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Oedipus is a limit. But "limit" has many different meanings, since it can be
at the beginning as an inaugural event, in the role of a matrix; or in the middle as
a structural function ensuring the mediation of personages and the ground of their
relations; or at the end as an eschatological determination. Now we have seen
that it is only in this last sense that Oedipus is a limit. This is also the case for
desiring-production. But in fact this last sense itself can be understood in many
different ways. In the first place, desiring-production is situated at the
limits of social production; the decoded flows, at the limits of the codes
and the territorialities; the body without organs, at the limits of the
socius. We shall speak of an absolute limit every time the schizo-flows
pass through the wall, scramble all the codes, and deterritorialize the
socius: the body without organs is the deterritorialized socius, the
wilderness where the decoded flows run free, the end of the world, the
apocalypse. Secondly, however, the relative limit is no more nor less
than the capitalist social formation, because the latter engineers (ma-
chine) and mobilizes flows that are effectively decoded, but does so by
substituting for the codes a quantifying axiomatic (une axiomatique
comptable) that is even more oppressive. With the result that
capitalism—in conformity with the movement by which it counteracts
its own tendency—is continually drawing near the wall, while at the
same time pushing the wall further way. Schizophrenia is the absolute
limit, but capitalism is the relative limit. Thirdly, there is no social
formation that does not foresee, or experience a foreboding of, the real
form in which the limit threatens to arrive, and which it wards off with
all the strength it can command. Whence the obstinacy with which the
formations preceding capitalism encaste the merchant and the techni-
cian, preventing flows of money and flows of production from assuming
an autonomy that would destroy their codes. Such is the real limit.
 

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... the ethnologists and the Hellenists think that a symbol is not defined by
what it means, but by what it does and by what is done with it. It always
means the phallus or something similar, except that what it means does
not tell what purpose it serves. In a word, there is no ethnological
interpretation for the simple reason that there is no ethnographic
material: there are only uses and functionings (des fonctionnements). On
this point, it could be that psychoanalysts have much to learn from
ethnologists: about the unimportance of "What does it mean?" When
Hellenists place themselves in opposition to the Freudian Oedipus, it
should not be thought that they put forward other interpretations to
replace the psychoanalytic interpretation. It could be that ethnologists
and Hellenists will compel psychoanalysts for their part to make a
similar discovery: namely, that there is no unconscious material either,
nor is there a psychoanalytic interpretation, but only uses, analytic uses
of the syntheses of the unconscious, which do not allow themselves to
be defined by an assignment of a signifier any more than by the
determination of signifieds. How it works is the sole question.
Schizo-analysis foregoes all interpretation because it foregoes
discovering an unconscious material: the unconscious does not mean
anything. On the other hand the unconscious constructs machines, which
are machines of desire, whose use and functioning schizoanalysis
discovers in their immanent relationship with social machines. The
unconscious does not speak, it engineers. It is not expressive or
representative, but productive. A symbol is nothing other than a social
machine that functions as a desiring-machine, a desiring-machine that
functions within the social machine, an investment of the social
machine by desire.
 

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That second one's the one I have. Lamentable. Their Anti-Oedipus is perhaps even worse.

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sus

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I couldn't take any of the ideas seriously in a book like that

Am I the only one who thinks covers are quite important, for music and books alike

The book is a world in black and white and the cover is the color tint and vibe you overlay on and interpret it through
 

sus

Well-known member
I have synesthesia though I'm a very special person so this may not extrapolate to anyone, it may be reserved for gifted synesthetic geniuses who are specially in touch with the written word and their own phenomenology
 

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There's one with tank treads on the front that's naff, but probably the best of the bunch. There's a German edition of AO that has a nice classic look too, like a 70s Philip Roth novel.

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