The Distinction Between Markets and Capitalism in Deleuze and Guattari’s “Capitalism and Schizophrenia”: Some Preliminary Thoughts

Deterritorial Investigations

A fruitful exchange via Twitter the other night has led me to type up some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for some time – namely, that the vision of capitalism presented by Deleuze and Guattari in the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia must be rendered distinct from simple market exchanges and systems, and that this distinction is implicit in the texts. Capitalism is indeed a system that does rely on market mechanisms, but they are mechanisms that are almost exclusively dominated by monopolistic competition. While this state of affairs is often depicted by CNN financial gurus and even Reason magazine pundits as being the ‘free market in action’, scratching past this surface level read reveals a system wholly contingent on the state’s intervention in order to prop itself up and reproduce relations equitable to itself. It is my contention that approaching Deleuze and Guattari’s depiction…

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Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? (2016)

Foucault News

Editor: I am delighted to announce that my long out of print 1989 book (originally published with Macmillan) is soon to be republished as an ebook.

Springer is also offering a special offer of 50% off all its Social Sciences, Philosophy, Education & Language ebooks until 17 October 2016,

Clare O’Farrell, Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? ebook, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming

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The controversial French thinker, Michel Foucault, was famous not only for the variety of his interests but also for his frequent changes of position. Clare O’Farrell, in a lively and lucid account argues that for all this diversity his work was held together by a coherent theme, namely the idea that philosophy should be practised as an historical inquiry into the limits of ordered experience. At the same time, Foucault’s work is situated in its intellectual and social context in France and striking differences between its French- and…

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1969 – Obsolete Communism – Daniel Cohn Bendit + Gabriel Cohn Bendit

In May 68 a student protest spread to other universities, to Paris factories and in a few weeks to most of France. A million Parisians marched; ten million workers went out on strike. At the center of the fray was Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Obsolete Communism was written in 5 weeks immediately after the state regained control, and no account of May 68 can match its immediacy or urgency.

Re-published by AK Press on May 1, 2000.