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Pierre-Felix Guattari
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Classical thought distanced the soul from matter and separated the
essence of the subject from the cogs of the body. Marxists later set up an
opposition between subjective superstructures and infrastructural rela-
tions of production. How then ought we talk about the production of
subjectivity today? the contents of subjectivity have become
increasingly dependent on 'a multitude of machinic systems. No area of
opinion, thought, images, affects or spectacle has eluded the invasive grip
of "computer-assisted" operations, such as databanks and telematics.
This leads one to wonder whether the very essence of the subject - that
infamous essence, so sought after over the centuries by Western philo-
sophy - is not threatened by contemporary subjectivity's new "machine
addiction" Its current result, a curious mix of enrichment and impover-
ishment, is plainly evident: apparent democratization of access to data
and modes of knowledge, coupled with a segregative exclusion from their
means of development; a multiplication of anthropological approaches, a
planetary intermixing of cultures, paradoxically accompanied by a rising
tide of particularisms, racisms and nationalisms; and a vast expansion in
the fields of technoscientific and aesthetic investigation, taking place in a
general atmosphere of gloom and disenchantment. Rather than joining
the fashionable crusades against the misdeeds of modernism, or pre-
aching a rehabilitation of worn-out transcendent values, or indulging in
the disillusioned indulgences of postmodernism, we might instead try to
find a way out of the dilemma of having to choose between unyielding
refusal or cynical acceptance of this situation.
The fact that machines are capable of articulating statements and
registering states of fact in as little as a nanosecond, and soon in a
picosecond, l does not in itself make them diabolical powers that threaten
to dominate human beings. People have little reason to tum away from
machines; which are nothing other than hyperdeveloped and hypercon-
centrated forms of certain aspects of human subjectivity, and emphati-
cally not those aspects that polarize people in relations of domination and
power. It will be possible to build a two-way bridge between human
beings and machines and, once we have established that, to herald new
and confident alliances between them.
96 From Schizo Bypasses fa Poslmodern Impasses
has continued unabated since then; the first great "takeoff" of techno-
logies and commercial exchange, which is known to historians as the
"industrial revolution of the eleventh century", and was a correlate of the
appearance of new figures of urban organization. What could have given
this tortured, unstable, ambiguous formula the surfeit of consistency that
was to see it persist and flourish through the terrible historical trials
awaiting it: barbarian invasions, epidemics, never-ending wars? Sche-
matically, one can identify six series of factors:
First: The promotion of a monotheism that would prove in practice to
be quite flexible and evolutionary, able to adapt itself more or less
successfully to particular subjective positions - for example, even those
of "barbarians" or slaves. The fact that flexibility in a system of ideologi-
cal reference can be a fundamental asset for its survival is a basic
given, which can be observed at every important turning point in the
history of capitalist subjectivity (think, for example, of the surprising
adaptive abilities enabling contemporary capitalism literally to swallow
the so-called socialist economies whole). Western Christianity's consoli-
dation of new ethical and religious patterns led to two parallel markets
of subjectification: one involves the perpetual reconstitution of
the base territorialities (despite many setbacks), and a redefmi-
tion of fIliation suzerainty and national networks; the other involves a
predisposition to the free circulation of knowledge, monetary signs,
aesthetic figures, technology, goods, people, and so forth. This kind
of market prepared the ground for the deterritorialized capitalist
path/voice.
Second: The cultural establishment of a disciplinary grid onto Christian
populations through a new type of religious machine, the original base
for which was the parish school system created by Charlemagne, but
which far outlived his empire.
Third: The establishment of enduring trade organizations, guilds, mon-
asteries, religious orders and so forth, functioning as so many "data-
banks" for the era's modes of knowledge and technique.
Fourth: The widespread use of iron, and wind and water mills; the
development of artisan and urban mentalities. It must be emphasized,
however, that this first flowering of machinism only implanted itself in a
somewhat parasitic, "encysted" manner within the great human assemb-
lages on which the large-scale systems of production continued essen-
tially to be based. In other words, a break had not yet been made with the
fundamental and primordial relation of human being to tool.
