Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and the total system

Mohamed Zayani

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattariand the total system

Abstract This paper is concerned with an aspect of Deleuze and Guattari’sthought which has not been duly analyzed: systematicity. More specifically,it deals with their conception of the system in three co-authored majorworks: What is Philosophy?, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.These works are of renewed interest because they tease out, each in its ownway, a particular type of system. Regardless of whether it has a philo-sophical import, a botanical reference, a social dimension, or a libidinalinvestment, the system that Deleuze and Guattari advocate is allegedly ahyper-dynamic system that resists closure. Thus, in an interview with DidierEribon, Deleuze points out that philosophy is ‘an open system’ and then,referring to A Thousand Plateaus, he further observes that what he andGuattari ‘call a rhizome is also one example of an open system’. Thepurpose of this essay is not merely to explore how the system in the worksof these two prominent poststructuralists is conceived, how it is structured,and how it works, but also to show how it is only superficially open. Payinga special attention to Deleuze and Guattari’s exegesis on capitalism, I arguethat the proposed system is cynical and ultimately untenable.

Key words capitalism · Gilles Deleuze · Félix Guattari · open system ·philosophy · total system

If in general the question about the nature of philosophy is complexenough, when posed by a philosopher like Gilles Deleuze and a psy-chotherapist like Félix Guattari who distrust essences and disclaim per-manent truths, it becomes an ambitious endeavor. For these two Frenchthinkers, addressing the question of ‘What is philosophy?’ is not onlyinsistent but also timely: ‘the time has come for us to ask what philo-sophy is. We had never stopped asking this question previously. . . .[T]he answer had not only to take note of the question, it had to

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determine its moment, its occasion and circumstances, its landscapes andpersonae, its conditions and unknowns’ (WP 2). Having established theurgency of the question at hand and having pointed out the intricaciesof the problem, Deleuze and Guattari then embark on what may bedescribed as a negative definition of philosophy:

We can at least see what philosophy is not: it is not contemplation, reflec-tion, or communication. . . . It is not contemplation, for contemplations arethings themselves as seen in the creation of their specific concepts. It is notreflection, because no one needs philosophy to reflect on anything. . . .Nor does philosophy find any refuge in communication, which only worksunder the sway of opinions in order to create ‘consensus’ and not concepts’(WP 6)

Philosophy does not have an essence, nor does it deal with essences;rather the reverse. For a philosophical inquiry to be sound and reward-ing, it has to shake the integrity of the essence, problematize the claimto a universal truth, shatter the belief in the sacrosanctity of a transcen-dental principle, question the idea of an inherent reality, and put to thetest the possibility of reducing meaning to a stable structure. To do so isto move away from Platonism which, according to the authors of Whatis Philosophy?, has sacrificed the extrinsic character of philosophy foran insistently intrinsic character: ‘With the creation of philosophy, theGreeks violently force the friend into a relationship that is no longer arelationship with an other but with an Entity, an Objectality, an Essence– Plato’s friend, but even more the friend of wisdom, of truth or theconcept’ (WP 3).

With these observations, we are in a better position to apprehendthe nature of the authors’ dissatisfaction with the tentative definition ofphilosophy they venture at the beginning of their book, namely thatphilosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts.No sooner do Deleuze and Guattari make this provisional propositionthan they qualify it: ‘philosophy is not a simple art of forming, invent-ing, or fabricating concepts, because concepts are not necessarily forms,discoveries, or products. More rigorously, philosophy is the disciplinethat involves creating concepts’ (WP 5). With Deleuze, philosophy losesits right to reflect on things. Philosophy is neither a reflection nor amediation, but a process of production – a bringing-to-being, so tospeak, in which the concept deterritorializes itself at the very momentit is created. This probably explains why Deleuze and Guattari’s worksteem with such ‘intellectually mobile concepts’ (Deleuze in ‘Mediators’,1992a: 282) as nomadology, deterritorialization, lines of escape, assem-blage, intensity, rhizome, becoming, machinism, plateaus, hetero-geneous series, body without organs, and plane of immanence, to namebut a few. What lies behind these fancy and complicated words is not

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a desire to be trendy, but the realization that a concept sometimes needsa new word to express it. As soon as there are concepts, Deleuze main-tains there is a ‘genuine philosophy’ (N 32). The object of philosophy,as a nomadic thought, is to create new concepts for problems that con-stantly change.1 The primary task of philosophy is the creation of con-cepts which, in turn, can be properly known only through their owncreation: ‘Concepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenlybodies. There is no heaven for concepts. They must be invented, fabri-cated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator’ssignature’ (Deleuze, WP 5). By aligning itself with the creation of con-cepts – which are valued not for the truth they may yield, but for theeffect they can create – philosophy becomes a matter of productionrather than reflection.

Therein lies Nietzsche’s most enduring impact on the authors ofWhat is Philosophy?: their innovativeness does not lie in having forgeda theoretical paradigm – i.e. a philosophy in the abstract sense of theterm – but in having relocated the thrust of philosophy within praxis.For them, meaning is not something to be uncovered, but produced; ithas nothing to do with origins, but is instead a matter of production.From this vantage point, the starting-point and guiding question of aphilosophical inquiry is not ‘What does it mean?’ but ‘How does itwork?’ Philosophy, just like desire, ‘represents nothing, but it produces.It means nothing, but it works. [It] makes its entry with the general col-lapse of the question “What does it mean?” ’ (AO 109).2 The shift thatDeleuze and Guattari propose is an intellectual shift from a preoccu-pation with questions of significance and meaning to a concern withquestions of function and use, from a pursuit of static principles andordering realities to an interest in dynamic movements and immanentdynamics, from the configuration of resultants to the mapping of flows,from a representation of essences to an experimentation with events –in fact, an affirmation of events through the creation of concepts: ‘Thetask of philosophy when it creates concepts, entities, is always toextract an event from things and beings, to set up the new event: space,time, matter, thought, the possible as events’ (WP 33). Philosophy is analignment between creation and self-positing. The concept is not given,but created; it is not formed, but posits itself in itself. The concept isrelated to circumstances rather than essences;3 it is expressive and notreferential, which is tantamount to saying that there are no simpleready-made a priori concepts. Every concept has components and isdefined by the combinatorial possibilities of these components. Theconcept is a multiplicity in the sense that it has a becoming that involvesits relationship with concepts situated on the same plane.4 Conceptslink up with each other, support each other, and coordinate each other’smovement. Every concept branches off toward other concepts that are

95Zayani: Deleuze, Guattari and the total system




differently composed but that can be connected to each other, and par-ticipate in a process of co-creation. The concept functions along amodel of dissemination, bifurcation and proliferation; it engenderspolyvalence, asymmetry, heterogeneity and dynamism, so much so thatphilosophy becomes a nomadology or, as Deleuze confides in a letter toJean-Clet Martin, ‘a heterogenesis’ (1993: 7).

