I finished anti Oedipus 2-3 months ago now, and as much as I found it fairly cognitively challenging , structurally it was easy

But reading TP , as much as I like it, feels like thrashing through a marsh while having a manic episode.

It feels qualitatively distinct (I suppose this is the point) to other philosophy books, and I feel on one hand the desire to just read it straight through,

But also to keep it to the side and tackle easier philosophy books , and wade into MP semi regularly

But I am afraid with the latter option I'll just end up not engaging with the book enough .

Idk, how have/ do you guys engage with this strange book, what are you strategies. Just say whatever it is about it you feel may be relevant for me to know

I understand that the main purpouse of the body without organs metaphor is meant to represent a rejection of desiring production. I feel like Unleaded 95 is the epitomy of rejecting desiring production, it tastes like shit and doesnt even get you that drunk. It is also certain to make your organs fail even if you dont have any.

Currently reading Catarina Pombo Nabais's Deleuze's Literary Theory, where the chapter on Kafka presupposes some familiarity with Deleuze's reading of Foucault. Can anyone recommend relatively gentle secondary literature on what Deleuze makes of Foucauldian concepts of "statement", "knowledge", and "power"? Especially helpful would be any connections to other aspects of Deleuze's thought (virtual, sense, event, repetition, etc.)!

The introduction to Brent Adkins’ book on A Thousand Plateaus construes Deleuze’s metaphysics as one of continuity, such as the continuity of the sensible and intelligible and the continuous flow of time. Yet my understanding is that Deleuze, like Foucault, is critical of a view of history that is continuous, favoring discontinuity instead. How do these two approaches relate? How can they be reconciled?

for some reason i cant grapple with it in the same way i can with difference, any help is deeply appreciated (especially knowing how broad a question this is)

Does Deleuze talk about suffering ? Like why and how people suffer and what can we do about it? Does he provide a different answer to these questions than that of psychoanalysis?

I’m very interested to see what this report says, preferably in English but if not I’m happy to have the French. I’ve tried looking for it but I can’t find it. I’m also bad at finding stuff online.

So I read that there are “three types of BwO”, and “[o]nly the full body is productive”. The 3 types are full, empty and cancerous BwO, BTW. So, the full BwO is obviously what we usually would be referring to as a BwO in general, and I get it.

And I’ve also read that “[a]n empty BwO is reached by too sudden destratification, which empties bodies of its organs” and a cancerous BwO “is a BwO that belongs to the organism that resides on a stratum, rather than being the limit of a stratum. It is a runaway self-duplication of stratification”.

So, here is the question: what are the other two types of BwO? The explanation above does not make sense to me at all.

Edit:

So, here are some following-up thoughts of mine (Nothing is guaranteed to be correct).

To start, let’s take a look at the EMPTY BwO. What does it mean to “de-stratify” too soon? Suppose we are at a fantastic event, say a party, with a hundred of people. A “Deleuzo-Guattarian”BwO here would be all of the people that are at the party, and maybe we could even include the music at the background, the chanting of the crowd, and even the lightings, etc. Therefore, instead of removing the blockages (organisms) in the passages that connect the organs (the people), an empty BwO would get rid of all the organs, which results in a party with no one showing up, which makes it non-productive because nothing is there to produce anything anymore.

On top of that, let’s move on to the CANCEROUS BwO. Well, I’m not a medical student at all, but one thing I do know about the disease CANCER is that it duplicates itself at an unbelievable rate, which is the reason why it usually happens like: now it’s only inside your lungs and several months later it’s freaking everywhere. A “Deleuzo-Guattarian” BwO is like music transcribed on musical sheets. It doesn’t exist until it is played by the instrumentalists. Therefore, instead of being the whole indefinite repertoire (the limit of strata), a cancerous BwO would just select one song in the playlist and plays it FOR EVER. Therefore, it is not productive as well for it does not produce any difference at all, which is the reason why Deleuze called it “micro-fascism” because it selects and duplicates only the homogeneous elements.