Fifth: The appearance of machines operating by much more advanced
subjective integration: clocks striking the same canonical hours
throughout all of Christendom; and the step-by-step invention of various
forms of religious music subordinated to scripture.
Regimes, Pathways, Subjects 101
First: The general spread of the printed text into all aspects of social
and cultural life, correlated with a certain weakening of the performative
force of direct oral communication; by the same token, capabilities of
accumulating and processing knowledge are greatly expanded.
Second: The primacy of steam-powered machines and steel, which
multiplied the power of machinic vectors to propagate themselves on
land, sea and air, and across every technological, economic and urban
space.
Third: The manipulation of time, which is emptied of its natural
rhythms by: chronometric machines leading to a Taylorist rationalization
of labor power; techniques of economic semiotization, for example,
involving credit money, which imply a general virtualization of capacities
for human initiative and a predictive calculus bearing on domains of
innovation - checks written on the future - all of which makes possible
an unlimited expansion of the imperium of market economies.
Fourth: The biological revolutions, beginning with Pasteur's dis-
coveries, that have linked the future of living species ever more closely to
the development of biochemical industries.
Human beings find themselves relegated to a position of quasi-para-
sitic adjacency to the machinic phyla. Each of their organs and social
relations are quite simply repatterned in order to be reallocated, over-
coded, in accordance with the global requirements of the system. (The
most gripping and prophetic representations of these bodily rearrange-
ments are found in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Breughel, and
especially Arcimboldi.)
The paradox of this functionalization of human and faculties
and its attendant regime of general equivalence between systems of value
is that, even as it stubbornly continues to invoke universalizing perspec-
tives, all it ever manages to do historically is fold back on itself, yielding
reterritorializations of nationalist, classist, corporatist, racist and
nationalist kinds. Because of this, it inexorably returns to the most
conservative, at times caricatured, paths/voices. The "spirit of enlighten-
ment", which marked the advent of this second figure of capitalist
subjectivity, is necessarily accompanied by an utterly hopeless fetishiza-
tion of profit - a specifically bourgeois libidinal power formula. That
formula distanced itself from the old emblematic systems of control over
territories, people and goods by employing more deterritorialized media-
tions only to secrete the most obtuse, asocial and infantilizing of
subjective groundworks. Despite the appearance of freedom of thought
that the new capitalist monotheism is so fond of affecting, it has always
presupposed an archaistic, irrational grip on unconscious subjectivity,
most notably through hyperindividuated apparatuses of responsibility -
and guilt-production, which, carried to a fever pitch, lead to compulsive
Regimes, Pathways, Subjects 103
I imagine that this language will ring false to many a jaded ear, and that
even the least malicious will accuse me of utopianism. Utopia, it is true,
gets bad press these days, even when it acquires a charge of realism and
efficiency, as it has with the Greens in Germany. But let there be no
mistake: these questions of subjectivity production do not only concern
a handful of illuminati. Look at Japan, the prototypical model of new
capitalist subjectivities. Not enough emphasis has been placed on the fact
that one of the essential ingredients of the miracle mix showcased for
visitors to Japan is that the collective subjectivity produced there on a
massive scale combines the highest of "high-tech" components with
feudalisms and archaisms inherited from the mists of time. Once again,
we find the reterritorializing function of an ambiguous monotheism -
Shinto-Buddhism, a mix of animism and universal powers - contributing
to the establishment of a flexible formula for subjectification going far
beyond the triadic framework of capitalist Christian paths/voices. We
have a lot to learn!
For now, though, consider another extreme, the case of Brazil. There,
phenomena involving the reconversion of archaic subjectivities have
taken an entirely different turn. It is common knowledge that a consider-
able proportion of the population is mired in such extreme poverty that
it lives outside the money economy, but that does not prevent Brazil's
industry being ranked sixth among Western powers. In this society, a
dual society if there ever was one, there is a double sweep of subjectivity:
on the one hand, there is a fairly racist Yankee wave (like it or not)
beamed in on one of the most powerful television networks
in the world, and on the other, an animist wave involving religions like
candombli, passed on more or less directly from the African cultural
heritage, which are now escaping their original ghettoization and spread-
ing throughout society, including the most well-connected circles of Rio
and Sao Paulo. It is interesting that, in this case, mass- media penetration
is preceding capitalist acculturation. What did President Sarney do when
he wanted to stage a decisive coup against inflation, which was running
as high as 400 percent per year? He went on television. Brandishing a
piece of paper in front of the cameras, he declared that from the moment
he signed the order he held in his hand everyone watching would become
his personal representative and would have the right to arrest any mer-
chant who did not respect the official pricing system. It seems to have
been surprisingly effective - but at the price of considerable regression in
the legal system.
