Guattari, Transversality and the Experimental Semiotics of Untranslatability

Following the thread provided by his lifetime of engagement with psychosis, this article considers a number of aspects of the writings of Félix Guattari in relation to the problem of untranslatability. Contrasting Guattari's approach with the structuralist diagnostic conceptualization of psychosis in terms of foreclosure, it follows the early development of his concept of transversality and the critique of linguistics that it leads to. Turning then to a consideration of the specific privilege Guattari accords psychosis, it addresses his constructive experimenting with theory as a way to rethink enunciation in terms of a semiotic 'energetics' that permits an effective problematization of the theoretical and practical privileges of the 'normal' structures of language within analysis. Finally, Guattari's approach to the challenge psychosis poses to the limits of language is contrasted to Cassin's conception of logology in its relation to untranslatables

Conceptualization · Constructive · Deleuze and Guattari · Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphysics · Overdetermination · Philosophy of language · Problematization · Semiotics · Sociology · Transversality · Computer Science · Historical and Scientific Studies · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Semiotics and Representation Studies

• On the Wandering Cephalophore

  Joff P N Bradley•University of Toronto Quarterly•2025

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