In A Thousand Plateaus, this heterogenesis is emphatically investedin a vegetal model which favors the rhizome over the tree.5 The openingchapter, which forcefully sets the tone for the book, is a vehement attackagainst, and an adamant rejection of, the principle of arborescentdescent. For Deleuze and Guattari, the tree-root, radicle model, whichis wedded to classical reflection, has molded our way of thinking. Thetree always designates a point of origin; it emanates out of a seed or acenter, develops an axis of rotation, and branches off its concentricityaccording to a principle of dichotomy which evolves into a hierarchicalsystem. In fact, the tree model is based on the binary logic of dichotomywhich makes it impossible to reach an understanding of multiplicity thatis not recouped within a transcendental model. To break away from theconfines of dualism, Deleuze and Guattari advocate a mode of thoughtmodeled on the adventitious growth and the propitious movement ofrhizomes, bulbs and tubers. The rhizome is governed by a number ofinterconnected characteristics. To start with, the rhizome, which is a sub-terranean stem, is an a-centered, non-hierarchical, anti-genealogicalnetwork of all kinds.6 Unlike the tree which plots a point, unlike the rootwhich fixes an order, unlike the structure which frames a set of relations,the rhizome can and must be connected to any other point. The rhizomeoperates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture and offshoots,which makes it not only heterogeneous, but also multiplicitous in thesense that it always has multiple entryways. In a rhizome, multiplicitiesconstantly change in nature and connect to other multiplicities in orderto form collective assemblages, so much so that it has neither a begin-ning nor an end, but always a middle from which it grows and which itoverspills. Thus aligned with cracks, ruptures, breaks, intersections andcrossings, a rhizomatic movement does not designate a localizable rela-tion but a movement which glides between, i.e. in the middle of a path;its underlying model is not punctual, but linear; it is not about being (theindicative ‘is’), but about becoming (the associative ‘and’): ‘the tree is fil-iation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposesthe verb “to be,” but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and. . . and . . . and . . .” [which] can overthrow ontology, do away withfoundations, nullify endings and beginnings’ (TP 25). Rather than filia-tion, the rhizome grows by means of expansion, propagation, occu-pation and contagion operating at the surface – all of which Deleuze andGuattari find encapsulated in what Gregory Bateson calls a plateau. A





rhizome is made of plateaus, i.e. of intensities whose development avoidsany orientation toward a point of culmination:

We call a ‘plateau’ any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities bysuperficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome. . . Gregory Bateson uses the term plateau for continuous regions of inten-sity constituted in such a way that they do not allow themselves to be inter-rupted by any external termination, anymore than they allow themselves tobuild toward a climax. (TP 22–58)

Unlike the tree model in which signifying breaks separate structures, therhizome model functions through asignifying ruptures. A rhizome maybe broken at a particular point or shattered at a given spot, but it willstart up again either on one of its old lines or on a new line. Each rhizomecontains lines of segmentarity according to which it is territorialized andlines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees. Wheneversegmentary lines explode into a line of flight, a rupture occurs in arhizome, and the lines are bound to tie back to and to connect up withone another in an act of reterritorialization.7 At the heart of Deleuze andGuattari’s project is an attempt to think through fragments whose onlyrelationship is sheer difference – i.e. fragments which are related to eachother only in that each of them is different.8 In work after work, Deleuzeand Guattari call for an affirmation of pure multiplicities. Their philo-sophy is inseparable from multiplicity, pluralism and possibility. Whatpervade are connected flows, each boosting, engendering and accelerat-ing the other. Everything is constituted of forces or relations of forcewhich take the form of lines of escape.

Implicit in this theory of production – the production of multiplicity– is a critique of the legacy of classic mechanism and vitalism which con-tinues to weigh heavily, and an attack on idealistic philosophies and Pla-tonic metaphysics. The multiplicity which is adumbrated in bothvolumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983,1987) is far from being a Platonic multiplicity which presumes thatthings are multiple insofar as they exist as the shadow of a real idea. Byarguing for a logic of difference, Deleuze and Guattari put into questionthe essentialist claims of traditional philosophy with its emphasis onidentities, foundations, essences and a prioris, and in doing so theypropose to go beyond the spurious question of representation and itscorollary the signifier/signified dyad.9 They are also necessarily rejectingthe dialectical mode of thought with its emphasis on binarism, dualities,opposites and contradictions: ‘It is wrongly said (in Marxism in par-ticular) that a society is defined by its contradictions. . . . A social fieldis always animated by all kinds of movements of decoding and deterri-torialization affecting “masses” and operating at different speeds andplaces. These are not contradictions but escapes’ (TP 216–20).10 For





Deleuze and Guattari, to conceive of the social machine as a binaryorganization is to ignore the fact that something always escapes. Theyboth reject the type of logical, ideal contradiction – which we find in itspure form in Hegelianism – because it reduces the complexity of thephenomena by presenting the different simply as the Janus-face of thesame in such a way as to reduce the complexity of the social phenom-ena to the internal confrontation of a single meaning. This uncompro-mising position is even more boldly stated in Anti-Oedipus:

We live in the age of partial objects, bricks that have been shattered to bits,and leftovers. We no longer believe in the myth of the existence of frag-ments that, like pieces of an antique statue, are merely waiting for the lastone to be turned up, so that they may all be glued together to create a unitythat is precisely the same as the original unity. We no longer believe in aprimordial totality that once existed, or a final totality that awaits us atsome future date. We no longer believe in the dull gray outlines of a dreamy,colorless dialectic of evolution, aimed at forming a harmonious whole outof heterogeneous bits by rounding off their rough edges. (Deleuze and Guat-tari, 1983: 42)