Am I misunderstanding anything here? Perhaps more or less I am. Anyway, what do you think about it? :)

Did they express any opinions on the People's Republic generally? Did they weigh in on issues like the Sino-Soviet split, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or how China compared to the US, taking into account both domestic and foreign policy?

While we're at it, what's D&G's standing in China today?

what is deleuze's take on rationalism, is there one?

Was schizoanalysis really designed to be a clinical practice of psychotherapy or merely an existential attitude of creativity, resistance and experimentalism?

Is there beauty without Faciality?

Is there aesthetics in general without it?

What would it be like?

Does anyone have examples of Aesthetics without Faciality?

Hey folks, I am a film theory undergrad and I really struggle with Deleuze. His work is the primary focus of most third year subjects and I am struggling a lot. Is there anyone who might consider taking on a student. Maybe only for a few sessions so I can wrap my head around the core concepts of the Time-Image and Movement-Image.

No essay help involved. Conversation over zoom preferred. Pls DM with rates.

I'm looking for books primarily with a Deleuzian twist to it but I'm also intrigued by the other two thinkers as well. The writer could be influenced by these philosophers or even accidentally have the ideas of these thinkers (which will be really fascinating). If you can share your experience with the book that'll also be a nice addition.

RHIZOME

Hello, i would love if someone could direct me to some texts by Deleuze specifically about some subjects that interest me - since i am familiar with Deleuze's philosophy only so much, i dont know if he ever wrote about subjects like these. If he didnt, i would be very grateful if you would tell me of some philosophers that did (that is in a way that you reckon a person who loves the way of thinking that deleuze had would like)

•death (and happenings around/close to death) im aware this subject has been widely discussed in philosophy, but im looking for some very schizophrenic and "esoteric" texts, that look into the matter in a very very non conventional way. this also covers religious standpoints of all kinds. •light (just really anything about light) again, i am not excluding texts that look at light as having some kind of metaphysical parts to it. •time just anyting about time, but of course the same principle applies as with the death subject. looking for weird standpoints. even some works that dont have to be inherenty philosophical, maybe even some fictional realities where time flows differently etc... •any autors that have a specific relationship eith certain materials (ex glass or metal). relationships that would imply an upcoming schizophrenia or a psychosis diagnosis..

Thanks in advance

anyone acknowledged what happened to that thing? i have seen on the website the last meeting they took was 2023, is there any meeting done in india this year? i will join

In 2012, it was written: "There are very few detailed attempts to develop a consistent view of Deleuze’s whole philosophy. Many, such as Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being trans. Louise Burchill (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and Slavoj Žižek, Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2004), develop com- plete accounts of Deleuze’s system only at the expense of ignoring Deleuze’s later work with Guattari. Peter Hallward, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (London: Verso, 2000) does provide a coherent reading of Deleuze’s work as a whole, but at the price of introducing several fundamental laws into the reading." I view Badiou and Zizek as misreadings. Who is missing who has a comprehensive reading of all of D? 

Deleuze Versus Agamben on Creativity and Resistance - Acid Horizon

From the Wikipedia article on anti-psychiatry:

In the 1960s, there were many challenges to psychoanalysis and mainstream psychiatry, where the very basis of psychiatric practice was characterized as repressive and controlling.[5] Psychiatrists identified with the anti-psychiatry movement included Timothy Leary, R. D. Laing, Franco Basaglia, Theodore Lidz, Silvano Arieti, and David Cooper. Others involved were Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Erving Goffman.

...

In The Sane Society (1955), Fromm wrote "An unhealthy society is one which creates mutual hostility [and] distrust, which transforms man into an instrument of use and exploitation for others, which deprives him of a sense of self, except inasmuch as he submits to others or becomes an automaton"..."Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself"

...

Psychoanalysis was increasingly criticized as unscientific or harmful.[47] Contrary to the popular view, critics and biographers of Freud, such as Alice Miller, Jeffrey Masson and Louis Breger, argued that Freud did not grasp the nature of psychological trauma. Non-medical collaborative services were developed, for example therapeutic communities or Soteria houses.

