1,000 lines of A Thousand Plateaus

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  and the sequence of nucleic units, with binary relations between units of the same type and biunivocal relationships between units of different types. Thus there are always two articulations, two segmentarities, two kinds of multiplicity, each of which brings into play both forms and substances. But the distribution of these two articulations is not constant, even within the same stratum.
 "before" the State, and of the State "after" the primitive peoples—as if the two waves that seem to us to exclude or succeed each other unfolded simultaneously in an "archaeological," micropo-litical, micrological, molecular field.
 (segmentometers), and conversions into lines of death (deleometers). Thus there is a whole process of selection of assemblages
 A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification. The whole
 a continuous variation for a discontinuous variable ... A variable can be continuous over a portion of its trajectory, then leap or skip, without that affecting its continuous variation; what this does is impose an absent development as an "alternative continuity" that is virtual yet real.
 a regime that involves a hieratic and immutable Master who at every moment legislates by constants, prohibiting or strictly limiting metamor- phoses, giving figures clear and stable contours, setting forms in opposi- tion two by two and requiring subjects to die in order to pass from one form to the other. It is always by means of something incorporeal that a body sep- arates and distinguishes itself from another. The
 ABSTRACT MACHINES
 according to their ability to draw a plane of consistency with an increasing number of connections. Schizoanalysis is not only a qualitative analysis of abstract machines in relation to the assemblages, but also a quantita tive analysis of the assemblages in relation to a presumably
 All so-called initiatory journeys include these thresholds and doors where becoming itself becomes, and where one changes becoming depending on the "hour" of the world, the circles of hell, or the stages of a journey that sets scales, forms, and cries in variation. From the howling of animals to the wailing of ele- ments and particles.
 An effect of capturing a surface that becomes more enclosed the more it expands. This is the signifying despotic face and the multiplication proper to it, its proliferation, its redundancy of frequency. A multiplication of eyes. The despot or his representatives are everywhere. This is the face as seen from the front, by a subject who does not so much see as get snapped up by black holes. This is a figure of destiny,
 an element of a face or a facialized object, which then assumes an anticipatory temporal value (the hands of the clock fore- shadow something).
 and clandestinity of what can no longer happen on the line of flight, how can we fail to see the upheavals caused by a monster force, the Secret, threatening to bring everything tum- bling down? Between the Couple of the first kind of segmentarity, the Dou- ble of the second, and the Clandestine of the line of flight, there are so many possible mixtures and passages.
 and subjective organic interiority (the strata of the book). The book imitates the world,
 and the block itself assigns the point new functions. In a punctual system, a point basically refers to linear coor- dinates. Not only are a horizontal line and a vertical line represented, but the vertical moves parallel to itself, and the horizontal superposes other horizontals upon itself; every point is assigned in relation to the two base coordinates, but is also marked on a horizontal line of superposition and on a vertical line or plane of displacement. Finally, two points are con- nected when any line is drawn from one to the other. A system is termed punctual'when its lines are taken as coordinates in this way, or as localizable connections; for example, systems of arborescence, or molar and mne- monic systems in general, are punctual. Memory has a punctual organiza- tion because every present refers simultaneously to the horizontal line of the flow of time (kinematics), which goes from an old present to the actual
 and whose existence is mobile in history. These are the acts of a "private thinker," as opposed to the public professor:
 anorganic. There are also nonhuman Becomings of human beings that overspill the anthropomorphic strata in all direc tions.
 as art imitates nature: by procedures specific to it that accomplish what nature cannot or can no longer do.
 as human classifications. Lovecraft applies the term "Outsider" to this thing or entity, the Thing, which arrives and passes at the edge,
 Be quick, even when standing still! Line of chance, line
 before it is an affair for linguistics; even the evaluation of degrees of gram-maticality is a political matter.
 Between the matter of a dirty little secret in rigid segmentarity, the empty form of "What happened?" in supple segmentarity,
 But how can we reach this "plane," or rather how can we con struct it, and how can we draw the "line" leading us there? For outside the strata or in the absence of strata we no longer have forms or sub stances, organization or development, content or expression. We are disarticulated; we no longer even seem to be sustained by rhythms. How could unformed matter, anorganic life, nonhuman becoming be anything but chaos pure and simple? Every undertaking of destratification (for example, going beyond the organism, plunging into a becoming) must therefore observe concrete rules of extreme
 But it was also the autonomous cities, the feudal sys- tems. .. The question as to whether these last-mentioned formations still answer to the concept of the State can be formulated only after certain cor- relations have been taken into account. Every bit as much as the evolved
 But noology is confronted by counterthoughts, which are violent in their acts and discontinuous in their appearances,
 Cleves is a novel precisely by virtue of what seemed paradoxical to the peo- ple of the time: the states of absence or "rest,"
 color and becomings-sounds by means of components of deterrito-rialization (we will return to this point later). Ethology is advanced enough to have entered this realm.
 CONCLUSION: CONCRETE
 CONCLUSION: CONCRETE RULES AND
 CONCLUSION: CONCRETE RULES AND ABSTRACT MACHINES
 confined to the physicochemical strata: there exists a submolecular, unformed Matter. Similarly, not all Life is confined to the organic strata: rather, the organism is that which life sets against itself in order to limit itself, and there is a life all the more intense, all the more pow erful for being
 Democritus, Menaechmus, Archimedes, Vauban, Desargues, Bernoulli, Monge, Carnot, Poncelet, Perronet, etc.: in each case a monograph would be neces- sary to take into account the special situation of these savants whom State science used only after restraining or disciplining them, after repressing their social or political conceptions.
 distinction subsists, and is even recreated, on the level oi traits: there and are traits of content (unformed matters or intensities) and traits of
 Do not multiply models. We are well aware that there are many others: a ludic model, which would compare games according to their type of space and found game theory on different principles (for example, the smooth space of Go versus the striated space of chess); and a noological model con- cerned not with
 Does the plane of consistency constitute the body without organs, or does the body without organs compose the plane? Are the Body without Organs and the Plane the same thing? In any event, composer and composed have the same power: the line does not have a dimen- sion superior to that of the
 empires, the autonomous cities, and feudal systems presuppose an archaic empire that served as their foundation; they were themselves in contact with evolved empires that reacted back upon them; they actively prepared the way for new forms of the State (for example, absolute monarchy as the culmination of a certain kind of subjective law and a feudal process).
 escapes the strata, cuts across assemblages, and draws an abstract line without contour, a line of nomad art and itinerant metallurgy.
 Even today, psychoanaly- sis lays claim to the role of Cogitatio universalis as the thought of the Law, in a magical return. And there are quite a few other competitors and pre- tenders. Noology, which is distinct from ideology, is precisely the study of images of thought, and their historicity. In a sense, it could be said that all this has no importance, that thought has never had anything but laughable gravity. But that is all it requires: for us not to take it seriously. Because that makes it all the easier for it to think for us, and to be forever engendering new functionaries. Because the less people take thought seriously, the more they think in conformity with what the State wants. Truly, what man of the State has not dreamed of that paltry impossible thing—to be a thinker?
 Even when times are abstractly equal, the individuation of a life is not the same as the individuation of the subject that leads it or serves as its support. It is not the
 Every order-word, even a father's to his son, carries a little death sentence—a Judgment, as Kafka put it.
 exactly the power of the Soviets came to an end. All of the external circumstances can be assigned: the war as well as the insurrection that forced Lenin to flee to Finland. But the fact remains that the incorporeal transformation was uttered on the
 figure, insofar as it is the extremity of a body, is the noncorporeal attribute that limits and completes that body: death is the Figure. It is through death that a body reaches com- pletion not only in time but in space, and it is through death that its lines form or outline a shape. There are dead spaces just as there are dead times. "If [enantiomorphosis is] practiced often the whole world shrivels....
 For when the nest is no longer made by the male, nesting ceases to be a component of the territorial assemblage—it takes wing, so to speak, from the territory; furthermore, courtship, which now precedes nesting, itself becomes a relatively autono- mous assemblage. In addition, the matter of expression, "grass stem," acts as a component of passage between the territorial assemblage and the courtship assemblage. The fact that the grass stem has an increasingly rudimentary function in certain species, the fact that it tends to cancel out in the series under consideration, is not enough to make it a vestige, much less a symbol. A matter of expression is never a vestige or a symbol. The grass stem is a deterritorialized component, or one en route to
 from expression. It is necessary to ascertain the content and the expression of each assemblage, to evaluate their real distinction, their reciprocal presupposition, their piecemeal insertions. The reason that the assemblage is not confined to the strata is that expression in it becomes a semiotic system, a regime of signs, and content becomes a pragmatic system, actions and passions. This is the double articulation face-hand, gesture-word, and the reciprocal presupposition between the two. This is the first division of every assemblage: it is simultaneously and inseparably a machinic assemblage and an assemblage of enunciation. In each case, it is necessary to ascertain both what is said and what is done. There is a new relation between content and expression that was not yet present in the strata: the statements or expressions express incorporeal transformations that are "attributed" as such (properties) to bodies or contents. In the strata, expressions do not form signs, nor contents pragmata, so this autonomous zone of incorporeal transformations expressed by the former and attributed to the latter does not appear. Of course, regimes of signs develop only in the alloplastic or anthropomorphic strata (including territorialized animals). But this does not mean that they do not permeate all of the strata, and overspill each of them. Assemblages belong to the strata to the extent that the distinction between content and expression still holds for them. We may also think of regimes of signs and pragmatic systems as strata in their own right, in the broad sense previously mentioned. But because the content-expression distinction assumes a new figure, we are already in a different element than that of the strata in the narrow sense.
 Fundamental segmentarity: one proceeding must end (and its termination must be marked) before another begins, to enable another to begin.
 get worse. The professor cynically congratulated himself on taking his pleasure from behind, but the offspring always turned out to be runts and wens, bits and pieces, if not stupid vulgarizations. Besides, the professor was not a geolo-
 Haecceity. To change milieus,
 He bears witness, above all, to other relations with women, with animals, because he sees all things in relations of becoming, rather than implementing binary distributions between "states": a verita- ble becoming-animal of the warrior, a becoming-woman, which lies out- side dualities of terms as well as correspondences between relations. In every respect, the war machine is of another species, another nature, another origin than the State apparatus.
 He or one, indefinite article, proper name, infinitive verb: A HANS TO BECOME HORSE, A PACK NAMED WOLF TO LOOK AT
 HE, ONE TO DIE, WASP TO MEET ORCHID, THEY ARRIVE HUNS. Classified ads,
 HOW DO YOU MAKE YOURSELF A BODY WITHOUT ORGANS?
 idation, the closer it is to the living abstract machine. But it strays
 If the line is opposed to the point (or blocks to memories, becoming to the faculty of memory), it is not in an absolute way: a punctual system includes a certain utilization of lines,
 In any case, this line is very different from the previous one; it is a line of molecu- lar or supple segmentation the segments of which are like quanta of deterritorialization.
 In modern States, the sociologist succeeded in replacing the philosopher (as, for example, when Durkheim and his disciples set out to give the republic a secular model of thought).
 In short, symbolic understanding replaces the analogy of proportion with an analogy of pro- portionality; the serialization of resemblances with a structuration of dif- ferences;
 in that character only by being spoken in lan- guage. That is stating the obvious. More positively, it must be noted that the immanence within language of universal translation means that its epistrata and parastrata, with respect to superpositions, diffusions, com- munications, and abutments, operate in an entirely different manner than those of other strata: all human movements, even the most violent, imply translations.
 In truth, the nature of the abstract machine is the most general problem: there is no reason to tie the abstract
 Instead of setting up an opposition between the segmentary and the cen- tralized, we should make a distinction between two types of segmentarity, one "primitive" and supple,
 intermilieus, on the fence, between night and day, at dusk, twilight or Zwielicht,
 interpreter of all the other systems, linguistic and nonlinguistic." This amounts to defining an abstract character of language and then saying that the other strata can share
 is the order of the transformational series? What are
 It could always be said that these "grass stem" behaviors are merely archa- isms, or vestiges of nesting behavior. But the notion of behavior itself proves inadequate to this assemblage.
 It has its sadist or whore sew it up; the eyes, anus, urethra, breasts, and nose are sewn shut. It has itself strung up to stop the organs from working; flayed, as if the organs clung to the skin; sodomized, smothered, to make sure everything is sealed tight.
 It is necessary from this standpoint to conceptualize the contemporaneousness or coexistence of the two inverse movements, of the two directions of time—of the primitive peoples
 It is not a question of experiencing desire as an internal lack, nor of delaying pleasure in order to produce a kind of externalizable surplus value, but instead of constituting an intensive body without organs, Tao, a field of immanence in which desire lacks nothing and therefore cannot be linked to any external or tran- scendent criterion. It is true that the whole circuit can be channeled toward procreative ends (ejaculation when the energies are right); that is how Con- fucianism understood it. But this is true only for one side of the assemblage of desire, the side facing the strata, organisms, State, family... It is not true for the other side, the Tao side of destratification that draws a plane of consistency proper to desire. Is the Tao masochistic? Is courtly love Taoist? These questions are largely meaningless. The field of immanence or plane of consistency must be constructed. This can take place in very different social formations through very different assemblages (perverse, artistic, scientific, mystical, political) with different types of bodies without organs. It is constructed piece by piece, and the places, conditions, and techniques are irreducible to one another. The question, rather, is whether the pieces can fit together, and at what price. Inevitably, there will be mon- strous crossbreeds. The plane of consistency would be the totality of all BwO's, a pure multiplicity of immanence, one piece of which may be Chi- nese, another American, another medieval, another petty perverse, but all in a movement of generalized deterritorialization in which each person takes and makes what she or he can, according to tastes she or he will have succeeded in abstracting from a Self [Moi], according to a politics or strat- egy successfully abstracted from a given formation, according to a given procedure abstracted from its origin.
 It is on this line that a present is defined whose very form is the form of something that has already happened, however close you might be to it, since the ungraspable matter of that something is entirely molecularized, traveling at speeds beyond the ordinary thresholds of perception. Yet we will not say that it is necessarily better.
 It is the accents that form the diagonal in Mozart, the accents above all. If one does not follow the accents, if one does not observe them, one falls back into a relatively impoverished punctual system. The human musician is deterritorialized in the bird, but it is a bird that is itself deterritorialized, "transfigured," a celestial bird that has just as much of a becoming as that which becomes with it. Captain Ahab is engaged in an irresistible becoming-whale with Moby-Dick; but the animal, Moby-Dick, must simultaneously become an unbearable pure whiteness, a shimmering pure white wall, a silver thread that stretches out and supples up "like" a girl, or twists like a whip, or stands like a rampart. Can it be that literature sometimes catches up with painting, and even music? And that painting catches up with music? (More cites Klee's birds but on the other hand fails to understand what Messiaen says about bird song.) No art is imitative, no art can be imitative or figurative. Suppose a painter "represents" a bird; this is in fact a becoming-bird that can occur only to the extent that the bird itself is in the process of becoming something else, a pure line and pure color. Thus imitation self-destructs,
 It is the genetic code, which is in turn inseparable from a double segmentarity or a double articulation, this time between two types of independent molecules: the sequence of
 It is therefore a differential method that establishes the distinction between weapons and tools, from at least five points of view: the direction (sens) (projection-introception), the
 it should be borne in mind that he does so under very precise conditions of fluctuation and that the forms made by atoms are primarily large, nonmetric aggregates,
 its quantity and speed, when it relates a body considered as One to a striated space through which it moves, and which it measures with
 Jaw as high intensity,
 Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or even Shestov. Wherever they dwell, it is the steppe or the desert. They destroy images. Nietzsche's Schopen- hauer as Educator is perhaps the greatest critique ever directed against the image of thought and its relation to the State. "Private thinker," however, is not a satisfactory expression, because it exaggerates interiority, when it is a question of outside thought.
 Landing,
 Let us return to the story of multiplicity, for the creation of this substan- tive marks a very important moment. It was created precisely in order to escape the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one, to escape dialectics, to succeed in conceiving the multiple in the pure state, to cease treating it as a numerical fragment of a lost Unity or Totality or as the organic element of a Unity or Totality yet to come, and instead distinguish between different types of multiplicity. Thus we find in the work of the mathematician and physicist Riemann a distinction between discreet mul- tiplicities and continuous multiplicities (the metrical principle of the sec- ond kind of multiplicity resides solely in forces at work within them). Then
 Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the State apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of the game pieces, the relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a game of State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with a relative power, and these relative powers combine in a sub- ject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game's form of interiority. Go pieces, in contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function:
 Memories of the Secret. The secret has a privileged, but quite variable, relation to perception and the imperceptible. The secret relates first of all to certain contents. The content is too big for its form ... or else the con- tents themselves have a form, but that form is covered, doubled, or replaced by a simple container, envelope, or box whose role it is to suppress formal relations. These are contents it has been judged fitting to isolate or disguise for various reasons. Drawing up a list of these reasons (shame, treasure, divinity, etc.) has limited value as long as the secret is opposed to its discovery as in a binary machine having only two terms, the secret and disclosure, the secret and desecration. For on the one hand, the secret as content is superseded by a perception of the secret, which is no less secret
 Movement has an essential relation to the imperceptible; it is by nature imperceptible. Perception can grasp movement only as the displacement
 movement is absolute when, whatever its quantity and speed, it
 need for a transcendent center of power; power is instead immanent and melds with the "real," operating through normalization. A strange inven- tion: as if in one form the doubled subject were the causeof the statements of which, in its other form, it itself is a part. This is the paradox of the legislator-subject replacing the signifying despot: the more you obey the statements of the dominant reality, the more in command you are as sub- ject of enunciation in mental reality, for in the end you are only obeying yourself! You are the one in command, in your capacity as a rational being. A new form of slavery is invented, namely, being slave to oneself, or to pure "reason," the Cogito. Is there anything more passional than pure reason? Is there a colder, more extreme, more self-interested passion than the Cogito?
 Nor is the anomalous the bearer of a species presenting specific or generic characteristics in their purest state; nor is it a model or unique specimen; nor is it the perfection of a type incarnate; nor is it the eminent term of a series; nor is it the basis of an absolutely harmonious correspondence. The anomalous is neither an individual nor a species; it has only affects, it has neither familiar or subjectified feelings, nor specific or significant characteristics. Human tenderness is as foreign to it
 Not only does the State exercise power over the segments it sustains or permits to survive, but it possesses, and imposes, its own segmentarity. Perhaps the opposition sociologists establish between the segmentary and the central is biological deep down: the ringed worm, and the central nervous system. But the central brain itself is a worm, even more segmented than the others, in spite of and including all of its vicarious actions. There is no opposition between the central and the segmentary. The modern political system is a global whole, unified and unifying, but is so because it implies a constella- tion of juxtaposed, imbricated, ordered subsystems; the analysis of deci- sion making brings to light all kinds of compartmentalizations and partial processes that interconnect, but not without gaps and displacements. Technocracy operates by the segmentary division of labor (this applies to the international division of labor as well). Bureaucracy exists only in com- partmentalized offices and functions only by "goal displacements" and the corresponding "dysfunctions." Hierarchy is not simply pyramidal; the boss's office is as much at the end of the hall as on top of the tower. In short, we would say that modern life has not done away with segmentarity but has on the contrary made it exceptionally rigid.
 Now if we consider the first aspect of the order-word, in other words, death as the expressed of the statement, it clearly meets the preceding requirements: even though death essentially concerns bodies, is attributed to bodies, its immediacy, its instantaneousness, lends it the authentic char- acter of an incorporeal transformation. What precedes and follows it may be an extensive system of actions and passions, a slow labor of bodies; in itself, it is neither action nor passion, but a pure act, a pure transformation that enunciation fuses with the statement, the sentence. That man is dead ... You are already dead when you receive the order-word ... In effect, death is everywhere, as that ideal, uncrossable boundary separating bod- ies, their forms, and states, and as the condition, even initiatory, even sym- bolic, through which a subject must pass in order to change its form or state. This is the sense in which Canetti speaks of "enantiomorphosis":
 Of course, the crudest and most visible transformations were in the other direction: the symbolic translations occurring when the signifier takes power. The preceding exam- ples concerning monetary signs and rhythmic regimes can be repeated in the opposite direction. The passage from an African dance to a white dance
 of destruction or death. For the stakes here are indeed the negative and the positive in the absolute: the earth girded, encompassed,
 of hips, line of flight. Don't bring out the General in you! Don't have just ideas, just have an idea (Godard). Have short-term ideas. Make maps, not photos or drawings. Be the Pink Panther and your loves will be like the wasp and the orchid, the cat and the baboon. As they say about old man river:
 on a plane of consistency of variation, the plane of music and of the Recherche (just as Wagnerian motifs abandon all fixity of form and all assignation of personages). It is as though Swann's desperate efforts to reterritorialize the flow of things (to reterritorialize Odette on a secret, painting on a face, music on the Bois de Boulogne) were replaced by the sped-up movement of deterritorialization, by a linear speedup of the abstract machine, sweeping away faces and landscapes, and then love, jeal- ousy, painting, and music itself, according to increasingly stronger coeffi- cients that nourish the Work at risk of dissolving everything and dying. For the narrator, despite partial victories, fails in his project; that project was not at all to regain time or to force back memories, but to become master of speeds to the rhythm of his asthma. It was to face annihilation. But another outcome was possible, or was made possible by Proust.
 One could be called Compars and the other Dispars. The compars is the legal or legalist model employed by royal sci- ence. The search for laws consists in extracting constants, even if those con- stants are only relations between variables (equations). An invariable form for variables, a variable matter of the invariant: such is the foundation of the hylomorphic schema. But for the dispars as an element of nomad sci- ence the relevant distinction is material-forces rather than matter-form. Here, it is not exactly a question of extracting constants from variables but of placing the variables themselves in a state of continuous variation. If there are still equations, they are adequations, inequations, differential equations irreducible to the algebraic form and inseparable from a sensible intuition of variation. They seize or determine singularities in the matter, instead of constituting a general form. They effect individuations through events or haecceities, not through the "object" as a compound of matter and form; vague essences are nothing other than haecceities. In all these respects, there is an opposition between the logos and the nomos, the law and the nomos, prompting the comment that the law still "savors of
 Physiological, acoustic, and vocal substance are not the only things that undergo all these deterritorializations. The form of expression, as language, also crosses a threshold.
 point, nor the surface to that of the line,
 power, why we so often think of it in apocalyptic terms, what conflicts it spawns, what slim chances it leaves us.. .)•
 PROBLEM HI. How do the nomads invent or find their weapons?
 Proliferation of Eyes By Multiplication of Border
 protein units
 pure abstract machine.
 reterritorialization.
 Rhythm is never on the same plane as that which has rhythm. Action occurs in a milieu, whereas rhythm is located between two milieus, or between two
 RULES AND ABSTRACT MACHINES
 Second, weapons and tools do not "tendentially" (approximately) have the same relation to movement, to speed. It is yet another essential contri- bution of Paul Virilio to have stressed this weapon-speed complemen- tarity: the weapon invents speed, or the discovery of speed invents the weapon (the projective character of weapons is the result). The war machine releases a vector of speed so specific to it that it needs a special name; it is not only the power of destruction, but "dromocracy" (= nomos). Among other advantages, this idea articulates a new mode of distinction between the hunt and war. For it is certain not only that war does not derive
 smooth spaces such as the air, the sea, or even the earth (magnae res). There is indeed such a thing as measured, cadenced rhythm, relating to the coursing of a river between its banks or to the form of a striated space; but there is also a rhythm without measure, which relates to the upswell of a flow, in other words, to the manner in which a fluid occupies a smooth space.
