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Some notes on :
Deleuze G and Guattari F (2004) [1987] A Thousand Plateaus, London:
Continuum.
This book is unreadable. The authors have made
it unreadable deliberately, because they are
arguing throughout that we need new ways of
conceiving of the world which break out of
conventions, conventional classifications,
celebrate multiplicity and making creative
connections. They
say that’s what they’re doing here: for example,
they have apparently been criticised for quoting
lots of literary references, but they say
they’ve got to plug their arguments into
something, so they might as well just show us
what they’ve been making connections with.
I must say it makes more
sense after long hours of reading other works by
Deleuze (and Guattari) and commentaries and
codifications (like Buchanan on the rhizome here) , but whoever
thinks this is a suitable starting point for
students is a sadist. The discussions in Dialogues is
a bit better (or maybe I did more work before I
got there. It was written between Anti Oedipus
and ThouPLat, apparently, and it also has the
brave Claire Parnet as a contributor, who is
able to bring Deleuze down to earth now and then
There is a reasonably
clear discussion of what they are on about, and
an explanation of what the 'delirious' style is
trying to do in a subsequent discussion -- here.
Manuel DeLanda has been
very helpful to me in explaining some of the
other things that Deleuze is plugged into, new
developments in maths and biology especially,
and his series of video lectures is well worth
attention -- here.
Sorry
to any mathematicians or biologists reading this
but this is my gloss:
For example 'multiplicity'
has a mathematical meaning -- points located on
however many dimensions on a topographical space
-- which I had not grasped. Folding is a
topographical operation, involving distorting
shapes into new shapes, preserving quantities
and connectivitities. Singularities describe
particular points. Those multiplicities comprise
whole planes of immanence and they can be joined
together by following paths on the plane. Humans
and horses are singularities on the abstract
plane [of being?] and the way you become animal
for DeLanda is to remove the particularities of
human, revert to the plane and trace a path to
the particularity of 'horse'. Anyway,the
importance of speeds, flows and intensities also
derives from mathematical attempts to specify
the dimensions of topographical space as opposed
to Euclidian.
All this is fine except
that
1.
It makes the book
particularly inaccessible, since it is often
written in what is literally a private language,
according to personal goals which often seem to
be developing obsessional classifications,
sometimes based on someone else’s argument,
sometimes to develop an argument with someone
else. That someone
else is often not specified or referenced. By
any standards the 'evidence' for some of the
points is very flimsy.
2.
Of course, fellow
members of the elite band of French academics
who were making their mark in the 1960s will follow much of
this, and doubtless enjoy it.
They were also struggling to break free
of conventional ways of thought, in ‘state
philosophy’ as the introduction puts it. Foucault (in Power/Knowledge)
says there was a need to break with Freudianism,
Marxism, and structuralism in particular, in
order to write about new and interesting things. However, the point
made by Bourdieu about Barthes might be relevant
too—this was a way of building a career outside
of the normal conventional routes to academic
success. I also
like Bourdieu’s comment
that lofty discourses covering a range of
different disciplines can often only operate
with 'approximate borrowings'.
I think this only matters
when people who did not belong to that context,
who know nothing about it, and who have never
suffered by having conventional analysis imposed
on them are somehow persuaded to read this
stuff. Poor teacher
trainees and researchers apparently need to read
Deleuze. What
chance have they got? In
my view, as I said in my comments on Anti Oedipus,
they will be forced to develop a kind of
homelier version of this philosophical
speculation. There
will be reduced to the terms of ‘progressive’
education. I have
tried to suggest what might happen in my
innocent summaries of the bits I have read.
Generally, though, I
intend to take the authors’ advice literally and
not read this as a book, but consider it more as
a record playing in the background [oh for the
dear dead days of vinyl!].
I will just skip some tracks I don’t
like, I will stop listening carefully if the cat
needs to be left out, I’ll go back and listen to
bits until I get impatient with them.
OK, so I made some notes
of varying lengths on some 'plateaus' ( I still
call them chapters, just to annoy deleuzians). I
did this with varying enthusiasm and varying
insight. I went off and read other stuff before
returning in some cases to these notes. I did
not read the chapters in order, but I list them
in order. Over to you
Chapter 1 Introduction: Rhizome.
Useful for spelling out the
philosophical/mathematical notion of a rhizome.
Humble plant root it is not. Note that the
rhizome occurs in other chapters too, like Chs.
4 or 10. I was struggling with this though, and
it shows. It really anticipates much of the
discussion to come and it is baffling if you
meet the terms for the first time. Read it as a
conclusion.
Chapter 2 1914: One or Several Wolves.
This is a far better introduction. We get
graspable (just) summaries of
D's&G's criticisms of Freud as partial
( in both senses) abstractions from a much more
machinic (virtual) conscious made of various
assemblages. En route, we hear about
multiplicities, the body without organs, and
becoming. Sometimes the style is wild'n'wacky
and typically over the top, so you get used to
that too. There is even a bit about proper names
and collective enunciations. There is an example
of short story by Kafka (Jackals
and Arabs) which can be used to test
out deleuzian readings for yourself. Above all,
the chapter is fairly short.
Chapter 3 10,000 BC: The Geology of
Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?).
Pseudy nom-de-plume 'Professor Challenger' bears
the narrative (and takes the blame). An extended
discussion of strata (geological and
metaphorical) leads to an introduction to
Hjelmslev (who does a lot of work later -- eg in
Ch.4),and argues that, in a certain way, strata
and other things, express themselves.
Chapter 4 November 20, 1923 Postulates
of Linguistics. My notes say either this
is more transparent or I am getting used to
incomprehensible bullshit. It is a discussion of
'order words' and indirect discourse,and again
takes the 'transcendental' line to suggest that
other approaches to linguistics deal only with
narrow abstractions from a much wider 'machinic'
or virtual collections of assemblages.
