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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
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About the author
Félix Guattari
124 books442 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
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 - 4 of 4 reviews