Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977

Everything is rational in capitalism, except capital or capitalism itself. The stock market is certainly rational; one can understand it, study it, capitalists know how to use it, and yet it is completely delirious, it is mad. That’s why we the rational always is the rationality of an irrational. Marx is fascinated by capitalist mechanisms precisely because the system is demented, yet works very well at the same time. Down below, there are investments of desire that cannot be confused with the investments of all kinds of libidinous-unconscious flows that make up the delirium of this society. The true history is the history of desire.

This collection of essays and interviews edited by Sylvere Lotringer and published in 1995, focuses on the French anti-psychiatrist and theorist’s work as director of the experimental La Borde clinic (“A Clinic Unlike Any Other”) and longtime collaborator with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

Chaosophy is a groundbreaking introduction to Guattari’s theories on “schizo-analysis”: a process meant to replace Freudian interpretation with a more pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality. Unlike Freud, Guattari believes that schizophrenia is an extreme mental state induced by the capitalist system itself, which keeps enforcing neurosis as a way of maintaining normality. Guattari’s post-Marxist vision of capitalism provides a new definition not only of mental illness, but also of the micropolitical means of its subversion.

This collection contains key essays, such as, “Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring-Machines” and “Capitalism and Schizophrenia,” co-signed by Deleuze (with whom he co-authored Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus ), and the perennially provocative “Everybody Wants To Be a Fascist.”