What is Body Without Organs?

It is a philosophical concept from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari that academic Facebook pages and philosophy subreddits recycle as a running joke about the impossibility of explaining it.

Where did Body Without Organs come from?

The term comes from Deleuze's The Logic of Sense (1969) and Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972); as a meme, it starts with a March 22, 2017 4chan /lit/ greentext asking the board to 'explain Deleuze'.

What does Body Without Organs mean?

In Deleuze and Guattari's writing, it names a body not defined by its component organs; online, the abbreviation 'BwO' is often used as a punchline or text emoticon.

How do you use Body Without Organs?

Writers typically pair a familiar meme template, such as Buff Guys Explaining, with dense Deleuzian language or the 'BwO' tag, often on philosophy-focused Facebook pages.

Is Body Without Organs still popular?

Posts about the concept grew after 2019 and still appear on philosophy pages and in /r/Deleuze, though the joke stays inside that niche instead of mainstream meme feeds.

Body Without Organs

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Published October 23, 2026

Body Without Organs is a philosophical concept from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari that academic-leaning meme communities turned into a running joke about the impossibility of explaining it. A March 2017 4chan greentext asking strangers to summarize Deleuze kicked off the gag, and by 2019 Facebook pages like Spinozo-Deleuzian Memes without Organs were posting it weekly as 'BwO' punchlines.

pseudo intellectual memes copypasta memes 4chan memes facebook memes philosophy memes

Overview

Posts about Body Without Organs run on the gap between the term's abstract source material and the flat tone of a greentext or image macro. Writers lean on the fact that Deleuze and Guattari's 'body without organs' from The Logic of Sense (1969) and Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) has no clean one-sentence definition, so each joke stages someone failing or refusing to deliver one1. The shorthand 'BwO' also doubles as a text emoticon in one well-circulated version2.

Formats vary across the small philosophy-meme circuit. Facebook pages aimed at Deleuze and Spinoza readers favor captioned stock images and dense text panels3, while Reddit's /r/Deleuze mostly reposts outside memes with questions attached, such as a 2019 thread asking the sub to decode a BwO joke5. Templates borrowed from mainstream meme stock, including Buff Guys Explaining, also appear in the mix6.

The humor rewards readers who already know the concept, which keeps Body Without Organs circulating inside niche academic Facebook pages and philosophy subreddits rather than general meme feeds7.

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Origin & Background

Platform

4chan /lit/ (origin) / Facebook (viral spread)

Date

2017

The concept comes from Gilles Deleuze's The Logic of Sense (1969) and his co-authored Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) with Félix Guattari, where it describes a body not organized by its parts7. The earliest known viral meme reference is a 4chan /lit/ greentext dated March 22, 2017, archived on Warosu, in which a poster asks the board to 'explain Deleuze' and gets a chaotic lecture back; the thread was copied around as the 'Explain Deleuze To Me' copypasta1.

Six months later, on September 23, 2017, the Facebook page The Void Behind the Meme posted a submission that recast the term as 'BwO,' styled like a text emoticon, which is the first widely-shared image macro treatment of the idea2.

How It Spread

After the 2017 4chan thread and the Void Behind the Meme repost, Body Without Organs built an audience through a small cluster of Facebook pages. On January 31, 2019, the page Spinozo-Deleuzian Memes without Organs posted a BwO joke that drew more than 400 likes over the following years3. The same page returned to the bit on June 29, 2019, with a second post that passed 500 likes4.

The joke also surfaced on Reddit. On August 10, 2019, user CaiSant posted a BwO image to /r/Deleuze and asked the sub to explain what they were looking at, a thread that doubled as evidence that outside pages were producing the memes faster than readers could parse them5. Later that year, on November 6, 2019, the Facebook page The Phenomenology of Spiritual Memes ran the Buff Guys Explaining template with Body Without Organs as the subject, gathering more than 200 likes6.

Know Your Meme notes that posts about the concept grew sharply after 2019, though the audience stayed inside philosophy-leaning corners of Facebook and Reddit instead of crossing into mainstream meme feeds7.

Timeline

1969

Gilles Deleuze introduces the 'body without organs' concept in The Logic of Sense.

1972

Deleuze and Félix Guattari expand the concept in Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

2017-03-22

A 4chan /lit/ greentext titled 'Explain Deleuze To Me' becomes a copypasta.

2017-09-23

Facebook page The Void Behind the Meme posts a 'BwO' emoticon-style meme.

2019-01-31

Spinozo-Deleuzian Memes without Organs posts its first widely-liked BwO meme.

2019-06-29

The same page posts a second BwO meme that reaches 500+ likes.

2019-08-10

Redditor CaiSant posts a BwO meme to /r/Deleuze asking for an explanation.

2019-11-06

The Phenomenology of Spiritual Memes uses the Buff Guys Explaining template for a BwO joke.

How to Use This Meme

A typical Body Without Organs post picks a recognizable meme template, often a reaction image or an explaining format, and loads it with language from Deleuze that resists summary. Writers commonly abbreviate the term as 'BwO' and treat the acronym as a visual gag or emoticon2. Posts tend to live on philosophy-focused Facebook pages or in /r/Deleuze rather than large general subreddits5.