Anti-Oedipus I, Logic of Flows

The opening seminars  at Vincennes (1970-71 & 1971-72) not only provided a site for the ground work from which Anti-Oedipus emerged, but also the transitional discussions with which the long sequence of ‘plateaus’ would be developed. As Deleuze indicates in the opening seminar, he had already spent the 1970-71 academic year outlining the ongoing collaboration with Félix Guattari. Thus, with the book’s publication quite imminent (appearing in early 1972), these sessions allow Deleuze to refine the ongoing developments with Guattari, most notably concerning the tasks of schizoanalysis and the intersection of the fields of political economy and psychoanalysis, as well as the continuing dominant and oppressive impact of this intersection both on society and subjectivity. Note that Deleuze and Guattari had only published one essay derived from this ongoing collaboration, titled ‘La synthèse disjonctive’, in L’Arc 43 (on Klossowski), 1970, 54-62, but with the publication of Anti-Oedipus, numerous interviews will appear in 1972, notably in L’Arc 49 (on Deleuze) and in La Quinzaine littéraire 143 (16-30 June 1972).

In his “Letter to a Harsh Critic” published in 1972 and that later appears at the start of Negotiations, Deleuze describes his collaboration: “And then there was my meeting with Felix Guattari, the way we understood and complemented, depersonalized and singularized – – in short, loved — one another. Out of that came Anti-Oedipus, and it takes things a step further.” What more can be said?