Chaosophy - autonomous learning

empires). If the authors were merely saying: in capitalism, things
work this way, and in other types of societies, they work differently,
we would not have left the realm of the most tedious comparatism.
It isn't that at all, because they show "how things work differently."
Anti-Oedipus is also a general theory of society and of societies. In
other words, Deleuze and Guattari write about Savages and Barbarians
what until now ethnologists have not written.
It is certainly true (we didn't write it, but we knew it) that the
world of Savages relies on an encoding of fluxes: nothing escapes the
control of primitive societies, and if there is a slip-it happens-the
society always finds a way to block it. It's also quite true that the
imperial formations impose an overencoding on the savage elements
integrated into the Empire, without necessarily destroying the
encoding of the flux that persists on the local level of each element.
The example of the Incan Empire illustrates Deleuze and Guattari's
point of view perfectly. They say impressive things about the systems
of cruelty such as writing on the body among the Savages, about
writing's place in the system of terror among the Barbarians. It seems
to me that ethnologists should feel at home in Anti-Oedipus. That
does not mean that everything will be accepted right away. One
should expect a certain reticence (to say the least) in the face of a
theory that asserts the primacy of the genealogy of debt, replacing
the structuralism of exchange. One might also wonder whether the
idea of Earth does not somewhat crush that of territory. But all of
this means that Deleuze and Guattari are not taking ethnologists
lightly: they ask them real questions, questions that require reflection.
Is this a return to an evolutionist interpretation of history A
return to Marx, beyond Morgan Not at all. Marxism kind of
found its way to the Barbarians (the Asiatic mode of production)
but never quite knew what to do with the Savages. Why Because
if, in the Marxist perspective, the passage from barbarism (Oriental
despotism or feudalism) to civilization (capitalism) is thinkable, on
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