“Clinical Aesthetics: Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis, and Art’s Work on a Body”

The notion of a body and its health as a problem of desire is central to both modern art and psychoanalysis, two fields that emerge simultaneously in Western culture. Gilles Deleuze adopts Antonin Artaud’s term “body without organs” to articulate the potential in modern art and literature to challenge the preservation of traditional values. Although Deleuze calls for an aesthetic clinic apart from that of psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis’ address of the body in terms of desire and language provides keys for understanding the forceful intervention of the aesthetic in the social sphere.