Dear Diary Moment 8/20/2020:
“The fact that there is massive social repression that has enormous effect on desiring-production in no way vitiates our principle: desire produces reality, or stated another way, is one and the same thing as social production. It is not possible to attribute a special form of existence to desire, a mental or psychic reality that is presumably different from the material reality of social production.” –from D & G’s Anti-Oedipus
First of all, I apologize for repeating myself. I’m sure I covered a lot of this before. But this particular study point was particularly profound in not only that I found myself reading the original text as if it were a Steven King novel, but in the realization that once you understand this simple point, you have found an entry point to the rest of the book. This can be seen in the point they follow with: that fantasy is not some kind of direct expression of desiring production just because it happens to be psychic or mental. It is, rather, an expression of social production. And this can be seen in the attraction of porn which plays on fantasy in a very socially productive way, that is in terms of the Real.
But more importantly, it shows how and why people seem to seek their own oppression: desiring production leaks into the world, transforms into social production (it must to be of any use in the physical world: its new regime), and turns against any further intrusions from desiring production (anti-production (that might threaten the new regime.
(And we should note how D & G uses a hyphen with “desiring-production” as compared to “social production. It’s a postmodern technique of communication suggesting that while desire and production is one and the same thing, there is a separation that occurs with social production. In this lies the distinction between desire and interest.)
Anyway, that said, as I reach the end of this immersion in the Anti-Oedipus, I can’t help but think of the refrain Danny Glover repeated throughout the Lethal Weapon franchise:
“I’m too old for this shit!!!”