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THEORY | Notes from The Three Ecologies

Felix Guattari

osted on 08/01/2010

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Guattaris writing often seems fraught, even dangerous. He proposes ideas such as dissensus,

dissidence, resingularisation, break up and multiplicity. In The Three Ecologies(Continuum, 2000, Trans by Ian Pindar & Paul Simon), he proposes such ideas as strategies or processes towards areconstruction of social and individual practices of ecosophy. In presenting a problem of ecologicaldisequilibrium, which threatens the continuation of life on the planets surface, he notes a deteriorationof individual and collective modes of human life. Towards the end of the book he says, there is at leasta risk that there will be no more human history unless humanity undertakes a radical reconsiderationof itself.

Ecosophy, he argues, provides for an ethico-political and ethico-aesthetic articulation in three ecologiesor three ecological registers: the environment (or nature), social relations and human subjectivity. ForGuatta ri, the ecosophic problematic is that of the production of human existence itself in new historicalcontexts (24). Thus, the three ecologies of the books title are:

Social ecologyMental ecologyEnvironmental ecology

These three ecologies not only present as sites of negotiation and reconstruction, but also in Guattarisparlance as interchangeable lenses or styles. They are not distinct territories but formed relationally andtransversally. He states that

the y are governed by a di fferent logic to that of ordinary communitcation between speakers andlisteners It is a logic of intensities or eco-logic, [which] is concerned only with the movement andintensity of evolutive processes. Process, which I oppose here to system or to structure, strives to captureexistence in the very act of its constitution, definition and deterritorialisation.

This invokes a search for dissident vectors that run counter to the normal order of things, particularlypotential vectors of subjectification and singularisation. Capitalisms power and reach is so extensiveand intensive that it has infiltrated us by extending over all aspects of social, economic and cultural lifeas well as by intension into unconscious subjective strata. For Guattari, consensus is not the
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appropriate response; instead, a dissensus and singularisation will need to be cultivated. In other words,this alleviation of heterogeneity requires a processual activation of isolated and repressed singularitiesthat are just turning in circles. Early in the book, he talks of the patient who walks endlessly in circles,until the day that s/he decides to stop it, to break the repetitiveness, to do something else or to gosomewhere. This act of subjectification and singularisation somehow exemplifies eco-logic it is a break. Heterogenesis is a process of continuous resingularisation individual and collective subjectiviespull out without a thought for collective aims, for creative expression. Resingularisation means that

individuals, organisations and professions become more united and increasingly different differencemultiplies and creatively autonomous.

Ecology in my sense questions the whole of subjectivity and capitalistic power formations, whosesweeping progress cannot be guaranteed to continue as it has for the last decade.

In his formulation of the principles of the three ecologies, Guattari, he identifies the principle commonto each being that it is

not given in-itself, closed in on itself, but instead as a for-itself that is precarious, finite, finitised,

singular, singularised, capability of bifurcating into stratified and deathly repetitions or of opening upprocessually from a praxis that enables it to be made habitable by a human project.

Mental ecology drawing on ideas of the clinical session, he presents considerations of the pre-objectal and pre-personal, the fragment, the included middle; radically decentre social struggle andways of coming to ones own psyche; grasping points of rupture of denotation, connection andsignification; promotion of innovatory practices; expansion of alternative experiences centred around arespect for singularity; continuous production of an autonomising subjectivity that can articulate itselfappropriately in relation to the rest of society; agencies and dispositives that will simultaneously analyseand produce subjectivity.

Social ecology concerns the development of affective and pragmatic cathexis in human groups ofdiffering sizes; corresponds to a specifically qualitative reorganisations of primary subjectivity as itrelates to mental ecology; favour processual semiotics (diagrammatic rather than iconic i.e. it canescape from itself to constitute discursive chains directly in touch with the referent); challenge totransition from mass media to post-media; reterritorialising the family; assemblages; group Erosprinciples.

Environmental ecology anything is possible; national equilibriums will be increasingly reliant onhuman intervention e.g. regulation of carbon, machine ecology; much more than the simple defence of

nature; creation of new living species; needs new stories of permanent recreation to replace the narrativeof biblical genesis.

In summary, he says:

Rather than remaining subject, in periphery, to the seductive efficiency of economy competition, wemust reappropriate Universes of value, so that processes of singularisation can rediscover theirconsistency. We need new social and aesthetic practices, new practices of the Self in relation to theother, to the foreign, the strange a whole programme that seems far removed from current concerns.And yet, ultimately, we will only escape from the major crises of our era through the articulation of


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A nascent subjectivity A constantly mutat ing socius An environment in the process of being reinvented (p 45)

I am particularly interested in Guattaris ideas about multiplied difference and creative autonomy asintegral to ecosophical praxis. His final comments in the book address the need for a gradual reforgingand renewal of humanitys confidence in itself in order to reconquest various domains. Throughout

the text, he makes references to art and urban planning, indicating that relational albeit tangled pathways across the three ecologies are possible; for Guattari this is tranversality, which presents as apotential for interdisciplinarity, and a critical trajectory for new forms of practice.

Posted in: theory (http://placing.wordpress.com/category/theory/)One Response THEORY | Notes from The Three Ecologies Felix Guattari

danny wildemeersch

15/09/2011

Gisselle,

It could be interesting also to go back to the sources of the theoretical reflections ofsubjectification/singularisation. Felix Guattari is one of them. The interesting thing about this bookreview is that it shows that Guattaris interpretation of singularisation is also connected with ananalysis of wider ecological challanges we experience today in our societies.Danny

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