oedipal triangle. As Artaud put it: “I don’t believe in father, in mother, got no papamummy.” Schizo desire essentially seeks to free itself form “parents”. It will toy with Oedipus up to a point — the point at which it alters it. Schizo desire is not anchored in the relations produced within the nuclear family. As D&G will say, “the unconscious is an orphan” (p. 49).

Desiring-production forms a binary-linear system. The full body is introduced as a third term in the series, without destroying, however, the essential binary-linear nature of this series: 2, 1, 2, 1. . . . The series is completely refractory to a transcription that would transform and mold it into a specifically ternary and triangular schema such as Oedipus. The full body without organs is produced as antiproduction, that is to say it intervenes within the process as such for the sole purpose of rejecting any attempt to impose on it any sort of triangulation implying that it was produced by parents. How could this body have been produced by parents, when by its very nature it is such eloquent witness of its own self-production, of its own engendering of itself? And it is precisely here on this body, right where it is, that the Numen is distributed and disjunctions are established, independent of any sort of projection. Yes, I have been my father and I have been my son. “I, Antonin Artaud, am my son, my father, my mother, and myself .” The schizo has his own system of co-ordinates for situating himself at his disposal, because, first of all, he has at his disposal his very own recording code, which does not coincide with the social code, or coincides with it only in order to parody it. The code of delirium or of desire proves to have an extraordinary fluidity. It might be said that the schizophrenic passes from one code to the other, that he deliberately scrambles all the codes, by quickly shifting from one to another, according to the questions asked him, never giving the same explanation from one day to the next, never invoking the same genealogy, never recording the same event in the same way. When he is more or less forced into it and is not in a touchy mood, he may even accept the banal Oedipal code, so long as he can stuff it full of all the disjunctions that this code was designed to eliminate.

Desiring-production forms a binary-linear system. The full body is introduced as a third term in the series, without destroying, however, the essential binary-linear nature of this series: 2, 1, 2, 1. . . . I take it that desiring-production forms a binary-linear system insofar as it consists of producing couplings between machines one after another. It’s the two fold movement between desiring-machines (2) and organ-machines (1). The 2 gets at the actual connection between an organ-machine and an energy-machine and the 1 refers to those moments in which a organ-machine is not plugged into an energy-machine, but, rather, attached to the BwO. Desiring-production is all about couplings and decouplings, i.e., dyads — not triads. Again, the full body is the BwO (virtual body). The series is completely refractory to a transcription that would transform and mold it into a specifically ternary and triangular schema such as Oedipus. This process or series of desiring-machines is “refractory” insofar as it stubbornly resists becoming molded by Oedipus’ triangular (ternary, threefold) mode of transcription. In other words, the desiring-machines says, “Fuck off with your oedipal bullshit! Get out of our way! Stop trying to make me operate according to my mommy and daddy!” Organ-machines simply desire connections to partial objects — not whole persons and especially not only two whole persons. The full body without organs is produced as antiproduction, that is to say it intervenes within the process as such for the sole purpose of rejecting any attempt to impose on it any sort of triangulation implying that it was produced by parents. The BwO or virtual body fights back against Oedipus insofar as it is that aspect of ourselves that pulls us away from routines, patterns and organizations of our actual organs. Oedipus is a grand