Félix Guattari

Pierre-Félix Guattari (French: [ɡwataʁi] (listen) , "feh-LEEX GWA-tah-rhee"; March 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992) was a French psychiatrist, philosopher, semiologist, and activist. He founded two fields called schizoanalysis and ecosophy, and is best known for his academic partnership with Gilles Deleuze, especially their two-part book Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The first part of this is titled Anti-Oedipus and was published in 1972, and the second part is A Thousand Plateaus, published in 1980.

Félix Guattari

Life

Guattari was born in a suburb outside of Paris called Villeneuve-les-Sablons in 1930. He learned to practice a kind of psychology called psychoanalysis with his teacher Jacques Lacan in the early 1950s. He later worked at a psychiatric clinic called La Borde, which was his employer for the rest of his life.

Guattari contributed to a communist newspaper in Paris called La Voie Communiste (The Communist Way) from 1955 to 1965. He was politically active in France throughout the 1960s, and he met his academic partner Gilles Deleuze through his political work. Together, they published the two-part work Capitalism and Schizophrenia in 1972 and 1980. They also wrote many other works, including What is Philosophy? (1991).

Guattari died at La Borde of a heart attack on 29 August 1992, aged 62. His partner Gilles Deleuze died three years later.