 So that the narrator's pose is not principally that of the investi- gating detective but (a very different figure) that of the jailer. How can he become master of speed, how can he stand it nervously (as a headache) and perceptually (as a flash)? How can he build a prison for Albertine? Jealousy is different in Swann and the narrator, as is the perception of music: Vinteuil gradually ceases to be apprehended in terms of forms and compa- rable subjects, and assumes incredible speeds and slownesses that combine
 Social prohibitions against metamorphosis are perhaps the most impor- tant of all. . . . Death itself, the strictest of all boundaries, is what is inter- posed between classes."
 Some have spoken of an "ecosystem," not only situated at the origin, in which work tools and weapons of war exchange their determinations: it seems that the same machinicphylum traverses both. And yet we have the feeling that there are many internal differences, even if they are not intrin- sic, in other words, logical or conceptual, and even if they remain approxi- mate. As a first approximation, weapons have a privileged relation with projection. Anything that throws or is thrown is fundamentally a weapon, and propulsion is its essential moment. The weapon is ballistic; the very notion of the "problem" is related to the war machine. The more mecha- nisms of projection a tool has, the more it behaves like a weapon, poten- tially or simply metaphorically. In addition, tools are constantly compen- sating for the projective mechanisms they possess, or else they adapt them to other ends. It is true that missile weapons, in the strict sense, whether projected or projecting, are only one kind among others; but even hand- held weapons require a usage of the hand and arm different from that required by tools, a projective usage exemplified in the martial arts. The tool, on the other hand, is much more introceptive, introjective: it prepares a matter from a distance, in order to bring it to a state of equilibrium or to appropriate it for a form of interiority. Action at a distance exists in both cases, but in one case it is centrifugal and in the other, centripetal. One could also say that the tool encounters resistances, to be conquered or put to use, while the weapon has to do with counterattack, to be avoided or invented (the counterattack is in fact the precipitating and inventive factor in the war machine, to the extent that it is not simply reducible to a quanti- tative rivalry or defensive parade).
 speak of rhythm in the sense of form,
 splashdown, takeoff.. . This easily avoids an aporia that threatened to introduce meter into rhythm, despite all the dec- larations of intent to the contrary: How can one proclaim the constituent inequality of rhythm while at the same time admitting implied vibrations, periodic repetitions of components? A milieu does in fact exist by virtue of a periodic repetition, but one whose only effect is to produce a difference by which the milieu passes into another milieu. It is the difference that is rhythmic, not the repetition, which nevertheless produces it: productive repetition has nothing to do with reproductive meter. This is the "critical solution of the antinomy."
 taking them as you find them: Such is rhythm.
 terrestrial destiny, objective signifying destiny. The close-up in film knows this figure well: the Griffith close-up of a face,
 Terrestrial Signifying Despotic Face
 th of July for the peacetime development of the Revolution, and no longer held in the state of war; the passage from peace to war implied this transforma- tion, not just from the masses to a guiding proletariat, but from the prole- tariat to a directing vanguard. July
 The anomalous, the preferential element in the pack, has nothing to do with the preferred, domestic, and psychoanalytic individual.
 the artist turns his or her attention to the microscopic, to crystals, molecules, atoms, and particles, not for scientific conformity, but for movement, for nothing but immanent movement; the artist tells him- or herself that this world has had different aspects, will have still others, and that there are already others on other planets; finally, the artist opens up to the Cosmos in order to harness forces in a "work" (without which the opening onto the Cosmos would only be a reverie incapable of enlarging the limits of the earth); this work requires very simple, pure, almost childish means, but also the forces of a people, which is what is still lacking. "We still lack the ultimate force....
 The assemblage is also divided along another axis. Its territoriality (content and expression included) is only a first aspect;
 The audience rather sulkily denounced the numerous misunderstand- ings, misinterpretations, and even misappropriations in the professor's presentation, despite the authorities he had appealed to, calling them his "friends." Even the Dogons . . . And things would presently
 The condition for this circula- tion and multiplication is that the man not ejaculate.
 The hard part is to specify the status and scope of the order-word. It is not a question of the origin of language, since the order-word is only a language-function, a function coextensive with language. If language always seems to presuppose itself, if we cannot assign it a nonlinguistic point of departure, it is because language does not operate between some- thing seen (or felt) and something said, but always goes from saying to say- ing. We believe that narrative consists not in communicating what one has seen but in transmitting what one has heard, what someone else said to you. Hearsay. It does not even suffice to invoke a vision distorted by pas- sion. The "first" language, or rather the first determination of language, is
 The HE does not represent a subject but rather makes a diagram of an assemblage. It does not overcode statements, it does not transcend them as do the first two persons; on the contrary, it prevents them from falling under the tyr- anny of subjective or signifying constellations, under the regime of empty redundancies. The contents of the chains of expression it articulates are those that can be assembled for a maximum number of occurrences and becomings. "They arrive like fate... where do they come from, how have they pushed this far .. .?"
 the identification of terms with an equality of relations; the metamorphoses of the imagination with conceptual metaphors; the great
 The law in its entirety undergoes a mutation, becoming subjective, conjunctive, "topical" law: this is because the State apparatus is faced with a new task, which consists less in overcoding already coded flows than in organizing conjunctions of decoded flows as such. Thus the regime of signs has changed: in all of these respects, the operation of the imperial "signifier" has been superseded by processes of subjedification; machinic enslavement tends to be replaced by a regime of social subjection. And unlike the relatively uniform imperial pole, this second pole presents the most diverse of forms. But as varied as relations of personal dependence are, they always mark qualified and topical conjunc- tions. It was the evolved empires, of the East and of the West, that first developed this new public sphere of the private, through institutions such as the consilium and the fiscus in the Roman Empire (it was through these institutions that freed slaves acquired a political power paralleling that of the functionaries).
 The law of the book is the law of reflection, the One that becomes two. How could the law of the book reside in nature, when it is what presides over the very division between world and book, nature and art? One becomes two: whenever we encounter this formula, even stated strategically by Mao or understood in the most "dialectical" way possible, what we have before us is the most clas- sical and well reflected, oldest, and weariest kind of thought. Nature doesn't work that way: in nature, roots are taproots with a more multiple, lateral, and circular system of ramification, rather than a dichotomous one. Thought lags behind nature. Even the book as a natural reality is a tap- root, with its pivotal spine and surrounding leaves. But the book as a spiri- tual reality, the Tree or Root as an image, endlessly develops the law of the One that becomes two, then of the two that become four. . . Binary logic is the spiritual reality of the root-tree. Even a discipline as "advanced" as lin- guistics retains the root-tree as its fundamental image, and thus remains wedded to classical reflection (for example, Chomsky and his grammatical trees, which begin at a point S and proceed by dichotomy). This is as much as to say that this system of thought has never reached an understanding of multiplicity: in order to arrive at two following a spiritual method it must assume a strong principal unity. On the side of the object, it is no doubt pos- sible, following the natural method, to go directly from One to three, four, or five, but only if there is a strong principal unity available, that of the piv- otal taproot supporting the secondary roots. That doesn't get us very far. The binary logic of dichotomy has simply been replaced by biunivocal rela- tionships between successive circles. The pivotal taproot provides no bet- ter understanding of multiplicity than the dichotomous root. One operates in the object, the other in the subject. Binary logic and biunivocal relation- ships still dominate psychoanalysis (the tree of delusion in the Freudian interpretation of Schreber's case), linguistics, structuralism, and even information science.
 The masochist body: it is poorly understood in terms of pain; it is fundamentally a question of the BwO.
 The nomos, or the dispars, is altogether different. But this is not to say that the other forces refute gravity or contradict attraction. Although it is true that they do not go against them, they do not result from them either; they do not depend on them but testify to events that are always supple- mentary or of "variable affects." Each time a new field opened up in science—under conditions making this a far more important notion than that of form or object—it proved irreducible to the field of attraction and the model of the gravitational forces, although not contradictory to them. It affirmed a "more" or an excess, and lodged itself in that excess, that devi- ation. When chemistry took a decisive step forward, it was always by add-
 The order-word has two tones. The prophet receives order-words just as much in taking flight as in longing for death: Jewish prophetism fused the wish to be dead and the flight impulse with the divine order-word.
 the other "modern" and rigid. This distinction reframes each of the figures previously discussed.
 the other aspect is constituted by lines of deterritorialization that cut across it and carry it away. These lines are very diverse: some open the territor- ial assemblage onto other assemblages (for example, the territorial
 the sleep that overtakes the characters. There is always a Christian education in the novel. Molloy is the beginning of the genre of the novel. When the novel began, with Chretien de Troyes, for example, the essential character that would accompany it over the entire course of its history was already there: The knight of the novel of courtly love spends his time forgetting his name, what he is doing, what people say to him, he doesn't know where he is going or to whom he is speaking, he is continually drawing a line of absolute deterritorialization, but also losing his way, stopping, and falling into black holes. "He awaits chivalry and adventure." Open Chretien de Troyes to any page and you will find a catatonic knight seated on his steed, leaning on his lance, waiting, seeing the face of his loved one in the landscape; you have to hit him to make him respond. Lancelot, in the presence of the queen's white face, doesn't notice his horse plunge into the river; or he gets into a passing cart and it turns out to be the cart of disgrace. There is a face-landscape aggre- gate proper to the novel, in which black holes sometimes distribute them- selves on a white wall, and the white line of the horizon sometimes spins toward a black hole, or both simultaneously.
 The strata "take" on the plane of consistency itself, forming areas of thickening, coagulations, and belts organized and developing along the axes of another plane (substance-form, content- expression). This means that each stratum has a unity of consistency or of composition relating above all to substantial elements and formal traits, and testifying to the existence of a properly stratic abstract machine presiding over this other plane. And there is a third type: on the alloplastic strata, which are particularly propitious for the assem-
 The territorial assemblage continually passes into other assemblages. Likewise, the infra-assemblage is inseparable from the intra-assemblage, as is the intra-assemblage from interassemblages; yet these passages are not necessary but rather take place "on a case-by-case basis." The reason is simple: the intra-assemblage, the territorial assemblage, territorializes func- tions and forces (sexuality, aggressiveness, gregariousness, etc.), and in the process of territorializing them, transforms them. But these territorialized functions and forces can suddenly take on an autonomy that makes them swing over into other assemblages, compose other deterritorialized assemblages. In the intra-assemblage, sexuality may appear as a territorialized function, but it can just as easily draw a line of deterritorialization that describes another assemblage; there are therefore quite variable relations between sexuality and the territory, as if sexuality were keeping "its distance." Profession, trade, and specialty imply territorialized activities, but they can also take wing from the territory, building a new assemblage around themselves, and between professions. A territorial or territorialized component may set about budding, pro- ducing: this is the case for the refrain, so much so that we should perhaps call all cases of this kind refrains. This ambiguity between the territory and deterritorialization is the ambiguity of the Natal. It is understood much more clearly if it is borne in mind that the territory has an intense center at its profoundest depths; but as we have seen, this intense center can be located outside the territory, at the point of convergence of very
 The uncertain moment at which the white wall/black hole, black point/white shore system, as on a Japanese print, itself becomes one with the act of leaving it, breaking away from and crossing through it.
 There exist collective mechanisms that simultaneously ward off and
 There is no question that the two lines are constantly interfering, react- ing upon each other, introducing into each other either a current of supple- ness or a point of rigidity. Nathalie Sarraute, in her essay on the novel, praises English novelists, not only for discovering (as did Proust and Dostoyevsky) the great movements, territories, and points of the uncon- scious that allow us to regain time or revive the past, but also for inopportunely following these molecular lines, simultaneously present and imperceptible. She shows that dialogue or conversation does indeed com- ply with the breaks of a fixed segmentarity, with vast movements of regu- lated distribution corresponding to the attitudes and positions of each of us; but also that they are run through and swept up by micromovements, fine segmentations distributed in an entirely different way, unfindable par- ticles of an anonymous matter, tiny cracks and postures operating by dif- ferent agencies even in the unconscious, secret lines of disorientation or
 There is one last point of view, that of typological analysis. For there exist general types of abstract machines. The abstract machine or machines of the plane of consistency do not exhaust or dominate the entirety of the operations that constitute the strata and even the assemblages.
 There is one last problem, the most anguishing one, concerning the dan- gers specific to each line. There is not much to say about the danger con- fronting the first, for the chances are slim that its rigidification will fail. There is not much to say about the ambiguity of the second. But why is the line of flight, even aside from the danger it runs of reverting to one of the other two lines, imbued with such singular despair in spite of its message of joy, as if at the very moment things are coming to a resolution its undertak-
 There is, moreover, a third level, upon which cellular chemistry itself depends.
 These "problems" become singularly political when we think of modern States.
 This is the meaning of "absolute." The absolute expresses nothing transcendent or undifferentiated. It does not even express a quantity that would exceed all given (relative) quantities. It expresses only a type of movement qualitatively different from relative movement. A
 thought contents (ideology) but with the form, manner or mode, and function of thought, according to the mental space it draws and
 Thus packs, or multiplicities, continually transform themselves into each other, cross over into each other. Werewolves become vampires when they die. This is not surprising, since becoming and multiplicity are the same thing. A multiplicity is defined not by its elements, nor by a center of unification or comprehension. It is defined by the number of dimensions it has; it is not divisible, it cannot lose or gain a dimension without changing its nature. Since its variations and dimensions are immanent to it, it amounts to the same thing to say that each multiplicity is already composed of heterogeneous terms in symbiosis, and that a multiplicity is continually transforming itself into a string of other multiplicities, according to its thresholds and doors. For example, the Wolf-Man's pack of wolves also becomes a swarm of bees, and a field of anuses, and a collection of small holes and tiny ulcerations (the theme of contagion): all these heterogene- ous elements compose "the" multiplicity of symbiosis and becoming. If we imagined the position of a fascinated Self, it was because the multiplicity toward which it leans, stretching to the breaking point, is the continuation of another multiplicity that works it and strains it from the inside. In fact, the self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities. Each multiplicity is defined by a borderline functioning as Anomalous, but there is a string of borderlines, a continuous line of borderlines (fiber) fol- lowing which the multiplicity changes. And at each threshold or door, a new pact? A fiber stretches from a human to an animal, from a human or an animal to molecules, from molecules to particles, and so on to the imper- ceptible. Every fiber is a Universe fiber. A fiber strung across borderlines constitutes a line of flight or of deterritorialization. It is evident that the Anomalous, the Outsider, has several functions: not only does it border each multiplicity, of which it determines the temporary or local stability (with the highest number of dimensions possible under the circum- stances), not only is it the precondition for the alliance necessary to becom- ing, but it also carries the transformations of becoming or crossings of multiplicities always farther down the line of flight. Moby-Dick is the White Wall bordering the pack; he is also the demonic Term of the Alliance;
 To be present at the dawn of the world. Such is the link between imperceptibility, indis- cernibility, and impersonality—the three virtues. To reduce oneself to an abstract line, a trait, in order to find one's zone of indiscernibility with other traits, and in this way enter the haecceity and impersonality of the creator. One is then like grass: one has made the world, everybody/ everything, into a becoming, because one has made a necessarily commu- nicating world, because one has suppressed in oneself everything that prevents us from slipping between things and growing in the midst of things. One has combined "everything" (le "tout"): the indefinite article, the infinitive-becoming, and the proper name to which one is reduced. Sat- urate, eliminate, put everything in.
 To place thought in an immediate relation
 to the Cosmos, and presents itself as the material through which human beings tap cosmic forces. We could say that the earth, as deterritorialized, is itself the strict correlate of D. To the point that D can be called the creator of the earth—of a new land, a universe, not just a
 to the universal or the constant, or to efface the singularity of abstract machines insofar as they are built around variables and variations.
 Traits of expres- sion describing a smooth space and connecting with a matter-flow thus should not be confused with striae that convert space and make it a form of expression that grids and organizes matter.
 vector (speed-gravity), the model (free action-work), the expression (jewelry-signs), and the passional or desiring tonality (affect-feeling). Doubtless the State apparatus tends to bring uniformity to the regimes, by disciplining its armies, by making work a fundamental unit, in other words, by imposing its own traits. But it is not impossible for weapons and tools, if they are taken up by new assemblages of metamorphosis, to enter other relations of alliance. The man of war may at times form peasant or worker alliances, but it is more frequent for a worker, industrial or agricultural, to reinvent a war machine. Peasants made an important con-
 We believe on the contrary that the third person indefinite, HE, THEY,
 We have gone from explicit commands to order-words as implicit pre- suppositions; from order-words to the immanent acts or incorporeal trans- formations they express; and from there to the assemblages of enunciation whose variables they are. To the extent these variables enter at a given moment into determinable relations, the assemblages combine in a regime of signs or a semiotic machine. It is obvious that a society is plied by several
 We have seen that the abstract machine has two very different states: sometimes it is taken up in strata where it brings about deterritorial-izations that are merely relative, or deterritorializations that are absolute
 We seek a people. We began over there in the Bauhaus.... More we cannot do."
 We shall see that machinic reasons are entirely different from logical reasons or possibilities. One does not conform to a model, one straddles the right horse. Drug users have not chosen the right molecule or the right horse. Drugs are too unwieldy to grasp the imperceptible and becomings-imperceptible; drug users believed that drugs would grant them the plane, when in fact the plane must distill its own drugs, remaining master of speeds and proximities.
 What movement, what impulse, sweeps us outside the strata and (metastratd)"] Of course, there is no reason to think that all matter is
 Wherever we used the word "memories" in the preceding pages, we were wrong to do so; we meant to say "becoming," we were saying becoming.
 which is lin- ear yet multiple, "teeming, seething, swelling, foaming, spreading like an infectious disease, this nameless horror."
 Why such a dreary parade of sucked-dry, catatonicized, vitrified, sewn-up bodies, when the BwO is also full of gaiety, ecstasy, and dance? So why these examples, why must we start there? Emptied bodies instead of full ones. What happened? Were you cautious enough? Not wisdom, cau- tion. In doses. As a rule immanent to experimentation: injections of cau- tion. Many have been defeated in this battle. Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your
 with the number of its parts. The plane sections multiplicities of vari- able dimensions. The question is, therefore, the mode of connection between the different parts of the plane: To what extent do the bodies without organs interconnect? How are the continuums of intensity extended? What
 with the outside, with the forces of the outside, in short to make thought a war machine, is a strange undertaking whose precise procedures can be studied in Nietzsche (the aphorism, for example, is very different from the maxim, for a maxim, in the republic of letters, is like an organic State act or sovereign judgment, whereas an aphorism always awaits its meaning from a new external force, a final force that must conquer or subjugate it, utilize it). There is another reason why "private thinker" is not a good expression. Although it is true that this counterthought attests to an absolute solitude, it is an extremely populous solitude, like the desert itself, a solitude already intertwined with a people to come, one that invokes and awaits that people, existing only through it, though it is not yet here. "We are lacking that final force, in the absence of a people to bear us. We are looking for that popular support." Every thought is already a tribe, the opposite of a State. And this form of exteriority of thought is not at all symmetrical to the form of interiority. Strictly speaking, symmetry exists only between different poles or focal points of interiority. But the form of exteriority of thought—the force that is always external to itself, or the final force, the «th power—is not at all another image in opposition to the image inspired by the State apparatus. It is, rather, a force that destroys both the image and its copies, the model and its reproductions, every possibility of subordinating thought to a model of the True, the Just, or the Right (Cartesian truth, Kantian just, Hegelian right, etc.). A "method" is the striated space of the cogitatio universalis and draws a path that must be followed from one point to another. But the form of exteriority situates thought in a smooth space that it must occupy without counting, and for which there is no possible method, no conceivable reproduction, but only relays, intermezzos, resur- gences. Thought is like the Vampire; it has no image, either to constitute a model of or to copy. In the smooth space of Zen, the arrow does not go from one point to another but is taken up at any point, to be sent to any other point, and tends to permute with the archer and the target. The problem of the war machine is that of relaying, even with modest means, not that of the architectonic model or the monument. An ambulant people of relayers, rather than a model society. "Nature propels the philosopher into mankind like an arrow; it takes no aim but hopes the arrow will stick somewhere. But countless times it misses and is depressed at the fact.... The artist and the philosopher are evidence against the purposiveness of nature as regards the means it employs, though they are also first-rate evidence as to the wisdom of its purpose. They strike home at only a few, while they ought to strike home at everybody—and even these few are not struck with the force with which the philosopher and artist launch their shot."
"alliances"; it is what prevents them from becoming a State factor, from fusing groups.
"defacialization," it frees something like probe-heads {fetes chercheuses, guidance devices) that dismantle the strata in their wake, break through the walls of signifiance, pour out of the holes of subjectivity, fell trees in favor of veritable rhizomes, and steer the flows down lines of positive deterritorializaton or creative flight. There are no more concentrically organized strata, no more black holes around which lines coil to form borders, no more walls to which dichotomies, binarities, and bipolar values cling. There is no more face to be in redundancy with a landscape, painting, or little phrase of music, each perpetually bringing the other to mind, on the unified surface of the wall or the central swirl of the black hole. Each freed faciality trait forms a rhizome with a freed trait of landscapity, picturality, or musicality. This is not a collection of part-objects but a living block, a connecting of stems by which the traits of a face enter a real multiplicity or diagram with a trait of an unknown landscape, a trait of painting or music that is thereby effectively produced, created, according to quanta of absolute, positive deterritori-alization—not evoked or recalled according to systems of reterritorializa-tion. A wasp trait and an orchid trait. Quanta marking so many mutations of abstract machines, each of which operates as a function of the other. Thus opens a rhizomatic realm of possibility effecting the potentialization of the possible, as opposed to arborescent possibility, which marks a closure, an impotence.
"ghetto languages" set American English in variation, to the point that New York is virtually a city without a language. (Furthermore, American English could not have constituted itself without this linguistic labor of the minorities.) Or the linguistic situation in the old Austrian empire: German was a major language in relation to the minorities, but as such it could not avoid being treated by those minorities in a way that made it a minor language in relation to the German of the Germans. There is no language that does not have intralinguistic, endogenous, internal minorities. So at the most general level of linguistics, Chomsky's and Labov's positions are constantly passing and converting into each other. Chomsky can say that even a minor, dialectical, or ghetto language cannot be studied unless invariants are extracted from it and "extrinsic or mixed" variables are eliminated; and Labov can respond that even a standard or major language cannot be studied independently of "inherent" variations, which are pre- cisely neither mixed nor extrinsic. You will never find a homogeneous sys- tem that is not still or already affected by a regulated, continuous, immanent process of variation (why does Chomsky pretend not to understand this?).
"home." The territory is made of decoded fragments of all kinds, which are borrowed from the milieus but then assume the value of "properties": even rhythms take on a new meaning (refrains). The ter- ritory makes the assemblage. The territory is more than the organism and the milieu, and the relation between the two; that is why the assemblage goes beyond mere "behavior" (hence the importance of the relative distinction between territorial animals and milieu animals).
"It" makes a move. "It" could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. Thus the relations are very dif- ferent in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary's pieces: their functioning is structural. On the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constella- tions, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regu- lated, coded war, with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology. Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus of going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum num- ber of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, with- out departure or arrival. The "smooth" space of Go, as against the "stri- ated" space of chess. The nomos of Go against the State of chess, nomos against polis. The difference is that chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go proceeds altogether differently, territorializing or deterritorializing it (make the outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the con- struction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorialize the enemy by shattering his territory from within; deterritorialize oneself by renouncing, by going elsewhere . ..). Another justice, another movement, another space-time.
"sedimentation," which deposits units of cyclic sediment according to a statistical order: flysch, with its succession of sandstone and schist. The second articulation is the "fold- ing" that sets up a stable functional structure and effects the passage from sediment to sedimentary rock.