To derive the whole from the part is to fall victim to a ‘dialectical total-ization’ (Deleuze, AO 44); it is to fall prey to Hegelian idealism whichbelieves in the primacy of the whole as an essence.11

Following Nietzsche’s teachings, Deleuze and Guattari refuse tosubmit to acquiescence; they refuse to give in to the supposition that ‘onlyin the totality everything redeems itself and appears good and justified’(Nietzsche, 1968: 60). Nietzsche’s caveat leads the authors of Anti-Oedipus to rethink the relationship between the multiple and the one,between the part and the whole, between the fragments and the totality:‘We believe in totalities that are peripheral. And if we discover such atotality alongside various separate parts, it is a whole of all these par-ticular parts but does not totalize them; it is a unity of all these particu-lar parts, but does not unify them; rather it is added to them as a newpart fabricated separately’ (AO 42).12 What Deleuze and Guattari en-vision is the multiplication of connections in a network system whichcannot be reduced to any sort of unity. The whole, Deleuze and Guattariinsist, cannot be treated as an original from which the parts emanate, norcan it be said simply to coexist with the parts; it exists as a product which,although produced apart from the parts, is nonetheless related to them:‘the Whole itself is a product, produced as nothing more than a partalongside other parts, which it neither unifies nor totalizes, though it hasan effect on these other paths simply because it establishes aberrant pathsof communication between noncommunicating vessels, transverse unitiesbetween elements that retain all their differences within their own par-ticular boundaries’ (AO 43). The multiple is neither unified nor totalized,but simply unleashed. The whole is not anchored in a verifiable truth, but





is instead animated by processes of becoming and acts of return. Nothingis ever multiplicitous or multidirectional enough. Everything operateswithin a sum which never brings its various parts together so as to forma delineated whole; everything functions at the same time, but amid hia-tuses and ruptures, among breakdowns and failures. What defines thesystem are its disjunctions, which – precisely because they are disjunc-tions – are inclusive. In such a system, one is constantly confronted withgaps, divergences, dispersions and fragments that are intermittent, to saythe least. What matter are lines of escape, multiplicities of dispersion,detached codes, energies of inscription, productive disjunctions, driftingflows, continuous breaks and unrelenting schizes.

The example par excellence, if not the Ur-form of these unity-lessaberrations, is capitalism. For the authors of Anti-Oedipus, capitalismis a ‘segmentary system’ (AO 151) which is constantly born out of itsown disharmonies and fortified by its dysfunctions. It is distinguishedas much by its ruptures and scissions as it is by its fluxes and intensi-ties. Capitalism is caught up between two opposing poles of sociallibidinal investment which are inextricably linked and can be dis-engaged only theoretically: the schizoid revolutionary pole and theparanoiac, reactionary, fascisizing pole. It oscillates between a schizo-phrenic process and a paranoiac counter-process, between an influx ofenergy and the relapses that interrupt such an influx, between over-coding the flows and decoding them or, to use Deleuze and Guattari’sown terminology, between a breakthrough and a breakdown. Capital-ism brings the schizophrenic charges and energies into a worldaxiomatic that always opposes the revolutionary potential of thedecoded flows with new interior limits. In such a regime, it is hard todistinguish between decoding and the axiomatic that replaces the van-ished codes. Capitalism decodes and axiomatizes the flows at the sametime. The nature of capitalism is such that it is always destined toreconstitute itself on its own ruins and to be resurrected from its ownashes. It is a system whose power is drawn from its weakness, whoseexertion feeds off its impotence, and whose contraction leads to itsexpansion. Although capitalism tends toward the limit of schizo-phrenia, it is constantly evading that limit and trying to get round it.In this sense, schizophrenia as a process of desiring-production is thelimit of social production:

. . . capitalism, through its process of production, produces an awesomeschizophrenic accumulation of energy or charge, against which it brings allits vast powers of repression to bear, but which nonetheless continues to actas capitalism’s limit. For capitalism constantly counteracts, constantlyinhibits this inherent tendency while at the same time allowing it free rein;it continually seeks to avoid reaching its limit while simultaneously tendingtoward that limit. . . . The schizophrenic deliberately seeks out the very





limit of capitalism: he is its inherent tendency brought to fulfillment, itssurplus product, its proletariat, and its exterminating angel. (AO 34–35)

Capitalism axiomatizes with one hand what it decodes with the other.The schizophrenic lines of escape, which cause capitalism to move andflow in an unstoppable schizoid process of decoding and deterritorial-ization, are subjected to a paranoiac axiomatic of flows, which exorcizeand limit the process of production. Thus, being constructed on decodedflows that constitute its most profound tendency, capitalism finds itselfintensely counteracting and purposefully repressing this tendency so asto be able to reproduce and expand itself. Capitalism produces internaldysfunctions which it cannot transcend but only solve and master.Simply put, the (re)production of capitalism is invested in a limit whichis caught in a perpetual act of transgression.

The word ‘transgression’ requires more than a cursory attentionbecause, although not prominent in Deleuze and Guattari’s oeuvre, itcan help enhance our appreciation of the complexity of their thought.In a seminal essay on Georges Bataille entitled ‘A Preface to Transgres-sion’, Michel Foucault – who had a tremendous impact on Deleuze,much less on Guattari – defines transgression by what it is not: ‘Trans-gression does not seek to oppose one thing to another; it does not trans-form the other side of the mirror, beyond an invisible and uncrossableline, into a glittering expanse. Transgression is neither violence in adivided world (in an ethical world) nor victory over limits (in a dialec-tical or revolutionary world)’ (1977: 35). Embedded in this definitionis a subtle though poignant attack on the hallmark of Western thoughtand rationality; i.e. transcendence, which, in A Thousand Plateaus,Deleuze and Guattari disparagingly describe as a ‘specifically Europeandisease’ (1987: 18). Transgressing a limit, as Foucault explains, is notgoing beyond the limit, but coming into contact with the constitutiveother that is demarcated by the limit. In Foucault’s view, transgressionis inextricably linked to the limit it transgresses; it has its entire spacein the line it crosses: ‘transgression incessantly crosses and recrosses aline which closes up behind it in a wave of extremely short duration,and thus it is made to return once more right to the horizon of theuncrossable’ (1977: 33–4). The limit and transgression are caughtwithin a curious interaction which has no life outside the moment whenthey exchange their being. The limit has no life of its own; it does notexist independently of that which negates it. The limit and transgres-sion depend on each other for whatever density of being they possess.In the same way a limit cannot exist if it were absolutely uncrossable,transgression loses its meaning if it merely crossed a limit composed ofillusions and shadows. Transgression does not exhaust its own natureby crossing the limit because the latter is so – i.e. is defined as a limit –





only to the extent that it is transgressable. Transgression, Foucault con-cludes his essay, reinscribes the limit even as it effaces it: ‘the limit opensviolently onto the limitless, finds itself suddenly carried away by thecontent it has rejected and fulfilled by this alien plenitude which invadesit to the core of its being. Transgression carries the limit right to thelimit of its being; transgression forces the limit to face the fact of itsimminent disappearance, only to find itself in that which it excludes’(1977: 34).13