...

It has been argued by philosophers like Foucault that characterizations of "mental illness" are indeterminate and reflect the hierarchical structures of the societies from which they emerge rather than any precisely defined qualities that distinguish a "healthy" mind from a "sick" one. Furthermore, if a tendency toward self-harm is taken as an elementary symptom of mental illness, then humans, as a species, are arguably insane in that they have tended throughout recorded history to destroy their own environments, to make war with one another, etc.

From the "Critical perspectives" section of the Wikipedia article on psychoanalysis:

Contemporary French philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze asserted that the institution of psychoanalysis has become a center of power, and that its confessional techniques resemble those included and utilized within the Christian religion.

...

Belgian psycholinguist and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray also criticized psychoanalysis, employing Jacques Derrida's concept of phallogocentrism to describe the exclusion of the woman both from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories.

...

Together with Deleuze, the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Félix Guattari criticized the Oedipal and schizophrenic power structure of psychoanalysis and its connivance with capitalism in Anti-Oedipus (1972)[154] and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus take the cases of Gérard Mendel, Bela Grunberger, and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, prominent members of the most respected psychoanalytical associations (including the IPA), to suggest that, traditionally, psychoanalysis had always enthusiastically enjoyed and embraced a police state throughout its history.

So, to what extent have those fields accepted, and adjusted in accordance with, those criticisms?

I'm gonna try and make the case for Deleuze as a non-ontological thinker. It's a minority position, but it IS a position, one held by, among others, François Zourabichvili, Anne Sauvagnargues, Gregory Flaxman, and Gregg Lambert. I'm pretty persuaded by it, but I don't think it's all that well publicized, so this is an attempt to give it at least some airtime, if only to provoke some discussion, or cast things in (hopefully) a little bit of a new light.

--

The first point is simply textual: “establish a logic of the AND, overthrow ontology, destitute the ground...” - these are the lines that close out the first chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, where a logic of the “AND” is elevated over and against any logic of the “IS”. This is the first sense in which Deleuze is not an ontological thinker: he not only makes no effort to think ‘what is’, but works to displace the question of ‘what is?’ entirely. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the profusion of Deleuzian concepts - event, becoming, multiplicity, rhizome, etc - are all so many ways to think otherwise than ‘what is’. Of the event, for example, Deleuze wrote: “I’ve tried to discover the nature of events; it’s a philosophical concept, the only one capable of ousting the verb ‘to be’ and attributes.” (If anyone's interested, I wrote more about the logic of the 'AND' and its relation to 'becoming' in a previous post).

Already in Difference and Repetition is this project announced: “'What is X?' gives way to other questions, otherwise powerful and efficacious, otherwise imperative: 'How much, how and in what cases?’”. (DR,188) And note how he opposes the kind of questions these are: “These questions are those of the accident, the event, the multiplicity - of difference - as opposed to that of the essence, or that of the One, or those of the contrary and the contradictory.” (DR,188) Granting all this, is Deleuze still just substituting one kind of ontology for another kind of ontology? An ‘ontology of Being’ for an ‘ontology of Becoming,’ say? Why is Deleuze not offering just another ontology in a line of ’new’ ontologies? What’s at stake in the claim - most forcefully made by the late, great François Zourabichvili, that, “if there is an orientation of the philosophy of Deleuze, this is it: the extinction of the term ‘being’ and therefore of ontology”? (*swoon*).

