Reading Order
L'Anti-ŒdipeL'Anti-Œdipe Reading Order
L'Anti-Œdipe (Anti-Oedipus, 1972) by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari is the most radical and most politically influential work of French post-structuralist philosophy — the first volume of Capitalisme et schizophrénie, which diagnoses the Oedipal structure of both capitalism and psychoanalysis as a shared mechanism of repression, and proposes 'schizoanalysis' as an alternative to psychoanalytic interpretation. The book was published in the aftermath of May 1968, when the failure of both the traditional Communist Party and the anti-Oedipal revolt of the students prompted a radical rethinking of the relationship between desire and political power. Foucault wrote an influential preface for the American edition calling the book 'a book of ethics' and 'an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.' The second volume, Mille Plateaux (A Thousand Plateaus, 1980), is widely considered the more systematically developed and more philosophically important work; it introduced the concepts of rhizome, assemblage, nomadology, and the body without organs that became central to cultural theory in the 1980s and 1990s.
Where to start
Read L'Anti-Œdipe first, though it is very difficult — reading an introduction (Brian Massumi's A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1992, is excellent) is strongly recommended before attempting either volume. Read Mille Plateaux second for the more developed concepts. Read Deleuze's individual works (Différence et répétition, 1968; Logique du sens, 1969) for the philosophical foundations.
Complete L'Anti-Œdipe Book List
- 1Buy
L'Anti-Œdipe
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari·1972·Start here — Volume I of Capitalisme et schizophrénie; read an introduction first; the political diagnosis; desire as production, not lack; anti-Oedipus as anti-fascism - 2Buy
Mille Plateaux
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari·1980·A Thousand Plateaus — Volume II; the rhizome, the assemblage, the body without organs, nomadology; more developed and more philosophically rich; read after L'Anti-Œdipe - 3Buy
Différence et répétition
Gilles Deleuze·1968·Difference and Repetition — Deleuze's individual philosophical masterpiece; the metaphysics of difference; the philosophical foundation for the Guattari collaborations - 4Buy
Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari·1991·What is Philosophy? — the late Deleuze and Guattari; concepts, percepts, affects; the most accessible statement of their shared philosophical vision; read last - 5Buy
Logique du sens
Gilles Deleuze·1969·The Logic of Sense — the individual Deleuze on Lewis Carroll, Stoic philosophy, and the paradoxes of sense; the companion to Différence et répétition
L'Anti-Œdipe — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Oedipal structure that Deleuze and Guattari are opposing?
Deleuze and Guattari argue that psychoanalysis — both Freudian and Lacanian — is organized around the Oedipal triangle (father-mother-child) as the interpretive framework for all desire: whatever the patient says or does, the analyst interprets it as an expression of Oedipal desire. This Oedipalization is not a discovery about desire but a production of desire in a repressed form — psychoanalysis does not describe the structure of desire but produces it. The Anti-Oedipus proposes 'schizoanalysis' as an alternative: instead of interpreting desire in terms of the Oedipal triangle (lack, prohibition, representation), schizoanalysis analyzes desire as production — as a flow of investment in the social field that capitalism both liberates (by decoding all fixed flows) and represses (by recoding the liberated flows in the Oedipal family form).
What is the rhizome in Mille Plateaux?
The rhizome is Deleuze and Guattari's concept (introduced in the 'Rhizome' plateau that opens Mille Plateaux) for a non-hierarchical, non-linear structure of connections — in contrast to the 'arborescent' (tree-like) structure of traditional thought, in which all knowledge is organized around a single root and trunk. A rhizome has no beginning or end, only middles; it can be entered from any point; it has no fixed structure and is constantly changing through new connections. The rhizome is both a description of certain natural structures (grass, tubers, underground networks) and a model for a different kind of thinking — one that is not organized around a single origin or truth but that maps connections and flows. The rhizome became enormously influential in internet theory, network analysis, and cultural theory.
What is the body without organs?
The body without organs (corps sans organes, BwO) is one of Deleuze and Guattari's most challenging and most frequently cited concepts — borrowed from Antonin Artaud's late radio play (Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu, 1947) and developed into a philosophical concept. The BwO is not a body without physical organs but a body without the organization (the assignation of organs to functions, the organization of the organism into a hierarchy of parts) that constitutes the organism. It is the plane of intensity, of potential, of unstructured desire — what exists before it is organized into an organism with a face, a social role, and an Oedipal structure. The BwO is not a goal to be achieved (which would be death, the limit case) but a process of undoing organization to release the flows of desire.
What was Foucault's preface to the American edition of Anti-Oedipus?
Foucault's preface to the American edition of Anti-Oedipus (1977) is one of the most celebrated texts in the Foucault-Deleuze relation: Foucault calls the book 'an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life' and argues that it addresses the question that has most troubled political thought since 1968 — why do people desire their own repression? Why did the German working class, which had every reason to resist Nazism, embrace it? Foucault's reading frames Anti-Oedipus as an ethics — a guide to how to avoid the internal fascism that makes people want leaders, want to repress others, want to maintain the hierarchies that oppress them. The preface is not a commentary on the book's argument but a different framing of the same problem.
What is the relationship between Deleuze and Guattari?
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) was a professional philosopher who had already published major works on Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson, Spinoza, and his own original philosophy (Différence et répétition, 1968; Logique du sens, 1969) before meeting Félix Guattari (1930–1992). Guattari was a psychoanalyst and militant political activist who had worked at the experimental psychiatric clinic La Borde under Jean Oury. Their collaboration — on Anti-Oedipus (1972), Kafka (1975), Mille Plateaux (1980), and Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991) — is one of the most remarkable in the history of philosophy: neither could have produced alone what they produced together, and the texts are genuinely collaborative rather than one writer supervising the other.
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