Such as it is, the system that is adumbrated in both Anti-Oedipusand A Thousand Plateaus is a system which throbs with the tumultuousagitation of a life that knows no limits. Even if there were a limit, it isan unlimited and unlimiting one; it is a limit that is constitutively andtherefore necessarily transgressable.14 Capitalism points to nothingbeyond itself; it has no limit aside from and outside the frenzy which dis-rupts it in order to reinvent it and re-establish it. Capitalism is inces-santly made and unmade by its own excess which transgresses it. Notonly does capitalism recognize no limits, it constitutes its own limit, thussetting up as the law the very limit it transgresses. When Deleuze andGuattari write that schizophrenia is ‘a process and not a goal, a pro-duction and not an expression’ (AO 133), they also necessarily implythat the fulfillment of capitalism is neither desirable nor possible. Theonly certain thing is the continuous prolongation and ceaseless propa-gation of the system – a kind of jovial and endless titillation whichestablishes itself as the limitless limit of satisfaction.15 The nature ofcapitalism is such that it necessitates that its limit be indefinitely pushedback:

. . . capitalism is the only social machine that is constructed on the basis ofdecoded flows, substituting for intrinsic codes an axiomatic of abstractqualities in the form of money. Capitalism therefore liberates the flow ofdesire, but under the social conditions that define that limit and the possi-bility of its own dissolution, so that it is constantly opposing with all itsexasperated strength the movement that drives it toward this limit. (AO139–40)

The Deleuzo-Guattarian model posits no real boundaries, but onlythresholds in which every end announces a new beginning or, better yet,contiguities where flows converge only to diverge. By surpassing thecodes that regulate the flux, capitalism paradoxically enough drives usaway from the limit through the very process that brings us to the edgeof that limit. The more the limit threatens to arrive, the harder it iswarded off:

Concerning capitalism, we maintain that it both does and does not have anexterior limit: it has an exterior limit that is schizophrenia, that is, the absol-ute decoding of flows, but it functions only by pushing back and exorcising





this limit. And it also has, yet does not have, interior limits: it has interiorlimits under the specific conditions of capitalist production and circulation,that is, in capital itself, but it functions only by reproducing and wideningthe limits on an always vaster scale. The strength of capitalism indeed residesin the fact that its axiomatic is never saturated, that it is always capable ofadding a new axiomatic to the previous ones. (AO 250)

The nature of capitalism is such that it never ceases to decode codes andto deterritorialize territories, nor does it ever fail to overcome its limitand to counteract its tendency.

These observations lead us to what may be described as the crux ofDeleuze and Guattari’s thought – the immanent limit which precludesany external or transcendent criterion.16 Immanence is part of a richrepertoire of key terms or concept-words which Deleuze and Guattariuse, almost interchangeably, to delineate an unevenly constituted systemthat is defined less by its essence than by its circumstances. In Expres-sionism in Philosophy, Deleuze insists that ‘with immanence all is affir-mation’ (1990: 174) – the affirmation of reproduction and multiplicity.The field of immanence designates a space of coordination and a field ofinteraction.17 Nowhere, perhaps, is the field of immanence more mani-fest than in capitalism. Capitalism is defined by an unrestrained ten-dency, i.e. a tendency that has no end and no exterior limit that it couldreach or even approximate:

The tendency’s only limit is internal, and it is continually going beyond it,but by displacing this limit – that is, by reconstituting it, by rediscoveringit as an internal limit to be surpassed again by means of a displacement;thus the continuity of the capitalist process engenders itself in this break ofa break that is always displaced, in this unity of the schiz and the flow. Inthis respect already the field of social immanence . . . is continually expand-ing and acquires a consistency entirely its own, which shows the manner inwhich capitalism for its part was able to interpret the general principleaccording to which things work well only providing they break down, crisesbeing ‘the means immanent to the capitalist mode of production.’ If capital-ism is the exterior limit of all societies, this is because capitalism for its parthas no exterior limit, but only an interior limit that is capital itself and thatit does not encounter, but reproduces by always displacing it. (AO 230–1)

In capitalism all external limits are internalized, which is tantamountto saying that capitalism has no conceivable exteriority, but only a fieldof immanence which it never ceases to occupy. Capitalism finds inschizophrenia its own exterior limit, which it continually repels, whilecapitalism itself produces its immanent limits, which it never ceases todisplace. No sooner is a limit displaced than it reconstitutes itselffurther along.18

The effusion of antiproduction within production – the fact thatcapitalism desires its own strength while it seeks its impotence – leads





Deleuze and Guattari to make a distinction between absolute and rela-tive limits:

. . . capitalism is indeed the limit of all societies, in so far as it brings aboutthe decoding of the flows that the other social formations coded and over-coded. But it is the relative limit of every society; it effects relative breaks,because it substitutes for the codes an extremely rigorous axiomatic thatmaintains the energy of the flows in a bound state on the body of capital asa socius that is deterritorialized, but also a socius that is even more pitilessthan any other. Schizophrenia, on the contrary, is indeed the absolute limitthat causes the flows to travel in a free state on a desocialized body withoutorgans. Hence one can say that schizophrenia is the exterior limit of capital-ism itself or the conclusion of its deepest tendency, but that capitalism onlyfunctions on the condition that it inhibit this tendency, or that it push backor displace this limit, by substituting for it its own immanent relative limits,which it continually reproduces on a widened scale. (AO 245–6)

Schizophrenia is the absolute limit of every society inasmuch as it sets inmotion decoded and deterritorialized flows, while capitalism is the rela-tive limit of every society inasmuch as it axiomatizes the decoded flowsand reterritorializes the deterritorialized flows. In between these two ten-dencies lies the ‘real limit’ of capitalism (AO 176) – a perpetual dis-placement of the limit which prevents the coding of the flows from beingdecoded. To talk about a real limit is to talk about an unstable equilib-rium engendered by an endless tug-of-war between two opposing ten-dencies and engendering a perpetual self-reinvention: ‘Far from being apathological consequence, the disequilibrium is functional and funda-mental. Far from being the extension of a system that is at first closed,the opening is primary, founded in the heterogeneity of the elements thatcompose the presentations and that compensate for the disequilibriumby displacing it’ (AO 150). Seen from this vantage point, what definesthis system is neither its superior unity nor its pretraced destiny, but itstumultuous internal dynamics.

