‘Desire is a machine!’ When Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari made this bold claim in Anti-Oedipus (1972), it was intended as a provocation to the dominant intellectual frameworks of the time: psychoanalysis, Marxism, and structuralism. Rather than rejecting these traditions outright, they sought to reengineer them, combining their insights into a new mode of thought they called ‘schizoanalysis’.
In this lecture, cultural theorist Ian Buchanan will unpack the concept of schizoanalysis and the productive, machinic conception of desire at its heart. Traversing its clinical and socio-political dimensions, he will explore how Deleuze and Guattari’s radical synthesis remains relevant and resonant today.
-
Ian Buchanan is Professor of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong. He is the founding editor of the journal Deleuze and Guattari Studies and the author of The Incomplete Project of Schizoanalysis. He has just completed a book on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of affect.
