PKC-DG02 — Desire, Subjectivity and Schizoanalysis

Desire, Subjectivity, and Schizoanalysis

Course code: PKC-DG02   |   School: School of Philosophy, Knowledge and Civilization   |   Cluster: Deleuze–Guattari Studies   |   Level: 400 (Advanced)

This advanced course examines how Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari rethink desire, subjectivity, the unconscious, institutions, and political transformation. It develops themes introduced in PKC-DG01 and draws substantially from the author-supplied April 2026 manuscript, especially its discussions of La Borde, transversality, desiring-production, the Body without Organs, collective subjectivity, three ecologies, chaosmosis, and capitalism–schizophrenia.

Schizoanalysis challenges the reduction of desire to lack, private fantasy, or a universal family drama. It asks how desire connects bodies, signs, institutions, technologies, economies, ecologies, and collective arrangements. Subjectivity is treated as produced and open rather than as a permanent interior essence. This orientation enlarges inquiry, but it also creates ethical responsibilities: conceptual vocabulary must not romanticise psychosis, erase clinical suffering, or replace qualified mental-health assessment and care.

Across eight modules, learners move from a critical comparison of psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis to applied conceptual analysis. The course examines social and desiring production, Oedipal reduction, the Body without Organs, collective assemblages of enunciation, subjectivity as becoming, and the ethics of experimentation. Indonesian cases—education, digital culture, platform work, institutional mental health, ecological conflict, religious and legal plurality, artistic collectives, and community organising—are used where supported by evidence.

Who This Course Is For

PKC-DG02 is intended for advanced learners in philosophy, cultural theory, psychology and mental-health humanities, sociology, anthropology, political theory, education, media studies, arts practice, and institutional analysis. PKC-DG01 or equivalent familiarity with Deleuze and Guattari is strongly recommended. The course is educational and philosophical; it does not qualify participants to diagnose, counsel, or treat any person.

Learning Outcomes

• Compare psychoanalytic and schizoanalytic approaches without caricaturing either tradition.
• Explain desire as productive, social, material, and semiotic.
• Analyse the Oedipal critique and identify both its philosophical force and contested limits.
• Describe the Body without Organs as a practice and limit-concept rather than a literal body or lifestyle instruction.
• Map collective assemblages of enunciation and institutional production of subjectivity.
• Relate becoming, transversality, three ecologies, and chaosmosis to concrete cases.
• Evaluate experimentation through consent, care, risk, reversibility, and accountability.
• Produce an advanced schizoanalytic cartography grounded in evidence and ethical safeguards.

Course Structure

Module 1 — From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis

The opening module reconstructs the problems schizoanalysis addresses: the status of the unconscious, desire, interpretation, family, institution, and society. Learners compare approaches carefully and examine why Deleuze and Guattari challenge interpretive frameworks that return heterogeneous desire to one universal structure.

Module 2 — Desire as Production

Desire is studied as active connection among bodies, objects, signs, technologies, institutions, and flows. Learners distinguish desiring-production from conscious preference and analyse machines, interruptions, partial objects, social production, and antiproduction. A prototype maps how an institutional environment produces capacity and dependency.

Module 3 — Anti-Oedipus and the Family Model

This module examines the critique of Oedipal reduction without denying the importance of family relations. Learners identify how familial interpretation may conceal political economy, labour, education, gender, law, colonial histories, and institutional violence. The module also addresses scholarly and clinical objections to the book’s polemical strategy.

Module 4 — Body without Organs

The Body without Organs is approached as a limit against fixed organisation and as a field of intensities and potential connections. It is not a command to destroy the organism or reject care. Learners study the authors’ warnings about empty, cancerous, and destructive forms, developing a safety-oriented interpretation of experimentation.

Module 5 — Collective Assemblages of Enunciation

Speech and meaning are never produced by an isolated individual alone. Institutions, languages, media, technologies, collective arrangements, and power relations participate in enunciation. Learners map who can speak, which statements become authoritative, how communication is routed, and where collective voice becomes possible.

Module 6 — Subjectivity as Becoming

Subjectivity is examined as an open, heterogeneous process involving memory, affect, environment, media, group relations, and aesthetic creation. The module connects Guattari’s later work on chaosmosis and the three ecologies with Deleuzian becoming while rejecting simplistic claims that identity or responsibility no longer matter.

Module 7 — Ethics of Experimentation

Experimentation must be judged through what it enables and harms. Learners assess consent, power, reversibility, care, vulnerability, unequal risk, collective accountability, and institutional safeguards. A line of flight may open possibility but may also produce capture, precarity, mania, violence, or exclusion.

Module 8 — Applied Conceptual Analysis

The capstone integrates the course into a schizoanalytic cartography of a selected institution, cultural process, ecological conflict, or digital environment. Learners map flows, machines, territories, assemblages, subjectivities, dominant interpretations, escape routes, capture risks, and responsible interventions.

Learning Method and AI Laboratory Prototypes

Every module produces a distinct portfolio artefact: interpretive-framework comparison, desiring-production map, Oedipal reduction audit, Body without Organs safety canvas, collective-enunciation map, subjectivity ecology, experimentation ethics review, and final schizoanalytic cartography. AI Laboratory access should be restricted through Tutor LMS enrolment.

AI may support comparison, visual organisation, counterargument, and question generation. It must not diagnose mental illness, recommend treatment, simulate a patient or community, fabricate quotations, or process confidential clinical information. Learners must verify philosophical and historical claims, use reliable sources, and disclose significant AI assistance.

Assessment

• Advanced concept and source portfolio — 20%: accuracy, distinctions, textual grounding, and citation discipline.
• Seven module prototypes — 30%: analytic depth, evidence, reflexivity, and ethical safeguards.
• Critical comparative essay — 20%: interpretation, objections, argument, and conceptual limits.
• Final schizoanalytic cartography — 30%: integration, contextual relevance, originality, care, and communication.

High-quality submissions distinguish philosophical claims, clinical evidence, historical interpretation, and personal application. Learners must not infer a diagnosis from conceptual language. Any case involving real people requires consent, anonymisation, data protection, and appropriate professional boundaries.

Capstone Deliverable

The final dossier contains a problem statement, source record, institutional and historical context, map of material and semiotic flows, dominant interpretations, desiring-machines, territorial forces, collective-enunciation structure, production of subjectivity, ecological relations, potential lines of flight, capture and harm analysis, intervention options, safeguards, and reflective limitations. The submission should be suitable for academic discussion, institutional learning, or responsible arts-based inquiry.

Certificate and Completion

A Tutor LMS Pro certificate is awarded when the learner completes all required sessions and assessed artefacts. The certificate recognises advanced non-degree philosophical education. It is not a clinical credential, professional mental-health qualification, or authorisation to provide treatment.

KBA13 Academy principle: The study of desire becomes intellectually and ethically serious when conceptual experimentation remains accountable to suffering, evidence, consent, institutional power, and the possibility of care.