In spite of its theoretical sophistication, the project of Deleuze andGuattari is not void of problems. A close examination of the distinctionthey make between alliance and filiation can lay out in some detail twokey problems that plague the conception of capitalism as a system inboth Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus: the determinacy ofcapitalism (i.e. the fact that the economy is a determinant factor) and itstrans-historicity (i.e. the fact that history is always already the history ofcapitalism). According to Deleuze and Guattari, it is not possible todeduce alliance from filiation in the primitive social machine. There,where kinship dominates, alliances are inextricably linked with filiativelines, so much so that more often than not ties of common descent dis-guise, not to say assimilate, structural ties that derive from marriage. Yet,what ensures the continuity of ties is not simply the transmission of a





patrilineage name. Complementing the vertical structure is a lateral onewhich is maintained through economic relations – i.e. the generalizedexchange and circulation of gifts. The gift extends the debt between thecreditor and the debtor, since it has to be reciprocated with interest,abstract and intangible as that may be (power is one such example). Seenfrom this perspective, then, filiation can be said to be administrative andhierarchical, while alliance is political and, more importantly for ourpurpose, economic. The coexistence of these two structures leads Deleuzeand Guattari to associate the primitive machine with primitive capital:

Filiation and alliance are like the two forms of a primitive capital: fixedcapital or filiative stock, and circulating capital or mobile blocks ofdebts. . . . While production is recorded in the network of filiative disjunc-tions on the socius, the connections of labor still must detach themselvesfrom the productive process and pass into the element of recording thatappropriates them for itself as quasi cause. But it can accomplish this onlyby reclaiming the connective régime for its own, in the form of an affinaltie or a pairing of persons that is compatible with the disjunctions of filia-tion. It is in this sense that the economy goes by way of alliance. (AO 146–7)

What this proposition means, in part, is that in a primitive commune,alliance neither depends on the manifest filiative lineages nor derivesfrom them. Alliance is first and foremost a matter of ‘cold economy’ (AO150). Although not based on the flow of money or anchored in a defin-able market, this economy is not void of surplus value; it is sustained bya surplus value of code at the level of the flows: ‘each detachment fromthe chain produces, on one side or the other in the flows of production,phenomena of excess and deficiency, phenomena of lack and accumu-lation, which will be compensated for by nonexchangeable elements ofthe acquired-prestige or distributed consumption type’ (AO 150). Themotor of the primitive machine is relations of exchange or, to be morespecific, the unsuspected dominance of relations of exchange: ‘if filiationexpresses what is determinant while being itself determined, allianceexpresses what is determinant, or rather the return of the determinantin the determinate system of dominance. . . . The primitive machine isnot ignorant of exchange, commerce, and industry; it exorcises them,localizes them, cordons them off, encastes them’ (AO 147–53).

The logical extension of these assertions is that capitalism is both ourundeniable history and our inescapable future; regardless of its time anddegree of manifestation, capitalism is a transhistorical system operativethroughout history and present across societies. It must be emphasizedthat the problem with Anti-Oedipus is not to claim that ‘primitivesocieties are fully inside history’ (AO 151), but to equate history in generalwith the history of capitalism. Take, for example, Deleuze and Guattari’sclaim that ‘[p]rimitive societies are not outside history; rather, it is capital-ism that is at the end of history’ (AO 153). The implication here is that





capitalism, much like the Oedipal fear of incest, is universal; it haunts allsocieties all the time: ‘capitalism has haunted all forms of society, but ithaunts them as their unifying nightmare, it is the dread they feel of a flowthat would elude their codes’ (AO 140). In A Thousand Plateaus, theseclaims are reiterated even more forcefully and more provocatively: ‘Thereis no universal capitalism, there is no capitalism in itself; capitalism is atthe crossroads of all kinds of formations; it is neo-capitalism by nature’(20). To say that capitalism has a universalizing potential is one thing; toclaim that it haunts all societies and that it constitutes the absolute truthof history is quite another thing.19 Interestingly enough, these claims ofuniversality are presented under the guise of an attentive or, better yet,responsible reading of Marx. Deleuze and Guattari’s assertion that it ispossible to enact ‘a retrospective reading of all history in terms of capital-ism’ (AO 153) contains unmistakable references to Marx’s regressive-progressive method. For Marx, monetary economy has always existed inpre-capitalistic societies, albeit in an ‘embryonic form’ (Capital 154). Assoon as two individuals come together in order to exchange their goods,the value form is present in germ: ‘it makes its appearance at an early date,though not in the same predominance and therefore characteristic manneras nowadays’ (Marx, 1977: 176). It seems only natural, then, that anaccount of the money-form starts with an analysis of the commodity-form: ‘we have to show the origin of this money form, we have to tracethe development of the expression of value contained in the value-relationof commodities from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline to the daz-zling money-form. When this has been done, the mystery of money willimmediately disappear . . . . The whole mystery of the form of value lieshidden in the simple form’ (Marx, 1977: 139). On more than one occa-sion, Deleuze and Guattari urge the reader to remember and to follow theteachings of Marx – ‘it is correct to retrospectively understand all historyin the light of capitalism, provided that the rules formulated by Marx arefollowed exactly’ (AO 140) – but provide a narrow interpretation andarguably a deterministic reading of Marx’s original formulations. Farfrom being an axiom about the universality of capitalism, Marx’s claimthat in every society capitalism exists in nuci is a statement about themutability of historical formations.20 More than anything else, Marx’sregressive-progressive method stresses the originality of the capitalistmode of production and emphasizes its structural difference from ante-rior modes of production.21 To argue otherwise is to fall prey to a deter-ministic perspective which assumes that the economic is an absoluteprinciple. In Hegemony and Social Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and ChantalMouffe succinctly point out the limits of such a deterministic position: ‘ifthis ultimate determination were a truth valid for every society, the rela-tion between such determination and the condition of making it possiblewould not develop through a contingent historical articulation, but would





constitute an apriori necessity. . . . The problem is that if the “economy”is determinant in the last instance for every type of society, it must bedefined independently of any specific type of society’ (1985: 98). For theconcept of the economic to be theoretically viable, it has to be consideredas a historically specific claim and not as an absolute premise. If it wereotherwise, the economic simply takes over the historical.22

