Abstract

Given the increased online accessibility of Deleuze’s seminars, notably with the Deleuze Seminars project (Purdue University), this essay examines the start of Deleuze’s collaboration with Guattari in 1969 and so-called ‘missing years’ of Deleuze’s teaching, that is, his first semesters teaching at the University of Paris Vincennes campus (1970–1). After consulting Deleuze’s correspondence for details on his activities preceding his appointment at Vincennes as well as initial steps of working with Guattari, I draw from several sources – Deleuze’s remarks in the 1971–2 seminar as well as other pertinent publications – to derive the likely content of the first seminar devoted to Anti-Oedipus (during the 1970–1 academic year). Then, as an additional source, I juxtapose the likely seminar content with the contemporaneous testimony furnished in Guattari’s diary (1970–2), published as The Anti-Oedipus Papers. To develop this juxtaposition, I reconstitute these diary entries in their chronological order (heretofore unavailable in French or English). This analysis – outline of several sessions in the initial Anti-Oedipus seminar and details on Guattari’s concurrent theoretical input – displays Deleuze’s processes for preparing both teaching and collaborative publication as well the importance of Guattari’s contribution to both these outcomes and to the broad project of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.