Capitalism in permanent crisis (Integrated Worldwide Capitalism) is at
a total subjective impasse. It knows that paths/voices of self-reference are
indispensable for its expansion, and thus for its survival, yet it is under
tremendous pressure to efface them. A kind of superego - that booming
106 From Schizo Bypasses to Postmodern Impasses
figures of power and knowledge are not universals. They are tied to
reference myths profoundly anchored in the psyche, but they can still
swing around toward liberatory paths/voices. Subjectivity today remains
under the massive control of apparatuses of power and knowledge, thus
consigning technical, scientific and artistic innovations to the service of
the most reactionary and retrograde figures of sociality. In spite of that,
other modalities of subjective production - processual and singularizing
ones - are conceivable. These alternate forms of existential reappropria-
tion and self-valorization may in the future become the reason for living
for human collectivities and individuals who refuse to give in to the
deathlike entropy characterizing the period we are passing through.
Notes
This essay was published il) Incorporations, eds. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New
York: Unone, 1992). It corresponds to the "Liminaire" of Guattari's Cartographies schi-
zoanalytiques (Paris: Gallilee, 1989).
1 A nanosecond is 10- 9 seconds; a pico-second is 10- 12• On the futurological themes
touched on·here, see the special issue of Science et uclmique entitled "Rappon sur I'etat
de la technique", ed. Thierry Gaudin.
2 The immediate aim of their expressive chains is no longer to denote states of fact or to
embed states of sense in significational axes but - I repeat - to activate existential
crystallizations operating, in a cenain way, outside the fundamental principles of
classical reason: identity, the excluded middle, causality, sufficient reason, conti-
nuity The most difficult thing to convey is that these materials, which can set
processes of subjective self-reference in motion, are themselves extracted from radically
heterogeneous, not to mention heteroclite, elements: rhythms oflived time, obsessive
refrains, identificational emblems, transitional objects, fetishes of all kinds. What
is affirmed in this crossing of regions of being and modes of semiotization are traits of
singularization that date - something like existential postmatks - as well as "event",
"contingent" states of fact, their referential correlates and their corresponding assemb-
lages of enunciation. Rational modes of discursive knowledge cannot fully grasp this
double capacity of intensive traits to singularize and transversalize existence, enabling
it, on the one: hand, to persist locally, and on the other hand, to consist transversally
(giving it traDsconsistency). It is accessible to apprehension only on the order of affect,
a global transferential grasp whereby that which is most universal is conjoined with the
most highly contingent facticity: the loosest of meaning's ordinary moorings becomes
anchored iIi the finitude of being-there. Various traditions of what could be termed
"narrow rationalism" persist in a quasi-militant, syste:mic incomprehension of anything
in these: metamodelizations pertaining to virtual and incorporeal universes, fuzzy
worlds of uncenainty, the aleatory and the probable. Long ago, narrow rationalism
banished from anthropology those modes of categorization it considered "pre logical",
when they were in reality metalogical or paralogical, their objective essentially being to
give consistency to individual and/or collective assemblages of subjectivity. What we
need to conceptualize is a continuum running from children's games and the makeshift
ritualizations accompanying attempts at psychopathological recompositions of "schi-
zoid" worlds, through the complex canographies of myth and art, all the way to the
sumptuous speculative edifices of theology and philosophy, which have sought to
108 From Schizo Bypasses 10 Postmodem Impasses
apprehend these same dimensions of existential creativity (examples are Plotinus's
"forgetful souls" and the "unmoving motor" which, according to Leibniz, preexists any
dissipation of potential.)
Translaud by Brian Massumi