Lines of Flight

by Felix Guattari

Published 17 December 2015
As an analyst, philosopher and militant, Félix Guattari anticipated decentralized forms of political activism that have become increasingly evident around the world since the events of Seattle in 1999. Lines of Flight offers an exciting introduction to the sometimes difficult and dense thinking of an increasingly important 20th century thinker.

An editorial introduction by Andrew Goffey links the text to Guattari’s long-standing involvement with institutional analysis, his writings with Deleuze, and his consistent emphasis on the importance of group practice - his work with CERFI in the early 1970s in particular. Considering CERFI’s work on the ‘genealogy of capital’ it also points towards the ways in which Lines of Flight anticipates Guattari’s later work on Integrated World Capitalism and on ecosophy.

Providing a detailed and clearly documented account of his micropolitical critique of psychoanalytic, semiological and linguistic accounts of meaning and subjectivity, this work offers an astonishingly fresh set of conceptual tools for imaginative and engaged thinking about capitalism and effective forms of resistance to it.

Schizoanalytic Cartographies represents Felix Guattari's most important later work and the most systematic and detailed account of his theoretical position and his therapeutic ideas. Guattari sets out to provide a complete account of the conditions of 'enunciation' - autonomous speech and self-expression - for subjects in the contemporary world. Over the course of eight closely argued chapters, he presents a breathtakingly new reformulation of the structures of individual and collective subjectivity. Based on research into information theory and new technologies, Guattari articulates a vision of a humanity finally reconciled with its relationship to machines. Schizoanalytic Cartographies is a visionary yet highly concrete work, providing a powerful vantage point on the upheavals of our present epoch, powerfully imagining a future 'post-media' era of technological development. This long overdue translation of this substantial work offers English-speaking readers the opportunity finally to fully assess Guattari's contribution to European thought.