DOI: 10.4231/f082-p221
title: Anti-Oedipus I: Logic of Flows, Lecture 5, 25 January 1972

description: &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Deleuze Seminars&lt;/em&gt; is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During his first year at Vincennes, where Deleuze began in fall 1970, he taught two seminars, back-to-back in the same three-hour weekly sessions, one titled &ldquo;Logic and Desire&rdquo;, the other titled &ldquo;Spinoza&rsquo;s Logic&rdquo; (with no documents on either currently available). Hence, the first transcripts available correspond to Deleuze&rsquo;s second year at Vincennes as he continues to expand the concepts developed for &lt;em&gt;Anti-Oedipus &lt;/em&gt;(published in March 1972) but also with the long view of the second volume, &lt;em&gt;A Thousand Plateaus&lt;/em&gt;, in progress with F&eacute;lix Guattari. Focusing on this forthcoming book, Deleuze with Guattari develop only one text for publication corresponding directly to the seminar, their first jointly published essay titled &ldquo;La synth&egrave;se disjonctive&rdquo;, in the journal &lt;em&gt;L&rsquo;Arc&lt;/em&gt; 43 (1970), an issued dedicated to Pierre Klossowski.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In session 5, 25 January 1972, in yet another fragmentary session, Deleuze again mainly responds to students&rsquo; questions, first, regarding contrasts between community psychiatry versus institutional analysis, which includes group psychotherapy, shifting the focus briefly to reflect on which writers present a perverted text (Raymond Roussel, who invents a territoriality and group) versus a psychotic text (Antonin Artaud). Deleuze sidesteps another query about what authentic reterritorialization would be, asking instead whether deterritorialization might create a new earth, the transcript omitting his complete response. To another student who seems to see &ldquo;the real as sexed&rdquo;, Deleuze responds in agreement but also opens this possibility to bisexuality. To a proposal that one can still think difference as life and death, as real otherness, Deleuze considers the death drive as a Freudian trick, but he also argues that one would need to discuss the relationship of death and desiring machines. Ultimately Deleuze interprets the various student comments as agreeing with his own, i.e., desexualization as the operation whereby some portion of the libido is desexualized and moves over to the death drive, hence a middle term through which the libido passes while moving toward other investments. The session&rsquo;s fragmentary nature is confirmed as it ends in mid-sentence with a student speaking.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;No recording of this session is available currently. The original French transcript provided here, in Open Data Text (odt) format, is from the WeDeleuze site, also with the revised French transcription and new English translation in odt format. [WebDeleuze was founded by Richard Pinhas -- a student in Deleuze&#39;s seminars -- who, with the Deleuze family&#39;s support, developed transcripts and translations of many of the seminars.]&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Les S&eacute;minaires de Deleuze sont une collection d&#39;enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents compl&eacute;mentaires des conf&eacute;rences que le philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Gilles Deleuze a donn&eacute; lors de sa carri&egrave;re &agrave; l&#39;Universit&eacute; de Paris 8.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Cette s&eacute;ance 5, le 25 janvier 1972, est toujours fragmentaire s&rsquo;adressant &agrave; la schizo-analyse psychanalytique, et faisant donc implicitement r&eacute;f&eacute;rence &agrave; la deuxi&egrave;me et &agrave; la quatri&egrave;me section de &lt;em&gt;l&rsquo;Anti-&OElig;dipe&lt;/em&gt;. Deleuze interpr&egrave;te les diff&eacute;rents commentaires des &eacute;tudiants comme concordant avec ses perspectives, &agrave; savoir la d&eacute;sexualisation comme l&rsquo;op&eacute;ration par laquelle une partie de la libido se d&eacute;sexualise et passe &agrave; la pulsion de mort, d&rsquo;o&ugrave; un terme moyen par lequel la libido passe en se dirigeant vers d&rsquo;autres investissements. Le caract&egrave;re fragmentaire de la s&eacute;ance se confirme puisqu&rsquo;elle se termine en pleine phrase par la prise de parole d&rsquo;un &eacute;tudiant.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Seminar with only 9 sessions available, given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the Vincennes University, 1971-72. The fifth lecture available was presented on 25 January 1972.