Slavoj Zizek's Organs without Bodies (OwB) is monograph on the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.  Why a book on Deleuze?  Deleuze's thinking and terminology are a central reference point for contemporary Continental Philosophy.  For instance, Deleuze's writings with Felix Guattari have been a "theoretical foundations" for the new anti-globalist and Marxists, particularly in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's book Empire.  With this increased interest in Deleuze, Zizek presents OwB as a challenge to how academics and Deleuzians understand Deleuze.  It is an attempt to keep open or recover a reading of Deleuze that has been covered over.

OwB begins from the position that there are two different ontologies in Deleuze's writing.  Zizek argues that Deleuze recognized this fact and that the two logics formed an inherent tension in terms of an opposition or antimony.  Deleuze tried to resolve the dualism with his writings with Felix Guattari.  For Zizek, this was a failure and a disaster.  Anti-Oedipus is Deleuze's worst book.  Within these texts emerge a form of idealism and such terms as "bodies without organs" and "desiring machines".  This is a "guattarized" Deleuze, as Zizek puts it.  Now the essential question to ask about Deleuze is why did he turn to Guattari?  As Zizek writes, Is Anti-Oedipus….not the result of escaping the full confrontation of a deadlock via a simplified 'flat' solution…(21).  Was there an irreconcilable difficulty in his thinking that led him to a solution that resulted in the work with Guattari?  Zizek believes that this is the case.

If one viewed the two logical oppositions in Deleuze in terms of texts, then it is The Logic of Sense versus Anti-Oedipus.  The ontology of the former is that of the "sterility of the incorporeal of the Sense-Event".  The ontology of the latter is that of "the productive multitude of Becoming against the reified order of being".  The dualism plays out in a typical Deleuze's discussion of art.  The affect of art is no longer a feeling originating from individual persons.  Rather, the affect is free floating intensity; a Spinozan position.  So for instance, excitement over an art installation or a movie is not something that originates in the person but from in an impersonal intensity.  Then the question is how do the affects interact with persons?  According to Zizek's dual logic, there are two explanations.  On the one hand, "the immaterial affect is generated by interacting bodies as a sterile surface of pure Becoming" (Zizek 21).   On the other hand, "it is part of the virtual intensities out of which bodies emerge through the actualization" (21).  The goal of OwB is to confront this inner tension again and to resolve it in a more successful way than Deleuze did.  In other words, it moves Deleuze away from his own "guattarized" thinking.

The problem is that the standard reading of Deleuze comes from Deleuze's failure to reconcile the tension found in his two conceptual logics.  That is, the reason why Deleuze is a reference point for contemporary philosophy is because academics and scholars read Deleuze from his writings with Guattari.  Moving Deleuze away from the standard reading shows how Deleuze and the consequences of his thinking can be "shattering".  The discussions of these consequences make up the discussion of the second half of the book.

The title of Zizek's book, thus, reflects this discussion of the tension between the two logics.  It is a playful restating of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of "body without organs"–which itself is a term that Deleuze appropriated from Antonin Artuad's "To Have Done with the Judgment of God, a radio play".  The "body without organs" is the term for a dynamically adjusting social desire.  If desire manifests into various forms because there are many different people, then desire develops new ways to actualize itself.  Hence "organs without bodies" comes from the other logic found in Deleuze's early monograph writings such as Difference and Repetition or The Logic of Sense.  The ontology here is that of the virtual as the "sterility of the incorporeal of the Sense-Event", the affect taken away from the subject.  So Organs without bodies represents the logic of Deleuze that must be recovered and brought to light.

Along the way of examining this tension, Zizek challenges the conventional view that Deleuze was anti-Hegelian and against psychoanalysis.  This claim is farfetched at first sight.  With regards to Hegelianism, Michael Hardt writes, "He (Deleuze) engaged Hegelianism…to articulate a total critique and a rejection of the negative dialectical framework so as to achieve a real autonomy, a theoretical separation from the entire Hegelian problematic" (Michael Hardt Gilles Deleuze: an Apprentice in Philosophy [Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993] xi).  But Zizek's reading is partly made possible by illustrating that Deleuze is much closer to Hegel than what Deleuze himself recognized.  In offering this new reading of Deleuze, it also casts new light on the relationship between Deleuze's thinking and Hegelianism — one that also goes against the conventional reading.

As a writer, Slavoj Zizek can translate difficult philosophical positions in a succinct way while maintaining its original force and insight.  But what is specifically unique to Zizek is his ability to enliven philosophical insights that can be seen as dry and difficult to understand.  Of course, Zizek does follow the conventional academic style of the axiomatic arguments that is supported by a close textual analysis of philosophical texts.  But he can also open insights by drawing on other fields and domains without sacrificing rigor and focus.  For instance in Organs without Bodies, while referencing a specific sexual act done in pornographic movies (which I will leave unnamed and allow for curious readers to find in the book), Zizek vividly illustrates the concept "organs without bodies" with clarity.  All the originary insight and soundness of argument is maintained without sacrificing seriousness.  In other sections of the book, he seamlessly shows how a discussion of Denis Diderot and David Fincher's movie Fight Club can fit together while remaining insightful, humorous, and rigorous all at the same time.

And so, Organs without Bodies is a provocative and important book for Deleuzians because it successfully opens a reading of Deleuze that is anti-conventional and moves against the current.  It also shows how Deleuze is closer to Hegel, which itself is a direct challenge to how Deleuzians have understood the relationship between Hegelianism and Deleuze.  What all this points to is how Zizek is an unconventional thinker with radical and originary insight.  This makes Organs without Bodies a worthwhile and necessary read.

© 2007 Robert Ramos

Robert Ramos, M.A. Candidate in Philosophy, New School for Social Research, New York, NY

Categories: Philosophical