A Thousand Plateaus

From Geography

A Thousand Plateaus is the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, published 8 years after publishing the first volume, Anti-Oedipus. Many topics are covered in this book, including noology and political economy.

The concept of plateaus can be defined as follows: "Each plateau is an orchestration of crashing bricks extracted from a variety of disciplinary edifices. They carry traces of their former emplacement, which give them a spin defining the arc of their vector. The vectors are meant to converge at a volatile juncture, but one that is sustained, as an open equilibrium of moving parts each within its own trajectory" (Deleuze & Guatarri, 1980, p. xiv)

In the introduction Guattari and Deleuze explain ‘Rhizome’. According to them the western idea of knowing is tree-like and hierarchichal, with limited connections, focused on beginnings and endings. The rhizome is horizontal, and knows no hierarchy. Unlike the tree with only one ‘root’, the rhizome knows many, many roots.

Book structure

The book consists of the following chapters, that can be read in any order, apart from the introduction and conclusion:

• Rhizome (Introduction)
• 1914: One or Several Wolves?
• 10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)
• November 20, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics
• 587 BC-AD 70: On Several Regimes of Signs
• November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?
• Year Zero: Faciality
• 1874: Three Novellas, or "What Happened?"
• 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity
• 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible...
• 1837: Of the Refrain
• 1227: Treatise on Nomadology; The War Machine
• 7000 BC.: Apparatus of the Capture
• 1440: The Smooth and the Striated

Each of the sections is dated because at these dates the 'compositions' being described experienced their highest degree of intensity (Deleuze & Guatarri, 1980, p. xv)

Quotes

• “A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window”
• “Bring something incomprehensible into the world!”
• “It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity”
• “In truth, Freud sees nothing and understands nothing.”

Sources

Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (1980). A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0-8264-7694-5.

--Tom Heinen 23:02, 29 September 2011 (UTC) page enhanced by Pieter-Jan Schut 1 October 2011, at 15:27