Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

coding or its axiomatic first determine [sic] within it a communica-

tion of unconsciouses. (Anti-Oedipus, 276)

The substance that circulates in the biological body is a semiotic sub-

stance that the genetic code comes to define. In the same way, there

circulates in the social body a substance able to stabilize human aggre-

gates for long periods of time. Refrains are the DNA of social bodies:

they act as organizing devices for the substance that circulates through

communication, combinatory styles that permit the recognition of an

individual, or a collective, as a singularity.

The concept of refrain is not far from what Gregory Bateson defined

as the ‘pattern which connects’ (Mind and Nature, 8–12):

Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns

are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrich-

ment of information that occurs when one description is combined

with another. In the case of rhythmic patterns, the combination of

two such patterns will generate a third. (Mind and Nature, 79)

The refrain is an assemblage of signs that function in order to give

to whoever assembles them the opportunity to come into contact with

other men, with the social world, with the cosmos. The refrain is the

recognition cipher, a sort of singular code for accessing the cosmos, a

vibration that assembles and connects with the surrounding vibrations.

In front of Tinguely’s cosmic cogwheels on display at the Pompidou

Centre exhibit, Félix stopped for many long minutes in melancholic

ecstasy. And then he said that the Tinguely cogwheels were a metaphor

for the refrain, devices that try to hook into the cosmos, to enter into

communication with the inaccessible.

There is no truth, then, if not singular. And the refrain is the activity

of connecting.

But what does all this have to do with ’68?

’68 here means the movement of rebellion against all kinds of bondage,

not only those of exploitation, of oppression, of imperialism, of the fam-

ily, but also and especially against the bondage of the Signified. ’68 freed

up the possibility of building desiring assemblages, of the signifying func-

tion of the assemblage:

If desire is productive, it can be productive only in the real world

and can produce only reality. Desire is the set of passive syntheses

that engineer partial objects, flows, and bodies, and that function as

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