is the exclusive property of Marxism, their conjunction determines a generally
Marxist position, which I am going to use to elaborate a Marxist philosophy
of language. How do Deleuze and Guattari stand with respect to these theses?
The answer is: in a relation of distance or proximity, but always in a relation.
Let us take the strict theses. It is clear that Capitalism and Schizophreniaseeks
to provide an analysis, however surprising, of the functioning of capital, and
not only – as in Derrida – of a ‘new world order ’ that, of necessity, remains
vague. And a relationship to Marxism there most certainly is: a relation of
translation, or addition, which includes and focuses on what Marxism ignored:
the issues posed by madness, sexual orientation, and so on – issues which
are treated as socialquestions and not merely individual ones (for Deleuze
and Guattari, the wanderings of the delirious patient are not the product of
her individual anguish: the whole of history is the object of her delerium).
In a sense, Deleuze and Guattari are part of a tradition of extending Marxism:
they continue The Origin of the Familyby other means. This analysis of capital
involves, if not a programme capable of guiding an organisation, then at least
a lineor lines(as everyone knows, the concepts of plane of immanence, line
of flight, and rhizome are essential in Deleuze and Guattari).^19 These multiple
lines (here we have a difference with Marxism: the line of organisation, as
Leninism dictates, is one) found a politics of desire, often characterised as
anarcho-désirant. And, in truth, Marxists have difficulty making sense of this
(just as they previously found it difficult to approve of the concrete political
options of Deleuze and Guattari – e.g. their support for Coluche’s presidential
candidacy in 1981). But they will acknowledge that it is derived from an
analysis of capitalism. According to their usual tactics (we know their
pronounced hostility to metaphors), Deleuze and Guattari take the metaphor
of the body politic literally. And every reader of Hardt and Negri’s Empire^20
knows that this politics, far from being a curiosity of the immediate post-’68
period, has its extensions in the current conjuncture.
We also find in Deleuze and Guattari an overall conception of history, in
the typically Marxist form of a periodisation. Not, certainly, in terms of modes
of production, but of régimes of signs – a concept peculiar to them (which is
bound up with their concepts of flow and code). Here the shift, which is not
122 • Chapter Five
(^19) Cf. Lecercle 2002.
(^20) See Hardt and Negri 2000.