towards the other, the pleasure of discovering the other as a potential-
ity of your own being, as consciousness ... Up to this point, all is well.
However, then there is a phase, not necessarily a chronological ques-
tion, but a different modality of what Deleuze and Guattari call
‘becoming other’, in which you find in the other a reinforcement of
your own identity. You are equal to me, and therefore we can together
set ourselves against whomever, in our conflicts, is the other. Or you
confirm my identity that I know, as a worker, as a male ...GM:Or female ...Bifo:Of course, as well. Sometimes the confirmation of identity is
a confirmation of one’s own dependence, of one’s own weakness, of a
condition of subjection that is deeply inscribed in my being that I am
no longer able to recognize myself in anything but my own condition
of dependence. So here, I would say that the passage from the group in
fusion to the practico-inert has identitarian forces as the decisive
element. Now is there a cure for a passage of this sort? I would say we
have to be cured from the identitarian need, which is deeply inscribed
in masculine, patriarchal history. That is, I know very well that there is
a need for identity also for women, and I see it, I understand it and feel
it, but it seems to me that the social sanction on identity is essentially
a masculine phenomenon; it’s from the male that the necessity to sta-
bilize identity as a positive element arises, as an element that in a
certain way constitutes an acquisition that it’s frightening to lose. On
the female side, identity is simply a lifeline, a way not to lose every-
thing, while the female element is essentially dispersive, opening itself to
the other. I don’t mean here, I am not speaking about men and women,
but rather about the male and female as cultural qualities, as modes of
being, also as a way of seeing the other. So here, I have the impression
that the problem of keeping open the ability to see the other is the same
as the ability to reduce the identiarian anxiety. Reducing this anxiety
is a problem perhaps that does not belong essentially to politics, but
belongs rather, not to psychotherapy, but to schizoanalysis! What is
schizoanalysis? It’s the capacity to use the tools from politics, psycho-
therapy, art, language, everything, in order to succeed in keeping open
the capacity to be other, to become other, to take pleasure in the other.
Now that thing, that passage is one that is made possible through an
action of an essentially therapeutic character. But it is also the deep core
of politics ... and it is a cure for the increasing rigidity of Western politics.
And not only Western, naturally.Interview with Franco Berardi (Bifo) 1659780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 165