But this is not all. In Anti-Oedipus, capitalism is not only a histori-cally universal determinant, but also and mostly an unsurpassable andimpenetrable system; i.e. a space from which nothing can free itself anda space which nothing can penetrate.23 For a critique of Deleuze andGuattari’s project to be judicious, one has to deal not only with the ten-ability of the idea that capitalism is a universal system of structuraldetermination or causality, but also with the feasibility of envisaging anall-encompassing, ever-engulfing, self-enclosed, auto-generating, self-perpetuating system; i.e. a closed or total system.

The problem of the total system is worthy of attention partly becauseit is endemic to methodological difficulties that are common in a varietyof fields today ranging from cultural studies to historiography. Even ina project as far-reaching as that of the Frankfurt school, and morespecifically in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic ofEnlightenment, this problem has not been satisfactorily resolved. WhatAdorno and Horkheimer saw in modern industrial society is a ‘totality’(136) characterized above all by its exceptional ability to control indi-vidual consciousness, manipulate needs, promote obedience and includesubmissions: ‘the might of industrial society is lodged in men’sminds. . . . The industry as a whole has molded men as a type unfail-ingly reproduced in every product. . . . What is decisive today is thenecessity inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not fora moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible’ (1982:127–41). For Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry constitutesa seamless web in which all forms of resistance and all possibilities forchange – being programmed by the system itself – are ultimately reified.However, this ‘administrative view’ of culture, as Adorno calls it else-where (1978: 127), poses more problems than it solves. For one thing,the type of domination described here, much like the one described inAnti-Oedipus, lacks historical specificity. The crisis that plagues indus-trial and post-industrial societies has its origin in man’s continuingattempt to control nature. As Rolf Wiggerhaus succinctly points out,Dialectic of Enlightenment rests on the assumption that ‘the decisiveevent in the history of human culture was not the development of themodern period and of capitalism, but rather humanity’s transition todomination over nature’ (1994: 334). But even if such a transhistoricalpremise is overlooked, the project of these two prominent members ofthe Frankfurt school remains vulnerable to criticism. There is something





stultifying about the unrelenting insistence on the total domination ofculture – its irreversible tendency to assemble, to evaluate and to organ-ize. The socio-economic system evoked in Dialectic of Enlightenment –much like the philosophical system adumbrated in Negative Dialectics24

– is totalitarian to say the least; it refuses to see in the negative impulsesthat are likely to emerge in and interfere with the system more than aninternal strategy generated by the system itself, which means that theproposed system is a total system. Fredric Jameson has aptly capturedthe scandalous implications of such a position: ‘the model of the “totalsystem” would seem slowly and inexorably to eliminate any possibilityof the negative as such, and to reintegrate the place of an oppositionalor even merely “critical” practice and resistance back into the system asthe latter’s mere inversion’ (1981: 91). Although capitalism is not voidof moments of dysfunctionality, these are always already neutralizedbecause the disruptive element is not subversive of capitalism but con-stitutive of its power. Although capitalism generates asymmetries, theseare always recouped within a position that inflexibly emphasizes closure.

Something similar is at work in Anti-Oedipus. Deleuze and Guattariare content with the assertion that dysfunctions are essential to thesystem’s ability to function: ‘The death of the social machine has neverbeen heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on the contrary, socialmachines make a habit of feeding on the crises they provoke, on the anx-ieties they engender. . . . Capitalism has learned this and has ceased doubt-ing itself. . . . [T]he more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, thebetter it works, the American way’ (AO 151). The notion that capitalismis at once intensive and expansive, but fundamentally unbalanced anddriven by internal contradictions, highlights the dynamic character of thesystem but does not emphasize its transformation. Deleuze and Guattari’sassertion that the ‘capitalist machine does not run the risk of becomingmad, it is mad from one end to the other and from the beginning, and thisis the source of its rationality’ (AO 373) implies, among other things, thatcapitalism neither encounters a terminal limit which compels it to with-draw nor reaches a state of a hysterical runaway which ultimately impelsit to self-destruct. Instead, capitalism relentlessly and endlessly expands,thus reproducing itself on an ever widening and more comprehensivescale. Nowhere, perhaps, is this position more provocative than in theimmanent axiomatic Deleuze and Guattari propose: ‘which is the revol-utionary path? . . . Is there one? To withdraw from the world market, asSamir Amin advises Third World countries to do?’ (AO 239). From thestandpoint of the immanent axiomatic, the question is purely rhetorical.Shunning or even denying the force and inevitability of the capitalistmachine is a curious revival of the fascist economic solution. The alterna-tive path is to go in the opposite direction; that is, to further the move-ment of the market or, as Deleuze and Guattari put it, of decoding and





deterritorialization. In other words, short of a viable solution, the onlycourse of action is to further deterritorialize capitalism because the flowis not deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, and therefore notschizophrenic enough.