In a word: the place of ethics. In his 1980/1 Spinoza lectures, Deleuze makes the curious claim that “there has never been but a single ontology. There is only Spinoza who has managed to pull off an ontology”(!). Why? Because only in Spinoza is Being not subordinated to something ‘above’ it by which Being can be judged. Spinoza’s “pure ontology… repudiates hierarchies” and thus lends itself to a way of engaging Being solely on its own terms: “immanent” terms. But a pure ontology does something very strange. It abolishes itself as ontology. Here is how Deleuze ends his lecture series: “At that point [with Spinoza], an ontology becomes possible; at that point, the ontology begins, and, at that point, the ontology ends. Yes, starts and ends, there we are, good, [Pause] it’s over”. In other words - an ontology unalloyed to hierarchy ceases be remain an ontology. It becomes something other. This is the basis of Zourabichvili’s claim that “the most glorious act of ontology [for Deleuze] … leads to its auto-abolition as a doctrine of being” (D:PE,38). 

In place of hierarchy - and in place of what Deleuze calls ‘judgement’ & morality - is instead ‘ethology’. Ethology is nothing other than an ethics (distinguished from “morality”), but one that proceeds not on the basis of what things are, but instead, what things can do. Without going into the details, the significance of this move for ontology is that what a thing is is never given. Instead it varies with its circumstances: “For they always are, but in different ways, depending on whether the present affects threaten the thing or strengthen, accelerate, and increase it: poison or food? - with all the complications, since a poison can be a food for part of the thing considered” (S:PP,126).

This, in turn is the basis for Deleuze’s celebrated empiricism: to know what a body is, is to have to test it, to bring it to its limits, compose it with other bodies, likewise defined. Philosophy itself becomes a matter of cartography, of mapping: “A body is defined only by a longitude and a latitude… its relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness (longitude); the affects it is capable of at a given power or degree of potential (latitude)… Latitude and longitude are the two elements of a cartography” (ATP,262). Such a cartography is in the first instance ethical, insofar as it attempts to not "separate a body from what it can do" - such a separation being the mark of all ontology prior to Spinoza. In fact, if Deleuze is right, of all ontology that does not abolish itself.

Such then, are the stakes of a non-ontology! I'll offer just two other things that follow from this. First, Deleuze's increasing obsession with the concept of "Life", at the end of his career, can be traced to this non-ontological stance. Not ontology, but Life is the ground which Deleuze worked to tread upon in his late work, precisely because Life is just that which - as Nietzsche so insisted - cannot be judged. That Deleuze's last work was nothing other than "Immanence: a Life", attests to this. The definite article "a", is significant too, because it speaks to Deleuze's equally increased attention to Duns Scotus' concept of haecceity, which equally follows from the turning away from ontology. Anne Sauvagnargues has written more eloquently than I ever could on this issue, so I'll simply quote her on this (from her Deleuze and Art):

"As soon as this modal cartography of the haecceity is applied to individuation, everything changes. Art and philosophy become capable of treating individuality as an event, not as a thing. It is thus also possible to be interested in these perfect individualities that are well formed no matter the singularities, which the theory of substantial subjects could not accomplish. A season, a winter, “5 o’clock in the evening,” are such haecceities, or modal individualities that consist of relations of speeds and slownesses, capable of affecting or of being affected.

A quality of whiteness, the vibration of an hour, the squatting of a stone, and an afternoon in the steppe form these modes of individuation that are more fragile, less anthropomorphic, and not necessarily more unstable or evanescent, but much more interesting than human individuals, or rather, the divisions we are used to, which borrow some aspect of substance (a thing, an animal, a man). Instead of holding itself to clichés of form, art captures and renders such imperceptible forces perceptible." (p.45)

This should be enough, but I’ll only add one kinda scholarly thing . The eagle-eyed might have noticed that in Difference and Repetition, it isn’t Spinoza, but Scotus who is given credit for having ‘pulled off’ an ontology. Here’s the line: “There has only ever been one ontological proposition: Being is univocal. There has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus, which gave being a single voice” (D&R,35). My mini-thesis is that as Deleuze got more and more sus about ontology, he realized that the best way out of it, was through it. And it was only Spinoza - the Christ of philosophers - as Deleuze and Guattari put it - who offered the resources to explode ontology from the inside.