(all of which constitutes a cycle or period)
(as opposed to activity)
(as opposed to territory)
(even isomorphy does not have that consequence), but it would be no less inac- curate to privilege a certain form of the State (forgetting that polymorphy establishes strict complementarities between the Western democracies and the colonial or neocolonial tyrannies that they install or support in other regions) or to equate the bureaucratic socialist States with the totali- tarian capitalist States (neglecting the fact that the axiomatic can encom- pass a real heteromorphy from which the higher power of the aggregate derives, even if it is for the worse).
(hold to the Particular as an innovative form). It is always astounding to see the same story repeated: the modesty of the minorities' initial demands, cou- pled with the impotence of the axiomatic to resolve the slightest corre- sponding problem. In short, the struggle around axioms is most important when it manifests, itself opens, the gap between two types of propositions, propositions of flow and propositions of axioms. The power of the minori- ties is not measured by their capacity to enter and make themselves felt within the majority system, nor even to reverse the necessarily tautolog- ical criterion of the majority, but to bring to bear the force of the non-denumerable sets, however small they may be, against the denumerable sets, even if they are infinite, reversed, or changed, even they if imply new axioms or, beyond that, a new axiomatic. The issue is not at all anarchy versus organization, nor even centralism versus decentralization, but a calculus or conception of the problems of nondenumerable sets, against the axiomatic of denumerable sets. Such a calculus may have its own compositions, organizations, even centralizations; nevertheless, it proceeds not via the States or the axiomatic process but via a pure becoming of minorities.
(Moses the Hebrew, Genseric the Vandal, Genghis the Mongol, Mao the Chinese . . .). But there is no Power regulating the flows themselves. No one dominates the growth of the "monetary mass," or money supply. If an image of the master or an idea of the State is projected outward to the limits of the universe, as if something had domination over flows as well as segments, and in the same manner, the result is a fictitious and ridiculous representation. The stock exchange gives a better image of flows and their quanta than does the State. Capitalists may be the masters of surplus value and its distribution, but they do not dominate the flows from which surplus value derives. Rather, power centers function at the points where flows are converted into seg- ments: they are exchangers, converters, oscillators. Not that the segments themselves are governed by a decision-making power. We have seen, on the contrary, that segments (classes, for example) form at the conjunction of masses and deterritorialized flows and that the most deterritorialized flow determines the dominant segment; thus the dollar segment dominates cur- rency, the bourgeoisie dominates capitalism, etc. Segments, then, are themselves governed by an abstract machine. But what power centers gov- ern are the assemblages that effectuate that abstract machine, in other words, that continually adapt variations in mass and flow to the segments of the rigid line, as a function of a dominant segment and dominated seg- ments. Much perverse invention can enter into the adaptations.
) The machinic com- ponent: the study of the assemblages that effectuate abstract machines, simultaneously semiotizing matters of expression and physicalizing matters of content.
) this new borderline between the two groups guides the contagion of animal and human being within the pack.
. A typology of modern States is thus coupled with a metaeconomics: it would be inaccurate to treat all States as "interchangeable"
. FacialityLine
. Finally, in the case of linear segmentarity, we would say that each seg- ment is underscored, rectified, and homogenized in its own right,
. LandscapityLine
. Models, isomorphy. In principle, all States are isomorphic; in other words, they are domains of realization of capital as a function of a sole external world market. But the first question is whether isomorphy implies a homogeneity or even a homogenization of States. The answer is yes, as can be seen in present-day Europe with respect to justice and the police, the highway code, the circulation of commodities, production costs, etc. But this is true only insofar as there is a tendency toward a single integrated domestic market. Otherwise, isomorphy in no way implies homogeneity: there is isomorphy, but heterogeneity, between totalitarian and social dem- ocratic States wherever the mode of production is the same. The general rules regarding this are as follows: the consistency, the totality {Vensemble), or unity of the axiomatic are defined by capital as a "right" or relation of production (for the market); the respective independence of the axioms in no way contradicts this totality but derives from the divisions or sectors of the capitalist mode of production; the isomorphy of the models, with the two poles of addition and subtraction, depends on how the domestic and foreign markets are distributed in each case.
. Power (puissance). Let us suppose that the axiomatic necessarily mar- shals a power higher than the one it treats, in other words, than that of the aggregates serving as its models. This is like a power of the continuum, tied to the axiomatic but exceeding it. We immediately recognize this power as a power of destruction, of war, a power incarnated in financial, industrial, and military technological complexes that are in continuity with one another. On the one hand, war clearly follows the same movement as capi- talism: In the same way as the proportion of constant capital keeps grow- ing, war becomes increasingly a "war of materiel" in which the human being no longer even represents a variable capital of subjection, but is instead a pure element of machinic enslavement. On the other hand, and this is the main point, the growing importance of constant capital in the axiomatic means that the depreciation of existing capital and the forma- tion of new capital assume a rhythm and scale that necessarily take the route of a war machine now incarnated in the complexes: the complexes actively contribute to the redistributions of the world necessary for the exploitation of maritime and planetary resources. There is a continuous "threshold" of power that accompanies in every instance the shifting of the axiomatic's limits; it is as though the power of war always supersaturated the system's saturation, and was its necessary condition.
. Principle of asignifying rupture: against the oversignifying breaks separating
. Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively treated as a
. What forms the apparatus of capture are two operations always found in the convergent modes: direct comparison and monopolistic appropriation.
/log  exactly).
: One or Several Wolves?
: ONE OR SEVERAL WOLVES? D
: Three Novellas, or 'What Happened?"
\^
A BODY WITHOUT ORGANS?
a Body without Organs?
A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters,
A ciphered, rhythmic, directional, autonomous, movable, numbering number: the war machine is like the necessary consequence of nomadic organization (Moses experienced it, with all its consequences). Some peo- ple nowadays are too eager to criticize this numerical organization, denouncing it as a military or even concentration-camp society where peo- ple are no longer anything more than deterritorialized "numbers." But that is false. Horror for horror, the numerical organization of people is certainly no cruder than the lineal or State organizations. Treating people like num- bers is not necessarily worse than treating them like trees to prune, or geo- metrical figures to shape and model. Moreover, the use of the number as a numeral, as a statistical element, is proper to the numbered number of the State, not to the numbering number. And the world of the concentration camp operates as much by lineages and territories as by numeration. The question is not one of good or bad but of specificity. The specificity of numerical organization rests on the nomadic mode of existence and the war machine function. The numbering number is distinct both from lineal codes and State overcoding. Arithmetic composition, on the one hand, selects, extracts from the lineages the elements that will enter into nomadism and the war machine and, on the other hand, directs them against the State apparatus, opposing a machine and an existence to the
A constant or invariant is defined less by its permanence and duration than by its function as a center, if only relative. In the tonal or diatonic sys- tem of music, laws of resonance and attraction determine centers valid for all modes and endowed with stability and attractive power (pouvoir). These centers therefore organize distinct, distinctive, forms that are clearly estab- lished for a certain amount of time: a linear, codified, centered system of the arborescent type. It is true that the minor "mode" gives tonal music a decentered, runaway, fugitive character due to the nature of its intervals and the lesser stability of its chords. This mode thus has the ambiguity of undergoing operations that align it to a major model or standard at the same time as it continues to display a certain modal power (puissance) irre- ducible to tonality, as though music set out on a journey and garnered all resurgences, phantoms of the Orient, imaginary lands, traditions from all over. But temperament, tempered chromaticism has an even greater ambi- guity: stretching the action of the center to the most distant tones, but also preparing the disaggregation of the central principle, replacing the cen- tered forms of continuous development with a form that constantly dis- solves and transforms itself. When development subordinates form and spans the whole, as in Beethoven, variation begins to free itself and becomes identified with creation. But when chromaticism is unleashed, becomes a generalized chromaticism, turns back against temperament, affecting not only pitches but all sound components—durations, intensi- ties, timbre, attacks—it becomes impossible to speak of a sound form organizing matter; it is no longer even possible to speak of a continuous development of form. Rather, it is a question of a highly complex and elab- orate material making audible nonsonorous forces. The couple matter-form is replaced by the coupling material-forces. The synthesizer has taken the place of the old "a priori synthetic judgment," and all functions change accordingly. By placing all its components in continuous variation, music itself becomes a superlinear system, a rhizome instead of a tree, and enters the service of a virtual cosmic continuum of which even holes, silences, ruptures, and breaks are a part. Thus the important thing is certainly not to establish a pseudobreak between the tonal system and atonal music; the latter, on the contrary, in breaking away from the tonal system, only carried temperament to its ultimate conclusion (although no Viennese stopped there). The essential thing is almost the opposite movement: the ferment in the tonal system itself (during much of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
A dentist told the Wolf-Man that he "would soon lose all his teeth because of the violence of his bite"—and that his gums were pocked with pustules and little holes.
A final distinction must now be noted. Not only does the abstract machine have different simultaneous states accounting for the complex- ity of what takes place on the plane of consistency, but the abstract machine should not be confused with what we call a concrete machinic assemblage. The abstract machine sometimes develops upon the plane of consistency, whose continuums, emissions, and conjugations it con- structs, and sometimes remains enveloped in a stratum whose unity of composition and force of attraction or prehension it defines. The machinic assemblage is something entirely different from the abstract machine, even though it is very closely connected with it. First, on a stra- tum, it performs the coadaptations of content and expression, ensures biunivocal relationships between segments of content and segments of expression, and guides the division of the stratum into epistrata and parastrata. Next, between strata, it ensures the relation to whatever serves as a substratum and brings about the corresponding changes in organization. Finally, it is in touch with the plane of consistency because it necessarily effectuates the abstract machine on a particular stratum, between strata, and in the relation between the strata and the plane. An assemblage (for example, the smith's anvil among the Dogons) is neces- sary for the articulations of the organic stratum to come about. An assem- blage is necessary for the relation between two strata to come about. And an assemblage is necessary for organisms to be caught within and perme- ated by a social field that utilizes them: Must not the Amazons amputate a breast to adapt the organic stratum to a warlike technological stratum, as though at the behest of a fearsome woman-bow-steppe assemblage? Assemblages are necessary for states offeree and regimes of signs to inter- twine their relations. Assemblages are necessary in order for the unity of composition enveloped in a stratum, the relations between a given stra- tum and the others, and the relation between these strata and the plane of consistency to be organized rather than random. In every respect, machinic assemblages effectuate the abstract machine insofar as it is developed on the plane of consistency or enveloped in a stratum. The most important problem of all: given a certain machinic assemblage, what is its relation of effectuation with the abstract machine? How does it effectuate it, with what adequation? Classify assemblages. What we call the mechanosphere is the set of all abstract machines and machinic assemblages outside the strata, on the strata, or between strata.
A first response would be: to be like everybody else. That is what Kierkegaard relates in his story about the "knight of the faith," the man of becoming: to look at him, one would notice nothing, a bourgeois, nothing but a bourgeois. That is how Fitzgerald lived: after a real rupture, one suc- ceeds ... in being just like everybody else. To go unnoticed is by no means easy. To be a stranger, even to one's doorman or neighbors. If it is so diffi- cult to be "like" everybody else, it is because it is an affair of becoming. Not everybody becomes everybody [and everything: tout le monde—Trans.], makes a becoming of everybody/everything. This requires much asceti- cism, much sobriety, much creative involution: an English elegance, an English fabric, blend in with the walls, eliminate the too-perceived, the too-much-to-be-perceived. "Eliminate all that is waste, death, and superfluity," complaint and grievance, unsatisfied desire, defense or pleading, everything that roots each of us (everybody) in ourselves, in our molarity. For everybody/everything is the molar aggregate, but becoming everybody/
A first type of book is the root-book. The tree is already the image of the world, or
a hideous pact, is made; there is the institution of an assemblage, a war machine or criminal machine, which can reach the point of self-destruction; there is a circula- tion of impersonal affects, an alternate current that disrupts signifying projects as well as subjective feelings, and constitutes a nonhuman sexual- ity; and there is an irresistible deterritorialization that forestalls attempts at professional, conjugal, or Oedipal reterritorialization. (Are there Oedi- pal animals with which one can "play Oedipus," play family, my little dog, my little cat, and then other animals that by contrast draw us into an irre- sistible becoming? Or another hypothesis: Can the same animal be taken up by two opposing functions and movements, depending on the case?)
A mutant flow always implies something tending to elude or escape the codes; quanta are precisely signs or degrees of deterrito-rialization in the decoded flow. The rigid line, on the other hand, implies an overcoding that substitutes itself for the faltering codes; its segments are like reterritorializations on the overcoding or overcoded line. Let us return to the case of original sin: it is the very act of a flow marking a decoding in relation to creation (with just one last island preserved for the Virgin), and a deterritorialization in relation to the land of Adam; but it simultaneously performs an overcoding by binary organizations and resonance (Powers, Church, empires, rich-poor, men-women, etc.) and complementary reterritorializations (on the land of Cain, on work, on reproduction, on
A New Regime
A plateau is always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end. A rhi- zome is made of plateaus. Gregory Bateson uses the word "plateau" to
A regime of signs has more than just two components. It has, in fact, four of them, which form the object of Pragmatics. The first was the generative component, which shows how a form of expression located on the language stratum always appeals to several combined regimes, in other words, how every regime of signs or semiotic is concretely mixed. On the level of this component, one can abstract forms of content, most successfully if empha- sis is placed on the mixture of regimes in the form of expression: one should not, however, conclude from this the predominance of a regime constitut- ing a general semiology and unifying forms. The second, transformational, component, shows how one abstract regime can be translated, transformed into another, and especially how it can be created from other regimes. This second component is obviously more profound, because all mixed regimes presuppose these transformations from one regime to another, past, pres- ent, or potential (as a function of the creation of new regimes). Once again, one abstracts, or can abstract, content, since the analysis is limited to meta- morphoses internal to the form of expression, even though the form of expression is not adequate to account for them. The third component is diagrammatic: it consists in taking regimes of signs or forms of expression and extracting from them particles-signs that are no longer formalized but instead constitute unformed traits capable of combining with one another. This is the height of abstraction, but also the moment at which abstraction
a relative sense. It will be noted immediately that these two major forms of D are not in a simple evolutionary relation to each other: the second may break away from the first, or it may lead into it (nota- bly when the segmentations of converging lines of flight bring an overall reterritorialization or one benefiting a particular segment, thus arresting the movement of escape). There are all kinds of mixed figures, assuming highly varied forms of D.
A rich couple comes into the post office and reveals to the young woman, or at least confirms, the existence of another life: coded, multiple tele- grams, signed with pseudonyms. It is hard to tell who is who anymore, or what anything means. Instead of a rigid line composed of well-determined segments, telegraphy now forms a supple flow marked by quanta that are like so many little segmentations-in-progress grasped at the moment of their birth, as on a moonbeam, or on an intensive scale. Thanks to her "pro- digious talent for interpretation," the young woman grasps that the man has a secret that has placed him in danger, deeper and deeper in danger, in a dangerous posture. It does not just have to do with his love relations with the woman. James has reached the stage in his work when it is no longer the
A stratum obviously presents very diverse forms and substances, a variety of codes and milieus. It thus possesses both different formal Types of organization and different substantial Modes of develop- ment, which divide it into parastrata and epistrata, for example, the divisions of the organic
A Thousand Plateaus
A Vss^^
a way of dying, in a kind of sonorous abolition? Is it a new borderline, an active line that will bring other becomings entirely different from becom- ing or rebecoming a pianist, that will induce a transformation of all of the preceding assemblages to which x was prisoner? Is it a way out? Is it a pact with the Devil? Schizoanalysis, or pragmatics, has no other meaning: Make a rhizome. But you don't know what you can make a rhizome with, you don't know which subterranean stem is effectively going to make a rhi- zome, or enter a becoming, people your desert. So experiment.
a) Direct comparison of lands, dif- ferential rent;
a) Direct comparison of the objects
A. The point of departure is an undivided flow that has yet to be ap propriated or compared, a "pure availability," "nonpossession and non- wealth": this is precisely what occurs when banks create money, but taken more generally it is the establishment of the stock, which is the creation of an undivided flow.
A: flow and poles
a: quanta
Above all, diagrammaticism should not be confused with an operation of the axiomatic type. Far from drawing creative lines of flight and conju- gating traits of positive deterritorialization, axiomatics blocks all lines, subordinates them to a punctual system, and halts the geometric and alge- braic writing systems that had begun to run off in all directions. This hap- pened in relation to the question of indeterminism in physics: a "reorder- ing" was undertaken to reconcile it with physical determinism. Mathemat- ical writing systems were axiomatized, in other words, restratified, resemiotized, and material flows were rephysicalized. It is as much a politi- cal as a scientific affair: science must not go crazy. Hilbert and de Broglie were as much politicians as scientists: they reestablished order. An axiomatization, a semiotization, a physicalization, is not a diagram but in fact the opposite of a diagram. The program of a stratum, against the dia- gram of the plane of consistency. This does not, however, preclude the diagram's heading back down the road to escape and scattering new, singu- lar abstract machines (the mathematical creation of improbable functions was carried out in opposition to axiomatization, and the material inven- tion of unfindable particles in opposition to physicalization). Science as
absolute specificity, that the intermediary, the interval, played exactly this substantial role. Moreover, it does not have that role in the guise of a "will"; it only has a becoming, it invents a "becoming-artist."
abstract machine is not random; the continuities, emissions and combina- tions, and conjunctions do not occur in just any fashion.
Abstract Machines (Diagram and Phylum)
according to which labor rent would come first, followed by rent in kind, followed by money rent.
aggregates themselves are taken up into stable structures that "elect" stereoscopic compounds, form organs, functions, and regulations, organize molar mechanisms, and even distribute centers capable of overflying crowds, overseeing mecha- nisms, utilizing and repairing tools, "overcoding" the aggregate (the fold- ing back on itself of the fiber to form a compact structure; a second kind of segmentarity). Sedimentation and folding, fiber and infolding.
agriculture or metallurgy, and it is the State that creates agriculture, animal raising, and metallurgy; it does so first on its own soil, then imposes them upon the surrounding world. It is not the country that progressively creates the town but the town that creates the country. It is not the State that pre- supposes a mode of production; quite the opposite, it is the State that makes production a "mode." The last reasons for presuming a progressive development are invalidated. Like seeds in a sack: It all begins with a chance intermixing. The "state and urban revolution" may be Paleolithic, not Neolithic as Childe believed.
alive than the others. On the first line, there are many words and conversa- tions, questions and answers, interminable explanations, precisions; the second is made of silences, allusions, and hasty innuendos inviting interpretation. But if the third line flashes, if the line of flight is like a train in motion, it is because one jumps linearly on it, one can finally speak "literally" of anything at all, a blade of grass, a catastrophe or sensation, calmly accepting that which occurs when it is no longer possible for any- thing to stand for anything else. The three lines, however, continually intermingle.
Although all becomings are already molecular, including becoming-woman, it must be said that all becomings begin with and pass through becoming-woman. It is the key to all the other becomings. When the man of war disguises himself as a woman, flees disguised as a girl, hides as a girl, it is not a shameful, transitory incident in his life. To hide, to camouflage oneself, is a warrior function, and the line of flight attracts the enemy, traverses something and puts what it traverses to flight; the warrior arises in the infinity of a line of flight. Although the femininity of the man of war is not accidental, it should not be thought of as structural, or regulated by a
ambiguous in that it appeals to an ongoing dialectical miracle of the transformation of matter into meaning, content into expression, the social process into a signifying system.
ance of currency.
and assassins deceive in order to take power but then become good kings. That kind are men of the State. Richard III comes from elsewhere: his ven- tures, including those with women, derive more from a war machine than from a State apparatus. He is the traitor, springing from the great nomads and their secrecy. He says so from the beginning, when he mentions a secret project infinitely surpassing the conquest of power. He wants to return the war machine both to the fragile State and pacified couples. The only one to guess is Lady Anne, fascinated, terrified, consenting. Elizabethan theater is full of these traitorous characters who aspire to be absolute traitors, in opposition to the deceptions of the man of the court or even of the State.
and asubjective line of pure musi- cality. And Swann knows that he no longer loves Odette and, above all, that Odette will never again love him.
and at other times lines of flight are already drawn toward black holes, flow connections are already replaced by limitative conjunctions, and quanta emissions are already converted into center-points. All of this happens at the same time. It is at the same time that lines of flight connect and continue their intensities, whip particles-signs out of black holes; and also retreat into the swirl of micro-black holes or molecular conjunctions that interrupt them; or again, enter overcoded, concentricized, binarized, stable segments arrayed around a central black hole.
and constructs the molar compounds in which these structures are simultaneously actualized {substances). In a geological stratum, for exam- ple, the first articulation is the process of
and for having defined the plane of Nature as pure longitude and latitude. Latitude and longitude are the two elements of a cartography.
and formal traits (Ecumenon). But it divides into parastrata according to its irreducible forms and associated milieus, and into epistrata according to its layers of formed substances and intermediary milieus. Epistrata and parastrata must themselves be thought of as strata. A machinic assemblage is an interstratum insofar as it regulates the relations between strata, as well as the relations between contents and expressions on each stratum, in conformity with the preceding divisions. A single assemblage can borrow from different strata, and with a certain amount of apparent disorder; conversely, a stratum or element of a stratum can join others in function- ing in a different assemblage. Finally, the machinic assemblage is a metastratum because it is also in touch with the plane of consistency and necessarily effectuates the abstract machine. The abstract machine exists enveloped in each stratum, whose Ecumenon or unity of composition it defines, and developed on the plane of consistency, whose destratification it performs (the Planomenon). Thus when the assemblages fit together the variables of a stratum as a function of its unity, they also bring about a spe- cific effectuation of the abstract machine as it exists outside the strata. Machinic assemblages are simultaneously located at the intersection of the contents and expression on each stratum, and at the intersection of all of the strata with the plane of consistency. They rotate in all directions, like beacons.
and has the value of One Alone. The territory does not open onto a people, it half-opens onto the Friend, the Loved One; but the Loved One is already dead, and the Friend uncertain, disturbing.
and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize. Yes, couchgrass is also a rhizome. Good and bad are only the products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed.
and more hideous epilepsy of stark panic than they had seen on human countenance before." No one had heard the summary, and no one tried to keep Challenger from leaving. Challenger, or what remained of him, slowly hurried toward the plane of consistency, following a bizarre tra- jectory with nothing relative left about it. He tried to slip into an assem- blage serving as a drum-gate, the particle Clock with its intensive clicking and conjugated rhythms hammering out the absolute: "The figure slumped oddly into a posture scarcely human, and began a curious, fascinated sort
and ordered relations; fuzzy, not exact aggre-
and second, by the nature of the line (smooth-directional, open intervals; dimensional-striated, closed
And the comparison always presupposes the appropriation: labor presupposes surplus labor; differential rent presupposes absolute rent;
and they have a local construction excluding the prior determination of a base domain (economic, political, juridical, artistic);
and transduction in which at times molar lines are already undermined by fissures and cracks,
and very different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook
Answering this question will illustrate the entanglement of the lines. We speak of the power of the army, Church, and school, of public and private power ... Power centers obvi- ously involve rigid segments. Each molar segment has one or more centers. It might be objected that the segments themselves presuppose a power cen- ter, as what distinguishes and unites them, sets them in opposition and makes them resonate. But there is no contradiction between the segmen- tary parts and the centralized apparatus. On the one hand, the most rigid of segmentarities does not preclude centralization: this is because the com- mon central point is not where all the other points melt together, but instead acts as a point of resonance on the horizon, behind all the other points. The State is not a point taking all the others upon itself, but a reso- nance chamber for them all. Even when the State is totalitarian, its func- tion as resonator for distinct centers and segments remains unchanged: the only difference is that it takes place under closed-vessel conditions that increase its internal reach, or couples "resonance" with a "forced move- ment." On the other hand, and conversely, the strictest of centralizations does not eradicate the distinctiveness of the centers, segments, and circles. When the overcoding line is drawn, it assures the prevalence of one seg- ment, as such, over the other (in the case of binary segmentarity), gives a certain center a power of relative resonance over the others (in the case of circular segmentarity), and underscores the dominant segment through which it itself passes (in the case of linear segmentarity). Thus centraliza- tion is always hierarchical, but hierarchy is always segmentary.
anthropomorphic (or "alloplastic"). Each stratum, or articulation, consists of coded milieus and formed substances. Forms and substances, codes and milieus are not really distinct. They are the abstract components of every articulation.
anxiety and subordinate the smooth. The abstract line is the affect of smooth spaces, not a feeling of anxiety that calls forth striation. Further- more, although it is true that art begins only with the abstract line, the rea- son is not, as Worringer says, that the rectilinear is the first means of breaking with the nonaesthetic imitation of nature upon which the prehis- toric, savage, and childish supposedly depend, lacking, as he thinks they do, a "will to art." On the contrary, if prehistoric art is fully art it is precisely because it manipulates the abstract, though nonrectilinear, line: "Primi- tive art begins with the abstract, and even the prefigurative.... Art is abstract from the outset, and at its origin could not have been otherwise." In effect, the line is all the more abstract when writing is absent, either because it has yet to develop or only exists outside or alongside. When writ- ing takes charge of abstraction, as it does in empires, the line, already downgraded, necessarily tends to become concrete, even figurative. Chil- dren forget how to draw. But in the absence of writing, or when peoples have no need for a writing system of their own because theirs is borrowed from more or less nearby empires (as was the case for the nomads), the line is necessarily abstract; it is necessarily invested with all the power of abstraction, which finds no other outlet. That is why we believe that the dif- ferent major types of imperial lines—the Egyptian rectilinear line, the Assyrian (or Greek) organic line, the supraphenomenal, encompassing Chinese line—convert the abstract line, rend it from its smooth space, and accord it concrete values. Still, it can be argued that these imperial lines are contemporaneous with the abstract line; the abstract line is no less at the "beginning," inasmuch as it is a pole always presupposed by any line capa- ble of constituting another pole. The abstract line is at the beginning as much because of its historical abstraction as its prehistoric dating. It is therefore a part of the originality or irreducibility of nomad art, even when there is reciprocal interaction, influence, and confrontation with the imperial lines of sedentary art.
