Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

Bifo:Think about the things that could serve the entire movement to

absorb the conceptual energy that comes from the Greens. It is useless

to think that we are militants: militancy per se will not save us.

GM:Yes, I understand perfectly. That is, the Green practice is much more

efficient and important than parliamentary representation might be ... That

is very interesting. Perhaps this is even a remnant, if you will, of your engage-

ment in the Autonomist movement.

Bifo:Certainly.

GM:Practice is therefore much more important than parliamentary represen-

tation. And I hope so, that is, given that representative democracy in America

is truly laughable, one must gather one’s strengths and say ‘But after all, pol-

itics does not exhaust itself in this’.

A bit more about the present now, that is, the present that goes beyond the

writing of Félix.In your book, you talk about Guattari’s reflection, in my

view very intelligent, inspired by Sartre, on groups of political activism or cre-

ation in which there might be a difference between the subjugated group and

the subject or creator group. For if a group is not subjugated, singularities are

expressed, but if the group is subjugated, singularities get reterritorialized,

there is even a fascist drift with collective activities. How does one refute this

tendency, that is, this group tendency to become subjugated? When does it

happen that singularities do not get caught in the fascist or neo-fascist

derivation? When one speaks of the old terrorism of the Red Brigades, or

when one speaks of contemporary terrorism, and we get beyond the manipu-

lations, the secret services, etc., there must be something there that allows

groups to become subjugated. How can one resist this tendency?

Bifo:You cited Sartre who spoke about ‘groups in fusion’ and of the

‘practico-inert’ in order to say that the group in fusion, which resem-

bles the subject group that Guattari discussed, is the dimension of the

collectivity in which the collective is a choice, or rather a desire, a

dimension in which desire is expressed. While the practico-inert is the

dimension in which group activity is suddenly a function of external

requirements and automatisms. The pressures of economic production,

for instance, or, and here I am getting to your question, the fear of

conflicts with the outside. Today I would say that the decisive element

in the question you have posed is that of identity, of the identitarian

obsession. We can say that the singularities create the collectivity in a

desiring manner until this collectivity essentially represents an opening

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