theory FÉLIX GUATTARI
CHAOSMOS
translation by PETER BEHRMAN DE SINÉTY
excerpt from chaosmose by félix guattari éditions galilée, 1992
In our time, aesthetic machines offer us the most complete models for those units of sensation that can extract robust meaning from all the empty semiotic systems that hem us in on all sides. The underground territory of art contains some of the most significant cells of resistance against the steamroller of capitalist subjectivity — of unidimensionality, universal equivalence, segregation, and deafness to what is truly Other. This isn’t a matter of making artists into the new heroes of the revolution, the new levers of history. Art here is not only the work of recognized artists, but also the act of an entire subjective creativity that spans generations among oppressed peoples, ghettos, minorities… I only mean to emphasize that the aesthetic paradigm — the creation and arrangement of mutant percepts and…