Pathic Subjectivation: Guattari’s Experiments with Contact

Abstract

Engaging with the account of pathic subjectivation developed by Félix Guattari, this article explores the ways in which his thinking about the production of subjectivity takes up and transforms the concept of the pathic dimension of experience that emerges from the rich tradition of existential-phenomenological psychiatry and the thematisation of contact it entails. Explicitly foregrounding the link made within that tradition between aesthetics and existence, this article considers the origins of Guattari’s conception of pathic subjectivation in his work on Proust, the experimental understanding of the semiotic transformations of sensory experience it entails and the practical role it plays in catalysing the creative emergence of new modes of (embodied) existence.