However, the fact that capitalism has no limit – because its limit isimpassable, or so goes the argument – is a limit in and of itself. Thereproduction of capital, as Alain Bihr succinctly puts it in L’Économiefetiche, necessarily leads the economic towards its limit; that is, ‘it pushesit both and at the same time towards its finish (finition) – its realization,fulfillment, and completion – and its finitude (finitude) – its borders, itslimits’ (1979: 126). A system’s movement toward completion is inter-estingly enough ominous because this same movement brings with it thethreat of dissolution. As Jean Baudrillard rightly reminds us, ‘a systemthat approaches the threshold of perfection is a system that lies on thebrink of its collapse’ (1976: 11). For the Deleuzo-Guattarian model tobe theoretically viable, it has to reconceive immanence. The deploymentof the system produces unpredictable conditions which call for a specialattention not only to the reproduction of the system, but also the move-ment of its elements. As Henri Lefebvre reminds us, ‘reproduction doesnot occur without undergoing changes’ (1976: 90–1). What this means,in part, is that the continuity of the system does not reside in its iden-tity, but in the relation of its elements to their environment. Capitalismis an inherently unstable system which engenders a continuous interplayof its elements, but the structural imbalance is not the only thing thatdefines the system or determines its outcome. At least, systems theoryteaches us that the play of elements within a given system does not occurwithout consequences. In attuning its internal contradictions and repla-cing its elements, the system necessarily transforms itself. To say that thesystem purges itself of its excesses, overcomes its problems, and repro-duces itself on a larger scale is also to say that the system moves towardsgreater complexity and organization which not only revitalize it but alsoalter it. The system feeds, as it were, on its own problems, but in theprocess it changes. According to the central paradigm of systems theory,open systems are living systems which are continuously interacting withtheir environment; they are continuously breaking down componentsand shaping up others. In the process of reproducing itself, the systemundergoes modification, and transformation. Accordingly, one may saythat there is a tight connection between the reproduction of capitalismand its transformation, between invariance and change. Repetition ofthe same eventually leads to the introduction of difference, which is tan-tamount to saying that the survival of capitalism means continuity witha difference.25 The dysfunctions of capitalism sharpen the system andperfect it, but they do so only to the extent that they change it. In Whatis Neostructuralism?, Manfred Frank prompts us to sophisticate our





understanding of organic equilibrium by drawing our attention to theinnovativeness of organicity which he relegates to the interactionbetween simple essence and chaotic difference, between the repeatabil-ity of the identical and the same, on the one hand, and the occurrenceof difference and innovation, on the other hand – a repetition in whichunity is partially displaced: ‘Without a minimum order, the organismthat relies on its environment could not survive; without minimal pre-dictability of recurring (and thus regulated) experiences, none of uswould have the courage to begin the day. Now, all organic productionis accomplished within orders; however, this does not mean that it doesnot constantly alter, challenge, and rework the status quo of these orders’(1989: 340). By definition, a system can be controlled only withinlimits.26 This is the essence of the open system as Lefebvre unravels itslineaments: ‘The fulfillment of the system implies a limit the attainmentof which is impossible. . . . Society stands as an extremely complexwhole, as an open totality. . . . How is it ever possible to seize a systemor a sub-system without a critical distance, without an entry and an exit,without an opening?’ (1971: 122).27 The emphasis on the openness ofthe system makes it possible to propose a more viable understanding ofcapitalism, namely that capitalism has not only a tendency to envelopthe entirety of the social body, but also a proclivity to develop dysfunc-tionalities, to create deficiencies, to provoke deviations, and to generatecounter-processes which are both tendentious and consequential.28

Simply put, the logic of capitalism is neither static nor circular; it is alogic that is both ascending and spiral.29

University of Bahrain, English Department, Sakhir, Bahrain

Notes

For easy reference, the following abbreviations of works by Deleuze and Guattarihave been used: (AO) Anti-Oedipus (1983), (D&R) Difference and Repetition(1994), (EP) Expressionism in Philosophy (1990), (N) Negotiations (1995b),(TP) A Thousand Plateaus (1987) and (WP) What is Philosophy? (1994).

1 In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze observes that ‘concepts, with theirzones of presence, should intervene to resolve local situations. They them-selves change along with problems’ (1994: xx).

2 In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze describes the dynamics of desire incomparable terms: ‘Desire is never an undifferentiated instinctual energy,but itself results from a highly developed, engineered set up rich in interac-tions, a whole supple segmentarity that processes molecular energies’(Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 215).


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3 Philosophy, as Deleuze puts it in an interview with Didier Eribon, is ‘anopen system’ (N 30).

4 In Negotiations, Deleuze observes that he sees philosophy as ‘a logic ofmultiplicities’ (N 147).

5 In the aforementioned interview, Deleuze points out that what he andGuattari ‘call a rhizome is precisely one example of an open system’ (N 32).

6 The connection is far from being imposed. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuzeand Guattari write: ‘Transversal communications between different linesscramble the genealogical trees. . . . The rhizome is an anti-genealogy’(1987: 11).

7 For more on the rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, see Frank, Whatis Neostructuralism? (1989: 347–9), Buydens, Sahara (1990: 24–6),Parnet’s collaboration with Deleuze in Dialogues, 25–6, and Grossberg,‘Experience, Signification, and Reality’ (1982: 85–8).

8 Roberto Machado is right to point out that ‘Deleuze’s philosophy is not theannouncement of a new thought as much as it is the sum of the thought itbrings together in order to articulate, at one level or another, difference’(1990: 225).

9 In an essay on Deleuze entitled ‘La “Grande identité” ’, Pierre Zaoui arguesthat the common thread that runs through these critical endeavors is anattack on identity: ‘Pour Deleuze, il s’agit donc avant tout de briser le primatde l’identité et de ses avatars (le même, la représentation, le sense commun,etc.) à sense fin de faire émerger le fond et la surface de l’être commedifférence pure et comme répétition complexe de cette différence, c’est-à-dire comme multiplicités hétérogènes et comme devenir de ces multiplicités’(1995: 64–5).

10 Likewise, in Dialogues, Deleuze writes: ‘A Marxist can be quickly recog-nized when he says that a society contradicts itself, is defined by its contra-dictions, and in particular by its class contradictions. We would rather saythat, in a society, everything flees and that a society is defined by its lines offlight which affect masses of all kinds. A society, but also a collective assem-blage, is defined first by its points of deterritorialization, its fluxes of deter-ritorialization’ (1987: 135).

11 In a review essay on Costas Axelos entitled ‘Faille et feux locaux’, Deleuzefurther writes: ‘La dialectique hégélienne et encore marxiste évoluent dansles catégories de l’être, du non-être et de l’Un-Tout. Et que peut faire le Toutsauf totaliser le néant, et nihiliser le néant non mois que l’être? . . . Le toutn’est jamais conçu comme totalisation: ni à la manière platoncienne, commel’action ordonante d’un principe un sur le chaos, ni d’une manière hégéli-enne-marxiste, comme le processus d’un devenir qui recueille et dépasse sesmoments’ (1970: 347–9).

12 Equally pertinent is Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of the concept: ‘Theconcept is a whole because it totalizes its components, but it is a fragmen-tary whole’ (WP 16).

