fruit on a ground that no longer separates philosophy and other mech-
anisms, but allows philosophy to function precisely as a mechanism.^3
Anti-Oedipusbrings to conclusion the path that Deleuze had developed
while reading Nietzsche. In Nietzsche and Philosophy(1962), Deleuze
began to transfer thought from interpretation to production, from
work to pleasure, from responsibility to dance. But to complete this tra-
jectory of de-responsibilization, what was needed was the new notion
of the unconscious that Guattari had elaborated in his process of
taking distance from Freud. So then, from the theatre of traditional
philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis, the factory of Anti-Oedipus
emerged, a laboratory in which thought starts functioning as a schizo
Unconscious that does not pretend to pursue a pre-established pro-
gramme, but rather to dis-connect (de-lira), that is, to transfer its
reading from one semiotic plane to another.
Anti-Oedipusbrings to fruition Deleuze’s work on Nietzsche and
Guattari’s work on collectivities of enunciation.
What did Deleuze do without Guattari? He meandered nimbly
through philosophers with the intention of never contradicting them.
What is the point of contradicting someone’s thought, Deleuze
asked? Contradiction serves no purpose. This is not an issue of polite-
ness, but the simple fact that Deleuze wandered through philosophers
in search of elements that could function in a process of hetero-
geneities that will be machinically assembled. This is the philosophical
creation of concepts and the becoming-event of signs. This is why
Deleuze wasted no time on contradiction because he was interested in
understanding from the works of different authors what could be rein-
vented within the semiochemical process. And in the course of this
process Guattari appeared.
Deleuze blazed his own trail towards an interaction with Guattarian
molecular thought in which biological and specifically pharmacolo-
gical concepts proliferate virally.
The encounter between Deleuze and Guattari occurred in 1968
when, besides so many other interesting things that occurred, Deleuze
published his book Bergsonism.^4
It is precisely here, in the way that Deleuze reads Bergson and that
Guattari conceptualizes enunciation, as a mutagenic machinism, as a
viral pragmatism, that we can find the philosophical junction between
the two rhizomaticians.
Guattari’s convergent pathway comes from militant activity and ana-
lytical practice. On this level, Guattari applied a cognitive method that
is no longer dialectical, but essentially molecular.Kafka, Hypertext and Assemblages 979780230_221192_10_cha09.pdf 10/3/08 11:35 AM Page 97