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Mead and Bateson's work in South East Asia was the basis for the title of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus[1]. I was curious and went through the footnotes

Mead and Bateson's work in South East Asia was the basis for the title of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus[1]. I was curious and went through the footnotes of Anti-Oedipus and D&G say in Mead and Bateson's Balinese photographic survey that they describe a certain culture the mothers tease their sons when they are very young by pulling on their penises and then ignoring them, but I pulled the Mead and Bateson book out of the Brooklyn Public Library and could not for the life of me find evidence of what Deleuze and Guattari were talking about. Why would you title your book based on a 30+ year old half-heard tale about a foreign culture? I like Deleuze and Guattari, but the experience of trying to figure out the physical, material, biological, sociological source for the idea of 'Anti-Oedipus' itself left me disillusioned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus

mistersquid 7y ago
> Mead and Bateson's work in South East Asia was the basis for the title of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus[1]. Being fairly familiar with Delueze and Guattari's _Anti-Oedipus_, I don't think it's accurate to characterize the Mead-Bateson link as foundational. To that point, the title of the work is "Anti-Oedipus" and the subtitle is "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Indeed, the Wikipedia entry to which you link makes no mention of "Mead" and mentions "Gregory Bateson" in a sentence including twenty-three other names, which notably does not include "Sigmund Freud" against whom Deleuze and Guattari are writing and whose work is the (anti-)basis of the title Anti-Oedipus. Anti-Oedipilization is the formative root of Delueze and Guattari's schizoanalysis whose method is informed in its opening pages by Georg Büchners novella Lenz [0] Quoting (excerpt of Anti-Oedipus page 1): > A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world. Lenz’s stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Buchner. This walk outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with his pastor, who forces him to situate himself socially, in relationship to the God of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his mother. While taking a stroll outdoors, on the other hand, he is in the mountains, amid falling snowflakes, with other gods or without any gods at all, without a family, without a father or a mother, with nature. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_(fragment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_(fragment) [1] https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/commentary-on-d-gs-anti-oedipus-chapter-1-1-desiring-production-f23648202f79 https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/commentary-on-d-gs-anti-oedip... EDIT: fix citation
- bgilroy26 7y ago
  Thank you, this is very helpful!

mistersquid 7y ago

> Mead and Bateson's work in South East Asia was the basis for the title of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus[1]. Being fairly familiar with Delueze and Guattari's _Anti-Oedipus_, I don't think it's accurate to characterize the Mead-Bateson link as foundational. To that point, the title of the work is "Anti-Oedipus" and the subtitle is "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Indeed, the Wikipedia entry to which you link makes no mention of "Mead" and mentions "Gregory Bateson" in a sentence including twenty-three other names, which notably does not include "Sigmund Freud" against whom Deleuze and Guattari are writing and whose work is the (anti-)basis of the title Anti-Oedipus. Anti-Oedipilization is the formative root of Delueze and Guattari's schizoanalysis whose method is informed in its opening pages by Georg Büchners novella Lenz [0] Quoting (excerpt of Anti-Oedipus page 1): > A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world. Lenz’s stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Buchner. This walk outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with his pastor, who forces him to situate himself socially, in relationship to the God of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his mother. While taking a stroll outdoors, on the other hand, he is in the mountains, amid falling snowflakes, with other gods or without any gods at all, without a family, without a father or a mother, with nature. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_(fragment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_(fragment) [1] https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/commentary-on-d-gs-anti-oedipus-chapter-1-1-desiring-production-f23648202f79 https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/commentary-on-d-gs-anti-oedip... EDIT: fix citation

bgilroy26 7y ago
Thank you, this is very helpful!