organizational schema for the body and its actual organs. The BwO, pure potentiality, is the antiproduction of organization. It breaks down organized bodies and sets them free for new productions. Our bodies are not the makings of our parents — they are the makings of the process at large. Thinking that we are essentially the products of our parents is to lose sight of the fact that we do not have parents (sources outside the flux of the process). Our parents did not make us like how we think of God creating the world ex nihilo. How could this body have been produced by parents, when by its very nature it is such eloquent witness of its own self-production, of its own engendering of itself? Our parents didn’t make our bodies in the way a shoemaker makes a shoe. The body made itself and continues to make itself. The body, desire and the unconscious produce themselves. And it is precisely here on this body, right where it is, that the Numen is distributed and disjunctions are established, independent of any sort of projection. The energy of the divine, Numen, is produced by the body itself and it is this energy that seeks new productions, new permutations between organ-machines. Yes, I have been my father and I have been my son. “I, Antonin Artaud, am my son, my father, my mother, and myself .” The body is its own source and its own product, its parents and its offspring and the looping process itself. This is another way to speak of the autopoiesis of the body. The schizo has his own system of co-ordinates for situating himself at his disposal, because, first of all, he has at his disposal his very own recording code, which does not coincide with the social code, or coincides with it only in order to parody it. The schizo’s Numen or energy of disjunction is free, experimental, spontaneous, creative, etc. It does not immediately conform to society’s disjunctions: “You can try this, but not that”. If it does go along with society’s coding, it’s just to have some fun playing around with it (mocking it). In other words, the body automatically produces its own options, “choices”, selections or inclusive disjunctions. The body produces its own libido (Numen) mapping system. “See what these combinations do, see what those do, and now try these out.” In a sense, the production of a libidinal economy is not something like an alien intruder that snatches the body. No! Libidinal economy is automatically produced by the body itself — it needs no Other (Symbolic order) and no other (Imaginary whole persons qua alter-egos). The code of delirium or of desire proves to have an extraordinary fluidity. Delirium and desire are used as synonyms or near synonyms. The recording system of desire is incredibly fluid, which means that it is not fixed once and for all, some absolute and eternal representational matrix. No! It is always in a state of becoming. It’s like a computer system that is always updating itself. The update never finishes. This mapping system seeks lines of flight or ways to escape the capture of the organization of the body (pattern, routine satisfactions). It might be said that the schizophrenic passes from one code to the other, that he deliberately scrambles all the codes, by quickly shifting from one to another, according to the questions asked him, never giving the same explanation from one day to the next, never invoking the same genealogy, never recording the same event in the same way. The disjunctive energy of desire produces many codes and it disrupts codes that get imposed on it. Schizo has no single code, which is why you can never pin down the discourse of the schizo. The associations in his desire are constantly being altered, modified, updated, etc. There is no strict history of the schizo because she is always shifting her parameters. When he is more or less forced into it and is not in a touchy mood, he may even accept the banal Oedipal code, so long as he can stuff it full of all the disjunctions that this code was designed to eliminate. The schizo will accept Oedipus just for the fun of turning it inside out. Making it into its opposite. Schizo desire overloads Oedipus.

