On some aspects of a semiotics of the non-identical: Deleuze, Guattari and Adorno

Abstract

In this article I propose to use the philosopher Theodor Adorno’s concept of the non-identical to explore the semiotic project that Félix Guattari developed alone and with Gilles Deleuze. I begin by recalling the principles, concepts and aims of schizoanalysis, as theorized by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus. Schizoanalysis is a militant practice that seeks to analyse the productivity of desire in the unconscious and its multiple points of applications in the social world. Alongside his collaboration with Deleuze, Guattari practised schizoanalysis as part of his clinical work at the La Borde Clinic. Initially inspired by Hjelmslevian semiotics, Guattari then proposed his own classification of signs, better suited to analysing the multiple components of subjectivity, desire and the unconscious in relation to capitalism. Deleuzo-Guattarian schizoanalysis combined with the more specifically Guattarian semiotics is from the beginning oriented towards the nonidentical. It offers conceptual and analytical tools for identifying and mapping the heterogeneity of the most singular semiotic universes within the media, art, science and, more broadly, social life.