Why Guattari? A Liberation of Cartographies, Ecologies and Politics

Felix Guattari was a French philosopher, known for his work in an institutional psychiatric clinic during the 1950s. His ideas remain intrinsic to the social sciences sphere today. This interdisciplinary book evaluates Guattari’s experimental and creative production of ideas, primarily through an Geography lens. This book demonstrates the pertinence of Guattari in the present day, showcasing that Guattari offers social science and its cognate disciplines a stimulating conceptual vocabulary that presents innovative and in situ methodological approaches. This accessible introduction to Guattari will appeal to academics as well Masters students within Human Geography, Social Theory, and Continental Studies.

This book examines Félix Guattari, the French psychoanalyst, philosopher, and radical activist, renowned for an energetic style of thought that cuts across conceptual, political, and institutional spheres.

Increasingly recognised as a key figure in his own right, Guattari’s influence in contemporary social theory and the modern social sciences continues to grow. From the ecosophy of hurricanes to the micropolitics of cinema, the book draws together a series of Guattarian motifs which animate the complexity of one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most enigmatic thinkers. The book examines techniques and modes of thought that contribute to a liberation of thinking and subjectivity. Divided thematically into three parts – ‘cartographies’, ‘ecologies’, and ‘micropolitics’ – each chapter showcases the singular and pragmatic grounds by which Guattari’s signature concepts can be found to be both disruptive to traditional modes of thinking, and generative toward novel forms of ethics, politics and sociality.

This interdisciplinary compendium on Guattari’s exciting, experimental, and enigmatic thought will appeal to academics and postgraduates within Social Theory, Human Geography, and Continental Philosophy.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.