Deleuze and Guattaris critique of capitalismo: a political philosophy beyond structuralism: the problem of ground and limit

• Grant number: 17/17912-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: November 01, 2017
• End date: July 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marilena de Souza Chauí
• Grantee: Larissa Drigo Agostinho
• Supervisor: David Lapoujade
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/20961-0 - Deleuze and Guattari's Political Philosophy: critique of reason and capitalism criticism, BP.PD

Abstract

The general objective of this research is to establish a continuity between the individual work of Deleuze and Guattari (before 1972) and the works that the authors wrote together, especially Capitalism and schizophrenia I and II or Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. In Guattari we can find the criticism that gave rise to the relationship between desire and social that will be elaborated in Anti-Oedipus, criticism addressed to the structuralism of Althusser and Lacan. These critics are made on behalf of the Deleuzian concept of difference, which demonstrates the immobile and transcendent character of the lacanian structure, - where the unconscious is thought not as production but as expression, - as well as the althusserian structure, where the means of production taken as the structure that determinates the whole of social relations is unable to give an account on history or to explain how the conditions from which capitalism is established emerges. In parallel, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze sought to construct another way of thinking that was not representative or causal. One reason that was not as platonic thought, the court hearing the adequacy of copies and models from a transcendent foundation that organizes the entire social life. This critique of representation based on the identity of foundation and founded is made in the name of an unlimited difference, a plane of immanence that will serve as the basis for the construction of the relation between capitalism and schizophrenia. Thus, the relation between the two will be no longer be thought from the notion of ground, but from the notion of boundary. Capitalism works by imposing and constructing its own limits and thus it limits and circumscribes the desired production, schizophrenia. The question will therefore be to establish the difference of regime between capitalism and schizophrenia, since this difference is no longer a difference of nature. Two concepts will be central in this analysis that aims to trace the genesis of the project Capitalism and schizophrenia: foundation (ground) and limit. The specific objective of the analysis of these concepts is to explain the relationship between the critique of reason and representation and the critique of capitalism and the state, on the one hand and on the other, explain the relationship between critique of psychoanalysis and critique of capitalism. Deleuze and Guattari seek to understand the functioning of capitalism and its relation to the state, precisely demonstrating that it has no foundation and therefore works from an axiomatic, producing its own mechanisms of legitimation and circumscribing the space, the limits and the nature of capitalism's action. Psychoanalysis will be understood as an equally legitimating instrument of capitalism and state because it limits or circumscribes the desire that is social within the family. Psychoanalysis as capitalism has as its limit, schizophrenia, which it does not cease to distance and try to conjure. Psychoanalysis, like capitalism, has as its limit schizophrenia, which it does not cease to distance and try to conjure. If capitalism needs an axiomatic, it is precisely in order to turn the potential of desire, and insert them within the limits set by capital, so that all desiring production is always focused on the capital itself. The relevance of this research is trying to trace the relationships established by Deleuze and Guattari between social criticism and the critique of reason, the critique of philosophy and the critique of psychoanalysis in an attempt to build a renewed notion of political philosophy, where the unconscious (no longer expressive, but productive) occupies a central place. (AU)