Dear Diary Moment 8/23/2020:
I have come to appreciate the import of Deleuze and Guattari’s materialism in the Anti-Oedipus in terms of its Marxist lean against Capitalism. It is, of course, rooted in French tradition via the haunting presence of Bergson. But that does not undermine the revolutionary nature of D&G’s recognition that our salvation in the face of Capitalism’s power lies in recognizing ourselves as nodes in a system of exchange –with each other through social production, the world, and the earth from which it sprang.
The brilliance of it lies in recognizing that this is where the Capitalists, FreeMarketFundamentalists, and Neo-Liberals/Neo-Conservatives go wrong (think republicans here): their failure to recognize their selves as nodes in a system. They, in their arrogance and the solipsism they share w/ humanity in general (due to our ontological status as objects occupying each other’s space), tend to see the system as something that exists purely for their benefit. This is why they tend towards seeing Capitalism as some kind of natural force in our lives: the very notion that their paid for right-wing tanks spin into the memes that tends to disseminate (via FOX News among others (throughout their ready and willing disciples. As a progressive in Nebraska, I hear it all the time: like some grating and nerve splitting refrain.
But once again, I have to imagine any possible apocalyptic scenario possible – that is apocalypse being rooted in a word that meant disclosure. And whether it’s a zombie apocalypse, as in The Walking Dead, or an environmental one such as portrayed in the movie The Road (that withering landscape), either way, what one can’t help but notice (that is if their looking (is the extent which the breakdown of social and political systems renders all arguments for FreeMarketFundamentalism moot.
And most telling here is the possibility of an environmental apocalyptic scenario (in a nod to the import of the Anti-Oedipus as concerns environmental issues). As catastrophic as that would be, I can’t help but relish the poetic justice of the Capitalist class (and their neo-liberal sycophants), in their failure to recognize their place within our shared system (their subject/object illusion/delusion addressed by many continental thinkers including D&G), to see everything they live by go down with that system and render all their natural force arguments for Capitalism the complete nonsense they are now.