Guattari's Aesthetic Paradigm: From the Folding of the Finite/Infinite Relation to Schizoanalytic Metamodelisation

This article offers two commentaries on two of Félix Guattari's essays from Chaosmosis : 'The New Aesthetic Paradigm' and 'Schizoanalytic Metamodelisation'. The first commentary attends specifically to how Guattari figures the infinite/finite relation in relation to what he calls the three Assemblages (pre-, extant, and post-capitalism) and then even more specifically to the mechanics of this relation - or folding - within the third 'processual' Assemblage or new aesthetic paradigm of the essay's title. The second commentary looks at what Guattari has to say about this paradigm in relation to subjectivity, that is, the schizoanalytic programme or practice of metamodelling. Here the focus is on the turn to asignifying semiotics - but also the importance of signifying material and indeed the actual material scene of encounter - in any programme for the production of subjectivity (it is here also that the symptom makes its appearance).