Synopses & Reviews
This book offers a detailed look at Guattari's working methods in transdisciplinary experimentation from the time of his youth to his final years.His youthful adventures in the post-war Youth Hostels movement, decisive contact with institutional pedgagogy and the mentor figures of Fernand Oury and his brother Jean, give rise to an extraordinary penchant for organizational innovation in his life at Clinique de La Borde in Cour-Cheverny, France, and collective forms of expression manifested in publishing ventures and diverse collaborative research formations.Guattari's highly original and hitherto neglected theories of a-signifyng semiotics and minor cinema are explored in depth with reference to the political goals of the critique of infoculture and the molecular revolutionary tendencies that are released in the search for a people to come.Guttari's engagement with eco-politics and art practices displays his originality as a political thinker and is firmly grounded on his exporation of how subjectivity is produced inlate capitalism.Guattari's ground-breaking conception of transversal politics is fully explored in relation to Michel Foucault's sense of the concept and its role in global political theory.
Review
'A brilliant and long overdue book. It shows once and for all that Guattari was not merely one half of one of the twentieth century's greatest intellectual collaborations, but also a powerful thinker in his own right who did a great deal to transform the way we think about the relation between individuals and society.'
Ian Buchanan, Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, founding editor of the Deleuze Studies Journal
Synopsis
This is an introduction to the thought of the radical French thinker Felix Guattari. It is ideal for undergraduates and anyone studying political and cultural theory.
Guattari's main works were published in the 1970s and 1980s. His background was in psychoanalysis -- he was trained by Lacan and he practised as a psychoanalyst for much of his life. He developed a distinctive psychoanalytic method informed always by his revolutionary politics.
Guattari was actively involved in numerous political movements, from Trotskyism to Autonomism, tackling ecological and sexual politics along the way. A true believer in collectivity, much of his work was written in collaboration, most famously with Gilles Deleuze, with whom he wrote the hugely influential books Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. He also wrote with Antonio Negri and others.
This accessible introduction explores his highly original ideas -- including his ground-breaking conception of 'transversal politics' -- and the impact his concern with subjectivity had on wider political theory.
Synopsis
Praise for Gary Genosko's previous book, Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction:
'Genosko skillfully presents the semiotic, psychiatric, and political underpinnings of Guattari's philosophy and activism.'
Brian Massumi, University of Montreal
This is an introduction to the thought of the radical French thinker F lix Guattari. It is ideal for undergraduates and anyone studying political and cultural theory.
Guattari's main works were published in the 1970s and 1980s. His background was in psychoanalysis -- he was trained by Lacan and he practised as a psychoanalyst for much of his life. He developed a distinctive psychoanalytic method informed always by his revolutionary politics.
Guattari was actively involved in numerous political movements, from Trotskyism to Autonomism, tackling ecological and sexual politics along the way. A true believer in collectivity, much of his work was written in collaboration, most famously with Gilles Deleuze, with whom he wrote the hugely influential books Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. He also wrote with Antonio Negri and others.
This accessible introduction explores his highly original ideas -- including his ground-breaking conception of 'transversal politics' -- and the impact his concern with subjectivity had on wider political theory.
Synopsis
Outstanding contributors include Pierre Macherey, Charles Wolfe, Alex Callinicos and Judith Revel
About the Author
Gary Genosko is currently Canada Research Chair in Technoculture at Lakehead University in Canada. He is the author of two books on Felix Guattari, An Aberrant Introduction (2002) and The Party without Bosses: Lesson on Anti-Capitalism from Felix Guattari and Lula da Silva (2003). He has also edited The Guattari Reader (1996) and Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments, 3 vols (2001).