You’ve probably found your way here because you’re interested in reading Anti-Oedipus, the first book in the Capitalism and Schizophrenia series. Or perhaps you’ve stumbled upon this by chance. Either way, welcome!
Written by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus critiques Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis by reworking concepts from Antonin Artaud, Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and many other influential thinkers. In their critique, Deleuze and Guattari dismantle the apparatus by which psychoanalysis operates as a disciplinary mechanism in service of capitalism.
Due to the extensive background knowledge necessary to understand Anti-Oedipus, many readers are left confused or walk away with mistaken interpretations. For the purposes of this project, I will conduct a detailed sentence-by-sentence analysis of Anti-Oedipus to clarify its concepts and guide readers toward a more accurate understanding. I will also analyze every reference they cite — examining the original sources they draw upon — and compare the English translation against the original French to ensure precision.
Chapter One
Chapter 1.1: In the first section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the first synthesis of the unconscious, referred to as the connective synthesis or the production of production. They characterize the energy within this synthesis as “libido.” The first synthesis is guided by “and … and then.”
Chapter 1.2: In the second section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the second synthesis of the unconscious, referred to as the disjunctive synthesis or production of recording. They characterize the energy within this synthesis as “Numen.” The second synthesis is guided by “either … or … or”
Chapter 1.3: In the third section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the third synthesis of the unconscious, referred to as the conjunctive synthesis or production of consumption. They characterize the energy within this synthesis as “voluptuous.” The third synthesis is guided by “so it’s… ”
(The three syntheses of the unconscious describe nature as a “process of production” and explain how subjectivity comes to be. Deleuze and Guattari do not assume personalized subjectivity as a priori.)
Chapter 1.4: In the fourth section, Deleuze and Guattari examine the history of schizophrenia. They also discuss deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the context of capitalism. By analyzing capitalism, they show that capitalism produces the schizophrenic as a result of decoded flows.
Chapter 1.5: In the fifth section, Deleuze and Guattari detail a summary of the three syntheses of the unconscious.
Chapter 1.6: In the sixth section, Deleuze and Guattari explain their metaphysics. They examine the concept of the One and the many and reframe it in terms of the whole and its parts, showing how the body without organs falls back on the production process, causing the process to start up again.
Chapter Two
Chapter 2.1:In the first section, Deleuze and Guattari discuss how structural psychoanalytic interpretations rely on the classical Freudian framework. Through an examination of Freud’s case studies, they praise early psychoanalysis while tracing how it began to go astray.
Chapter 2.2: In the second section, Deleuze and Guattari analyze three of Freud’s foundational texts.
(Having laid the essential groundwork for their critique of psychoanalysis, they proceed to discuss the paralogisms.)
Drafted Summaries / Work In Progress
Chapter 2.3: In the third section, Deleuze and Guattari present the first paralogism of the unconscious which isolates misuse of the first synthesis.
Chapter 2.4: In the fourth section, Deleuze and Guattari present the second paralogism of the unconscious which isolates misuse of the second synthesis.
Chapter 2.5: In the fifth section, Deleuze and Guattari present the third paralogism of the unconscious which isolates misuse of the third synthesis.
Chapter 2.6: In the sixth section, Deleuze and Guattari detail a summary of the first three paralogisms of the unconscious.
Chapter 2.7: In the seventh section, Deleuze and Guattari present the fourth paralogism of the unconscious which is concerned with social and psychic repression.
Chapter 2.8: In the eighth section, Deleuze and Guattari present the fifth paralogism of the unconscious dealing with neurosis and psychosis. (This resonates with Michel Foucault’s argument in his book Discipline and Punish. Deleuze and Guattari’s first four paralogisms describe the conditions that precede one’s policing of others and themselves.)
Chapter 2.9: In the ninth section, Deleuze and Guattari discuss neurosis, psychosis, and schizophrenia in the context of literature and art.
Chapter Three
— —
Work In Progress
Chapter 3.1: In the first section, Deleuze and Guattari state the aim of their analysis of the socius, explaining how social production records onto the surface of the socius. They establish that while all three syntheses operate within every socius, each social formation privileges one synthesis as dominant.
Chapter 3.2: In the second section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the primitive socius — the first socius — as a ‘primitive territorial machine’ that organizes flows and remains parallel the connective synthesis. The connective synthesis dominates by linking production to the full body of the earth.
Chapter 3.3: In the third section, Deleuze and Guattari analyze the elements of representation in the first socius through coding on the full body of the earth, establishing the conditions for repression prior to symbolic mediation.
Chapter 3.4: In the fourth section, Deleuze and Guattari draw on ethnographic material to examine how territorial organization, ritual, and kinship structure social production within the first socius.
Chapter 3.5: In the fifth section, Deleuze and Guattari examine territorial representation, showing how blocks of debt function as the primary mode of inscription organizing social production. They analyze the theater of cruelty as the apparatus through which this inscription marks bodies and secures repression within the primitive socius.
(Having examined the first socius, Deleuze and Guattari turn to the second socius.)
Chapter 3.6: In the sixth section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the the ‘barbarian despotic machine’ — the second socius — defined by a new alliance and direct filiation. This socius parallels the disjunctive synthesis, as it overcodes previously coded flows by imposing exclusive relations that subordinate all alliances and filiations to a single unity.
Chapter 3.7: In the seventh section, Deleuze and Guattari analyze how imperial representation replaces territorial inscription with a regime of overcoding, where writing and the despotic signifier subordinate the earlier code.
Chapter 3.8: In the eighth section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of the Urstaat. They argue that later states are variations that reconstitute this despotic form under new conditions, especially as decoded flows (property, money, commodities, classes) force the State to reinvent its codes.
(Having examined the second socius, Deleuze and Guattari turn to the third socius.)
Chapter 3.9: In the ninth section, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the ‘civilized capitalist machine’ — the third socius — where the conjunctive synthesis is emphasized: capitalism is born from decoded flows, with capital functioning as a surface of recording.
Chapter 3.10: In the tenth section, Deleuze and Guattari contrast despotic representation, grounded in writing and the signifier, with capitalist representation, which operates through the axiomatization of flows.
Chapter 3.11: In the eleventh section, Deleuze and Guattari show how Oedipus emerges as the interior limit of capitalism, produced when investments fall back onto the family.