Desiring-production

Desiring-production (French: machine désirante, "desire-machine") is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Œdipus (1972). They oppose the Freudian conception of the unconscious as a representational "theater", instead favoring a productive "factory" model: desire is not an imaginary force based on lack, but a real, productive force. They describe the mechanistic nature of desire as a kind of "desiring-machine" that functions as a circuit breaker in a larger "circuit" of various other machines to which it is connected. Meanwhile, the desiring-machine is also producing a flow of desire from itself. Deleuze and Guattari imagine a multi-functional universe composed of such machines all connected to each other: "There are no desiring-machines that exist outside the social machines that they form on a large scale; and no social machines without the desiring machines that inhabit them on a small scale." Desiring-production is explosive, "there is no desiring-machine capable of being assembled without demolishing entire social sectors" of the socius that inscribed it.

Deleuze & Guattari see a world full of productive 'factories' (Preston Dickinson, Factory, c. 1920)

The concept of desiring-production is part of Deleuze and Guattari's more general appropriation of Friedrich Nietszche's formulation of the Will to Power. In both concepts, a pleasurable force of appropriation of what is outside oneself, incorporating into oneself what is other than oneself, characterizes the essential process of all life. Similarly, a kind of reverse force of "forgetting" in Nietzsche and the body without organs in Deleuze and Guattari disavows the Will to Power and desiring-production, attempting to realize the ideal of an hermetic subject.

Thenceforth, while very interested by Wilhelm Reich's fundamental question — why did the masses desire fascism? — they criticized his dualist theory leading to a rational social reality on one side, and an irrational desire reality on the other side. Anti-Œdipus was thus an attempt to think beyond Freudo-Marxism; and Deleuze and Guattari tried to do for Freud what Marx had done for Adam Smith.

Published in the same year as Anti-Œdipus, Guy Hocquenghem's Homosexual Desire re-articulated desiring-production within the emergent field of queer theory.

Sources

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1972. Anti-Œdipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of L'Anti-Oedipe. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0-8264-7695-3.
---. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0-8264-7694-5.
Guattari, Félix. 1984. Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-055160-3.
---. 1995. Chaosophy. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1-57027-019-8.
---. 1996. Soft Subversions. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Trans. David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 1-57027-030-9.
Hocquenghem, Guy. 1972. Homosexual Desire. Trans. Daniella Dangoor. 2nd ed. Series Q Ser. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. ISBN 0-8223-1384-7.
Massumi, Brian. 1992. A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. Swerve editions. Cambridge, USA and London: MIT. ISBN 0-262-63143-1.
Holland, Eugene W.. 1999. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-11318-2.

Gilles Deleuze – Félix Guattari

Concepts and theories	Affect Arborescent Assemblage Body without organs Conceptual character Desiring-production Deterritorialization Difference Haecceity Immanent evaluation Individuation Line of flight Minority Molar and molecular Multiplicity Noosphere Plane of immanence Reterritorialization Rhizome Schizoanalysis Society of control Subjectification Transcendental empiricism Virtual

Works by Deleuze and Guattari	Capitalism and Schizophrenia Anti-Oedipus A Thousand Plateaus Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature Rhizome Nomadology: The War Machine What is Philosophy?

Works by Deleuze	Empiricism and Subjectivity Nietzsche and Philosophy Kant's Critical Philosophy Proust and Signs Nietzsche Bergsonism Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty Difference and Repetition Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza The Logic of Sense Spinoza: Practical Philosophy The Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault Dialogues² Superpositions Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation Cinema 1: The Movement Image Cinema 2: The Time-Image Foucault The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque Périclès et Verdi: La philosophie de Francois Châtelet Negotiations Essays Critical and Clinical Bartleby, la formula della creazione Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 Two Regimes of Madness

Works by Guattari	Psychanalyse et transversalité Molecular Revolution Desire and Revolution L'inconscient machinique. Essais de Schizoanalyse L’intervention institutionnelle Les années d'hiver Pratique de l'institutionnel et politique Communists Like Us Molecular Revolution in Brazil The Three Ecologies Cartographies schizoanalytiques Chaosmose Chaosophy Soft Subversions The Guattari Reader The Anti-Œdipus Papers Chaos and Complexity

Related topics	L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze La Borde clinic A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity

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Desiring-production

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