Body without organs
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In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari begin to develop their concept of the BwO - body without organs, their term for the changing social body of desire. Since desire can take on as many forms as there are persons to implement it, it must seek new channels and different combinations to realize itself, forming a BwO for every instance. Desire is not limited to the affections of a subject.
In their later work, A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Deleuze and Guattari eventually differentiate between three kinds of BwO: cancerous, empty, and full. Roughly, the empty BwO is the BwO of Anti-Oedipus. This BwO is also described as "catatonic" because it is completely de-organ-ized; all flows pass through it freely, with no stopping, and no directing. Even though any form of desire can be produced on it, the empty BwO is non-productive. The full BwO is the healthy BwO; it is productive, but not petrified in its organ-ization. The cancerous BwO is caught in a pattern of endless reproduction of the self-same pattern.
The term is borrowed from Antonin Artaud's radio play "To Have Done with the Judgment of God" (1947):
When you will have made him a body without organs,
then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions
- and restored him to his true freedom.[1]
References:
- ^ Antonin Artaud. "To Have Done with the Judgment of God" in Antonin Artaud Selected Writings. Susan Sontag (ed). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976, p. 571.