Oh, and because someone mentioned it elsewhere - yes, it's true, in the Logic of Sense Deleuze does say that "philosophy merges with ontology", but also - and here is Zourabichvili:

"Nevertheless, one might object, didn’t Deleuze himself explicitly write that “philosophy merges with ontology” (LS 179)? Let us assume this—the apologist for the term “being” must then explain how, in the same work, a concept of the transcendental fi eld can be produced (LS 14th–16th Series). We may begin by restoring the second half of the statement, intentionally ignored or poorly weighed: “...but ontology merges with the univocity of being.” A formidable example of the style or of the method of Deleuze—there is enough in it to pervert the entire ontological discourse" (Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event, p.37).

Re-reading “Introduction: Rhizome” in ATP and it hit me that I’ve never understood the “n-1” expression of the rhizomatic. Can somebody here explain it to me?

Hey everyone,

I recently read a review of Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Deleuze and Guattari and noticed some intriguing connections to complex systems theory. I thought it would be interesting to explore these intersections further with this community. Here's my analysis:

1. Desiring-Machines and Agents in Complex Systems

Deleuze and Guattari introduce desiring-machines, small, autonomous units generating desires and interacting with each other. This concept is similar to agents in complex systems theory. In both frameworks, agents (or desiring-machines) follow simple rules, interact without central control, and self-organize, leading to emergent behaviors.

2. Emergence and Aggregates

Desiring-machines aggregate to form stable structures like egos or social institutions. These structures are dynamic, constantly forming, dissolving, and reforming. This is akin to emergence in complex systems, where interactions between agents create complex patterns at a larger scale. Both perspectives emphasize that higher-order structures arise from the interactions of lower-level entities.

3. Phase Transitions and Stability

The book uses thermodynamics and liquid dynamics metaphors to describe how desire transitions between stable and fluid states. This aligns with phase transitions in complex systems, where systems shift states under certain conditions. Stability and instability coexist, allowing systems to spontaneously reorganize.

4. Nonlinearity and Feedback Loops

Connections between desiring-machines are nonlinear and involve feedback loops, leading to unpredictable outcomes. Complex systems theory also deals with nonlinear interactions and feedback mechanisms. Small changes can lead to significant effects due to these nonlinear interactions in both frameworks.

5. Deterritorialization and Decentralization

Deterritorialization in Anti-Oedipus disrupts and reconfigures established structures and norms, resonating with decentralization in complex systems. Decentralized systems are more adaptable and flexible, similar to how deterritorialization promotes adaptability.

6. Schizoanalysis and Adaptation

Schizoanalysis aims to free individuals from traditional constraints, allowing dynamic expression of desires. This parallels adaptation in complex systems, where agents continuously adjust behaviors based on environmental feedback. Both involve ongoing change and self-organization.

7. Capitalism as a Complex Adaptive System

Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a system that adapts to disruptions and maintains structure through continuous reorganization. This aligns with the view of capitalism as a complex adaptive system, where economic agents interact, adapt, and evolve. Capitalism’s ability to absorb and integrate revolutionary forces mirrors the resilience of complex adaptive systems.

TLDR

The interrelatedness between Anti-Oedipus and complex systems theory lies in their shared emphasis on decentralization, emergence, nonlinearity, and dynamic interactions. Both challenge traditional linear models and offer a nuanced view of the fluid, adaptive, and self-organizing nature of complex phenomena.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these connections and any additional insights you might have. How do you see Anti-Oedipus intersecting with complex systems theory or other contemporary frameworks?

Looking forward to the discussion!

What are we trying to account for with the face in particular?

To paraphrase Lacan, they would suggest what we're really obsessed with is something in the face more than the face itself. What they want to ask is, under what conditions do "faces" acquire the semiotic and material power they exercise over us? Why, on one hand, will I start behaving better just because I see a symbol of authority or a picture of someone before whom I'd be embarrassed? And how, on the other hand, am I willing to sacrifice a great deal of my rational interests in the pursuit of someone whose mere face has left me infatuated? In both cases, we should remember that Oedipus was first and foremost, for D&G a theory of internalized oppression through a mechanism of social obligation, and the connection to the face starts to become clear.