APPARATUS OF CAPTURE D
appointing the hour of death in the works and of the break that refreshes . . .
archaic or ancient forms? For it is there that surplus labor is isolated, distinguished, in the form of tribute or corvee. Consequently, it is there that the concept of labor appears at its
articulation of expression, with content and expression each possessing its own form and substance. Between them, between content and expression, there is neither a correspon- dence nor a cause-effect relation nor a signified-signifier relation:
Articulation, which is constitutive of a stratum, is always a double articulation (double pincer). What is articulated is a content and an expression. Whereas form and substance are not really distinct, con- tent and expression are. Hjelmslev's net is applicable to the strata: articulation of content and
as content. Content and expression are two variables of a function of stratification. They not only vary from one stratum to another, but intermingle, and within the same stratum multiply and divide ad infinitum. Since every articulation is dou- ble, there is not an articulation of content and an articulation of expression—the articulation of content is double in its own right and con- stitutes a relative expression within content; the articulation of expression is also double and constitutes a relative content within expression. For this reason, there exist intermediate states between content and expression, expression and content: the levels, equilibriums, and exchanges through which a stratified system passes. In short, we find forms and substances of content that play the role of expression in relation to other forms and sub- stances, and conversely for expression. These new distinctions do not, therefore, coincide with the distinction between forms and substances within each articulation; instead, they show that each articulation is already, or still, double. This can be seen on the organic stratum: proteins of content have two forms, one of which (the infolded fiber) plays the role of functional expression in relation to the other. The same goes for the nucleic acids of expression: double articulations cause certain formal and
As Deligny says, it should be borne in mind that these lines mean noth- ing. It is an affair of cartography. They compose us, as they compose our map. They transform themselves and may even cross over into one another. Rhizome. It is certain that they have nothing to do with language; it is, on the contrary, language that must follow them, it is writing that must take sustenance from them, between its own lines. It is certain that they have nothing to do with a signifier, the determination of a subject by the signifier; instead, the signifier arises at the most rigidified level of one of the lines, and the subject is spawned at the lowest level. It is certain that they have nothing to do with a structure, which is never occupied by any- thing more than points and positions, by arborescences, and which always forms a closed system, precisely in order to prevent escape. Deligny invokes a common Body upon which these lines are inscribed as so many segments, thresholds, or quanta, territorialities, deterritorializations, or reterritorializations. The lines are inscribed on a Body without Organs, upon which everything is drawn and flees, which is itself an abstract line with neither imaginary figures nor symbolic functions: the real of the BwO. This body is the only practical object of schizoanalysis: What is your body without organs? What are your lines? What map are you in the process of making or rearranging? What abstract line will you draw, and at what price, for yourself and for others? What is your line of flight? What is your BwO, merged with that line? Are you cracking up? Are you going to crack up? Are you deterritorializing? Which lines are you severing, and which are you extending or resuming? Schizoanalysis does not pertain to elements or aggregates, nor to subjects, relations, or structures. It pertains only to linea- ments running through groups as well as individuals. Schizoanalysis, as the analysis of desire, is immediately practical and political, whether it is a question of an individual, group, or society. For politics precedes being. Practice does not come after the emplacement of the terms and their rela- tions, but actively participates in the drawing of the lines; it confronts the same dangers and the same variations as the emplacement does. Schizoanalysis is like the art of the new. Or rather, there is no problem of application: the lines it brings out could equally be the lines of a life, a work
As diverse and real as formal distinctions are, on the organic stratum the very nature of the distinction changes. As a result, the entire distribution between content and expression is different. The organic stratum never- theless preserves, and even amplifies, the relation between the molecular and the molar, with all kinds of intermediate states. We saw this in the case of morphogenesis, where double articulation is inseparable from a com- munication between two orders of magnitude. The same thing applies to
As long as preestablished forms were compared to predetermined degrees, all one could do was affirm their irreducibility, and there was no way of judging possible communication between the two factors. But we see now that forms depend on codes in the parastrata and plunge into pro- cesses of decoding or drift and that degrees themselves are caught up in movements of intensive territorialization and reterritorialization. There is no simple correspondence between codes and territorialities on the one hand and decodings and deterritorialization on the other: on the contrary, a code may be a deterritorialization and a reterritorialization a decoding. Wide gaps separate code and territoriality. The two factors nevertheless have the same "subject" in a stratum: it is populations that are deter- ritorialized and reterritorialized, and also coded and decoded. In addition, these factors communicate or interlace in the milieus.
as though capitalism were riding a vector tak- ing it to the moon; but following the USSR, which conceived of extraterres- trial space as a belt that should circle the earth taken as the "object," the American government cut off funds for exploration and returned capital in this case to a more centered model. It is thus proper to State deterrito-rialization to moderate the superior deterritorialization of capital and to provide the latter with compensatory reterritorializations. More generally, this extreme example aside, we must take into account a "materialist" determination of the modern State or nation-state: a group of producers in which labor and capital circulate freely, in other words, in which the homogeneity and competition of capital is effectuated, in principle without external obstacles. In order to be effectuated, capitalism has always required there to be a new force and a new law of States, on the level of the flow of labor as on the level of the flow of independent capital.
as we have just seen, the first axis is consciousness. Consciousness as passion is precisely that doubling of subjects, of the subject of enunciation and the subject of the statement, and the recoiling of one into the other. But the second form of subjectification is love as passion, love-passion, another type of double, of doubling and recoiling. Here again, a variable point of subjectification serves to distrib- ute two subjects that as much conceal their faces as reveal them to each other, that wed a line of flight, a line of deterritorialization forever drawing them together and driving them apart. But everything changes: there is a celibate side to this doubled consciousness, and there is a passional love couple that no longer has any use for consciousness or reason. Yet it is the same regime, even in betrayal and even if the betraying is done by a third party. Adam and Eve, and Cain's wife (about whom the Bible should have said more). Richard III, the traitor, is in the end given consciousness in a dream, but only the strange face-off with Lady Anne, a meeting of two countenances that conceal themselves knowing that they have promised themselves to each other following the same line that will nonetheless sepa- rate them. The most loyal and tender, or intense, love assigns subject of enunciation and a subject of the statement that constantly switch places, wrapped in the sweetness of being a naked statement in the other's mouth, and of the other's being a naked enunciation in my own mouth. But there is always a traitor in the making. What love is not betrayed? What cogito lacks its evil genius, the traitor it will never be rid of? "Tristan . . . Isolde . . . Isolde.. . Tristan": the cry of the two subjects climbs the scale of intensities until it reaches the summit of a suffocating consciousness, whereas the ship follows the line of the waters, the line of death and the unconscious, betrayal, a continuous melody line. Passional love is a cogito built for two, just as the cogito is a passion for the self alone. There is a potential couple in the cogito, just as there is a doubling of a single virtual subject in love-passion. Klossowski has created the strangest figures on the basis of this
as well have said the Wolf-Man: a religious-military machine that Freud attributes to obsessional neurosis; an anal pack machine, an anal be- coming-wolf or -wasp or -butterfly machine, which Freud attributes to the hysteric character; an Oedipal apparatus, which Freud considers the sole motor, the immobile motor that must be found everywhere; and a counter-Oedipal apparatus—incest with the sister, schizo-incest, or love with "people of inferior station"; and anality, homosexuality?—all that Freud sees only as Oedipal substitutes, regressions, and derivatives. In truth, Freud sees nothing and understands nothing. He has no idea what a libidinal assemblage is, with all the machineries it brings into play, all the multiple loves.
assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable.
Assemblages
Assemblages are passional, they are compositions of desire. Desire has nothing to do with a natural or spontaneous determination; there is no desire but assembling, assembled, desire. The rationality, the efficiency, of an assemblage does not exist without the passions the assemblage brings into play, without the desires that constitute it as much as it constitutes them. Detienne has shown that the Greek phalanx was inseparable from a whole reversal of values, and from a passional mutation that drastically changed the relations between desire and the war machine. It is a case of man dismounting from the horse, and of the man-animal relation being replaced by a relation between men in an infantry assemblage that paves the way for the advent of the peasant-soldier, the citizen-soldier: the entire Eros of war changes, a group homosexual Eros tends to replace the zoosexual Eros of the horseman. Undoubtedly, whenever a State appropri- ates the war machine, it tends to assimilate the education of the citizen to the training of the worker to the apprenticeship of the soldier. But if it is true that all assemblages are assemblages of desire, the question is whether the assemblages of war and work, considered in themselves, do not funda- mentally mobilize passions of different orders. Passions are effectuations of desire that differ according to the assemblage: it is not the same justice or the same cruelty, the same pity, etc. The work regime is inseparable from an
assumes a given form. We must therefore define those characteristics first. Take a system in which transversals are subordinated to diagonals, diago- nals to horizontals and verticals, and horizontals and verticals to points (even when there are virtual). A system of this kind, which is rectilinear or unilinear regardless of the number of lines, expresses the formal conditions under which a space is striated and the line describes a contour. Such a line is inherently, formally, representative in itself, even if it does not represent anything. On the other hand, a line that delimits nothing, that describes no
assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion
At a second level, it can be said that space is susceptible to two kinds of breaks: one is defined by a standard, whereas the other is irregular and undetermined, and can be made wherever one wishes to place it. At yet another level, it can be said that frequencies can be distributed either in the intervals between breaks, or statistically without breaks. In the first case, the principle behind the distribution of breaks and intervals is called a "module"; it may be constant and fixed (a straight striated space), or
At any rate, you have one (or several). It's not so much that it preexists or comes ready-made, although in certain respects it is preexistent. At any rate, you make one, you can't desire without making one. And it awaits you; it is an inevitable exercise or experimentation, already accomplished the moment you undertake it, unaccomplished as long as you don't. This is not reassuring, because you can botch it. Or it can be terrifying, and lead you to your death. It is nondesire as well as desire. It is not at all a notion or a
At least two things prevent us from adopting this point of view. As Chomsky notes, a dialect, ghetto language, or minor language is not immune to the kind of treatment that draws a homogeneous system from it and extracts constants: Black English has its own grammar, which is not defined by a sum of mistakes or infractions against standard English; but that grammar can be studied only by applying to it the same rules of study that are applied to standard English. In this sense, the notions of major and minor seem to have no linguistic relevance. When French lost its world- wide major function it lost nothing of its constancy and homogeneity, its centralization. Conversely, Afrikaans attained homogeneity when it was a locally minor language struggling against English. Even politically, espe- cially politically, it is difficult to see how the upholders of a minor language can operate if not by giving it (if only by writing in it) a constancy and homogeneity making it a locally major language capable of forcing official recognition (hence the political role of writers who assert the rights of a minor language). But the opposite argument seems more compelling: the more a language has or acquires the characteristics of a major language, the more it is affected by continuous variations that transpose it into a "minor" language. It is futile to criticize the worldwide imperialism of a language by denouncing the corruptions it introduces into other languages (for example, the purists' criticisms of English influences in French, the petit-bourgeois or academic denunciation of "Franglais"). For if a lan- guage such as British English or American English is major on a world scale, it is necessarily worked upon by all the minorities of the world, using very diverse procedures of variation. Take the way Gaelic and Irish English set English in variation. Or the way Black English and any number of
At the same time, we are on the wrong track with all these geographical distributions. An impasse. So much the better. If it is a question of showing that rhizomes also have their own, even more rigid, despotism and hierar- chy, then fine and good: for there is no dualism, no ontological dualism between here and there, no axiological dualism between good and bad, no blend or American synthesis. There are knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots. Moreover, there are despotic formations of immanence and channelization specific to rhizomes, just as there are anarchic deformations in the transcendent system of trees, aerial roots, and subterranean stems. The important point is that the root-tree and canal-rhizome are not two opposed models: the first operates as a tran- scendent model and tracing, even if it engenders its own escapes; the sec- ond operates as an immanent process that overturns the model and outlines a map, even if it constitutes its own hierarchies, even if it gives rise to a despotic channel. It is not a question of this or that place on earth, or of a given moment in history, still less of this or that category of thought. It is a question of a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing, and of a process that is perpetually prolonging itself, breaking off and starting up again. No, this is not a new or different dualism. The problem of writing: in order to designate something exactly, anexact expressions are utterly unavoidable. Not at all because it is a necessary step, or because one can only advance by approximations: anexactitude is in no way an approxima- tion; on the contrary, it is the exact passage of that which is under way. We invoke one dualism only in order to challenge another. We employ a dual- ism of models only in order to arrive at a process that challenges all models. Each time, mental correctives are necessary to undo the dualisms we had no wish to construct but through which we pass. Arrive at the magic formula we all seek—PLURALISM = MONISM—via all the dualisms that are
attains this result only by sobriety, creative subtraction. Continuous varia- tion has only ascetic lines, a touch of herb and pure water.
AXIOM II. The war machine is the invention of the nomads (insofar as it is exterior to the State apparatus and distinct from the military institu- tion). As such, the war machine has three aspects, a spatiogeographic aspect, an arithmetic or algebraic aspect, and an affective aspect.
AXIOM III. The nomad war machine is the form of expression, of which itinerant metallurgy is the correlative form of content.
b) Monopolistic appropriation of labor, surplus labor.
b) Monopolistic appropriation of land, absolute rent.
b) Monopolistic appropriation of the The Banker means of comparison, the issu
B. The undivided flow becomes divided to the extent it is allocated to the "factors," distributed to the "factors." There is only one kind of factor, the immediate producers. We could call them the "poor" and say that the flow is distributed among the poor. But this would be inaccurate because there are no preexistent "rich." What counts, the important thing, is that the producers do not yet acquire possession of what is distributed to them, and that what is distributed to them is not yet wealth: remuneration assumes neither comparison and appropriation, nor buying-selling; it is much more an operation of the nexum type. There is only equality between set B and set A, between the distributed set and the undivided set. The dis tributed set could be called nominal wage; nominal wages are the form of expression of the entire undivided set ("the entire nominal expression," or as it is often put, "the expression of total national income"). This is the point at which the apparatus of capture becomes semiological.
B.C.:
B.C.: APPARATUS
b: line and segments
B: power center
banditry. Is it the destiny of the war machine, when the State triumphs, to be caught in this alternative: either to be nothing more than the disci- plined, military organ of the State apparatus, or to turn against itself, to become a double suicide machine for a solitary man and a solitary woman? Goethe and Hegel, State thinkers both, see Kleist as a monster, and Kleist has lost from the start. Why is it, then, that the most uncanny modernity lies with him? It is because the elements of his work are secrecy, speed, and affect.'' And in Kleist the secret is no longer a content held within a form of interiority; rather, it becomes a form, identified with the form of exteriority that is always external to itself. Similarly, feelings become uprooted from the interiority of a "subject," to be projected violently out- ward into a milieu of pure exteriority that lends them an incredible veloc- ity, a catapulting force: love or hate, they are no longer feelings but affects. And these affects are so many instances of the becoming-woman, the becoming-animal of the warrior (the bear, she-dogs). Affects transpierce the body like arrows, they are weapons of war. The deterritorialization velocity of affect. Even dreams (Homburg's, Pentheselea's) are externa- lized, by a system of relays and plug-ins, extrinsic linkages belonging to the war machine. Broken rings. This element of exteriority—which dominates everything, which Kleist invents in literature, which he is the first to invent—will give time a new rhythm: an endless succession of catatonic episodes or fainting spells, and flashes or rushes. Catatonia is: "This affect is too strong for me," and a flash is: "The power of this affect sweeps me away," so that the Self (Moi) is now nothing more than a character whose actions and emotions are desubjectified, perhaps even to the point of death. Such is Kleist's personal formula: a succession of flights of madness and catatonic freezes in which no subjective interiority remains. There is much of the East in Kleist: the Japanese fighter, interminably still, who then makes a move too quick to see. The Go player. Many things in modern art come from Kleist. Goethe and Hegel are old men next to Kleist. Could it be that it is at the moment the war machine ceases to exist, conquered by the State, that it displays to the utmost its irreducibility, that it scatters into thinking, loving, dying, or creating machines that have at their disposal vital or revolutionary powers capable of challenging the conquering State? Is the war machine already overtaken, condemned, appropriated as part of the same process whereby it takes on new forms, undergoes a metamorpho- sis, affirms its irreducibility and exteriority, and deploys that milieu of pure exteriority that the occidental man of the State, or the occidental thinker, continually reduces to something other than itself?
Bbi it
because He cannot bear the BwO, because He pursues it and rips it apart so He can be first, and have the organism be first. The organism is already that, the judgment of God, from which medical doctors benefit and on which they base their power. The organism is not at all the body, the BwO; rather, it is a stratum on the BwO, in other words, a phenomenon of accu- mulation, coagulation, and sedimentation that, in order to extract useful labor from the BwO, imposes upon it forms, functions, bonds, dominant and hierarchized organizations, organized transcendences. The strata are bonds, pincers. "Tie me up if you wish." We are continually stratified. But who is this we that is not me, for the subject no less than the organism belongs to and depends on a stratum? Now we have the answer: the BwO is that glacial reality where the alluvions, sedimentations, coagulations, foldings, and recoilings that compose an organism—and also a significa- tion and a subject—occur. For the judgment of God weighs upon and is exercised against the BwO; it is the BwO that undergoes it. It is in the BwO that the organs enter into the relations of composition called the organism. The BwO howls: "They've made me an organism! They've wrongfully folded me! They've stolen my body!" The judgment of God uproots it from its immanence and makes it an organism, a signification, a subject. It is the BwO that is stratified. It swings between two poles, the surfaces of stratifi- cation into which it is recoiled, on which it submits to the judgment, and the plane of consistency in which it unfurls and opens to experimentation. If the BwO is a limit, if one is forever attaining it, it is because behind each stratum, encasted in it, there is always another stratum. For many a stra- tum, and not only an organism, is necessary to make the judgment of God. A perpetual and violent combat between the plane of consistency, which frees the BwO, cutting across and dismantling all of the strata, and the sur- faces of stratification that block it or make it recoil.
because it establishes the proportional relations of a structure. It may be in the mind of a god, or in the unconscious of life, of the soul, or of language: it is always concluded from its own effects. It is always inferred. Even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.). The tree is given in the seed, but as a function of a plan(e) that is not given. The same applies to music. The developmental or organizational principle does not appear in itself, in a direct relation with that which develops or is organized: There is a transcendent compositional principle that is not of the nature of sound, that is not "audible" by itself or for itself. This opens the way for all possible interpretations. Forms and their developments, and subjects and their formations, relate to a plan(e) that operates as a transcendent unity or hidden principle. The plan(e) can always be described, but as a part aside, as ungiven in that to which it gives rise. Is this not how even Balzac, even Proust, describe their work's plan(e) of organization or development, as though in a metalanguage? Is not Stockhausen also obliged to describe the structure of his sound forms as existing "alongside" them, since he is unable to make it audible? Life plan(e), music plan(e), writing plan(e), it's all the same: a plan(e) that can- not be given as such, that can only be inferred from the forms it develops and the subjects it forms, since it is for these forms and these subjects.
because it is on both lines simultane-
because they bring dissymmetrical movements into play. For now, it suf- fices to say that there are two kinds of voyage, distinguished by the respec- tive role of the point, line, and space. Goethe travel and Kleist travel? French travel and English (or American) travel? Tree travel and rhizome travel? But nothing completely coincides, and everything intermingles, or crosses over. This is because the differences are not objective: it is possible to live striated on the deserts, steppes, or seas; it is possible to live smooth even in the cities, to be an urban nomad (for example, a stroll taken by Henry Miller in Clichy or Brooklyn is a nomadic transit in smooth space; he makes the city disgorge a patchwork, differentials of speed, delays and accelerations, changes in orientation, continuous variations ... The beat- niks owe much to Miller, but they changed direction again, they put the space outside the cities to new use). Fitzgerald said it long ago: it is not a question of taking off for the South Seas, that is not what determines a voy- age. There are not only strange voyages in the city but voyages in place: we are not thinking of drug users, whose experience is too ambiguous, but of true nomads. We can say of the nomads, following Toynbee's suggestion: they do not move. They are nomads by dint of not moving, not migrating, of holding a smooth space that they refuse to leave, that they leave only in order to conquer and die. Voyage in place: that is the name of all intensities, even if they also develop in extension. To think is to voyage; earlier we tried to establish a theo-noological model of smooth and striated spaces. In short, what distinguishes the two kinds of voyages is neither a measurable quantity of movement, nor something that would be only in the mind, but the mode of spatialization, the manner of being in space, of being for space. Voyage smoothly or in striation, and think the same way... But there are always passages from one to the other, transformations of one within the other, reversals. In his film, Kings of the Road, Wenders intersects and superposes the paths of two characters; one of them takes a still educa- tional, memorial, cultural, Goethean journey that is thoroughly striated, whereas the other has already conquered smooth space, and only experi- ments, induces amnesia in the German "desert." But oddly enough, it is the former who opens space for himself and performs a kind of retroactive smoothing, whereas striae reform around the latter, closing his space again. Voyaging smoothly is a becoming, and a difficult, uncertain becoming at that. It is not a question of returning to preastronomical navigation, nor to the ancient nomads. The confrontation between the smooth and the stri- ated, the passages, alternations and superpositions, are under way today, running in the most varied directions.