Chapter 5 587 BC--AD 70: On Several
Regimes of Signs. Introduces the terms
signifiance [NB not significance] and
subjectification to explain the (limited)
creative powers of 'individuals' in despotic and
authoritarian regimes. Reference to Althusser on
the subject. Lots of critical discussion about
Saussurian linguistics. Ends with an argument
for the 'Abstract-Real', ie the virtual, to
explain linguistic variations and differences
between 'sign regimes'.
Chapter 6 November 28 1947: How Do You
Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? Lots
of different definitions and arguments, all as
examples of approaches that might be
transcendentally/deductively overcome to get a
machinic version (only hinted at in the end)?
Particularly dense and self-referential (I have
tried to clarify by including some additional
notes eg on Artaud's play). Must be very
mystifying unless you have already read some
Deleuze,or better still DeLanda on
modern embryology so you can get the bits about
the BWO as an egg. Reading 1960s texts like
those written by Castenada will also help.
Chapter 7 Year Zero: Faciality.
Strange work on 'the face' as a disciplining
mechanism for communication, reducing sentences
to binaries. Their counter to Lacan's emphasis
on the phallus? Together with Ch 11, this
is D&G discussing the political and social
limits on linguistic creativity. Guattari's
discussion in Machinic
Unconscious is slightly clearer.
Helps if you have read Proust (or my summary here)
Chapter 8 1874: Three Novellas or
"What Happened?" A discussion of 3
novellas (one of them The Crackup by F
Scott Fitzgerald, also discussed elsewhere eg Logic of Sense).
The discussion turns into an account of three
different sorts of 'lines' in literature and
life, including line of flight. Terms like
'becoming imperceptible' are introduced. The
usual dangers are outlined.
Chapter 9 1933: Micropolitics and
Segmentarity This is the most 'political'
chapter, analyzing power in terms of
constructing segmented lines. Happily, all that
is opposed by abstract machines producing
mutation and flow. An abstract functionalism
lurks here and there. The chapter warns that
apparent escapes often reproduce micro powers,
and ends with a rousing warning about lines of
flight and war machines becoming fascist
(presumably explaining the date).
Chapter 10 1730: Becoming-Intense,
Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible.
The discussion builds on the much more
comprehensible one in Logic
of Sense. This is a popular term,
but the actual chapter is interminable, so 2
sets of notes are available, one much longer
than the other. Definitely NOT just about kids
developing through play, although there are a
couple of sentences about them. About the way
things are connected at the virtual level,
meaning that fixed categories and simple
connections like causals are inadequate,whether
developing classifications, using language,or
describing reality. Free-wheeling discussion
with weird examples. Ludicrous mess around the
discussion of haecceity (about 1/3 way in)
ending in contradiction covered by bullshit and
waffle --e.g. Little Hans is not a real subject
at all, just the Proper Name of a
becoming-horse. A discussion on method ensues
via the wretched plan(e)s -- again the
implications are pursued obsessively and
mystified.
Chapter 11 1837: Of the Refrain.
The refrain is another way to preserve order
against chaos. A long discussion of dodgy
ethology shows that animals can develop refrains
too, which are not just learned or determined by
the environment -- we need a virtual assemblage
to grasp the possibilities again. Discusses 'the
Dividual'.
Chapter 12 1227: Treatise on
Nomadology:- The War Machine. Very long
indeed, and probably the most dubious in terms
of basing arguments on 'evidence' gathered from
French anthropology and general histories ( and
literature, of course). All this is used to
generate really windy generalizations followed
by the inevitable 'clarifications' and
backpedalling. Nomadic peoples and concepts are
creative (eg they deterritorialize) but
State apparatuses try to domesticate them with
'bad' deterritorialization and
reterritorialization, and this helps us see what
happens to the war machine itself. Variants can
be traced to assemblages and machinic phyla etc.
Metals are the mode of thought of the artisan
[!]. Royal science is the model of normal
thought.
Chapter 13 7000 BC: Apparatus of
Capture. Long again. Continues ch 12 with
lost of historical examples leading to a
proliferation of possible mechanisms of capture
and resistance and their interactions. Social
assemblages are needed for analysis, not modes
of production. Ends with a long discussion of
convergences and tensions, almost 'crises', in
'axiomatic' capitalism, with an optimistic
politics that cites Negri and Italian autonomism
based on minoritarianism.
Chapter 14 1440: The Smooth and the
Striated. This begins easily enough with
what looks like a pretty straightforward
metaphor -- smooth spaces permit
multiplicities to operate relatively
unconstrained by lines or strata and thus allow
rhizomatic growth. Also discussed in ch 12.
However, we find that in most cases the smooth
is mixed with the striated. Subsequent
discussion to clarify the two in principle leads
to some interesting ontology and discussion of
the multiplicity, and mathematics [with which I
struggled]. Some applications include
textiles, music, work in capitalism [with a good
discussion of Marx] and nomadic art.
Includes the much less-well discussed 'holey
space' (on holes see Ch 7 as well).
Chapter 15 Conclusion: Concrete Rules
and Abstract Machines. Picks out the main
points for them. Far from helpful -- even denser
than the main parts. They seem to be trying to
make the different bits cohere -- fit rhizomes
to smooth spaces etc. It is like an obsessive
structure for a sci-fi novel. Where things don't
fit we have to invent new cases -- new types of
abstract machine, for example. In the
process, it becomes clear that some chapters are
used to make generalizations in a dubious way -
- what we know [which is based on one source
anyway] about birds and grass stems has some
major significance for the operation of
expressions etc. Hjemslev is used as some
organizing classificatory principles which
flicker on and off.
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