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Molecular Revolution in Brazil (Semiotext
Yes, I believe that there is a multiple people, a people of mutants, a people of potentialities that appears and disappears, that is embodied in social, literary, and musical events.... I think that we're in a period of productivity, proliferation, creation, utterly fabulous revolutions from the viewpoint of this emergence of a people. That's molecular revolution: it isn't a slogan or a program, it's something that I feel, that I live....--from Molecular Revolution in Brazil
Following Brazil's first democratic election after two decades of military dictatorship, French philosopher F lix Guattari traveled through Brazil in 1982 with Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik and discovered an exciting, new political vitality. In the infancy of its new republic, Brazil was moving against traditional hierarchies of control and totalitarian regimes and founding a revolution of ideas and politics. Molecular Revolution in Brazil documents the conversations, discussions, and debates that arose during the trip, including a dialogue between Guattari and Brazil's future President Luis Ignacia Lula da Silva, then a young gubernatorial candidate. Through these exchanges, Guattari cuts through to the shadowy practices of globalization gone awry and boldly charts a revolution in practice.Assembled and edited by Rolnik, Molecular Revolution in Brazil is organized thematically; aphoristic at times, it presents a lesser-known, more overtly political aspect of Guattari's work. Originally published in Brazil in 1986 as Micropolitica: Cartografias do desejo, the book became a crucial reference for political movements in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. It now provides English-speaking readers with an invaluable picture of the radical thought and optimism that lies at the root of Lula's Brazil. F lix Guattari (1930-19920), post-'68 French psychoanalyst and philosopher, is the author of Anti-Oedipus (with Gilles Deleuze), The Anti-Oedipus Papers (Semiotext(e), 2006), and other books. Semiotext(e) has published the first two volumes of his complete essays, Chaosophy (1995) and Soft Subversions (1996), and will publish the final volume, Chaos and Complexity, in 2008. Suely Rolnik is a psychoanalyst, cultural critic, and curator who lives and works in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was a close collaborator of Guattari during her exile in Paris from the military dictatorship in Brazil.
Following Brazil's first democratic election after two decades of military dictatorship, French philosopher F lix Guattari traveled through Brazil in 1982 with Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik and discovered an exciting, new political vitality. In the infancy of its new republic, Brazil was moving against traditional hierarchies of control and totalitarian regimes and founding a revolution of ideas and politics. Molecular Revolution in Brazil documents the conversations, discussions, and debates that arose during the trip, including a dialogue between Guattari and Brazil's future President Luis Ignacia Lula da Silva, then a young gubernatorial candidate. Through these exchanges, Guattari cuts through to the shadowy practices of globalization gone awry and boldly charts a revolution in practice.Assembled and edited by Rolnik, Molecular Revolution in Brazil is organized thematically; aphoristic at times, it presents a lesser-known, more overtly political aspect of Guattari's work. Originally published in Brazil in 1986 as Micropolitica: Cartografias do desejo, the book became a crucial reference for political movements in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. It now provides English-speaking readers with an invaluable picture of the radical thought and optimism that lies at the root of Lula's Brazil. F lix Guattari (1930-19920), post-'68 French psychoanalyst and philosopher, is the author of Anti-Oedipus (with Gilles Deleuze), The Anti-Oedipus Papers (Semiotext(e), 2006), and other books. Semiotext(e) has published the first two volumes of his complete essays, Chaosophy (1995) and Soft Subversions (1996), and will publish the final volume, Chaos and Complexity, in 2008. Suely Rolnik is a psychoanalyst, cultural critic, and curator who lives and works in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was a close collaborator of Guattari during her exile in Paris from the military dictatorship in Brazil.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 31, 2007
About the author
Félix Guattari
126 books464 followersPierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy. Guattari is best known for his intellectual collaborations with Gilles Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 6, 2026
MOLECULAR REVOLUTION IN BRAZIL BABY LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO
Finally finished this masterpiece of a book, and let me tell you was it a journey. I really didn't expect it to be this long when I first got it but hey appearances fool don't they. This book is so underrated I'm not even sure where to begin, it's basically the written form of Guattarian praxis, you learn more about the practicality and theoretical potential of schizoanalysis in this book than in Anti Oedipus. And not to mention it's very simple and easy to understand in the most part, a lot of parts drag on for a bit and are a bit redundant but I felt as though I was there in Brazil, in the Folha de Sao Paolo with Guattari doing molecular revolution. And to think that Guattari and Lula knew each other before one of them became president of Brazil.
Honestly it's a must read for any Deleuze and Guattari enjoyer and if you think you know Schizoanalysis without reading this book, no you don't, I'm officially gatekeeping it behind having read this 400 page masterpiece.
Jokes aside it really does help better visualise what it means to do schizoanalysis and the various examples he illustrates not only in personal analysis with patients but on a more molar-political level give you a more concrete picture with real life examples that helps you reach out of that little bubble of theoretical language that often ends up trapping these concepts and relegating them to the realm of theory alone. I think this book teaches so much and yet it's somehow irrelevant in the grander scheme of Deleuze and Guattari literature. It especially shows how much further the theory goes beyond Guattari himself, how the Brazilian people take it and use it for their own experiences taking it beyond the horizon that Guattari initially set. The critiques are also just as important, the challenges that Guattari and Suely Rolnik face in the Brazilian journey end up actually strengthening the power of the book itself. It also provides some really key insights that so far I haven't found in AO or ATP and there's even a little appendix of terms at the end of the book explaining the terminology.
