Beauregard Bottomley's Reviews > Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

An incredibly engaging critique of psychoanalysis through a prism of 1972 eyes that is still highly entertaining to the modern reader of today and with ever vigilant warnings against fascism, the paradox of existing and the dangers of capitalism heavily filtered through the lens of Marx and Nietzsche, and Foucault’s unfolding of madness and civilization revealing itself through itself ( for a recent example for a book that does that also with Foucault read ‘Irrationality’ by Justin E.H. Smith).

Oedipal is mommy, daddy, and me and is the paradigm for creating capitalism and psychoanalysis and provides infinite paychecks for the analyst since it offers no finite resolution. Anti-oedipal is the realization that we are ‘desiring machines’ within a desiring creating society encoded by flows and fields with no direction since the micro (schizoid) never intersects with the macro (paranoiac). The schizoid sees beyond the trap we are in and the paranoiac suffers a breakdown. The psychoanalyst needs to keep the person, the family member, and the society within the false frame of Oedipal in order to perpetuate their own existence. (I strongly suspect psychoanalyst would not like this book, even though the authors are using psychoanalysis in their critique).

At the heart of this book is a guide book on overcoming fascism through understanding the sagacity of anti-oedipal thinking since fascism thrives by embracing the arche (the author’s word, Greek for categories) from the axioms from the powerful ruling class within the Oedipal Capitalistic engulfing paradigm.

The authors stay within psychoanalysis even when they are destroying it. I bet you they mentioned homosexual or its variant 20 or so times and would quickly associate it as a perversion or illness but not quite judging it as such but always thinking of it as a behavioral problem that needs to be solved rather than as an intrinsic part of the individual in the same way as being right handed is part of who I am and doesn’t need to be judged, criticized or fixed. The authors just can’t get out of the trap of their 1972 mindset. The authors will dwell on incest, penis envy, castration, ‘anal shit’, and make the world binary or try to make it unitary all the while ignoring how the world can be complex and it is often best considered as a spectrum since there really are not any categories except for human made categories. ‘You’re either with us or against us’, but perhaps I can be both or in between or might not care beyond a ‘rat’s ass’ (that’s an expression that pops up multiple time with this translation).

There’s a whole lot that I’m not telling about this book since it covers myriad topics and speaks with a strange patois at times. It is always engaging. It’s really not hard to follow. The book is anti-Capitalist, anti-fascist (to an extreme) and therefore is applicable to today’s politics, eviscerates psychoanalysis though tries to save it with schizoidanalysis (or something, they explain what they mean but it seemed garbled to me). Marx’s immanent critique of capitalism is a touchstone, and Nietzsche’s will to power or as the author’s essentially do making Nietzsche’s will to power about desire beyond mere striving through our aspirations, hopes and controls of others who are not us. (Spinoza and his infinite attributes and one substance make an appearance also in this book).

In the end fascism is about power for the sake of power for its own sake for within a self-identity, clan or nation (right wing Hegelism, Hegel was only mentioned once in this book. Heidegger not at all, but yet there is definitely overlaps in thought), and as I mentioned this book can be read as an ultimate anti-fascist warning through its anti-oedipal thesis for within the individual, the family and the nation. I always read Nietzsche as a proto-fascist because he despises equality and wants all power to reside outside of all individuals except for a Napoleon who will exercise his mastering over the masses by trans-valuing all values through that lens while Marx will endow power through the class of the working exploited alienated worker and retain the surplus labor back to the working class. This book discuses that kind of stuff among many other different strains of thought and tries to synthesize Marx and Nietzsche at least the non proto-fascist parts of Nietzsche.

[The only reason I discovered this book was because it was on the Goodread list of must read Philosophy Books and it was the first one I came to that I had not yet read].