Guattari, "Refrain and Existential Affects" and "Architectural Enunciation"

Last week, we discussed two short pieces by Guattari, "Refrain and Existential Affects" and "Architectural Enunciation", both from his book Schizoanalytic Cartographies. As usual, we started with some questions:

- What is the importance of non-discursive components of subjectivity? Is Guattari's account of these non-discursive components convincing, or not?

- How are we supposed to understand Guattari's claim about affect as the motor of enunciation? Is that a convincing account? What is the relationship to aesthetics here (p.204)?

- What is the distinction between sensible affect and problematic affect (206, 211)?

- Is Guattari's critique of psychoanalysis convincing? Is his critique implying the need for the reformulation of psychoanalysis, or does it suggest moving towards aesthetic-ethical paradigms (204)?

- What is Guattari's account of subjectification (208, 212)? What are existential truths beyond common sense? What is Guattari's project directing us towards, overall?

In our conversation, we paid particular attention to Guattari's understanding of psychoanalysis. We were reminded by a group member of Guattari's own background in psychoanalysis (as a student of Lacan), and the fact that he was active in creating innovative therapeutic methods beyond the traditional Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis. We discussed Guattari's redefinition of unconsciousness and his rereading of traditional psychoanalysis, which plays a crucial part in his understanding of subjectivity. The therapeutic lens seems to be central to Guattari's work overall, and his emphasis on group therapy is in accordance with his general tendency to move away from an individualist logic towards a collective one, in a therapeutic as well as in a political sense. We speculated about the implications of his critique for contemporary forms of therapy, before moving towards the question of subjectification. Overall, Guattari challenges the idea of ego, both in the psychoanalytical and in the liberal-individualist sense. What is crucial to his account is his critique of capitalism and the logic of general equivalence, which closes down the possibilities of subjectivity due to its antagonistic logic. We can go beyond such limited perspective only if we turn towards the semiotic and non-linguistic elements of subjectification. Guattari's account of affect is an attempt to take into account non-discursive elements of subjectivity and of human experience more broadly. According to this view, simple affects are based on complex ones (somewhat contrary to our everyday understanding). This view takes into account the complexity of social actions and can be fruitful for thinking about complex political decisions such as elections etc. We ended our conversation by attempting to connect Guattari's arguments in these two pieces to Deleuze's book on Foucault, which our group has discussed in the previous weeks.