Schizoanalysis

From Geography

Schizoanalysis

Deleuze (in Doel, 2000, p. 131) speaks of schizoanalysis as method of “getting out of the association” and explains that this would mean to ”do away with the all of the One”, as the “method of between”. The “method of and” implies to “do away with Being” so that what finally remains is to”become constitutive between-two” (Deleuze in Doel, 2000, p. 131).

Kane (2009) gives a useful example of what schizoanalysis can look like practically: Fundamentally it is a sort of “collective analysis” to make groups or associations “question their composition”. From a given group a sample or subgroup is taken (individually varying affinity). The original group which is “often constituted on the basis of a preexisting institutional structure” and “various autonomous, self-organizing tendencies” often regards the own “goals” and means at hand as given (Kane, 2009). Reflection on the latter is not common. The subgroup constructs an “analytic machine” to organize and mobilize the original group. Kane (2009) compares the procedure to a “case-study of organizational dynamics immanent in the original group and its institutional infrastructure”, where reflection becomes a decisive additional means of the original group. Although the subgroup is not meant to “intervene” in the setting, being a part of the group the subgroup analyzing provokes interventionist effects. This is regarded as positive effect to discover new ways of organization (Kane, 2009). Kane even calls the schizoanalysis a kind of “curing the group of collective neuroses” and predicts that the group becomes “a destination of libidinal and social production”.

Abou-Rihan (n.d.) adds to this that from the perspective of ”schizoanalysis, there is no subject that imparts to another its accomplishments in knowledge, health, or experience”. The only thing that can be found is “an analytic machine that is […]a recurring factor of production among parts (associations, syntheses, subjectivities) functioning alongside one another and under specific clinical conditions”. The machines here thus resemble the two associations, or groups, described by Kane. This comes to surface very clearly by a quotation from Guattari and Deleuze: “That which makes a machine [the schizoanalytic sine qua non] are connections, all the connections that operate the disassembly”. Stepping back to analyze thus implies destructing an assemblage to see others and others in manifold (Doel, 2000, p. 131).

Reference

Abou-Rihan, F. (n.d.). Schizoanalysis. Retrieved on March 16th, 2012, on the psychoanalytic field: http://thepsychoanalyticfield.com/category/schizoanalysis/

Doel, M.A. (2000). Un-glunking geography. Spatial science after Dr. Seuss and Gilles Deleuze. In Crang, M. & Thrift, N. (Eds), Thinking Space. Routledge Taylor &Francis Group: London.

Kane, R. (2009). Schizoanalysis 3: notes on praxis. Retrieved on March 16th, 2012, on: http://planomenology.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/schizoanalysis-3-notes-on-praxis/

Contributors

Edited by Janna Voelpel s3015041JannaVolpel 12:46, 7 May 2012 (CEST)