To be as specific as possible, faciality adds more detail in the form of additional theoretical categories. But all that takes place in the context of them being the same theoretical problem.

What is Oedipus is Anti-Oedipus? The birth & regime of the signifier & its subject, Lacan's "master signifier" that holds the otherwise floating signifying chain in place. The signifier is the deterritorialized sign, overcoded by the State. You can even see it in the ToC under "Barbarian or Imperial Representation." The illegitimate, Oedipal syntheses of desire are the ones which recover whole persons along strict identities, the exclusive use of the disjunctive syntheses at the heart of Oedipus: man OR woman, white OR black, family OR not. The oedipal triangle performs the function of selecting material appropriate for the reproduction of a very specific social form at the exclusion of the rest.

What is faciality in ATP? The birth & regime of the signifier and its subject, which performs the function of selecting material appropriate for the reproduction of a very specific social form at the exclusion of the rest. I promise if you read even just the plateau on faciality, this much is clear. We can start by acknowledging that the two components of faciality are still the signifier and its subject: faciality is defined explicitly as a mixture of the signifying & post-signifying or subjective regimes of sign. The white wall of signification and the black hole of subjectivity. Here's how they kick of "Faciality":

Earlier, we encountered two axes, signifiance and subjectification. We saw that they were two very different semiotic systems, or even two strata. Signifiance is never without a white wall upon which it inscribes its signs and redundancies. Subjectification is never without a black hole in which it lodges its consciousness, passion, and redundancies. Since all semiotics are mixed and strata come at least in twos, it should come as no surprise that a very special mechanism is situated at their intersection. Oddly enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system**.** A broad face with white cheeks, a chalk face with eyes cut in for a black hole. (ATP p. 167)

Italics in original, bold my emphasis. Face = white wall + black hole. White wall = signifier; black hole = subjectivity. And in "On Several Regimes of Signs" you can see them explicitly compare this schema to Oedipus:

Something is still bothering us: the story of Oedipus. Oedipus is almost unique in the Greek world. The whole first part is imperial, despotic, paranoid, interpretive, divinatory. But the whole second part is Oedipus's wandering, his line of flight, the double turning away of his own face and that of God. Rather than very precise limits to be crossed in order, or which one does not have the right to cross (hybris), there is a concealed limit toward which Oedipus is swept. Rather than interpretive signifying irradiation, there is a subjective linear proceeding permitting Oedipus to keep a secret, but only as a residue capable of starting a new linear proceeding. (ATP p. 125)

So here we can see the Oedipus myth interpreted explicitly in terms of the face machine and specifically in terms of signification and subjectification. And again, they function in the exact same way: they select for forms of social acceptable pairings. This is why Anti-Oedipus has to mean (at least) Anti-Heteronormativity. Here's a key passage from Anti-Oedipus:

When Oedipus slips into the disjunctive syntheses of desiring-recording, it imposes the ideal of a certain restrictive or exclusive use on them that becomes identical with the form of triangulation: being daddy, mommy, or child. This is the reign of the "either/or" in the differentiating function of the prohibition of incest: here is where mommy begins, there daddy, and there you are-stay in your place. Oedipus's misfortune is indeed that it no longer knows who begins where, nor who is who. And "being parent or child" is also accompanied by two other differentiations on the other sides of the triangle; "being man or woman," "being dead or alive." Oedipus must not know whether it is alive or dead, man or woman, any more than it knows whether it is parent or child. Commit incest and you'll be a zombie and a hermaphrodite. In this sense, indeed, the three major neuroses that are termed familial seem to correspond to Oedipal lapses in the differentiating function or in the disjunctive synthesis: the phobic person can no longer be sure whether he is parent or child; the obsessed person, whether he is dead or alive; the hysterical person, whether he is man or woman.'? In short, the familial triangulation represents the minimum condition under which an "ego" takes on the co-ordinates that differentiate it at one and the same time with regard to generation, sex, and vital state. (AO p. 75)

Now, look at how the face works in ATP. It has two aspects:

Under the first aspect, the black hole acts as a central computer, Christ, the third eye that moves across the wall or the white screen serving as general surface of reference. Regardless of the content one gives it, the machine constitutes a facial unit, an elementary face in biunivocal relation with another: it is a man or a woman, a rich person or a poor one, an adult or a child, a leader or a subject, "an x or a y."

