<P>I think "schizo-culture" here is being used rather in a special sense. Notreferring to clinical schizophrenia, but to the fact that the culture is divided up into all sortsof classes and groups, etc., and that some of the old lines are breaking down. And that this is ahealthy sign. -- William Burroughs, from <I>Schizo-Culture</I></P><P>Thelegendary 1975 "Schizo-Culture" conference, conceived by the early Semiotext(e)collective, began as an attempt to introduce the then-unknown radical philosophies of post-'68France to the American avant-garde. The event featured a series of seminal papers, from Deleuze'sfirst presentation of the concept of the "rhizome" to Foucault's introduction of his<I>History of Sexuality</I> project. The conference was equally important on a politicallevel, and brought together a diverse group of activists, thinkers, patients, and ex-cons in orderto address the challenge of penal and psychiatric institutions. The combination proved to beexplosive, but amid the fighting and confusion "Schizo-Culture" revealed deep ruptures inleft politics, French thought, and American culture.</P><P>The"Schizo-Culture" issue of the Semiotext(e) journal came three years later. Designed by agroup of artists and filmmakers including Kathryn Bigelow and Denise Green, it documented thechaotic creativity of an emerging downtown New York scene, and offered interviews with artists,theorists, writers, and No Wave and pre-punk musicians together with new texts from Deleuze,Foucault, R. D. Laing, and other conference participants.</P><P>This slip-cased editionincludes <I>The Book: 1978</I>, a facsimile reproduction of the original Schizo-Culturepublication; and <I>The Event: 1975</I>, a previously unpublished and comprehensiverecord of the conference that set it all off. It assembles many previously unpublished texts,including a detailed selection of interviews reconstructing the events, and features Félix Guattari,William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michel Foucault, Sylvère Lotringer, Guy Hocquenghem, Gilles Deleuze,John Rajchman, Robert Wilson, Joel Kovel, Jack Smith, Jean-François Lyotard, Ti-Grace Atkinson,François Peraldi, and John Cage.</P>