Deleuze et l'Anti-Œdipe: la production du désir (review)

Revisiting Deleuze and Guattari's L'Anti-Œdipe nearly forty years after it was first published is a worthwhile endeavour for any number of possible reasons, the most obvious — at least to this reader — being to evaluate the continued or renewed relevance of its proposed schizo-analyse, most notably in relation to the recent financial crises. Another equally worthy exercise might be an evaluation of the book's impact on both the field of psychoanalysis and Marxist theory over the past four decades. Preferring to adopt the role of biblical exegete than to address these other tasks, Sibertin-Blanc returns to the text itself, which is where, for the most part, his study remains. The result is a neatly organized commentary that calls to account the complex relationship Deleuze and Guattari established between libidinal desire and economic production. The primary objective of the study, laid out at the start, is to situate the text within its own historical and political moment. In doing so, Sibertin-Blanc demonstrates how L'Anti-Œdipe works from within discourses of psychoanalysis and Marxist theory in order to create a space outside of them in which to analyse the relationship between individual subjectivization and the larger mechanisms of capitalist society. Sibertin-Blanc draws the conclusion that Deleuze and Guattari create a space for schizo-analyse from which they and their text must ultimately be excluded. L'Anti-Œdipe represents an interstice between existing modes of defining both individual desire and capitalist modes of production and opens up a potential space for thinking these differently. Anyone familiar with L'Anti-Œdipe and the rest of Deleuze and Guattari's corpus will find such conclusions frustratingly self-evident. If Sibertin-Blanc considers Deleuze and Guattari to be trapped within the interstice of L'Anti-Œdipe, he too seems caught up in an account that, in its desire to assign L'Anti-Œdipe to a specific post-'68 moment, fails to move beyond the text into new areas of critical reflection. Consequently, the study will be of primary interest to those getting to grips with Capitalisme et schizophrénie for the first time and to anyone looking for a clear and insightful introduction to its key concepts and context.