Chaosophy - autonomous learning

operation he had the year before. More than one of his lungs had to
be removed. As a result, his tuberculosis worsened and chronically
weakened his respiratory system until he died. He was exhausted
in the full sense of the term by which he will later characterize the
work of Samuel Beckett-an exhaustion which offered an opening
and allowed for a true meeting, a presence for the other and a
fruitful relationship. Meeting Guattari would be crucial for reviving
his vital forces.
As for Guattari, he disclosed his own weaknesses to his new
friend, revealing aspects of the inhibition which led to his "extremist
misfiring."2 The basis for this writing disorder, he admitted, was a
lack of consistent work and theoretical readings, and a fear of diving
back into what he had left fallow for too long. To these failings he
added a complicated personal history with an upcoming divorce,
three children, the clinic, conflicts of all kinds, militant groups,
the FGERl ... 3 As for the theoretical elaboration itself, Guattari
considered "concepts mere utensils, gadgets."4 For example, he
used the concept of "vacuolar group" as a way of bringing out
something less oppressive within militant organizations, also more
conducive to rethinking singular phenomena. Guattari invented his
concept of "transversality" in order to unsettle so-called "democratic
centralism"5 in favor of "effectiveness and a breathing."6
From their first encounter, both of them immediately identified
their critical target: "the Oedipal triangle" and the familial reduction
brought about by psychoanalytical discourse, the critique of which
became the core of Anti-Oedipus, published in 1972. From the
beginning their relation was located at the heart of theoretical
stakes, based on an immediate friendship and intellectual affinity
with an equal rigor on both sides. However, this friendship would
never be fusional, and the use of vous would always be de rigueur
between them, although they otherwise readily used the tu form.
Coming from two different galaxies, each respected in their difference