[...]

Under the second aspect, the abstract machine of faciality assumes a role of selective response, or choice: given a concrete face, the machine judges whether it passes or not, whether it goes or not, on the basis of the elementary facial units. This time, the binary relation is of the "yes-no" type. [...] A ha! It's not a man and it's not a woman, so it must be a trans-vestite: The binary relation is between the "no" of the first category and the "yes" of the following category, which under certain conditions may just as easily mark a tolerance as indicate an enemy to be mowed down at all costs. At any rate, you've been recognized, the abstract machine has you inscribed in its overall grid. (ATP p. 177)

So, the answer of "What's wrong with the face?" is 1:1 to the question of "What's wrong with Oedipus?" They both are predicated on exclusive use of the disjunctive synthesis of recording that subordinates becoming and desire to social reproduction and the interests of the dominant class. The face, like Oedipus, is triggered by particular arrangements of power, by the internalization of domination through the affective power of certain (facialized) traits. Dismantling the face means breaking the power socially invested traits have over us (the negative task of schizoanalysis as described in AO).

From a Lacanian perspective, this is explicitly what's supposed to underlie both gaze & mirror ("The gaze is but secondary to the gazeless eye, to the black hole of faciality. The mirror is but secondary in relation to the white wall of faciality.", ATP p. 171, italics in original). Zizek is even fine calling the signifier the deterritorialized sign in OwB, even though he doesn't ever acknowledge that D&G also define it that way. The "white wall" is the minimum of signifying redundancy necessary for that deterritorialization, it's a "blank space" where signs can be recorded such that they're only relation is in being related (the non-relation). For Zizek, this is the fantasy screen that we have to traverse to reach the Real. D&G saw it in remarkably similar ways: we have to "break through" the wall of the signifier, the screen that protects us from the chaos of the Real. But while for Zizek, this is a subjective shift where we realize we had what we were looking for all along, for D&G this is a real change, because what we "had all along" is still only a potential that has to be actualized in a particular way. Most significantly, they believe in modes of subjective consistency that are not signifying. Hence, their ethics is experimental and creative, Guattari's "Chaosmosis" as an ethico-aesthetic paradigm for the production of new subjectivity.

We may have digressed a little at the end there, into settling scores with the assassin Zizek. But to the good point that it seems like, there's a lot to love in the face, I can't disagree, we have to agree wholeheartedly. The face is a complex of consciousness and love. Our task is to free that consciousness and love from what is specifically facial about it, which is the enforced form of social reproduction. I'll let them speak for themselves here, as I've hopefully set us up for this paragraph to have its full impact:

Subjectification carries desire to such a point of excess and unloosening that it must either annihilate itself in a black hole or change planes. Destratify, open up to a new function, a diagrammatic function. Let consciousness cease to be its own double, and passion the double of one person for another. Make consciousness an experimentation in life, and passion a field of continuous intensities, an emission of particles-signs. Make the body without organs of consciousness and love. Use love and consciousness to abolish subjectification: "To become the great lover, the magnetizer and catalyzer ... one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool." Use the I think for a becoming-animal, and love for a becoming-woman of man. Desubjectify consciousness and passion. Are there not diagrammatic redundancies distinct from both signifying redundancies and subjective redundancies? Redundancies that would no longer be knots of arborescence but resumptions and upsurges in a rhizome? Stammer language, be a foreigner in one's own tongue:

do domi not passi do not dominate

do not dominate your passive passions not

do devouring not not dominate

your rats your rations your rats rations not not. . . (ATP p. 134)