becomes real; everything operates through abstract-real machines (which have names and dates). One can abstract forms of content, but one must simultaneously abstract forms of expression; for what is retained of each are only unformed traits. That is why an abstract machine that would oper- ate purely on the level of language is an absurdity. It is clear that this dia- grammatic component is in turn more profound than the transformational component: the creations-transformations of a regime of signs operate by the emergence of ever-new abstract machines. Finally, the last, properly machinic, component is meant to show how abstract machines are effectu- ated in concrete assemblages; it is these assemblages that give distinct form to traits of expression, but not without doing the same for traits of content—the two forms being in reciprocal presupposition, or having a necessary, unformed relation that once again prevents the form of expres- sion from behaving as though it were self-sufficient (although it is indepen- dent or distinct in a strictly formal way).
becoming-animal of the human: an emission of particles. There is no need for bestialism in this, although it may arise, and many psychiatric anec- dotes document it in ways that are interesting, if oversimplified and conse- quently off the track, too beastly. It is not a question of "playing" the dog, like an elderly gentleman on a postcard; it is not so much a question of mak- ing love with animals. Becomings-animal are basically of another power, since their reality resides not in an animal one imitates or to which one cor- responds but in themselves, in that which suddenly sweeps us up and makes us become—a proximity, an indiscernibility that extracts a shared element from the animal far more effectively than any domestication, uti- lization, or imitation could: "the Beast."
belongs to a smooth space. It draws a plane that has no more dimen- sions than that which crosses it; therefore the multiplicity it consti-
beneficent God to explain geological move- ments. In a book, as in all things,
between milieus, intermixings. Rhythms pertain to these interstratic movements, which are also acts of stratification. Stratification is like the creation of the world from chaos, a continual, renewed creation. And the strata constitute the Judgment of God. Classical artists are like God, they make the world by organizing forms and substances, codes and milieus, and rhythms.
between segmentarity and centralization hardly seems relevant.
binding, constituting the efficacy of a foundation {mythos); a republic of free spirits proceeding by pact or contract, constituting a legislative and juridical organization, carrying the sanction of a ground (logos). These two heads are in constant interference in the classical image of thought: a "republic of free spirits whose prince would be the idea of the Supreme Being." And if these two heads are in interference, it is not only because there are many intermediaries and transitions between them, and because the first prepares the way for the second and the second uses and retains the first, but also because, antithetical and complementary, they are necessary to one another. It is not out of the question, however, that in order to pass from one to the other there must occur, "between" them, an event of an entirely different nature, one that hides outside the image, takes place out- side.
black hole/white wall system, functions in two ways, one of which concerns the units or elements, the other the choices. Under the first aspect, the black hole acts as a central computer, Christ, the third eye that moves across the wall or the white screen serving as general surface of reference. Regardless of the content one gives it, the machine constitutes a facial unit, an elementary face in biunivocal relation with another: it is a man or a woman, a rich person or a poor one, an adult or a child, a leader or a subject, "an x or a y." The movement of the black hole across the screen, the trajec- tory of the third eye over the surface of reference, constitutes so many dichotomies or arborescences, like four-eye machines made of elementary faces linked together two by two. The face of a teacher and a student, father and son, worker and boss, cop and citizen, accused and judge ("the judge had a stern expression, his eyes were horizonless..."): concrete individu- alized faces are produced and transformed on the basis of these units, these combinations of units—like the face of a rich child in which a military call- ing is already discernible, that West Point chin. You don't so much have a face as slide into one.
breath." A bird launches into its refrain. All of music is pervaded by bird songs, in a thousand different ways, from Jannequin to Messiaen. Frr, Frr. Music is pervaded by childhood blocks, by blocks of femininity. Music is pervaded by every minority, and yet composes an immense power. Chil- dren's, women's, ethnic, and territorial refrains, refrains of love and destruction: the birth of rhythm. Schumann's work is made of refrains, of childhood blocks, which he treats in a very special way: his own kind of becoming-child, his own kind of becoming-woman, Clara. It would be pos- sible to catalogue the transversal or diagonal utilizations of the refrain in the history of music, all of the children's Games and Kinderszenen, all of the bird songs. But such a catalogue would be useless because it would seem like a multiplication of examples of themes, subjects, and motifs, when it is in fact a question of the most essential and necessary content of music. The motif of the refrain may be anxiety, fear, joy, love, work, walking, territory . . . but the refrain itself is the content of music.
bring up the opposition between minor sciences and major sciences: for example, the tendency of the broken line to become a curve, a whole opera- tive geometry of the trait and movement, a pragmatic science of placings-in-variation that operates in a different manner than the royal or major science of Euclid's invariants and travels a long history of suspicion and even repression (we will return to this question later).
but also in relation to the others. Not only does each have its own unit of measure, but there is an equivalence and translatability between units. The central eye has as its correlate a space through which it moves, but it itself remains invariant in relation to its movements. With the Greek city-state and Cleisthenes' reform, a homogeneous and isotopic space appears that overcodes the lineal segments, at the same time as distinct focal points
but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification.
But at this point, everything turns around, and the reasons why a regime of signs is less than language also become the reasons why it is more than language. Only one side of the assemblage has to do with enunciation or formalizes expression; on its other side, inseparable from the first, it for- malizes contents, it is a machinic assemblage or an assemblage of bodies. Now contents are not "signifieds" dependent upon a signifier in any way, nor are they "objects" in any kind of relation of causality with the subject. They have their own formalization and have no relation of symbolic corre- spondence or linear causality with the form of expression: the two forms are in reciprocal presupposition, and they can be abstracted from each other only in a very relative way because they are two sides of a single assemblage. We must therefore arrive at something in the assemblage itself
But Fitzgerald says that there is another type of cracking, with an en- tirely different segmentarity. Instead of great breaks, these are micro-cracks, as in a dish; they are much more subtle and supple, and occur when things are going well on the other side. If there is aging on this line, it is not of the same kind: when you age on this line you don't feel it on the other line, you don't notice it on the other line until after "it" has already happened on this line. At such a moment, which does not correspond to any of the ages of the other line, you reach a degree, a quantum, an intensity beyond which you cannot go. (It's a very delicate business, these intensities: the finest intensity becomes harmful if it overtaxes your strength at a given moment; you have to be able to take it, you have to be in shape.) But what exactly happened? In truth, nothing assignable or perceptible: molecular changes, redistributions of desire such that when something occurs, the self that
But how can one still identify and name things if they have lost the strata that qualified them, if they have gone into absolute deterritorialization? Eyes are black holes, but what are black holes and eyes outside their strata and territorialities? What it comes down to is that we cannot content our- selves with a dualism or summary opposition between the strata and the destratified plane of consistency. The strata themselves are animated and defined by relative speeds of deterritorialization; moreover, absolute deterritorialization is there from the beginning, and the strata are spin- offs, thickenings on a plane of consistency that is everywhere, always pri- mary and always immanent. In addition, the plane of consistency is occupied, drawn by the abstract Machine; the abstract Machine exists simultaneously developed on the destratified plane it draws, and envel- oped in each stratum whose unity of composition it defines, and even half-erected in certain strata whose form of prehension it defines. That which races or dances upon the plane of consistency thus carries with it the aura of its stratum, an undulation, a memory or tension. The plane of consistency retains just enough of the strata to extract from them variables that operate in the plane of consistency as its own functions. The plane of consistency, or planomenon, is in no way an undifferentiated aggregate of unformed matters, but neither is it a chaos of formed matters of every kind. It is true that on the plane of consistency there are no longer forms or substances, content or expression, respective and relative deterritorializations. But beneath the forms and substances of the strata the plane of consistency (or the abstract machine) constructs continuums of intensity: it creates continuity for intensities that it extracts from distinct forms and substances. Beneath contents and expressions the plane of consistency (or the abstract machine) emits and combines particles-signs that set the most asignifying of signs to functioning in the most deterritorialized of particles. Beneath relative movements the plane of consistency (or the abstract machine) performs conjunctions of flows of deterritorialization that transform the respective indexes into absolute values. The only intensities known to the strata are discontinuous, bound up in forms and substances; the only particles are divided into particles of content and articles of expression; the only deterritorialized flows are disjointed and reterritorialized. Continuum of intensities, combined emission of particles or signs-particles, conjunction of deterritorialized flows: these are the three factors proper to the plane of consistency; they are brought about by the abstract machine and are constitutive of destratification. Now there is no hint in all of this of a chaotic white night or an undifferentiated black night. There are rules, rules of "plan(n)ing," of diagramming, as we will see later on, or elsewhere. The
But if abstract machines know nothing of form and substance, what happens to the other determination of strata, or even of assemblages—content and expression? In a certain sense, it could be said that this distinction is also irrelevant to the abstract machine,
But if it is true that drugs are linked to this immanent, molecular percep- tive causality, we are still faced with the question of whether they actually succeed in drawing the plane necessary for their action. The causal line, or the line of flight, of drugs is constantly being segmentarized under the most rigid of forms, that of dependency, the hit and the dose, the dealer. Even in its supple form,
But in everything else the patient says or does, he or she is a subject of the statement, eternally psychoanalyzed, going from one linear proceeding to another, perhaps even changing analysts, growing increasingly submissive to the normalization of a dominant reality. In this sense, psychoanalysis, with its mixed semiotic, fully participates in a line of subjectification. The psychoanalyst does not even have to speak anymore,
But in the third moment, at the end of his long passion, Swann attends a reception where he sees the faces of the servants and guests disaggregate into autonomous aesthetic traits, as if the line of picturality regained its independence, both beyond the wall and outside the black hole. Then Vinteuil's little phrase regains its transcendence and renews its connection with a still more intense, asignifying,
But on the other hand, men are simultaneously extracted from each lineage to form a special numerical body—as if the new numerical composition of the lineage-body could not succeed without the constitution of a body proper to it, itself numerical. We believe that this is not an accidental phenomenon but rather an essential constituent of the war machine, a necessary operation for the autonomy of the number: the number of the
but remain negative; sometimes it is developed on a plane of consistency giving it a "diagrammatic" function, a positive value of deterritorial-ization, the ability to form new abstract machines. Sometimes the abstract machine, as the faciality machine, forces flows into signifiances and subjectifications, into knots of aborescence and holes of abolition; sometimes, to the extent that it performs a veritable
but that does not mean that the molecules will be the same. The substantial elements may be the same throughout the stratum without the substances being the same. The formal relations or bonds may be the same without the forms being the same. In biochemistry, there is a unity of composition of the organic stratum defined at the level of materials and energy, substantial elements or radicals, bonds and reac- tions.
But the becoming of the secret compels it not to content itself with con- cealing its form in a simple container, or with swapping it for a container. The secret, as secret, must now acquire its own form. The secret is elevated from a finite content to the infinite form of secrecy. This is the point at which the secret attains absolute imperceptibility, instead of being linked to a whole interplay of relative perceptions and reactions. We go from a content that is well defined, localized, and belongs to the past, to the a pri- ori general form of a nonlocalizable something that has happened. We go from the secret defined as a hysterical childhood content to secrecy defined as an eminently virile paranoid form. And this form displays the same two concomitants of the secret, the secret perception and the mode of action by secret influence; but these concomitants have become "traits" of a form they ceaselessly reconstitute, reform, recharge. On the one hand, paranoiacs denounce the international plot of those who steal their secrets, their most intimate thoughts; or they declare that they have the gift of per- ceiving the secrets of others before they have formed (someone with para- noid jealousy does not apprehend the other in the act of escaping; they divine or foresee the slightest intention of it). On the other hand, paranoi- acs act by means of, or else suffer from, rays they emit or receive (Raymond
But the numbering number has a second, more secret, characteristic. Everywhere, the war machine displays a curious process of arithmetic rep- lication or doubling, as if it operated along two nonsymmetrical and nonequal series. On the one hand, the lineages are indeed organized and reshuffled numerically; a numerical composition is superimposed upon the lineages in order to bring the new principle into predominance.
But there is a variety of different molecules, substances, and forms.
But this is only a first bipolarity, applying to the States that are located at the center and are under the capitalist mode of production. A second, West-East, bipolarity has been imposed on the States of the center, that of the capitalist States and the bureaucratic socialist States. Although this new distinction may share certain traits of the first (the so-called socialist States being assimilable to the totalitarian States),
but to an abstract design. Its number of dimensions continually increases as what happens happens, but even so it loses nothing of its planitude. It is thus a plane of proliferation, peopling, contagion; but this proliferation of material has nothing to do with an evolution, the development of a form or the filiation of forms. Still less is it a regression leading back to a principle. It is on the contrary an involution, in which form is constantly being dis- solved, freeing times and speeds. It is a fixed plane, a fixed sound plane, or visual plane, or writing plane, etc. Here, fixed does not mean immobile: it is the absolute state of movement as well as of rest, from which all relative speeds and slownesses spring, and nothing but them. Certain modern musicians oppose the transcendent plan(e) of organization, which is said to have dominated all of Western classical music, to the immanent sound plane, which is always given along with that to which it gives rise, brings the imperceptible to perception, and carries only differential speeds and slownesses in a kind of molecular lapping: the work of art must mark sec- onds, tenths and hundredths of seconds.
But what counts is less this circularity of signs than the multiplicity of the circles or chains. The sign refers not only to other signs in the same cir- cle, but to signs in other circles or spirals as well. Robert Lowie describes how Crow and Hopi men react differently when their wives cheat on them (the Crow are nomadic hunters and the Hopi sedentaries with an imperial tradition): "A Crow Indian whose wife has cheated on him slashes her face, whereas the Hopi who has fallen victim to the same misfortune, without losing his calm, withdraws and prays for drought and famine to descend on the village." It is easy to see where the paranoia resides, the despotic ele- ment or signifying regime, or again, as Levi-Strauss says, "the bigotry": "In effect, for a Hopi everything is connected: a social disturbance or a domes- tic incident calls into question the system of the universe, the levels of which are united by multiple correspondences; a disruption on one plane is only intelligible, and morally tolerable, as a projection of other disruptions involving other levels." The Hopi jump from one circle to another, or from one sign to another on a different spiral. One leaves the village or the city, only to return. The jumps may be regulated not only by presignifying ritu- als but also by a whole imperial bureaucracy passing judgment on their legitimacy. The jumps are not made at random, they are not without rules. Not only are they regulated, but some are prohibited: Do not overstep the outermost circle, do not approach the innermost circle .. . There is a dis- tinction between circles because, although all signs refer to each other only to the extent that they are deterritorialized, oriented toward the same cen- ter of signifiance, distributed throughout an amorphous continuum, they have different speeds of deterritorialization attesting to a place of origin (temple, palace, house, street, village, bush, etc.), and they have differential relations maintaining the distinction between circles or constituting thresholds in the atmosphere of the continuum (private and public, family
But when we use a word as vague as "intervene," when we say that expressions intervene or insert themselves into contents, are we not still prey to a kind of idealism in which the order-word instantaneously falls from the sky? What we must determine is not an origin but points of inter- vention or insertion in the framework of the reciprocal presupposition of the two forms. Both forms of content and forms of expression are insepara- ble from a movement of deterritorialization that carries them away. Both expression and content are more or less deterritorialized, relatively deterritorialized, according to the particular state of their form. In this respect, one cannot posit a primacy of expression over content, or content over expression. Sometimes the semiotic components are more deter- ritorialized than the material components, and sometimes the reverse. For example, a mathematical complex of signs may be more deterritorialized than a set of particles; conversely, the particles may have experimental effects that deterritorialize the semiotic system. A criminal action may be deterritorializing in relation to the existing regime of signs (the earth cries for revenge and crumbles beneath my feet, my offense is too great); but the sign that expresses the act of condemnation may in turn be deter- ritorializing in relation to all actions and reactions ("a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth" [Gen.
but which asserts new nomadic and political claims. In any case, if the State always finds it necessary to repress the nomad and minor sciences, if it opposes vague essences and the operative geometry of the trait, it does so not because the content of these sciences is inexact or imperfect, or because of their magic or initiatory character, but because they imply a division of labor opposed to the norms of the State. The difference is not extrinsic: the way in which a science, or a conception of science, participates in the
But why does this argument fail to convince us entirely? We follow Clastres when he demonstrates that the State is explained neither by a development of productive forces nor by a differentiation of political
BwO's produce from a basis in their genera? Could what the drug user or masochist obtains also be obtained in a different fashion in the conditions of the plane, so it would even be possible to use drugs without using drugs, to get soused on pure water, as in Henry Miller's experimentations? Or is it a question of a real passage of substances, an intensive continuum of all the BwO's? Doubtless, anything is possible. All we are saying is that the iden- tity of effects, the continuity of genera, the totality of all BwO's, can be obtained on the plane of consistency only by means of an abstract machine capable of covering and even creating it, by assemblages capable of plug- ging into desire, of effectively taking charge of desires, of assuring their continuous connections and transversal tie-ins. Otherwise, the BwO's of the plane will remain separated by genus, marginalized, reduced to means of bordering, while on the "other plane" the emptied or cancerous doubles will triumph.
by a loved or dreamed-of face, develop a face to come or already past. What face has not called upon the landscapes it amalgamated, sea and hill; what landscape has not evoked the face that would have completed it, providing an unexpected complement for its lines and traits? Even when painting becomes abstract, all it does is rediscover the black hole and white wall, the great composition of the white canvas and black slash. Tearing, but also stretching of the canvas along an axis of escape (fuite), at a vanishing point (point defuite), along a diagonal, by a knife slice, slash, or hole: the machine is already in place that always functions to produce faces and landscapes, however abstract. Titian began his paintings in black and white, not to make outlines to fill in, but as the matrix for each of the colors to come.
by cutting it off from the plane of consistency as destratification. We had to summarize before we lost our voice. Challenger was finishing up. His voice had become unbearably shrill. He was suffocating. His hands were becom- ing elongated pincers that had become incapable of grasping anything but could still vaguely point to things. Some kind of matter seemed to be pour- ing out from the double mask, the two heads; it was impossible to tell whether it was getting thicker or more watery. Some of the audience had returned, but only shadows and prowlers. "You hear that? It's an animal's voice." So the summary would have to be quick, the terminology would have to be set down as well as possible, for no good reason. There was a first group of notions: the Body without Organs or the destratified Plane of Consistency; the Matter of the Plane, that which occurs on the body or plane (singular, nonsegmented multiplicities composed of intensive con- tinuums, emissions of particles-signs, conjunctions of flows); and the abstract Machine, or abstract Machines, insofar as they construct that body or draw that plane or "diagram" what occurs (lines of flight, or abso- lute deterritorializations).
by radiating through space. Combustion is the process of this escape or infinite division on the plane of consistency. Electrification is the opposite process, constitutive of strata; it is the process whereby similar particles group together to form atoms and molecules, similar molecules to form bigger molecules, and the biggest molecules to form molar aggregates: "the attraction of like by like," as in a double pincer or double articulation. Thus there is no vital matter specific to the organic stratum, matter is the same on all the strata. But the organic stratum does have a specific unity of composition, a single abstract Animal, a single machine embedded in the stratum, and presents everywhere the same molecular materials, the same elements or anatomical components of organs, the same formal connec-
C. Thus it cannot even be said that wages, conceived as distribution, remuneration, constitute a purchase; on the contrary, purchasing power derives from wages: "The remuneration of the producers is not a purchase, it is the operation by which purchasing becomes possible in a second moment, when money begins to exercise its new power." It is after it has been distributed that set B becomes wealth, or acquires a comparative power, in relation to something else entirely. This something else is the determinate set of the goods that have been produced and are thus purchas able. At first heterogeneous to goods and products, money later becomes a good homogeneous to the products it can buy; it acquires a purchasing power that is extinguished with the real purchase. Or more generally, between the two sets, the distributed set B and the set of real goods C, there
Capitalism arises as a worldwide enterprise of subjectification by con- stituting an axiomatic of decoded flows. Social subjection, as the correlate of subjectification, appears much more in the axiomatic's models of real- ization than in the axiomatic itself. It is within the framework of the nation-State, or of national subjectivities, that processes of subjectifica-
Celebatory Machine
cernment or election rather than to linked reactions; and molecular combi- nations that proceed by noncovalent bonding rather than by linear relations—in short, a new "pace" produced by the imbrication of the semiotic and the material. From this standpoint, we may oppose the con- sistency of assemblages to the stratification of milieus. But once again, this opposition is only relative, entirely relative. Just as milieus swing between a stratum state and a movement of destratification, assemblages swing between a territorial closure that tends to restratify them and a deterrito-rializing movement that on the contrary connects them with the Cosmos. Thus it is not surprising that the distinction we were seeking was not between assemblages and something else but between the two limits of any possible assemblage, in other words, between the system of strata and the plane of consistency. We should not forget that the strata rigidify and are organized on the plane of consistency, and that the plane of consistency is at work and is constructed in the strata, in both cases piece by piece, blow by blow, operation by operation.
Certain distinctions proposed by Simondon can be compared to those of Husserl. For Simondon exposes the technological insufficiency of the matter-form model, in that it assumes a fixed form and a matter deemed homogeneous. It is the idea of the law that assures the model's coherence, since laws are what submit matter to this or that form, and conversely, realize in matter a given property deduced from the form. But Simondon demonstrates that the hylomorphic model leaves many things, active and affective, by the wayside. On the one hand, to the formed or formable mat- ter we must add an entire energetic materiality in movement, carrying sin- gularities or haecceities that are already like implicit forms that are topological, rather than geometrical, and that combine with processes of deformation: for example, the variable undulations and torsions of the fibers guiding the operation of splitting wood. On the other hand, to the essential properties of the matter deriving from the formal essence we must add variable intensive affects, now resulting from the operation, now on the contrary making it possible: for example, wood that is more or less porous, more or less elastic and resistant. At any rate, it is a question of surrender- ing to the wood, then following where it leads by connecting operations to a materiality, instead of imposing a form upon a matter: what one addresses is less a matter submitted to laws than a materiality possessing a nomos. One addresses less a form capable of imposing properties upon a matter than material traits of expression constituting affects. Of course, it is always possible to " translate" into a model that which escapes the model; thus, one may link the materiality's power of variation to laws adapting a fixed form and a constant matter to one another. But this cannot be done without a distortion that consists in uprooting variables form the state of continuous variation, in order to extract from them fixed points and con-
Challenger admitted having digressed at length but added that there was no possible way to distinguish between the digressive and the nondi-gressive. The point was to arrive at several conclusions concerning the unity and diversity of a single stratum, in this case the
Challenger quoted a sentence he said he came across in a geology text- book.