Probably the most expanded on ideas are the ones surrounding the psychoanalytic part of the AO and ATP philosophy (it is a book about Guattari after all), especially the whole subjectivity part which really takes form in this book in a way which makes its relation to desire and the machinic unconscious quite clear and palatable.
Anyway, read this book you won't regret it i hope. Definitely one of my favourites
Finally finished this masterpiece of a book, and let me tell you was it a journey. I really didn't expect it to be this long when I first got it but hey appearances fool don't they. This book is so underrated I'm not even sure where to begin, it's basically the written form of Guattarian praxis, you learn more about the practicality and theoretical potential of schizoanalysis in this book than in Anti Oedipus. And not to mention it's very simple and easy to understand in the most part, a lot of parts drag on for a bit and are a bit redundant but I felt as though I was there in Brazil, in the Folha de Sao Paolo with Guattari doing molecular revolution. And to think that Guattari and Lula knew each other before one of them became president of Brazil.
Honestly it's a must read for any Deleuze and Guattari enjoyer and if you think you know Schizoanalysis without reading this book, no you don't, I'm officially gatekeeping it behind having read this 400 page masterpiece.
Jokes aside it really does help better visualise what it means to do schizoanalysis and the various examples he illustrates not only in personal analysis with patients but on a more molar-political level give you a more concrete picture with real life examples that helps you reach out of that little bubble of theoretical language that often ends up trapping these concepts and relegating them to the realm of theory alone. I think this book teaches so much and yet it's somehow irrelevant in the grander scheme of Deleuze and Guattari literature. It especially shows how much further the theory goes beyond Guattari himself, how the Brazilian people take it and use it for their own experiences taking it beyond the horizon that Guattari initially set. The critiques are also just as important, the challenges that Guattari and Suely Rolnik face in the Brazilian journey end up actually strengthening the power of the book itself. It also provides some really key insights that so far I haven't found in AO or ATP and there's even a little appendix of terms at the end of the book explaining the terminology.
Probably the most expanded on ideas are the ones surrounding the psychoanalytic part of the AO and ATP philosophy (it is a book about Guattari after all), especially the whole subjectivity part which really takes form in this book in a way which makes its relation to desire and the machinic unconscious quite clear and palatable.
Anyway, read this book you won't regret it i hope. Definitely one of my favourites
October 13, 2010
I really like the part where Guattari is talking about the distinction between minority and marginilized group, I also like the glossary at the back.
November 14, 2018
My first Guattari. I wonder what kind of postscript would he add nowadays...
July 23, 2021
"Yes, I believe that there is a multiple people, a people of mutants, a people of potentialities that appears and disappears, that is embodied in social events, literary events, and musical events" (Guattari, pp. 456-457).
Suely Rolnik collected transcripts and letters and other snippets from her travels and conversations and correspondence with Felix Guattari and organized them topically -- and quite impressively -- in this wide-ranging book that, all the same, flows well. Guattari primarily argues for the crucial molecular revolutions: the heterogeneous, differentiating, singularizing imaginings and enactments of ways of thinking and living that resist the dictates of Integrated World Capitalism, which otherwise permeates every aspect of everyone's lives, and even into our dreams. "The production of subjectivity is possibly more important than any other kind of production," he claims (36). Thus "any revolution on a macropolitical level also concerns the production of subjectivity" (42).
Once I got past the demoralizingly slow start, I enjoyed the book. It was often repetitive and occasionally irrelevant to my work -- I'm not a practicing psychoanalyst, for instance -- but more often, I found it stunningly relevant to all of my various, seemingly disparate writing projects -- on representation in popular culture, on the possibilities for social change in narrative nonlinear temporalities, on the relevance of the humanities and the cultural to social change itself, and, of course, on social movements.
It probably took me 30 hours to read the entire book.
Suely Rolnik collected transcripts and letters and other snippets from her travels and conversations and correspondence with Felix Guattari and organized them topically -- and quite impressively -- in this wide-ranging book that, all the same, flows well. Guattari primarily argues for the crucial molecular revolutions: the heterogeneous, differentiating, singularizing imaginings and enactments of ways of thinking and living that resist the dictates of Integrated World Capitalism, which otherwise permeates every aspect of everyone's lives, and even into our dreams. "The production of subjectivity is possibly more important than any other kind of production," he claims (36). Thus "any revolution on a macropolitical level also concerns the production of subjectivity" (42).
Once I got past the demoralizingly slow start, I enjoyed the book. It was often repetitive and occasionally irrelevant to my work -- I'm not a practicing psychoanalyst, for instance -- but more often, I found it stunningly relevant to all of my various, seemingly disparate writing projects -- on representation in popular culture, on the possibilities for social change in narrative nonlinear temporalities, on the relevance of the humanities and the cultural to social change itself, and, of course, on social movements.
It probably took me 30 hours to read the entire book.
Want to Read
June 29, 2017I lent my copy.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews