First meeting about "La Revolution Moleculaire" by F. Guattari

Today we have held the first meeting about the book "La Revolution Moleculaire" by Félix Guattari. 

Although the book was written in the 70's, it had not been translated until now. We have planned the meeting around for main questions:

- What is capitalism?

- What is an "agencement" (assemblage, in English)?

- What is desire?

- What is then, the molecular revolution?

In brief, our conclusion was that, Capitalism is a particular agencement, the agencement of our current time. Capitalism has the feature of deterritorialize flows, and then, whatever actant (person, object...) is changeable by other one: all is comparable and replaceable. Asignificant machines are also an important element in the ways Capitalism produces these deterritorializations and reterritorializations. Capitalism captures desire throughout particular asignificant machines.

About desire, it is a flow. Capitalism creates particular desire flows. But desires are not inside me: they are on particular angecements (socius). Thus, desires is inseparable from contexts. 

Agencements is a concept employed to explain desire. It is a practice, a relation between heterogeneus elements that share a territory and they have a become. In Deleuzian's terminology, agencements are the "concretization" of the potencial multiplicities of the immanent plane.

Finally, the molecular revolution is the way to subvert capitalism. It is the capacity to open a space of creation within these agencies (capitalism) in which we already live. But molecular does not mean the opposite to the norm, but it has to be with desire. 

Other important concepts we have discussed are diagramatic semiotic and significant: we tend to equate diagram with image, but an image represents both more and less than a diagram. The diagram picks up relations, without entering more specificity

Photo Credit: waltercolor