1001Philosophers

Felix Guattari 1930 – 1992

Pierre-Felix Guattari was a French psychoanalyst, political activist, and philosopher and the long-time collaborator of Gilles Deleuze. After training as a psychoanalyst at the experimental La Borde clinic, he joined Deleuze in producing the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, that have become reference texts of late twentieth-century continental philosophy. His own writings, including Chaosmosis and The Three Ecologies, develop a philosophy of subjectivity, ecology, and political activism that anticipated many themes of later environmental thought.

Key facts

Nationality
French
Era
Contemporary
Movements
Post-Structuralism, Continental

Selected quotes

  • Attributed to Felix Guattari:

    “There is no escape from desire; only a transformation of its arrangements.”

  • Attributed to Felix Guattari:

    “The unconscious is a factory, not a theater.”

  • Attributed to Felix Guattari:

    “Subjectivity is fabricated, not given.”

  • Attributed to Felix Guattari:

    “There are three ecologies: of the environment, of social relations, and of human subjectivity.”

  • Attributed to Felix Guattari:

    “The map is open, connectable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification.”