The critique of representations in Félix Guattari between 1955 and 1968

Abstract

Revisiting Félix Guattari's writings up to 1968, one can observe the operation of a critique of representation that simultaneously affects both the theoretical and practical domains. Anticipating the schizoanalytic propositions of the unconscious as production, this critique is carried out through a reformulation of the problem of the unconscious and its relationship to the social and historical field. Although the institutional theme plays an important role within this critical economy, I argue that its significance is intimately connected to the elaboration of the problem of the relationship between History and revolutionary rupture in light of the critique of representation. Accordingly, the problems of History and its rupture will serve as an analytical lens through which concepts such as the subject group, the subjected group, and transversality will be examined. Finally, I seek to demonstrate how May ’68, understood as a global event, emerges as an objective problem that dramatizes Guattari’s concepts and reverberates throughout his collaborative work with Deleuze.