Capitalism and Schizophrenia
In Deleuze and Guattari's collaboration, the term describes an undifferentiated, unhierarchical realm that lies deeper than the world of appearances. It relates to the proto-world described in the mythology of many different cultures. Deleuze and Guattari often use the example of the Dogon egg, based primarily on anthropological reports from Marcel Griaule. Describing the Dogon story of the origins of the cosmos, Griaule writes:
These primordial movements are conceived in terms of an ovoid form—'the egg of the world' (aduno tal)—within which lie, already differentiated, the germs of things; in consequence of the spiral movement of extension the germs develop first in seven segments of increasing length, representing the seven fundamental seeds of cultivation, which are to be found again in the human body
According to Griaule, the basic patterns of organization within the egg reappear within all domains of Dogon life: kinship structures, village layout, understanding of the body, and so forth. The egg metaphor helps to suggest the gestation of a formation yet to come, and the potential formation of many actualities from a single origin.
Read more about this topic: Body Without Organs