The Age of Cynicism: Deleuze and Guattari on the Production of Subjectivity in Capitalism
The Age of Cynicism: Deleuze and Guattari on the Production of Subjectivity in Capitalism
This chapter argues that Deleuze and Guattari's slogan, ‘desire belongs to the infrastructure’ of society itself, can be used to summarise their project. This slogan highlights an ‘immediate coincidence’ between the logic of late capitalist production and the production of the subjects who inhabit its universe. This idea is traced back to Marx, and in this way demonstrates an important affinity between Marx's work and Deleuze and Guattari's. But it is an affinity born of a link to a ‘minor’ Marx rather than a ‘major’ or doctrinal Marx, to use Deleuze and Guattari's own terminology. One may speculate that it is this Marx that Deleuze's fabled book on the ‘greatness of Marx’ would have revealed. The chapter offers a glimpse of this other Marx, and shows very clearly its significance to Deleuze and Guattari's work.
Keywords: desire, infrastructure, society, capitalist production, Marx
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