ABSTRACT
A key theme of Guattari’s work was in finding ways to move beyond the traditional systems of signification in order to capture the points of singularity of a situation. This chapter explores the way Guattari invents new cartographies of apprehension in the name of the abstract machinism he presents in The Machinic Unconscious. The tenor here is in valorising the movement of forces that are not yet directly locatable within the discursive frameworks, both institutional and personal, that we have available to us. The chapter spotlights Guattari’s reading of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and the refrain of the ‘little phrase of music’ rendered through its multiple assemblages of enunciation in Guattari’s “Refrains of Lost Time”. Spotlighting the refrains of this phrase of music serves to highlight how abstractions always draw out the singularities of the present, scrambling both the past and the future. The machinism of these abstractions, Guattari argues, enables us to open up our thinking towards the invisible forces of desire that map out new modes of subjectivity and meaning. In juxtaposing a scientific ethos with an artistic style, I argue, Guattari presents social science with a new method for rethinking the individual that gives expression to the many invisible realities that script our collective becomings.
