Deleuze and Guattari's Symptomatology of Power: Paranoia as a Contagious Disease

Abstract:

This article engages with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus to analyse fascism as an illness closely linked to the functioning of power. Instead of examining it as a historical phase or an ideology, my symptomatologic approach diagnoses fascism by focusing on the interaction between the social and the biological. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, I explain how fascism, which they align with paranoia, arises when our unconscious vital processes are stalled by social forces. Substantiating the analysis with Deleuze’s account of Nietzsche, this article investigates three aspects of fascist paranoia. Firstly, I demonstrate how fascist tendencies are produced by our capitalist social formation. By paying close attention to the contact between the mental and the bodily domain, I then explain the psychosomatic nature of fascism. Finally, my examination of ers an account of fascism’s contagious character.