Capitalism and Schizophrenia A two volume work, consisting of
Anti-Oedipus (1972) and
A Thousand Plateaus (1980),
Capitalism and Schizophrenia was an influential success; and, with its critique of psychoanalytic conformity, marked a significant step in the evolution of
post-structuralism. Its emphasis on the
nomadic nature of knowledge and identity, as seen for example in the authors' stress on the continuities between the human and the animal, also places it among the formative texts of
postmodernism. Stark and Laurie argue that
Anti-Oedipus also "responded to the failures of Marxist revolutionary movements to purge themselves of the vices they were seeking to overthrow, including prejudice, dogmatism, nationalism and hierarchies of power".
Foucault in his preface to the first volume called it "a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time".
Fredric Jameson praised it for re-introducing the flux of history into the static world of
structuralism. The book's celebration of the
anoedipal has also been seen as sketching a strategy for survival under the capitalism of
late modernity.
Kafka Unhappy with the treatment of
Franz Kafka’s work by scholars, Deleuze and Guattari wrote
Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature in order to attack previous analyses of Kafka which they saw as limiting him either "by oedipalizing and relating him to mother-father narratives—or by trying to limit him to theological-metaphysical speculation to the detriment of all the political, ethical, and ideological dimensions that run through his work". Published in 1975, their book sought to enter Kafka’s works through deliberately imprecise analytical modes such as flow and intensity, without the unnecessary burden of the type of analysis that relates works to past or existing categories of genre, type, mode, or style. The latter sort of analysis is related to what Deleuze and Guattari would call the "Major" or dominant literature, out of which they see Kafka emerging as a voice of a marginalized, minority people re-appropriating the major language for his own purposes, and stressing collective forces over the individual "literary master".
Nomadology: The War Machine This work, published in English translation in 1986 and included in the English translation of
A Thousand Plateaus in 1987, originally appeared in French as ''''. The work contrasts the "war machine" with the state.
What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari also wrote
What Is Philosophy? (1991) together. The work draws from
David Hume in order to construct a view of philosophy as both based on experience and a quasi-
virtual world. ==Personal/political==