Félix Guattari was born in 1930 in Villeneuve-les-Sablons in France. His encounter with Fernand Oury, the creator of the Ecole Modern (a "school of the people", where the children were envisioned as active subjects in their own education) was a key moment for the young Guattari. Encouraged by the Fernand’s brother, Jean, Guattari developed a passionate interest in psychiatry. By the mid-fifties Guattari was Jean Oury’s principal collaborator, carrying out research at the La Borde clinic (which Oury had opened in 1951). La Borde was a training place for, philosophy, psychology, ethnology students, and social workers, and Guattari remained there until his death in 1992. He was a part of the psychological G.T., which brought together psychiatrists at the beginning of the sixties and created the Association of Institutional Psychotherapy in November 1965.
During the same time Guattari founded the F.G.E.R.I. (Federation of Groups for Institutional Study & Research) and its review Research, working on philosophy, mathematics, psychoanalysis, education, architecture, and ethnology. The F.G.E.R.I. was representative of Guattari’s lifelong political commitment, comprising as it myriad political groups and causes: some of these were the Group for Young Hispanics, the Franco-Chinese Friendships (in the times of the popular communes), the opposition activities with the wars in Algeria and Vietnam, the policy of the offices of psychological academic aid (B.A.P.U.), the organisation of the University Working Groups (G.T.U.), the reorganization of the training courses with the Centers of Training to the Methods of Education Activities (C.E.M.E.A.) for psychiatric male nurses, as well as the formation of Friendly Male Nurses (Amicales d'infirmiers), the studies on architecture and the projects of construction of a day hospital of for "students and young workers". In 1967 Guattari was one of the founders of OSARLA (Organization of solidarity and Aid to the Latin-American Revolution), and the following year he was involved in the events of May ’68. In 1970, Guattari created the C.E.R.F.I. (Center for the Study and Research of Institutional Formation).
Autonomist
Marxism
postructuralism
Antonio Negri
Maurizio Lazzarato
Franco Berardi (Bifo)
Gilles
Deleuze (as his own self, not as one with Felix)
Pirate
Radio
Telestreet
Felix Guattari's first collection of essays and interviews focuses on the French anti-psychiatrist and theorist's work as director of the experimental La Borde clinic and collaborator of philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Chaosophy is a groundbreaking introduction to Guattari's theories on "schizo-analysis," a process meant to replace Sigmund Freud's interpretation with a more pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality. Unlike Freud, Guattari believes that schizophrenia is an extreme mental state induced by the capitalist system itself. But capitalism keeps enforcing neurosis as a way of maintaining normality. Guattari's post-Marxist vision of capitalism provides a new definition not only of mental illness, but also of micropolitical means of subversion. It includes key essays such as "Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring Machines," cosigned by Deleuze (with whom he coauthored Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus), and the provocative "Everybody Wants To Be a Fascist."
In his last book, Chaosmose (1992), of which the topic already partially is
developed in What is Philosophy? (1991, with G Deleuze), Felix Guattari takes
again his essential topic: the question of subjectivity. "How to produce
it, collect it, enrich it, reinvent it permanently in order to make it compatible
with mutant Universes of value?" This idea return like a leitmotiv, from
Psychanalyse and transversality (a regrouping of articles from 1957 to 1972)
up to Années d'hiver 1980-1986 and to Cartographies Schizoanalytique
(1989). He insists on the function of "A-signification" account, which
plays the role of support for a subjectivity in act, starting from four parameters:
"significative and semiotic flows, Phylum of Machanic Propositions, Existential
Territories and Incorporeal Universes of Reference."
(1978) "Revolution and Desire: An Interview with Felix Guattari [by Hannah Levin with Mark Seem]," State and Mind 6/4 and 7/1 (Summer/Fall): 53-77.*
(1981) "Becoming-woman," trans. Rachel McComas and Stamos Metzidakis,
Semiotext(e) [Polysexuality] 4/1: 86-8.
(1984). Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. trans. Rosemary Sheed,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex and New York: Penguin.
(1985). "Cinematic Desiring-machines," trans. Jon Anderson and Gary
Hentzi, Critical Texts: A Review of Theory and Criticism 3/1: 3-9.*
(1990) Communists Like Us, (with Antonio Negri) trans. Michael Ryan, New York:
Semiotext(e).
(1990) "Popular Free Radio," trans. David Sweet, Semiotext(e)[Radiotext(e)]
VI/1: 85-89.
(1995) "On Machines," trans. Vivian Constantinopoulos, Journal of
Philosophy and the Visual Arts 6: 81-12.
(1995) Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains and Julian
Pefanis, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
(1995) Chaosophy. ed. Sylvere Lotringer, New York: Semiotext(e).
(1996) The Guattari Reader, ed. Gary Genosko, Oxford: Blackwell.
(1996) Soft Subversions, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. David L. Sweet
and Chet Wiener, et al. New York: Semiotext(e).
With Gilles Deleuze:
(1972) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. trans. Robert Hurley, Mark
Seem, and Helen Lane. New York: Viking Press
(1975) Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. trans. Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press
(1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. trans. Brian Massumi,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
(1991) What is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York:
Columbia University Press
Capitalism: A Very Special
Delirium: Deleuze and Guattari Interviewed
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9604/msg00025.html
Pragmatic/Machinic: Discussion with Fèlix Guattari (19 March 1985)
http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~mnunes/guattari.html
Remaking Social Practices by Fèlix Guattari
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9710/msg00015.html
The DeleuzeGuattari Dictionary:
http://cs.art.rmit.edu.au/deleuzeguattarionary/