Challenger wanted to go faster and faster. No one was left, but he went on anyway. The change in his voice, and in his appearance, was growing more and more pronounced. Something animalistic in him had begun to speak when he started talking about human beings. You still couldn't put your finger on it, but Challenger seemed to be deterritorializing on the spot. He still had three problems he wanted to discuss. The first seemed primarily terminological: Under what circumstances may we speak of signs? Should we say they are everywhere on all the strata and that there is a sign when-
character of enunciation.' ° The problem is that it is not enough to establish that enunciation has this social character, since it could be extrinsic; there- fore too much or too little is said about it. The social character of enuncia- tion is intrinsically founded only if one succeeds in demonstrating how enunciation in itself implies collective assemblages. It then becomes clear that the statement is individuated, and enunciation subjectified, only to the extent that an impersonal collective assemblage requires it and deter- mines it to be so. It is for this reason that indirect discourse, especially "free" indirect discourse, is of exemplary value: there are no clear, distinc- tive contours; what comes first is not an insertion of variously individ- uated statements, or an interlocking of different subjects of enunciation, but a collective assemblage resulting in the determination of relative subjectification proceedings, or assignations of individuality and their shifting distributions within discourse. Indirect discourse is not explained by the distinction between subjects; rather, it is the assemblage, as it freely appears in this discourse, that explains all the voices present within a single voice, the glimmer of girls in a monologue by Charlus, the languages in a language, the order-words in a word. The American murderer "Son of Sam" killed on the prompting of an ancestral voice, itself transmitted through the voice of a dog. The notion of collective assemblage of enuncia- tion takes on primary importance since it is what must account for the social character. We can no doubt define the collective assemblage as the redundant complex of the act and the statement that necessarily accom- plishes it. But this is still only a nominal definition; it does not even enable us to justify our previous position that redundancy is irreducible to a sim- ple identity (or that there is no simple identity between the statement and the act). If we wish to move to a real definition of the collective assemblage, we must ask of what consist these acts immanent to language that are in redundancy with statements or constitute order-words.
child, woman, mother, man, father, boss, teacher, police officer, does not speak a general language but one whose signifying traits are indexed to spe- cific faciality traits. Faces are not basically individual; they define zones of frequency or probability, delimit a field that neutralizes in advance any expressions or connections unamenable to the appropriate significations. Similarly, the form of subjectivity, whether consciousness or passion, would remain absolutely empty if faces did not form loci of resonance that select the sensed or mental reality and make it conform in advance to a dominant reality. The face itself is redundancy. It is itself in redundancy with the redundancies of signifiance or frequency, and those of resonance or subjectivity. The face constructs the wall that the signifier needs in order to bounce off of; it constitutes the wall of the signifier, the frame or screen. The face digs the hole that subjectification needs in order to break through; it constitutes the black hole of subjectivity as consciousness or passion, the camera, the third eye.
Children are Spinozists. When Little Hans talks about a "peepee-maker," he is referring not to an organ or an organic function but basically to a material, in other words, to an aggregate whose elements vary according to its connections, its relations of movement and rest, the different individuated assemblages it enters. Does a girl have a peepee-maker? The boy says yes, and not by analogy, nor in order to conjure away a fear of castration. It is obvious that girls have a peepee-maker because they effectively pee: a machinic functioning rather than an organic function. Quite simply, the same material has different connections, different relations of movement and rest, enters different assemblages in the case of the boy and the girl (a girl does not pee standing or into the distance). Does a locomotive have a peepee-maker? Yes, in yet another machinic assemblage. Chairs don't have them: but that is because the elements of the chair were not able to integrate this material into their relations, or decomposed the relation with that material to the point that it yielded something else, a rung, for example. It has been noted that for children an organ has "a thousand vicissitudes," that it is "difficult to localize, difficult to identify, it is in turn a bone, an engine, excrement, the baby, a hand, daddy's heart..." This is not at all because the organ is experienced as a part-object. It is because the organ is exactly what its elements make it according to their relation of movement or rest, and the way in which this relation combines with or splits off from that of neighboring elements. This is not animism, any more than it is mechanism; rather, it is universal machinism: a plane of consistency occupied by an immense abstract machine comprising an infinite number of assemblages. Children's questions are poorly understood if they are not seen as question-machines; that is why indefinite articles play so important a role in these questions (a belly, a child, a horse, a chair, "how is a person made?"). Spinozism is the becoming-child of the philosopher. We call the longitude of a body the particle aggregates belonging to that body in a given relation; these aggregates are part of each other depending on the composition of the relation that defines the individuated assemblage of the body.
Clarity, in effect, con- cerns the molecular. Once again, everything is involved, even perception, even the semiotic regime, but this time on the second line. Castaneda illus- trates, for example, the existence of a molecular perception to which drugs give us access (but so many things can be drugs): we attain a visual and sonorous microperception revealing spaces and voids, like holes in the
Classicism refers to form-matter relation, or rather a form-substance relation (substance is precisely a matter endowed with form). Matter is organized by a succession of forms that are compartmentalized, central- ized, and hierarchized in relation to one another, each of which takes charge of a greater or lesser amount of matter. Each form is like the code of a milieu, and the passage from one form to another is a veritable transcoding. Even the seasons are milieus. Two coexistent operations are involved, one by which the form differentiates itself according to binary distinctions, the other by which the formed substantial parts, milieus or seasons, enter into an order of succession that can be the same in either direction. But beneath these operations, the classical artist hazards an extreme and dangerous adventure. He or she breaks down the milieus, separates them, harmonizes them, regulates their mixtures, passes from one to the other. What the artist confronts in this way is chaos, the forces of chaos, the forces of a raw and untamed matter upon which Forms must be imposed in order to make substances, and Codes in order to make milieus. Phenomenal agility. That is why no one has ever been able to draw a clear line between baroque and classical.
clearest, for example, in the large-scale works of the empires, the urban, agricultural, or hydraulic works by which a "laminar" flow in supposedly parallel layers (striation) is imposed upon the waters. It seems on the con- trary that in the capitalist regime, surplus labor becomes less and less dis- tinguishable from labor "strictly speaking," and totally impregnates it. Modern public works have a different status from that of large-scale imper- ial works. How could one possibly distinguish between the time necessary for reproduction and "extorted" time, when they are no longer separated in time? This remark certainly does not contradict the Marxist theory of sur- plus value, for Marx shows precisely that surplus value ceases to be localizable in the capitalist regime. That is even his fundamental contri- bution. It gave him a sense that machines would themselves become
code), a dynamic structuration, a dynamic formation (the manual form, or manual formal traits). The hand as a general form of content is extended in tools, which are themselves active forms implying substances, or formed matters; finally, products are formed matters, or substances, which in turn serve as tools. Whereas manual formal traits constitute the unity of compo- sition of the stratum, the forms and substances of tools and products are organized into parastrata and epistrata that themselves function as verita- ble strata and mark discontinuities, breakages, communications and diffu- sions, nomadisms and sedentarities, multiple thresholds and speeds of relative deterritorialization in human populations. For with the hand as a formal trait or general form of content a major threshold of deterri- torialization is reached and opens, an accelerator that in itself permits a shifting interplay of comparative deterritorializations and reterritorial-izations—what makes this acceleration possible is, precisely, phenomena of "retarded development" in the organic substrata. Not only is the hand a deterritorialized front paw; the hand thus freed is itself deterritorialized in relation to the grasping and locomotive hand of the monkey. The synergistic deterritorializations of other organs (for example, the foot) must be taken into account. So must correlative deterritorializations of the milieu: the steppe as an associated milieu more deterritorialized than the forest, exerting a selective pressure of deterritorialization upon the body and technology (it was on the steppe, not in the forest, that the hand was able to appear as a free form, and fire as a technologically formable matter). Finally, complementary reterritorializations must be taken into account (the foot as a compensatory reterritorialization for the hand, also occurring on the steppe). Maps should be made of these things, organic, ecological, and technological maps one can lay out on the plane of consistency.
coexist with them in a complex network. It is plausible that "from the beginning" primitive societies have maintained distant ties to one another, not just short-range ones, and that these ties were channeled through States, even if States effected only a partial and local capture of them. Speech communities and languages, independently of writing, do not define closed groups of people who understand one another but primarily determine relations between groups who do not understand one another: if there is language, it is fundamentally between those who do not speak the same tongue. Language is made for that, for translation, not for communi- cation. And in primitive societies there are as many tendencies that "seek" the State, as many vectors working in the direction of the State, as there are movements within the State or outside it that tend to stray from it or guard themselves against it, or else to stimulate its evolution, or else already to abolish it: everything coexists, in perpetual interaction.
commercial money presupposes taxation. The apparatus of capture constitutes a general space of comparison and a mobile center of appropriation.
Comparative rates of flow on
complementarity between an over intense thought and an over feverish couple. The line of subjectification is thus entirely occupied by the Double, but it has two figures since there are two kinds of doubles: the syntagmatic figure of consciousness, or the consciousness-related double, relating to form (Self = Self [Moi = Moi]); and the paradigmatic figure of the couple, or the passional double, relating to substance (Man = Woman; here, the double is immediately the difference between the sexes).
Complex Machine
compound substances, and molecules. It is of little or no impor- tance that Geoffroy chose anatomical elements as the substantial units rather than protein and nucleic acid radicals. At any
Computer Einstein
Concerning Benoit Mandelbrot's "Fractals"
CONCLUSION: CONCRETE RULES AND ABSTRACT MACHINES
consistency, makes the piano an instrument of delirium, and prepares the way for Wagnerian opera.
Content
continuous or discontinuous character of the variable itself: the order-word,
contour, that no longer goes from one point to another but instead passes between points, that is always declining from the horizontal and the verti- cal and deviating from the diagonal, that is constantly changing direction, a mutant line of this kind that is without outside or inside, form or back-
Coupled Machine
D INTRODUCTION: RHIZOME
D. This is where the mystery or the magic resides, in a kind of disjunc- tion. For if we call B' the comparative set, in other words, the set placed in correspondence with the real goods, we see that it is necessarily smaller than the distributed set. B' is necessarily smaller than B: even if we assume that purchasing power has available to it all of the objects produced during a given period, the distributed set is always greater than the set that is used or compared, meaning that the immediate producers are able to convert only a portion of the distributed set. Real wages are only a portion of nomi- nal wages; similarly, "useful" labor is only a portion of labor, and "utilized" land is only a portion of the land that has been distributed. We shall call Capture this difference or excess constitutive of profit, surplus labor, or the surplus product: "Nominal wages include everything, but the wage-earners retain only the income they succeed in converting into goods; they lose the income siphoned off by the enterprises." It can be said that the whole was in fact distributed to the "poor"; the poor, however, find themselves extorted of everything they do not succeed in converting in the course of this strange race: the capture effects an inversion of the wave or of the divisible flow. It is precisely capture that is the object of monopolistic appropriation. And this appropriation (by the "rich") does not come after: it is included in nominal wages, while eluding real wages. It is between the two, it inserts itself between the distribution without possession and the conversion by correspondence or comparison; it expresses the difference in power between the two sets, between B' and B. In the end, there is no mystery at all: the mechanism of capture contributes from the outset to the constitution of the aggregate upon which the capture is effectuated.
depending on how they effectuate it, are assigned coefficients taking into account their potentialities, their creativity. The coefficients that "quantify" assemblages bear on the varying assemblage components (territory, deterritorialization, reterritori-alization, earth, Cosmos), the various entangled lines constituting the "map" of an assemblage (molar lines, molecular lines, lines of flight), and the different relations-between the assemblage and the plane of consistency (phylum and diagram). For example, the "grass stem" component may have different coefficients in assemblages of
determined by populations or variations of multiplicities, and with differ- ential coefficients or variations of relations. Contemporary biochemistry, or "molecular Darwinism" as Monod calls it, confirms, on the level of a single statistical and global individual, or a
Deterritorialization
different apparatuses of power (despotic generalized slavery versus author- itarian contract-proceeding). Neither begins with Christ, or the White Man as Christian universal: there are Indian, African, and Asiatic despotic formations of signifiance; the authoritarian process of subjectification appears most purely in the destiny of the Jewish people. But however dif- ferent these semiotics are, they still form a de facto mix, and it is at the level of this mixture that they assert their imperialism, in other words, their common endeavor to crush all other semiotics. There is no signifiance that does not harbor the seeds of subjectivity; there is no subjectification that does not drag with it remnants of signifier. If the signifier bounces above all off a wall, if subjectivity spins above all toward a hole, then we must say that the wall of the signifier already includes holes and the black hole of subjec- tivity already carries scraps of wall. The mix, therefore, has a solid founda- tion in the indissociable white wall/black hole machine, and the two semiotics intermingle through intersection, splicing, and the plugging of one into the other, as with the "Hebrew and the Pharaoh." But there is more because the nature of the mixtures may vary greatly. If it is possible to assign the faciality machine a date—the year zero of Christ and the histori- cal development of the White Man—it is because that is when the mixture ceased to be a splicing or an intertwining, becoming a total interpene-tration in which each element suffuses the other like drops of red-black wine in white water. Our semiotic of modern White Men, the semiotic of capitalism, has attained this state of mixture in which signifiance and subjectification effectively interpenetrate. Thus it is in this semiotic that faciality, or the white wall/black hole system, assumes its full scope. We must, however, assess the states of mixture and the varying proportions of the elements. Whether in the Christian or pre-Christian state, one element may dominate another, one may be more or less powerful than the other. We are thus led to define limit-faces, which are different from both the facial units and the degrees of facial divergence previously defined.
different regimes (circular irradiation versus segmentary linearity) and
discernibility belonging to given assemblages. It is only after matter has been sufficiently deterritorialized that it itself emerges as molecular and brings forth pure forces attributable only to the Cosmos. It had been pres- ent "for all of time," but under different perceptual conditions. New condi- tions were necessary for what was buried or covered, inferred or con- cluded, presently to rise to the surface. What was composed in an assemblage, what was still only composed, becomes a component of a new assemblage. In this sense, all history is really the history of perception, and what we make history with is the matter of a becoming, not the subject mat- ter of a story. Becoming is like the machine: present in a different way in every assemblage, passing from one to the other, opening one onto the other, outside any fixed order or determined sequence.
distribute everything and bring a circulation of movement with alternatives, jumps, and mutations.
do devouring not not dominate
do domi not passi do not dominate
do not dominate your passive passions not
DO YOU MAKE YOURSELF A BODY WITHOUT ORGANS?
does not filiate, it infects. The difference is that contagion, epidemic, involves terms that are entirely heterogeneous:
Double Articulation
Doubtless, in each case we must simultaneously consider factors of territoriality, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. Animal and child refrains seem to be territorial: therefore they are not "music." But when music lays hold of the refrain and deterritorializes it, and deterrito-rializes the voice, when it lays hold of the refrain and sends it racing off in a rhythmic sound block, when the refrain "becomes" Schumann or Debussy, it is through a system of melodic and harmonic coordinates by means of which music reterritorializes upon itself, qua music. Conversely, we shall see that in certain cases even the animal refrain possesses forces of deterritorialization much more intense than animal silhouettes, postures, and colors. We must therefore take a number of factors into consideration: relative territorialities, their respective deterritorializations, and their correlative reterritorializations, several types of them (for example, intrinsic reterritorializations such as musical coordinates, and extrinsic ones such as the deterioration of the refrain into a hackneyed formula, or music into a ditty). The fact that there is no deterritorialization without a special reterritorialization should prompt us to rethink the abiding correlation between the molar and the molecular: no flow, no becoming-molecular escapes from a molar formation without molar components accompanying it, forming passages or perceptible landmarks for the imperceptible processes.
Doubtless, the present situation is highly discouraging. We have watched the war machine grow stronger and stronger, as in a science fiction story; we have seen it assign as its objective a peace still more terrifying than fascist death; we have seen it maintain or instigate the most terrible of local wars as parts of itself; we have seen it set its sights on a new type of enemy, no longer another State, or even another regime, but the "unspeci- fied enemy"; we have seen it put its counterguerrilla elements into place, so that it can be caught by surprise once, but not twice. Yet the very conditions that make the State or World war machine possible, in other words, con- stant capital (resources and equipment) and human variable capital, continually recreate unexpected possibilities for counterattack, unfore- seen initiatives determining revolutionary, popular, minority, mutant machines. The definition of the Unspecified Enemy testifies to this: "mul- tiform, maneuvering and omnipresent... of the moral, political, subversive or economic order, etc.," the unassignable material Saboteur or human Deserter assuming the most diverse forms."' The first theoretical element of importance is the fact that the war machine has many varied meanings, and this is precisely because the war machine has an extremely variable relation to war itself. The war machine is not uniformly defined, and comprises something other than increasing quantities of force. We have tried to define two poles of the war machine: at one pole, it takes war for its object and forms a line of destruction prolongable to the limits of the universe. But in all of the shapes it assumes here—limited war, total war, worldwide organization—war represents not at all the supposed essence of the war machine but only, whatever the machine's power, either the set of conditions under which the States appropriate the machine, even going so far as to project it as the horizon of the world, or the dominant order of which the States themselves are now only parts. The other pole seemed to be the essence; it is when the war machine, with infinitely lower "quantities," has as its object not war but the drawing of a creative line of flight, the com- position of a smooth space and of the movement of people in that space. At this other pole, the machine does indeed encounter war, but as its supple- mentary or synthetic object, now directed against the State and against the worldwide axiomatic expressed by States.
down into internal structural elements, an undertaking not fundamentally different
drawn, or an outline of round or rectangular faces; but the black holes spread and reproduce, they enter into redundancy, and each time a secon- dary circle is drawn, a new black hole is constituted, an eye is put in it.'
dynamic, and collective experimentation. Trudaine organized unusual, open "general assemblies" in his home. Perronet took as his inspiration a supple model originating in the Orient: The bridge should not choke or obstruct the river. To the heaviness of the bridge, to the striated space of thick and regular piles, he opposed a thinning and discontinuity of the piles, surbase, and vault, a lightness and continuous variation of the whole. But his attempt soon ran up against principled opposition; the State, in naming Perronet director of the school, followed a frequently used procedure that inhibited experimentation more than crowning its achievements. The whole history of the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (School of Bridges and Roadways) illustrates how this old, plebeian "corps" was subordinated to the Ecole des Mines, the Ecole des Travaux Publics, and the Ecole Polytechnique, at the same time as its activities were increasingly
each in its own right, turning matters into physically or semiotically formed substances and functions into forms of expression or content. Expression then constitutes indexes, icons, or symbols that enter regimes or semiotic systems. Content then constitutes bodies, things, or objects that enter physical systems, organisms, and organizations. The deeper movement for conjugating matter and function—absolute deterri-torialization, identical to the earth itself—appears only in the form of respective territorialities, negative or relative deterritorializations, and complementary reterritorializations. All of this culminates in a language stratum that installs an abstract machine on the level of expression and takes the abstraction of content even further, tending to strip it of any form of its own (the imperialism of language, the pretensions to a general semiology). In short, the strata substantialize diagrammatic matters and separate a formed plane of content from a formed plane of expression. They hold expressions and contents, separately substantialized and forma- lized, in the pincers of a double articulation assuring their independence and real distinction and enthroning a dualism that endlessly reproduces and redivides. They shatter the continuums of intensity, introducing breaks between different strata and within each stratum. They prevent conjunctions of flight from forming and crush the cutting edges of deterri-torialization, either by effecting reterritorializations that make these movements merely relative, or by assigning certain of the lines an entirely negative value, or again by segmenting them, blocking them, plugging them, or plunging them into a kind of black hole.
Each stratum serves as the substratum for another stratum. Each stra- tum has a unity of composition defined by its milieu, substantial elements,
effectuated, because it already exists in the convergent wave that moves through the
English. Minor languages do not exist in themselves: they exist only in rela- tion to a major language and are also investments of that language for the purpose of making it minor. One must find the minor language, the dialect or rather idiolect, on the basis of which one can make one's own major lan- guage minor. That is the strength of authors termed "minor," who are in fact the greatest, the only greats: having to conquer one's own language, in other words, to attain that sobriety in the use of a major language, in order to place it in a state of continuous variation (the opposite of regionalism). It is in one's own language that one is bilingual or multilingual. Conquer the major language in order to delineate in it as yet unknown minor languages. Use the minor language to send the major language racing. Minor authors are foreigners in their own tongue. If they are bastards, if they experience themselves as bastards, it is due not to a mixing or intermingling of lan- guages but rather to a subtraction and variation of their own language achieved by stretching tensors through it.
ented toward its own limit, its own margin: it repeats its own ending. A new love follows, so that each love is serial, so that there is a series of loves. But once again, "beyond" lies the ultimate, at the point where the assem- blage changes, where the assemblage of love is superseded by an artistic assemblage—the Work to be written, which is the problem Proust tackles...
entirely undetermined, as long as one does not relate it to an assemblage it presupposes. It is the machine that is primary in relation to the technical element: not the technical machine, itself a collection of elements, but the social or collective machine, the machinic assemblage that determines what is a technical element at a given moment, what is its usage, extension, comprehension, etc.
Etc. Maritime Subjective Authoritarian Face (after Tristan and Isolde)
Even a case like Verdi's: it has often been said that his opera remains lyrical and vocal in spite of its destruction of the bel canto, and in spite of the importance of orchestration in the final works; still, voices are instrumentalized and make extraordinary gains in tessitura or extension (the production of the Verdi-baritone, of the Verdi-soprano). At any rate, the issue is not a given composer, especially not Verdi, or a given genre, but the more general movement affecting music, the slow mutation of the musical machine. If the voice returns to a binary distribu- tion of the sexes, this occurs in relation to binary groupings of instruments in orchestration. There are always molar systems in music that serve as coordinates; this dualist system of the sexes that reappears on the level of the voice, this molar and punctual distribution, serves as a foundation for new molecular flows that then intersect, conjugate, are swept up in a kind of instrumentation and orchestration that tend to be part of the creation itself. Voices may be reterritorialized on the distribution of the two sexes, but the continuous sound flow still passes between them as in a difference of potential.
Even though there is a real distinction between them, content and expression are relative terms ("first" and "second" articulation should also be understood in an entirely relative fashion). Even though it is capable of invariance, expression is just as much a variable
every direction; it has neither top nor bottom nor center; it does not assign fixed and mobile elements but rather distributes a continuous variation). Even the technologists who express grave doubts about the nomads' pow- ers of innovation at least give them credit for felt: a splendid insulator, an ingenious invention, the raw material for tents, clothes, and armor among the Turco-Mongols. Of course, the nomads of Africa and the Maghreb instead treat wool as a fabric. Although it might entail displacing the oppo- sition, do we not detect two very different conceptions or even practices of weaving, the distinction between which would be something like the dis- tinction between fabric as a whole and felt? For among sedentaries, clothes-fabric and tapestry-fabric tend to annex the body and exterior space, respectively, to the immobile house: fabric integrates the body and the outside into a closed space. On the other hand, the weaving of the nomad indexes clothing and the house itself to the space of the outside, to the open smooth space in which the body moves.
every musician or painter has this intention. One elaborates a punctual system or a didactic representation, but with the aim of making it snap,
Every stratum is a judgment of God; not only do plants and animals,
exchange places, and both are interior to the organic stratum. The limit between them is the mem- brane that regulates the exchanges and transformation in organization (in other words, the distributions interior to the stratum) and that defines all of the stratum's formal relations or traits (even though the situation and role of the limit vary widely depending on the stratum, for example, the limit of the crystal as compared to the cellular membrane). We may there- fore use the term central layer, or central ring, for the following aggregate comprising the unity of composition of a stratum: exterior molecular materials, interior substantial elements, and the limit or membrane con- veying the formal relations. There is a single abstract machine that is envel- oped by the stratum and constitutes its unity. This is the Ecumenon, as opposed to the Planomenon of the plane of consistency.
exchanged, the commodity; Taxation
Expression
expression on the organic stratum, and a "superlinearity" of the anthropomorphic strata). That is why the molar and the molecular have very different combinations depending on the stratum considered.
expressive qualities we term aesthetic are certainly not "pure" or symbolic qualities but proper qualities, in other words, appropriative qualities, pas- sages from milieu components to territory components. The territory itself is a place of passage. The territory is the first assemblage, the first thing to constitute an assemblage; the assemblage is fundamentally territorial. But how could it not already be in the process of passing into something else,
extent that the two aspects, the axiomatic and the models of realization, constantly cross over into each other and are themselves in communica- tion. Social subjection proportions itself to the model of realization, just as machinic enslavement expands to meet the dimensions of the axiomatic that is effectuated in the model. We have the privilege of undergoing the two operations simultaneously, in relation to the same things and the same events.
falling under a capacity, and longitude of extensive parts falling under a rela- tion. In the same way that we avoided defining a body by its organs and functions, we will avoid defining it by Species or Genus characteristics; instead we will seek to count its affects. This kind of study is called ethology, and this is the sense in which Spinoza wrote a true Ethics. A race- horse is more different from a workhorse than a workhorse is from an ox.
famous works of nomad art: the twisted animals have no land beneath them; the ground constantly changes direction, as in aerial acrobatics; the paws point in the opposite direction from the head, the hind part of the body is turned upside down; the "monadological" points of view can be interlinked only on a nomad space; the whole and the parts give the eye that beholds them a function that is haptic rather than optical. This is an animality that can be seen only by touching it with one's mind, but without the mind becoming a finger, not even by way of the eye. (In a much cruder fashion, the kaleidoscope has exactly the same function: to give the eye a digital function.) Striated space, on the contrary, is defined by the require- ments of long-distance vision: constancy of orientation, in variance of dis- tance through an interchange of inertial points of reference, interlinkage by immersion in an ambient milieu, constitution of a central perspective. It is less easy to evaluate the creative potentialities of striated space, and how it can simultaneously emerge from the smooth and give everything a whole new impetus.