Adolf Wolfli’s drawings reveal the workings of all sorts of clocks, turbines, dynamos, celestial machines, house-machines, and so on. And these machines work in a connective fashion, from the perimeter to the center, in successive layers or segments. This has to do with desiring-machines and the first synthesis. Machines plugging into other machines. But the “explanations” that he provides for them, which he changes as often as the mood strikes him, are based on genealogical series that constitute the recording of each of his drawings. This has to do with the BwO and the second synthesis. Affects are those potentials bodies have or the ways in which they can be effected. Affects refer to what bodies can make happen and to what can happen to bodies. What is even more important, the recording process affects the drawings themselves, showing up in the form of lines standing for “catastrophe” or “collapse” that are so many disjunctions surrounded by spirals. The second synthesis effects the first synthesis. The point is Wolfli’s paintings actually give us a visual illustration of the dynamics between the desiring-machines and the BwO. The schizo maintains a shaky balance for the simple reason that the result is always the same, no matter what the disjunctions. What’s “the same” here? Is it the production of the new? Is the “shaky balance” the one between the desiring-machines and the BwO? Although the organ-machines attach themselves to the body without organs, the latter continues nonetheless to be without organs and does not become an organism in the ordinary sense of the word. To say that the organs attach themselves to the body without organs means, I think, that they themselves (Numen) desire freedom, deterritorialization, liberation and disorganization. If organization has to do with the actual (actual routine, patterns, etc.), then disorganization has to do with the virtual. As Daniel Smith has pointed out, the term body without organs is a misnomer; the term should really be the “body without organization” (fixed structure). The BwO, even when the organs “attach” to it, never organizes the organs. It is what sets them free for new connections. The BwO is not anti-organ but is anti-organization of organs, which D&G call the “organism”. The BwO is the body in a state of disorganization, that is, becoming something, establishing itself in new relations and configurations. For example, the body while learning to swim. It remains fluid and slippery. The BwO is “fluid” and “slippery” in the sense of allowing the organs to “slip” out of their organization (organism). The virtual or BwO is the opposite of some fixed, static, “solidified” patterns or structure. The BwO (the body in a state of becoming) morphs. Think of Morph in the X-Men. Think about how he’s able to take on all kinds of different shapes. Well, that mutant power is like the BwO. Agents of production likewise alight on Schreber’s body and cling to it — the sunbeams, for instance, that he attracts, which contain thousands of tiny spermatozoids. Sunbeams, birds, voices, nerves enter into changeable and genealogically complex relationships with God and forms of God derived from the godhead by division. But all this happens and is all recorded on the surface of the body without organs: even the copulations of the agents, even the divisions of God, even the genealogies marking it off into squares like a grid, and their permutations. The surface of this uncreated body swarms with them, as a lion’s mane swarms with fleas. Again, all of the various connections between machines and their dynamics get registered on the BwO, that is, they get “remembered” or “recorded” in the virtual, in particular, the virtual of the body. It’s something similar to muscle memory. The body records these traces, they are “written” on the “surface” of the BwO, and, then, the disjunctive synthesis configures them in a way that the allows the body to experiment with these new potentials. Each trace is registered in the virtual like how we register or check-in at hotels. From there, the disjunctive synthesis takes these traces and places them in a myriad relations. The organs “swarm” the BwO insofar as they come to desire (via Numen, i.e., modified libido) virtual potential and disorganization, that is, the “surface” that allows them to enter into new productions, new actualities. Also, the BwO is “uncreated” in the sense that it is ultimately the virtual or the plane of immanence, which existed long before human beings. Nevertheless, as they argued in A Thousand Plateaus, we are the being that can actively expand our BwO. We can do things that help enable the body to transform and become. Deleuzo-Guattarians often speak of the body without organs and bodies without organs. This can be perplexing at first, since, strictly speaking, the virtual and the plane of immanence are a single, monist field, e.g., an “egg”. However, even though the virtual/BwO/plane of immanence can be thought of as a single “thing” from this perspective, we can also talk of the virtual potentials of a given body. At this very moment, sitting here in the coffee shop, I cannot simply choose to sprout wings and fly around. That virtual singularity is not “written” on my BwO (virtual body). Simply put, that’s not something my body can make happen right now; it’s not one of its current affects. Now, in the future, with new techno-modifications, new bio-technological assemblages, it may be possible for human bodies to do such things. But, for the moment, my BwO cannot pull off this new production. This is how we can talk of bodies (plural) without organs — the field or body of virtual potentials of the organs. There’s a feedback loop between organs (actual) and the BwO (virtual). The more this circuit circuits, the more the BwO is altered. The actual affects the virtual and the virtual affects the actual. Back to Nick Land: “Schizoanalysis works differently. It avoids Ideas, and sticks to diagrams: networking software for accessing bodies without organs. BwOs, machinic singularities, or tractor fields emerge through the combination of parts with (rather than into) their whole; arranging composite individuations in a virtual/actual circuit. They are additive rather than substitutive, and immanent rather than transcendent: executed by functional complexes of currents, switches, and loops, caught in scaling reverberations, and fleeing through intercommunications, from the level of the integrated planetary system to that of atomic assemblages. Multiplicities captured by singularities interconnect as desiring-machines; dissipating entropy by dissociating flows, and recycling their machinism as self-assembling chronogenic circuitry” (‘Meltdown’, Fanged Noumena, pp. 442–3).

Finally, I’d just like to say that I plan on writing a post on the BwO in the future. I wrote this commentary a couple months ago and have been thinking and reading a lot about this concept ever since. I have come to have a more coherent understanding of it and I want to go into my new thoughts at some point in the future. Again, this commentary is not intended to serve as an authoritative statement on the body without organs as presented in Anti-Oedipus. This was just my first serious attempt to wrap my head around the concept. I hope it’s of some help.

Commentary on D&G’s Anti-Oedipus (Chapter 1.2: The Body without Organs)

Written by The Dangerous Maybe

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