13 For Bataille’s original thoughts on Transgression, see his discussion of thetransgression of prohibition in The Accursed Share (1991: 89–119), hisanecdotal essay on limits and transcendence in Œuvres complètes (1970:VII, 445–52), and his elaboration on the notion of expenditure in Œuvres





complètes (1970: I, 302–20). For a brief discussion of transgression inDeleuze and Guattari’s project, see Lyotard, ‘Capitalism énergumène’(1972: 952–3).

14 Again, Foucault’s depiction of the complexity and even idiosyncrasy of themutative dynamics which transgression entails is worth quoting at length:‘Transgression contains nothing negative, but affirms limited being – affirmsthe limitlessness into which it leaps as it opens this zone to existence for thefirst time. But correspondingly, this affirmation contains nothing positive:no content can bind it, since, by definition, no limit can possibly restrict it.Perhaps it is simply an affirmation of division; but only insofar as divisionis not understood to mean a cutting gesture, or the establishment of a separ-ation or the measuring of a distance, only retaining that in it which maydesignate the existence of difference’ (1977: 35–6). On this point, see alsoFoucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972: 130–1).

15 The tendency of capitalism to transgress its own limits, to deterritorialize,so to speak, is already present in Marx’s original formulations. In Capital,Marx uses a telling metaphor to convey the inherent tendency of capital-ism continuously to transgress its limits and constantly to deterritorialize:he who accumulates money for the sake of money ‘is in the same situationas a world conqueror who discovers a new boundary with each country heannexes’ (1977: 231). If for Marx capitalism is a system that is defined bythe constant search and insatiable desire to accumulate value, for Deleuzeand Guattari it is a system that thrives on the continuous generation ofmachinic surplus-value. To say that ‘it is not for himself or his children thatthe capitalist works, but for the immortality of the system’ (AO 346) is tosay that capitalism serves no need other than its own need to survive and,further, that capitalism is a (de)coded and therefore unhampered flux.

16 In ‘What is a Dispositif?’, Deleuze argues that ‘modes of existence have tobe assessed according to immanent criteria, according to their content ofpossibilities, liberty or creativity, without any appeal to transcendentalvalues’ (1992b: 163). For more on immanence, see Deleuze’s ‘L’Immanence:une vie . . .’ (1995a).

17 For Éric Alliez, the immanent in Deleuze is closely associated with thevirtual. See in particular his Deleuze: philosophe virtuelle (1996: 12–13).

18 For Lyotard, Anti-Oedipus – as a book or a theoretical object in and ofitself – is conceived around this same law of value: ‘Dans la figure du Kapitalproposé par Deleuze et Guattari, on reconnaît bien ce qui fascine Marx: laperversion capitaliste, la subversion des codes, religion, pudeur, métier,éducation, cuisine, parole, l’arasage de toutes différences “fondée” au profitde la seule différence même: valoir pour être échangeable contre-. Différenceindifférente. Mors immortalis, disait-il’ (1972: 936–7).

19 On this point, see Girard, ‘Système du delire’ (1972: 961).20 See Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977: 121–4).21 See Goux, Symbolic Economies (1990: 64–87).22 Deleuze has been confronted on the question of history. In an interesting

interview, Eric Eribon criticizes him for refusing to ‘give history any decisiverole’ (N 30). To this charge, Deleuze replies: ‘History is certainly veryimportant. But if you take any line of research, for part of its course, at





certain points, it’s historical; but it’s also ahistorical, transhistorical. . . .“Becomings” are much more important than history in A Thousand Plateaus’(N 30). For Deleuze, as for Guattari, what define capitalism are the lines ofescape that traverse it and the becomings that run through it (see A ThousandPlateaus; 1987: 90, 216–27). The mainspring of their philosophy is a multi-plicity that has no unity. Thus, in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari arguethat ‘universal history is the history of contingencies, and not the history ofnecessity. Ruptures and limits, and not continuity. For great accidents werenecessary, and amazing encounters that could have happened elsewhere, orbefore, or might never have happened, in order for the flows to escape codingand, escaping, to nonetheless fashion a new machine bearing the determina-tions of the capitalist socius’ (1983: 140). Equally noteworthy is Deleuze andGuattari’s claim, in A Thousand Plateaus, that ‘History is always writtenfrom the sedentary point of view and in the name of a unitary Stateapparatus, at least a possible one, even when the topic is nomads. What islacking is a nomadology, the opposite of history’ (1987: 23).

23 This problem is all the more insistent because the system that Deleuze andGuattari envisage is more than merely an economic one. As early as Proustet les signes, Deleuze invokes a system which nothing can escape – ‘unsystème qui ne laisse rien hors de soi’ (1976: 64).

24 See in particular Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (1973: 33–57 and 135–207).25 In L’Économie fétiche, Alain Bihr observes that the ‘survival and continu-

ation of capitalism are contingent on its transformation. . . . Through aprocess that is at the same time complementary and competitive, evencontradictory, the reproduction of capitalism involves invariance, change,repetition, difference and repetition, from minimal difference (i.e., intro-ducing a variety to the dominant order) to maximal difference (i.e., thedisruption of existing forms)’ (1979: 41).

26 In A Reader’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Brian Massumi right-fully argues that no system is a closed system: ‘Stability is not fixed. It isvariation within limits. . . . A structure is a regularized unfolding of analeatory outside. The closest thing there is to order is the approximate, andalways temporary, prevention of disorder’ (1992: 57–8).

27 In The Survival of Capitalism, Lefebvre reiterates this same basic premiseeven more forcefully: ‘Those who believe in the system are making amistake, for in fact no complete, achieved totality exists. However, there iscertainly a “whole,” which has absorbed its historical conditions, reab-sorbed its elements and succeeded in mastering some of the contradictions,though without arriving at the desired cohesion and homogeneity’ (1976:10). For a more elaborate discussion of the concept of totality, see Best,‘Jameson, Totality, and the Postmodern Critique’ (1989). For a discussionof the open system with a specific emphasis on Deleuze, see Mengue, GillesDeleuze ou le système du multiple (1994: 66–9).

28 See Bihr, L’Économie fétiche (1979: 35–44).29 This is the essence of what Michel Serres calls ‘semi-cyclic causality’ (1968:29 20).


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Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and the total system

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