Felt is a supple solid product that proceeds altogether differently, as an anti-fabric. It implies no separation of threads, no intertwining, only an entanglement of fibers obtained by fulling (for example, by rolling the block of fibers back and forth). What becomes entangled are the microscales of the fibers. An aggregate of intrication of this kind is in no way homogeneous: it is nevertheless smooth, and contrasts point by point with the space of fabric (it is in principle infinite, open, and unlimited in
ference in viewpoint, nature, scale, and function (understood in this way, the notion of mass has entirely different connotations than Canetti's "crowd").
Field of Tracks, or Wolf Line
Finally, becoming is not an evolution, at least not an evolution by descent and filiation. Becoming produces nothing by filiation; all filiation is imaginary. Becoming is always of a different order than filiation. It con- cerns alliance. If evolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation. There is a block of becoming that snaps up the wasp and the orchid, but from which no wasp-orchid can ever descend. There is a block of becoming that takes hold of the cat and baboon, the alliance between which is effected by a C virus. There is a block of becoming between young roots and certain microorganisms, the alliance between which is effected by the materials synthesized in the leaves (rhizosphere). If there is originality in neoevolutionism, it is attributable in part to phenomena of this kind in which evolution does not go from some- thing less differentiated to something more differentiated, in which it ceases to be a hereditary filiative evolution, becoming communicative or contagious. Accordingly, the term we would prefer for this form of evolu- tion between heterogeneous terms is "involution," on the condition that involution is in no way confused with regression. Becoming is involu-tionary, involution is creative. To regress is to move in the direction of
finally, he is the terrible Fishing Line with nothing on the other end, the line that crosses the wall and drags the captain .. . where? Into the void . . .
Finally, the face or body of the despot or god has something like a counterbody: the body of the tortured, or better, of the excluded. There is no question that these two bodies communicate, for the body of the despot is sometimes subjected to trials of humiliation or even torture, or of exile and exclusion. "At the opposite pole one might imagine placing the body of
Finally, there is a third apparatus of capture in addition to rent and profit: taxation. To understand this third form, and its creative range, we must first determine the internal relation upon which the commodity depends. Edouard Will has shown, in relation to the Greek city and in par- ticular the Corinthian tyranny, that money derived not from exchange, the commodity, or the demands of commerce, but from taxation, which first introduces the possibility of an equivalence money = goods or services and which makes money a general equivalent. In effect, money is a correlate of the stock; it is a subset of the stock in that it can be constituted by any object that can be preserved over the long term. In the case of Corinth, metal money was first distributed to the "poor" (in their capacity as producers). who used it to by land rights; it thus passed into the hands of the "rich," on the condition that it not stop there, that everyone, rich and poor, pay a tax, the poor in goods or services, the rich in money, such that an equivalence money-goods and services was established. We will return to the signifi- cance of this reference to rich and poor in the already late case of Corinth. But beyond the context and particularities of this example, money is always distributed by an apparatus of power under conditions of conservation, circulation, and turnover, so that an equivalence goods-services-money can be established. We therefore do not believe in a succession.
finally, there is the possibility of a positive absolute deterritorialization on the plane of consistency or the body without organs.
First Novella: "In the Cage," Henry James
first state of the line, or a first kind of line: the line is subordinated to the point; the diagonal is subordinated to the horizontal and vertical; the line forms a contour, whether figurative or not; the space it consti- tutes is one of striation; the countable multiplicity it constitutes remains subordinated to the One in an always superior or supplemen-
First theorem: One never deterritorializes alone; there are always at least two terms, hand-use object, mouth-breast, face-landscape. And each of the two terms reterritorializes on the other. Reterritorialization must not be confused with a return to a primitive or older territoriality: it necessarily implies a set of artifices by which one element, itself deterritorialized, serves as a new territoriality for another, which has lost its territoriality as well. Thus there is an entire system of horizontal and complementary reter-ritorializations, between hand and tool, mouth and breast, face and landscape. Second theorem: The fastest of two elements or movements of deterritorialization is not necessarily the most intense or most deterri- torialized. Intensity of deterritorialization must not be confused with speed of movement or development. The fastest can even connect its inten- sity to the slowest, which, as an intensity, does not come after the fastest but is simultaneously at work on a different stratum or plane (for example, the way the breast-mouth relation is guided from the start by a plane of faciality). Third theorem: It can even be concluded from this that the least deterritorialized reterritorializes on the most deterritorialized. This is where the second system of reterritorializations comes in, the vertical system running from bottom to top. This is the sense in which not only
First, a relatively supple line of interlaced codes and territoriali- ties; that is why we started with so-called primitive segmentarity, in which the social space is constituted by territorial and lineal segmentations. Sec- ond, a rigid line, which brings about a dualist organization of segments, a concentricity of circles in resonance, and generalized overcoding; here, the social space implies a State apparatus. This system is different from the primitive system precisely because overcoding is not a stronger code, but a specific procedure different from that of codes (similarly, reterrito-rialization is not an added territory, but takes place in a different space than that of territories, namely, overcoded geometrical space). Third, one or several lines of flight, marked by quanta and defined by decoding and deterritorialization (there is always something like a war machine functioning on these lines).
First, on the level of morphogenesis: on the one hand,
First, one does not go from the relative to the absolute simply by acceler- ation, even though increases in speed tend to have this comparative and global result. Absolute deterritorialization is not defined as a giant acceler- ator; its absoluteness does not hinge on how fast it goes. It is actually possi- ble to reach the absolute by way of phenomena of relative slowness or delay. Retarded development is an example. What qualifies a deterritorialization is not its speed (some are very slow) but its nature, whether it constitutes epistrata and parastrata and proceeds by articulated segments or, on the contrary, jumps from one singularity to another following a nondecom-posable, nonsegmentary line drawing a metastratum of the plane of consistency. Second, under no circumstances must it be thought that absolute deterritorialization comes suddenly of afterward, is in excess or beyond. That would preclude any understanding of why the strata themselves are animated by movements of relative deterritorialization and decoding that are not like accidents occurring on them. In fact, what is primary is an absolute deterritorialization an absolute line of flight, however complex or multiple—that of the plane of consistency or body without organs (the Earth, the absolutely deterritorialized). This absolute deterritorialization becomes relative only after stratification occurs on that plane or body: It is the strata that are always residue, not the opposite. The question is not how something manages to leave the strata by how things get into them in the first place. There is a perpetual immanence of absolute deterritorialization within relative deterritorialization; and the machinic assemblages between strata that regulate the differential relations and relative
first, while the momentum of the first continues on its own plane.
flows or elastic fluids that "deploy themselves"
focal point, where all the forces draw together in close embrace. The earth is no longer one force among others, nor is it a substance endowed with form or a coded milieu, with bounds and an apportioned share. The earth has become that close embrace of all forces, those of the earth as well as of other substances, so that the artist no longer confronts chaos, but hell and the subterranean, the groundless. The artist no longer risks dissipation in the milieus but rather sinking too deeply into the earth: Empedocles. The artist no longer identifies with Creation but with the ground or foundation, the foundation has become creative. The artist is no longer God but the Hero who defies God: Found, Found, instead of Create. Faust, especially the second Faust, is impelled by this tendency. Criticism, the Protestant- ism of the earth, replaces dogmatism, the Catholicism of the milieus (code). It is certain that the Earth as an intense point in depth or in projec- tion, as ratio essendi, is always in disjunction with the territory; and the ter- ritory as the condition of "knowledge," ratio cognoscendi, is always in disjunction with the earth. The territory is German, the Earth Greek. And this disjunction is precisely what determines the status of the romantic art- ist, in that she or he no longer confronts the gaping of chaos but the pull of the Ground (Fond). The little tune, the bird refrain, has changed: it is no longer the beginning of a world but draws a territorial assemblage upon the earth. It is then no longer made of two consonant parts that seek and answer one another; it addresses itself to a deeper singing that founds it, but also strikes against it and sweeps it away, making it ring dissonant. The refrain is indissolubly constituted by the territorial song and the singing of the earth that rises to drown it out. Thus at the end of Das Lied von der Erde (The song of the Earth) there are two coexistent motifs, one melodic, evoking the assemblages of the bird, the other rhythmic, evoking the deep, eternal breathing of the earth. Mahler says that the singing of the birds, the color of the flowers, and the fragrance of the forest are not enough to make Nature, that the god Dionysus and the great Pan are needed. The Ur-refrain of the earth harnesses all refrains whether territorial or not, and all milieu refrains. By the end of [Berg's] Wozzeck, the lullaby refrain, military refrain, drinking refrain, hunting refrain, child's refrain are so many admi- rable assemblages swept up by the powerful earth machine and its cutting edges: Wozzeck's voice, by which the earth becomes sonorous, Marie's death cry moving over the pond, the repeated B note, when the earth howled ... It is owing to this disjunction, this decoding, that the romantic artist experiences the territory; but he or she experiences it as necessarily lost, and experiences him- or herself as an exile, a voyager, as deterrito-rialized, driven back into the milieus, like the Flying Dutchman or King Waldemar (whereas the classical artist inhabited the milieus).
follow the part of the flow that enters into the circuit, even an ever-wid- ening one. Transhumants are therefore itinerant only consequentially, or become itinerant only when their circuit of land or pasture has been exhausted, or when the rotation has become so wide that the flows escape the circuit. Even the merchant is a transhumant, to the extent that mercan- tile flows are subordinated to the rotation between a point of departure and a point of arrival (go get-bring back, import-export, buy-sell). Whatever the reciprocal implications, there are considerable differences between a flow and a circuit. The migrant, we have seen, is something else again. And the nomad is not primarily defined as an itinerant or as a transhumant, nor as a migrant, even though nomads become these consequentially. The pri- mary determination of nomads is to occupy and hold a smooth space: it is this aspect that determines them as nomad (essence). On their own account, they will be transhumants, or itinerants, only by virtue of the imperatives imposed by the smooth spaces. In short, whatever the de facto mixes between nomadism, itinerancy, and transhumance, the primary concept is different in the three cases (smooth space, matter-flow, rota- tion). It is only on the basis of the distinct concept that we can make a judg- ment on the mix—on when it is produced, on the form in which it is produced, and on the order in which it is produced.
For convenience, we presented three successive and distinct states, but only provisionally. We cannot decide whether animals have painting, even though they do not paint on canvas, and even when hormones induce their colors and lines; even here, there is little foundation for a clear-cut distinc- tion between animals and human beings. Conversely, we must say that painting does not begin with so-called abstract art but recreates the silhou- ettes and postures of corporeality, and is already fully in operation in the face-landscape organization (the way in which painters "work" the face of Christ, and make it leak from the religious code in all directions). The aim of painting has always been the deterritorialization of faces and land- scapes, either by a reactivation of corporeality, or by a liberation of lines or colors, or both at the same time. There are many becomings-animal, becomings-woman, and becomings-child in painting.
for example, a human being, an animal, and a bacterium, a virus, a molecule, a microorganism. Or in the case of the truffle, a tree, a fly, and a pig. These combinations are neither genetic nor structural; they are interkingdoms, unnatural partici- pations. That is the only way Nature operates—against itself. This is a far cry from filiative production or hereditary reproduction, in which the only differences retained are a simple duality between sexes within the same species, and small modifications across generations. For us, on the other hand, there are as many sexes as there are terms in symbiosis, as many dif- ferences as elements contributing to a process of contagion. We know that many beings pass between a man and a woman; they come from different worlds, are borne on the wind, form rhizomes around roots; they cannot be understood in terms of production, only in terms of becoming. The Uni- verse does not function by filiation. All we are saying is that animals are packs, and that packs form, develop, and are transformed by contagion.
For example, NASA appeared ready to mobilize considerable capital for interplanetary exploration,
For example, without privileging one regime over another, it is possible to construct schemas of the signifying and postsignifying semiotics that clearly illustrate the possibilities for concrete mixture.
For in the nine- teenth century he developed a grandiose conception of stratification. He said that matter, considered from the standpoint of its greatest divisibility, consists in particles of decreasing size,
For some of these lines are imposed on us from outside, at least in part. Others sprout up somewhat by chance, from a
Form
formal opposition or distinction favorable to the extraction of constants; nonlinguistic variables of content do also. As Hjelmslev notes, an expression is divided, for exam- ple, into phonic units in the same way a content is divided into social, zoo- logical, or physical units ("calf divides into young-bovine-male).
formed substances; these things exist only by means of and in relation to the strata.
Four errors concerning this molecular and supple segmentarity are to be avoided. The first is axiological and consists in believing that a little sup- pleness is enough to make things "better." But microfascisms are what make fascism so dangerous, and fine segmentations are as harmful as the most rigid of segments. The second is psychological, as if the molecular were in the realm of the imagination and applied only to the individual and interindividual. But there is just as much social-Real on one line as on the other. Third, the two forms are not simply distinguished by size, as a small form and a large form; although it is true that the molecular works in detail and operates in small groups, this does not mean that it is any less coexten- sive with the entire social field than molar organization. Finally, the quali- tative difference between the two lines does not preclude their boosting or cutting into each other; there is always a proportional relation between the two, directly or inversely proportional.
fragment of a painting. A piece of music must let fall a little
free association on the level of the rep- resentation of things, rather than verbal subsumption on the level of the representation of words. The result is the same, since it is always a question of bringing back the unity or identity of the person or allegedly lost object. The wolves will have to be purged of their multiplicity. This operation is accomplished by associating the dream with the tale, "The Wolf and the Seven Kid-Goats" (only six of which get eaten). We witness Freud's reduc- tive glee; we literally see multiplicity leave the wolves to take the shape of goats that have absolutely nothing to do with the story. Seven wolves that are only kid-goats. Six wolves: the seventh goat (the Wolf-Man himself) is hiding in the clock. Five wolves: he may have seen his parents make love at five o'clock, and the roman numeral V is associated with the erotic spread- ing of a woman's legs. Three wolves: the parents may have made love three times. Two wolves: the first coupling the child may have seen was the two parents more ferarum, or perhaps even two dogs. One wolf: the wolf is the father, as we all knew from the start. Zero wolves: he lost his tail, he is not just a castrater but also castrated. Who is Freud trying to fool? The wolves never had a chance to get away and save their pack: it was already decided from the very beginning that animals could serve only to represent coitus between parents, or, conversely, be represented by coitus between parents. Freud obviously knows nothing about the fascination exerted by wolves and the meaning of their silent call, the call to become-wolf. Wolves watch, intently watch, the dreaming child; it is so much more reassuring to tell oneself that the dream produced a reversal and that it is really the child who sees dogs or parents in the act of making love. Freud only knows the
Freud). Finally, there are more demonic animals, pack or affect animals that form a multiplicity, a becoming, a population, a tale ... Or once again, cannot any animal be treated in all three ways? There is always the possibility that a given animal, a louse, a cheetah or an elephant, will be treated as a pet, my little beast. And at the other extreme, it is also possible for any animal to be treated in the mode of the pack or swarm; that is our way, fellow sorcerers. Even the cat, even the dog. And the shepherd, the animal trainer, the Devil, may have a favorite animal in the pack, although not at all in the way we were just discussing. Yes, any animal is or can be a pack, but to varying degrees of vocation that make it easier or harder to discover the multiplicity, or multiplicity-grade, an animal contains (actually or virtually according to the case). Schools, bands, herds, populations are not inferior social forms; they are affects and powers, involutions that grip every animal in a becom- ing just as powerful as that of the human being with the animal.
from a search for roots. There is always something genealogical about a tree. It is not a
from the nomads. It was the Hyksos, conquering nomads, who brought it to Egypt; and when Moses applied it to his people in exodus, it was on the advice of his nomad father-in-law, Jethro the Kenite, and was done in such a way as to constitute a war machine, the elements of which are described in the biblical book of Numbers. The nomos is fundamentally numerical, arithmetic. When Greek geometrism is contrasted with Indo-Arab arithmetism, it becomes clear that the latter implies a nomos opposable to the logos: not that the nomads "do" arithmetic or algebra, but because arithmetic and algebra arise in a strongly nomad influenced world.
from the point of view of a general theory of thought, a thinking of thought. And so on. Moreover, there are still other kinds of space that should be taken into account, for example, holey space and the way it communicates with the smooth and the striated in different ways. What interests us in operations
From the standpoint of consistency, matters of expression must be con- sidered not only in relation to their aptitude to form motifs and counter- points but also in relation to the inhibitors and releasers that act on them, and the mechanisms of innateness or learning, heredity or acquisition, that modulate them. Ethology's mistake is to restrict itself to a binary distri- bution of these factors, even, and especially, when it is thought necessary to
From the standpoint of the State, the originality of the man of war, his
function coextensive with language. It is evident that order-words, collec- tive assemblages, or regimes of signs cannot be equated with language. But they effectuate its condition of possibility {the superlinearity of expres- sion), they fulfill in each instance this condition of possibility; without them, language would remain a pure virtuality (the superlinear character of indirect discourse). Doubtless, the assemblages vary, undergo transfor- mation. But they do not necessarily vary by language, they do not corre- spond to the various languages. A language seems to be defined by the syntactical, semantic, phonological constants in its statements; the collec- tive assemblage, on the contrary, concerns the usage of these constants in relation to variables internal to enunciation itself (variables of expression, immanent acts, or incorporeal transformations). Different constants, dif- ferent languages, may have the same usage; the same constants in a given language may have different usages, successively or even simultaneously. We cannot content ourselves with a duality between constants as linguistic factors that are explicit or potentially explicit, and variables as extrinsic, nonlinguistic factors. For the pragmatic variables of usage are internal to enunciation and constitute the implicit presuppositions of language. Thus if the collective assemblage is in each instance coextensive with the linguis- tic system considered, and to language as a whole, it is because it expresses the set of incorporeal transformations that effectuate the condition of pos- sibility of language and utilize the elements of the linguistic system. The language-function thus defined is neither informational nor communi-cational; it has to do neither with signifying information nor with intersubjective communication. And it is useless to abstract a signifiance outside information, or a subjectivity outside communication. For the subjectification proceedings and movement of signifiance relate to regimes of signs, or collective assemblages. The language-function is the transmission of order-words, and order-words relate to assemblages, just as assemblages relate to the incorporeal transformations constituting the variables of the function. Linguistics is nothing without a pragmatics (semiotic or political) to define the effectuation of the condition of possibil- ity of language and the usage of linguistic elements.
gates, etc. At the level of pathos, these multiplicities are expressed by psychosis and especially schizophrenia. At the level of pragmatics, they are utilized by sorcery. At the level of theory, the status of multi- plicities is correlative to that of spaces, and vice versa: smooth spaces of
genitality. That was its modernism. But it retained the essentials; it even found new ways of inscribing in desire the negative law of lack, the external rule of pleasure, and the transcendent ideal of phantasy. Take the interpre- tation of masochism: when the ridiculous death instinct is not invoked, it is claimed that the masochist, like everybody else, is after pleasure but can only get it through pain and phantasied humiliations whose function is to allay or ward off deep anxiety. This is inaccurate; the masochist's suffering is the price he must pay, not to achieve pleasure, but to untie the pseudobond between desire and pleasure as an extrinsic measure. Pleasure is in no way something that can be attained only by a detour through suffer- ing; it is something that must be delayed as long as possible because it inter- rupts the continuous process of positive desire. There is, in fact, a joy that is immanent to desire as though desire were filled by itself and its contempla- tions, a joy that implies no lack or impossibility and is not measured by pleasure since it is what distributes intensities of pleasure and prevents them from being suffused by anxiety, shame, and guilt. In short, the mas- ochist uses suffering as a way of constituting a body without organs and bringing forth a plane of consistency of desire. That there are other ways, other procedures than masochism, and certainly better ones, is beside the point; it is enough that some find this procedure suitable for them.
