The Little Hans Assemblage
RIS ID
80595
Link to publisher version (URL)
Abstract
There is no straightforward way to say to what schizoanalysis is. It can’t even be said that it is wholly opposed to psychoanalysis. In fact, Deleuze and Guattari only offer to re-engineer psychoanalysis, not repudiate it or replace it. The problem isn’t so much that the question isn’t answered by Deleuze and Guattari or that it is somehow unanswerable; rather, the problem is that it has several answers. Unwilling to provide any kind of “formula” or “model” that would enable us to simply “do” schizoanalysis as a tick-box exercise in which everything relates inexorably to one single factor (e.g., the family), which is what they thought psychoanalysis had become, Deleuze and Guattari observe a quite deliberate strategy of providing multiple answers to the questions their work raises. Deleuze and Guattari’s elaborate system of new terms and concepts is of a piece with this strategy of providing multiple answers to basic questions and should be seen as deliberately guarding against the reductive tendencies of the “practically-minded.” This isn’t to say schizoanalysis is either incoherent or impractical, as many of its detractors are quick to claim, but to insist that its practice cannot be divorced from its theory and that to engage with one, it is necessary to engage with the other.
Publication Details
Buchanan, I. M. (2013). The Little Hans Assemblage. Visual Arts Research, 39 (1), 9-17.