Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography
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9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page i Félix Guattari 9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page ii Also by Franco Berardi (Bifo) Scrittura e movimento (Rome: Marsilio, 1970). Chi ha ucciso Majakovski? (Milan: Squi/libri, 1977). with Alain Guillerme and Pierre Rival, L’ideologia francese: contro in ‘nouveaux philosophes’ (Milan: Squi/libri, 1977). Dell’innocenza: interpretazione del ‘77 (Bologna: Agalev, 1987). Politiche della mutazione (Milan/Bologna: Synergon, 1991). with Franco Bolelli, 60/90: dalla psichedelia alla telepatica (Milan/Bologna: Synergon, 1992). Mutazione e cyberpunk. Immaginario e tecnologia negli scenari di fine millennio (Milan: Costa & Nolan, 1994). Come si cura il nazi (Rome: Castelvecchi, 1994). Dell’innocenza: 1977, l’anno della premonizione (Verona: Ombre Corte, 1997). La nefasta utopia di Potere Operaio (Rome: Castelvecchi, 1998). La fabbrica dell ‘infelicita’: new economy e movimento del cognitariato (Rome: Derive-Approdi, 2001). Il sapiente, il mercante, il guerriero. Dal rifiuto del lavoro all’emergere del cognitariato (Rome: Derive-Approdi, 2004). Skizomedia. Trent’anni di mediattivismo (Rome: Derive-Approdi, 2006). Giuseppina Mecchia With Max Henninger and Timothy Murphy (eds) ‘Italian Post-Workerist Thought’, SubStance 112, Special Issue (2007). Charles J. Stivale The Two-Fold Thought of Deleuze and Guattari: Intersections and Animations (New York: Guilford Publications, 1998). Disenchanting Les Bons Temps: Identity and Authenticity in Cajun Music and Dance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). Editor, Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts (Chesham, UK: Acumen Publications/Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2005). Gilles Deleuze’s ABCs: The Folds of Friendship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page iii Félix Guattari Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography Franco Berardi (Bifo) Translated and edited by Giuseppina Mecchia and Charles J. Stivale 9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page iv © Franco Berardi (Bifo) 2008 Translation © Giuseppina Mecchia and Charles J. Stivale 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–22119–2 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–22119–X hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berardi, Franco. Felix Guattari : thought, friendship, and visionary cartography / Franco Berardi (Bifo); translated and edited by Giuseppina Mecchia and Charles J. Stivale. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 13: 978–0–230–22119–2 (hardback) ISBN 10: 0–230–22119–X (hardback) 1. Guattari, Flix, 1930–1992. I. Mecchia, Giuseppina, 1962– II. Stivale, Charles J. III, Title. B2430.G784B4713 2008 194–dc22 2008020595 10987654321 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne 9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page v Contents Preface: Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography, vi by Giuseppina Mecchia and Charles J. Stivale Chapter 1 Introduction: Cartographies in Becoming 1 Part I 9 Chapter 2 The Happy Depression 9 Chapter 3 Integrated World Capitalism 16 Chapter 4 Planetary Psychopathology 22 Chapter 5 Postmediatic Affect 29 Part II 37 Chapter 6 User’s Manual 39 Chapter 7 Deleuze and the Rhizomatic Machine 43 Chapter 8 Why is Anti-Oedipus the Book of the ’68 Movement? 73 Chapter 9 Kafka, Hypertext and Assemblages 88 Chapter 10 The Tantric Egg 109 Chapter 11 Chaosmosis 113 Chapter 12 The Provisional Eternity of Friendship 134 Interview with Franco Berardi ‘Bifo’, 11 July 2005 by 141 Giuseppina Mecchia Notes 169 Bibliography 174 Index 179 v 9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page vi Preface: Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography Giuseppina Mecchia and Charles J. Stivale1 In one of Gilles Deleuze’s final texts, a brief remembrance from August 1992, entitled simply ‘For Félix’, the eminent philosopher and writing partner concludes that Guattari’s work ‘is waiting to be discovered or rediscovered. That is one of the best ways to keep Félix alive’. Deleuze has already insisted that he refers not to their collaborative work, but precisely to Guattari’s writing on his own. So, Deleuze closes his state- ment by reflecting: ‘Perhaps the most painful aspects of remembering a dead friend are the gestures and glances that still reach us, that still come to us long after he is gone. Félix’s work gives new substance to these gestures and glances, like a new object capable of transmitting their power’ (2006, 383). It is fitting, then, that Franco Berardi, known familiarly as Bifo, frames his reflections on Guattari’s work in terms of the power in the gestures and glances that constitute their enduring friendship. In like fashion, the project to prepare an edition of these biograph- ical reflections, written originally in Italian, is inspired by our friend- ship with Bifo and other readers of Guattari. Although the works of Gilles Deleuze have been translated and have generated an entire market of critical works, anthologies and guides to his thought, Félix Guattari has not achieved the same public exposure, especially given that very few writers have undertaken a serious engagement with his thought.2 Besides the importance of making Guattari’s works better known, we are also inspired by the experience of Guattari’s practice lived by Bifo and expressed in his biography. As he explains in the introductory chapter, his book stems first from his acquaintance with Guattari’s writings and political engagement in the context of Bifo’s own activism in Italian autonomist politics in the 1970s and then his exile from Italy and direct collaboration with Guattari in Paris from 1977 onward. In light of the importance that Guattari placed on the political activities in Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, we propose to bring forward the way that Bifo illuminates the Italian political experi- ence in relation to Guattari’s life and thought. vi 9780230_221192_01_prexvi.pdf 10/3/08 11:31 AM Page vii Preface vii Bifo’s original work, published in 2001, is entitled Félix. Narrazione dell’incontro con il pensiero di Guattari, cartografia visionaria del tempo che viene: it translates as ‘Félix. Tale of the encounter with Guattari’s thought, a cartographic vision of the future’. To the translated text of this encounter, we add a succinct, critical introduction and a substan- tial interview with Bifo conducted during the summer of 2005. This biography gains distinction from its keen insight into Guattari’s polit- ical practice and from a precise understanding of how this practice relates to the theoretical and conceptual aspects of Guattari’s writings, alone and with Gilles Deleuze. One reason why key works from Guattari’s corpus remain untranslated is their density and general inaccessibility due to a highly abstract theoretical language. Thanks to an approach that is at once personal and extremely well informed about the origins and development of Guattari’s thought, Bifo’s biogra- phy is quite clear and fairly devoid of the abstract language that char- acterizes Guattari’s works. Our approach in this Preface is two-fold: in a first section, we turn toward the historical perspective on Bifo’s encounter with Guattari, in order to consider not only their shared political commitment through militant activism and a common understanding of late capitalism, but also the significance of the generational discrepancy between the two, mitigated somewhat by national differences. This historical perspective leads us to consider the concepts they shared, especially within the context of Bifo’s work on Italian post-workerist politics. In the second section, we consider how Guattari and Deleuze together are re-constructed and inserted into this biography. That is, we have noted in reading Félix a conceptual level in the encounter of the two friends that is distinct from merely personal memories. One way of exploring this distinction from both Bifo’s and Guattari’s