Georges Dumezil, in his definitive analyses of Indo-European mythology, has shown that political sovereignty, or domination, has two heads: the magician-king and the jurist-priest. Rex and flamen, raj and Brahman, Romulus and Numa, Varuna and Mitra, the despot and the legislator, the binder and the organizer. Undoubtedly, these two poles stand in opposi- tion term by term, as the obscure and the clear, the violent and the calm, the quick and the weighty, the fearsome and the regulated, the "bond" and the "pact," etc.' But their opposition is only relative; they function as a pair, in alternation, as though they expressed a division of the One or constituted in themselves a sovereign unity. "At once antithetical and complementary, necessary to one another and consequently without hostility, lacking a
gist or a biologist, he was not even a linguist, ethnologist,
gists distinguish between long-term memory and short-term memory (on the order of a minute). The difference between them is not simply quantita- tive: short-term memory is of the rhizome or diagram type, and long-term memory is arborescent and centralized (imprint, engram, tracing, or pho- tograph). Short-term memory is in no way subject to a law of contiguity or immediacy to its object; it can act at a distance, come or return a long time after, but always under conditions of discontinuity, rupture, and multipli- city. Furthermore, the difference between the two kinds of memory is not that of two temporal modes of apprehending the same thing; they do not grasp the same thing, memory, or idea. The splendor of the short-term Idea: one writes using short-term memory, and thus short-term ideas, even if one reads or rereads using long-term memory of long-term concepts. Short-term memory includes forgetting as a process; it merges not with the instant but instead with the nervous, temporal, and collective rhizome. Long-term memory (family, race, society, or civilization) traces and trans- lates, but what it translates continues to act in it, from a distance, offbeat, in an "untimely" way, not instantaneously.
giving orders
glacial, is Deterritorialization par excellence: that is why it belongs
God is a Lobster, or a double pincer, a double bind.
grafts onto it and undergoes a flourishing development. This time, natural reality is what aborts the principal root, but the root's unity subsists, as past or yet to come, as possible. We must ask
gravity). () The position of this point does not change when the direction of the parallel forces is changed, when they become perpendicular to their original direction. (
Ground rent, in its abstract model, appears precisely when a compari- son is drawn between different simultaneously exploited territories, or
ground, beginning or end and that is as alive as a continuous variation— such a line is truly an abstract line, and describes a smooth space. It is not inexpressive. Yet is true that it does not constitute a stable and symmetrical form of expression grounded in a resonance of points and a conjunction of lines. It is nevertheless accompanied by material traits of expression, the effects of which multiply step by step. This is what Worringer means when he says that the Gothic line (for us, the nomadic line invested with abstrac- tion) has the power of expression and not of form, that it has repetition as a power, not symmetry as form. Indeed, it is through symmetry that rectilin- ear systems limit repetition, preventing infinite progression and maintain- ing the organic domination of a central point with radiating lines, as in reflected or star-shaped figures. It is free action, however, which by its essence unleashes the power of repetition as a machinic force that multi- plies its effect and pursues an infinite movement. Free action proceeds by disjunction and decentering, or at least by peripheral movement: dis- jointed polythetism instead of symmetrical antithetism.
had emptied themselves of their organs instead of looking for the point at which they could patiently and momentarily dismantle the organization of the organs we call the organism. There are, in fact, several ways of botching the BwO: either one fails to produce it, or one produces it more or less, but nothing is produced on it, intensities do not pass or are blocked. This is because the BwO is always swinging between the surfaces that stratify it and the plane that sets it free. If you free it with too violent an action, if you blow apart the strata without taking precautions, then instead of drawing the plane you will be killed, plunged into a black hole, or even dragged toward catastrophe. Staying stratified—organized, signified, subjected— is not the worst that can happen; the worst that can happen is if you throw the strata into demented or suicidal collapse, which brings them back down on us heavier than ever. This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight, causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO. Connect, con- jugate, continue: a whole "diagram," as opposed to still signifying and sub- jective programs. We are in a social formation; first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are; then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held; gently tip the assem- blage, making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires, con- junction of flows, continuum of intensities. You have constructed your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines. Castaneda describes a long process of experimentation (it makes little difference whether it is with peyote or other things): let us recall for the moment how the Indian forces him first to find a "place," already a difficult operation, then to find "allies," and then gradually to give up interpretation, to construct flow by flow and segment by segment lines of experimentation, becoming-animal, becoming-molecular, etc. For the BwO is all of that: necessarily a Place, necessarily a Plane, necessarily a Collectivity (assembling elements, things, plants, animals, tools, people, powers, and fragments of all of these; for it is not "my" body without organs, instead the "me" (moi) is on it, or what remains of me, unalterable and changing in form, crossing thresholds).
hardness, weight, color . . .)• There is thus an ambulant coupling, events-affects, which constitutes the vague corporeal essence and is distinct from the sedentary linkage, "fixed essence-properties of the thing deriving from the essence," "formal essence-formed thing." Doubtless Husserl had a tendency to make the vague essence a kind of intermediary between the essence and the sensible, between the thing and the concept, a little like the Kantian schema. Is not roundness a schematic or vague essence, intermediary between rounded sensible things and the conceptual essence of the circle? In effect, roundness exists only as a threshold-affect (neither flat nor pointed) and as a limit-process (becoming rounded), through sensible things and technical agents, millstone, lathe, wheel, spinning wheel socket, etc. But it is only "intermediary" to the extent that what is intermediary is autonomous, initially stretching itself between things, and between thoughts, to establish a whole new relation between thoughts and things, a vague identity between the two.
has an essential relation to the signifying semiotic itself, for which the Hebrews and their God would always be nostalgic: reestablish an imperial society and integrate with it, enthrone a king like everybody else (Samuel), rebuild a temple that would finally be solid (David and Solomon, Zachariah), erect the spiral of the Tower of Babel and find the face of God again; not just bring the wandering to a halt, but overcome the diaspora, which itself exists only as a function of an ideal regathering. We only have space to indicate what, in this mixed semiotic, bears witness to the new postsignifying subjective or passional regime.
have a specificity that is too hastily reduced to its consequences, by includ- ing them in the empires or counting them among the migrants, assimilat- ing them to one or the other, denying them their own "will" to art. Again, there is a refusal to accept that the intermediary between the East and the North had its own
have replaced the declining codes with a univocal overcoding, and the lost territories with a specific reterritorialization (which takes place in an overcoded geometrical space). Segmentarity is always the result of an abstract machine, but different abstract machines operate in the rigid and the supple.
Have we not, however, reverted to a simple dualism by contrasting maps to tracings, as good and bad sides? Is it not of the essence of the map to be traceable? Is it not of the essence of the rhizome to intersect roots and sometimes merge with them? Does not a map contain phenomena of redundancy that are already like tracings of its own? Does not a multipli- city have strata upon which unifications and totalizations, massifications, mimetic mechanisms, signifying power takeovers, and subjective attribu- tions take root? Do not even lines of flight, due to their eventual diver- gence, reproduce the very formations their function it was to dismantle or outflank? But the opposite is also true. It is a question of method: the trac- ing should always be put back on the map. This operation and the previous one are not at all symmetrical. For it is inaccurate to say that a tracing reproduces the map. It is instead like a photograph or X ray that begins by selecting or isolating, by artificial means such as colorations or other restrictive procedures, what it intends to reproduce. The imitator always creates the model, and attracts it. The tracing has already translated the map into an image; it has already transformed the rhizome into roots and radicles. It has organized, stabilized, neutralized the multiplicities accord- ing to the axes of signifiance and subjectification belonging to it. It has gen- erated, structurahzed the rhizome, and when it thinks it is reproducing something else it is in fact only reproducing itself. That is why the tracing is so dangerous. It injects redundancies and propagates them. What the trac- ing reproduces of the map or rhizome are only the impasses, blockages, incipient taproots, or points of structuration. Take a look at psychoanalysis and linguistics: all the former has ever made are tracings or photos of the unconscious, and the latter of language, with all the betrayals that implies (it's not surprising that psychoanalysis tied its fate to that of linguistics).
He don't plant 'tatos Don't plant cotton
He said we needed to learn it by heart because we would only be in a position to understand it later on: "A surface of stratification is a more compact plane of consistency lying between two layers."
hearing; he mistook crowds for a single person. Schizos, on the other hand, have sharp eyes and ears. They don't mistake the buzz and shove of the crowd for daddy's voice. Once Jung had a dream about bones and skulls. A bone or a skull is never alone. Bones are a multiplicity. But Freud wants the dream to signify the death of someone. "Jung was surprised and pointed out that there were several skulls, not just one. Yet Freud still. . ."
here, cutting edges of deterritorialization become operative and
Here, the associated milieus are closely related to organic forms. An organic form is not a simple structure but a structuration, the constitution of an associated milieu. An animal milieu, such as the spider web, is no less "morphogenetic" than the form of the organism. One certainly cannot say that the milieu determines the form; but to complicate things, this does not make the relation between form and milieu any less decisive. Since the form depends on an autonomous code, it can only be constituted in an associated milieu that interlaces active, perceptive, and energetic charac- teristics in a complex fashion, in conformity with the code's requirements; and the form can develop only through intermediary milieus that regulate
History is always written from the sedentary point of view and in the name of a unitary State apparatus, at least a possible one, even when the topic is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology, the opposite of a history. There are rare successes in this also, for example, on the subject of the Children's Crusades: Marcel Schwob's book multiplies narratives like so many plateaus with variable numbers of dimensions. Then there is Andrzejewski's book, Les portes du paradis (The gates of paradise), com- posed of a single uninterrupted sentence; a flow of children; a flow of walk- ing with pauses, straggling, and forward rushes; the semiotic flow of the confessions of all the children who go up to the old monk at the head of the procession to make their declarations; a flow of desire and sexuality, each child having left out of love and more or less directly led by the dark posthu- mous pederastic desire of the count of Vendome; all this with circles of con- vergence. What is important is not whether the flows are "One or multiple"—we're past that point: there is a collective assemblage of enun- ciation, a machinic assemblage of desire, one inside the other and both plugged into an immense outside that is a multiplicity in any case. A more recent example is Armand Farrachi's book on the Fourth Crusade, La dis- location, in which the sentences space themselves out and disperse, or else
Holey Space
Holey space (machinic phylum or matter-flow)
HOW
How can a people and a land be made, in other words, a nation—a refrain? The coldest and bloodiest means vie with upsurges of romanticism. The axiomatic is complex, and is not without passions. The natal or the land, as we have seen elsewhere, implies a certain deterritorialization of the territories (community land, imperial provinces, seigneurial domains, etc.), and the people, a decoding of the population. The nation is constituted on the basis of these flows and is inseparable from the modern State that gives consistency to the corre- sponding land and people. It is the flow of naked labor that makes the peo- ple, just as it is the flow of Capital that makes the land and its industrial base. In short, the nation is the very operation of a collective subjecti-fication, to which the modern State corresponds as a process of subjection. It is in the form of the nation-state, with all its possible variations, that the State becomes the model of realization for the capitalist axiomatic. This is not at all to say that nations are appearances or ideological phenomena; on the contrary, they are the passional and living forms in which the qualitative homogeneity and the quantitative competition of abstract capital are first realized.
How could movements of deterritorialization and processes of reterri-torialization not be relative, always connected, caught up in one another? The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). But this is true only on the level of the strata—a parallelism between two strata such that a plant organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization ever further. There is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of flight composed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed to or subjugated by anything signifying. Rimy Chauvin expresses it well: "the aparallel evolution of two beings that have absolutely nothing to do with each other."
HOW DO
HOW DO YOU
HOW DO YOU MAKE YOURSELF
HOW DO YOU MAKE YOURSELF A BODY
HOW DO YOU MAKE YOURSELF A BODY WITHOUT ORGANS?
However relentless the killing, it is relatively difficult to liquidate a people or a group, even in the Third World, once it has enough connections with elements of the axiomatic. In still other respects, it can be predicted that the impending problems of the economy, which will consist in reforming capital in relation to new resources (undersea oil, metallic nodules, food- stuffs), will require not only a redistribution of the world that will mobilize the worldwide war machine and train its parts on the new objectives; we will also probably see the formation or re-formation of minoritarian aggre- gates, in relation to the affected regions.
However, it does not exhaust the question to establish a simple opposi- tion between two points of view, religion-nomadism. For monotheistic religion, at the deepest level of its tendency to project a universal or spiri- tual State over the entire ecumenon, is not without ambivalence or fringe areas; it goes beyond even the ideal limits of the State, even the imperial State, entering a more indistinct zone, an outside of States where it has the possibility of undergoing a singular mutation or adaptation. We are refer- ring to religion as an element in a war machine and the idea of holy war as the motor of that machine. The prophet, as opposed to the state personality of the king and the religious personality of the priest, directs the movement by which a religion becomes a war machine or passes over to the side of such a machine. It has often been said that Islam, and the prophet Moham- med, performed such a conversion of religion and constituted a veritable esprit de corps: in the formula of Georges Bataille, "early Islam, a society reduced to the military enterprise." This is what the West invokes in order to justify its antipathy toward Islam. Yet the Crusades were a properly Christian adventure of this type. The prophets may very well condemn nomad life; the war machine may very well favor the movement of migration and the ideal of establishment; religion in general may very well
However, it seems to us difficult to maintain that State societies, even our modern States, are any less segmentary. The classical opposition
However, there is more to the picture than semiotic systems waging war on one another armed only with their own weapons. Very specific assem- blages of power impose signifiance and subjectification as their determinate form of expression, in reciprocal presupposition with new contents: there is no signifiance without a despotic assemblage, no subjectification with- out an authoritarian assemblage, and no mixture between the two without assemblages of power that act through signifiers and act upon souls and subjects. It is these assemblages, these despotic or authoritarian forma-
However, we are obliged to make an immediate correction: movement also "must" be perceived, it cannot but be perceived, the imperceptible is also the percipiendum. There is no contradiction in this. If movement is imperceptible by nature, it is so always in relation to a given threshold of perception, which is by nature relative and thus plays the role of a media- tion on the plane that effects the distribution of thresholds and percepts and makes forms perceivable to perceiving subjects. It is the plane of organization and development, the plane of transcendence, that renders perceptible without itself being perceived, without being capable of being perceived. But on the other plane, the plane of immanence or consistency, the principle of composition itself must be perceived, cannot but be per- ceived at the same time as that which it composes or renders. In this case, movement is no longer tied to the mediation of a relative threshold that it eludes ad infinitum; it has reached, regardless of its speed or slowness, an absolute but differentiated threshold that is one with the construction of
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identify with something or someone. Nor is it to proportion formal relations. Neither of these two fig- ures of analogy is applicable to becoming: neither the imitation of a subject nor the proportionality of a form. Starting from the forms one has, the sub- ject one is, the organs one has, or the functions one fulfills, becoming is to extract particles between which one establishes the relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness that are closest to what one is becoming, and through which one becomes. This is the sense in which becoming is the process of desire. This principle of proximity or approximation is entirely particular and reintroduces no analogy whatsoever. It indicates as rigor-
If in a social field we distinguish the set of corporeal modifications and the set of incorporeal transformations, we are presented, despite the variety in each of the sets, with two formalizations, one of content, the other of expression. For content is not opposed to form but has its own formal- ization: the hand-tool pole, or the lesson of things. It is, however, opposed
If the experimentation with drugs has left its mark on everyone, even nonusers, it is because it changed the perceptive coordinates of space-time and introduced us to a universe of microperceptions in which becomings-molecular take over where becomings-animal leave off. Carlos Castaneda's
If the two solutions of extermination and integration hardly seem possi- ble, it is due to the deepest law of capitalism:
If we attempt an equally summary definition of romanticism, we see that everything is clearly different. A new cry resounds:
If we consider the other aspect of the order-word, flight rather than death, it appears that variables are in a new state,
If we return to a very gen- eral sense of the word "line," we see that there are not just two kinds of lines but three.
If work constitutes a striated space-time corresponding to the State apparatus, is this not especially true of its
II. "There Is an Abstract Machine of Language That Does Not Appeal to Any 'Extrinsic' Factor"
II. Nowweareathome.Buthomedoesnotpreexist:itwasnecessaryto draw a circle around that uncertain and fragile center, to
III. "There Are Constants or Universals of Language That Enable Us to Define It as a Homogeneous System"
III. Finally,oneopensthecircleacrack,opensitalltheway,letssome one in, calls someone, or else goes out oneself,
In a multilinear system, everything happens at once: the line breaks free of the point as origin; the diagonal breaks free of the vertical and the hori- zontal as coordinates; and the transversal breaks free of the diagonal as a localizable connection between two points. In short, a block-line passes amid (au milieu des) sounds and propels itself by its own nonlocalizable middle (milieu). The sound block is the intermezzo. It is a body without organs, an antimemory pervading musical organization, and is all the more sonorous: "The Schumannian body does not stay in place. ... The intermezzo [is] consubstantial with the entire Schumannian oeuvre.... At the limit, there are only intermezzi. ... The Schumannian body knows only bifurcations; it does not construct itself, it keeps diverging according to an accumulation of interludes.... Schumannian beating is panic, but it is also coded ... and it is because the panic of the blows apparently keeps within the limits of a docile language that it is ordinarily not perceived.. . . Let us imagine for tonality two contradictory (and yet concomitant) sta- tuses. On the one hand ... a screen, a language intended to articulate the body.. .according to a known organization... .On the other hand, contra-
In a way, we must start at the end: all becomings are already molecular. That is because becoming is not to imitate or
in America, and its role from the standpoint of a women's collectivity). The smooth space of patchwork is adequate to demonstrate that "smooth" does not mean homogeneous, quite the contrary: it is an amorphous, nonformal space prefiguring op art.
In analogical transformations, we often see sleep, drugs, and amorous rapture form expressions that translate into
In any case, content and expression are never reducible to signified-signifier. And (this is the second problem) neither are they reducible to base-superstructure. One can no more posit a primacy of content as the determining factor than a primacy of expression as a signifying system. Expression can never be made into a form reflecting content, even if one endows it with a "certain" amount of independence and a certain potential for reacting, if only because so-called economic content already has a form and even forms of expression that are specific to it. Form of content and form of expression involve two parallel formalizations in presupposition: it is obvious that their segments constantly intertwine, embed themselves in one another; but this is accomplished by the abstract machine from which the two forms derive, and by machinic assemblages that regulate their relations. If this parallelism is replaced by a pyramidal image, then content (including its form) becomes an economic base of production displaying all of the characteristics of the Abstract; the assemblages become the first story of a superstructure that, as such, is necessarily situated within a State apparatus; the regimes of signs and forms of expression become the second story of the superstructure, defined by ideology. It isn't altogether clear where language should go, since the great Despot decided that it should be reserved a special place, as the common good of the nation and the vehicle for information. Thus one misconstrues the nature of language, which exists only in heterogeneous regimes of signs, and rather than circulating information distributes contradictory orders. It misconstrues the nature of regimes of signs, which express organizations of power or assemblages and have nothing to do with ideology as the supposed expres- sion of a content (ideology is a most execrable concept obscuring all of the effectively operating social machines). It misconstrues the nature of orga- nizations of power, which are in no way located within a State apparatus but rather are everywhere, effecting formalizations of content and expres-
in comparison with that of the assem- blage. The natal stretches from what happens in the intra-assemblage all the way to the center that has been projected outside; it cuts across all the interassemblages and reaches all the way to the gates of the Cosmos.
in counterpoint, "escape tone"—Trans.]? And why so enormous a word, Cosmos, to discuss an operation that must be precise? Klee says that one "tries convulsively to fly from the earth," and that one "rises above it. . . powered by centrifugal forces that triumph over gravity." He adds that the artist begins by looking around him- or herself, into all the milieus, but does so in order to grasp the trace of creation in the created, of naturing nature in natured nature; then, adopting "an earthbound position,"
In each instance, then, the simple opposition "smooth-striated" gives rise to far more difficult complications, alternations, and superpositions. But these complications basically confirm the distinction, precisely
In fact, the opposition we should set up between the two planes is that between two abstract poles: for example, to the transcendent, organiza- tional plane of Western music based on sound forms and their develop- ment, we oppose the immanent plane of consistency of Eastern music, composed of speeds and slownesses, movements and rest. In keeping with our concrete hypothesis, the whole becoming of Western music, all musical becoming, implies a minimum of sound forms and even of melodic and harmonic functions; speeds and slownesses are made to pass across them, and it is precisely these speeds and slownesses that reduce the forms and functions to the minimum. Beethoven produced the most astonishing polyphonic richness with relatively scanty themes of three or four notes. There is a material proliferation that goes hand in hand with a dissolution of form (involution) but is at the same time accompanied by a continuous development of form. Perhaps Schumann's genius is the most striking case of form being developed only for the relations of speed and slowness one materially and emotionally assigns it. Music has always submitted its forms and motifs to temporal transformations, augmentations or diminu- tions, slowdowns or accelerations, which do not occur solely according to laws of organization or even of development. Expanding and contracting microintervals are at play within coded intervals. Wagner and the post-Wagnerians free variations of speed between sound particles to an even greater extent. Ravel and Debussy retain just enough form to shatter it,
in Meinong and Russell we find a distinction between multiplicities of magnitude or divisibility, which are extensive, and multiplicities of dis- tance, which are closer to the intensive. And in Bergson there is a distinc- tion between numerical or extended multiplicities and qualitative or durational multiplicities. We are doing approximately the same thing when we distinguish between arborescent multiplicities and rhizomatic multiplicities. Between macro- and micromultiplicities. On the one hand, multiplicities that are extensive, divisible, and molar; unifiable, total-izable, organizable; conscious or preconscious—and on the other hand, libidinal, unconscious, molecular, intensive multiplicities composed of particles that do not divide without changing in nature, and distances that do not vary without entering another multiplicity and that constantly construct and dismantle themselves in the course of their communications, as they cross over into each other at, beyond, or before a certain threshold. The elements of this second kind of multiplicity are particles; their relations are distances; their movements are Brownian; their quantities are intensities, differences in intensity.
in other words, the additions (the enunciation of new axioms) and the withdrawals (the creation of exclusive axioms), are the object of strug- gles in no way confined to the technocracy. Everywhere, the workers' strug- gles overspill the framework of the capitalist enterprises, which imply for the most part derivative propositions. The struggles bear directly upon the axioms that presi de over the State's public spending, or that even concern a specific international organization (for example, a multinational corpora-
in person, because it is a pure abstraction no less than a pure principle; in other words, it is nothing. Lack or excess, it hardly matters. It comes to the same thing to say that the sign refers to other signs ad infinitum and that the infinite set of all signs refers to a supreme signifier. At any rate, this pure formal redundancy of the signifier could not even be conceptualized if it did not have its own substance of expression, for which we must find a name: faciality. Not only is language always accompanied by faciality traits, but the face crystallizes all redundancies, it emits and receives, releases and recaptures signifying signs. It is a whole body unto itself: it is like the body of the center of signifiance to which all of the deterritorialized signs affix themselves, and it marks the limit of their deterritorialization. The voice emanates from the face; that is why, however fundamentally important the writing machine is in the imperial bureaucracy, what is writ- ten retains an oral or nonbook character. The face is the Icon proper to the signifying regime, the reterritorialization internal to the system. The signifier reterritorializes on the face. The face is what gives the signifier substance; it is what fuels interpretation, and it is what changes, changes traits, when interpretation reimparts signifier to its substance. Look, his expression changed. The signifier is always facialized. Faciality reigns materially over that whole constellation of signifiances and interpretations (psychologists have written extensively on the baby's relations to the moth- er's face, and sociologists on the role of the face in mass media and adver- tising). The despot-god has never hidden his face, far from it: he makes himself one, or even several. The mask does not hide the face, it is the face. The priest administers the face of the god. With the despot, everything is public, and everything that is public is so by virtue of the face. Lies and deception may be a fundamental part of the signifying regime, but secrecy is not.
In smooth space, the line is therefore a vector, a direction and not a dimension or metric determination. It is a space constructed by local oper- ations involving changes in direction. These changes in direction may be due to the nature of the journey itself, as with the nomads of the archipela-
in such a way as to extract from them series or structures, archetypes or models (Jung is in any event profounder than
In the course of Castaneda's books, the reader may begin to doubt the existence of the Indian Don Juan, and many other things besides. But that has no importance. So much the better if the books are a syncretism rather
In the first case, the stronger the molar organization is, the more it induces a molecularization of its own elements, relations, and elementary apparatuses. When the machine becomes planetary or cosmic, there is an increasing tendency for assemblages to miniaturize, to become micro-assemblages. Following Andre Gorz's formula, the only remaining element of work left under world capitalism is the molecular, or molecularized, individual, in other words, the "mass" individual. The administration of a great organized molar security has as its correlate a whole micro-
In the first place, the distinction between absolute war as Idea and real wars seems to us to be of great importance, but
In the first years of the twentieth century, psychiatry, at the height of its clinical skills, confronted the problem of nonhallucinatory delusions in which mental integrity is retained without "intellectual diminishment." There was a first major grouping, paranoid or interpretive delusions, which already subsumed various aspects. But the question of the possible independence of another group was prefigured in Esquirol's monomania and Kraepelin's querulous delusion, and later defined by Serieux and Capgras as grievance delusion, and by Clerambault as passional delusion
in the form of a chain of beings perpetually imitating one another, progres- sively and regressively, and tending toward the divine higher term they all imitate by graduated resemblance, as the model for and principle behind the series; or in the form of a mirror Imitation with nothing left to imitate because it itself is the model everything else imitates, this time by ordered difference. (This mimetic or mimological vision is what made the idea of an evolution-production possible at that moment.)
in the formation of interior substantial elements or even compounds. These elements and compounds both appropriate materials and exteri- orize themselves through replication, even in the conditions of the primor- dial soup itself. Once again, interior and exterior
in the instantaneous apprehension of a generic multiplicity: wolves. He knew that this new and true proper name
in the sense that the first eludes the second, or the second arrests the first, prevents it from flowing further; but at the same time,
in this respect from later evolutionism, which defined itself in terms of genealogy, kinship, descent, and filiation. As we know, evolutionism would arrive at the idea of an evolution that does not necessarily operate by filiation. But it was unavoidable that it begin with the genealogical motif. Darwin himself treats the evolutionist theme of kinship and the naturalist theme of the sum and value of differences or resemblances as very separate things: groups that are equally related can display highly variable degrees of difference with respect to the ancestor. Precisely because natural history is concerned primarily with the sum and value of differences, it can con- ceive of progressions and regressions, continuities and major breaks, but not an evolution in the strict sense, in other words, the possibility of a descent the degrees of modification of which depend on external condi- tions. Natural history can think only in terms of relationships (between A and B), not in terms of production (from A to x).
in which each term plays the role of a possible transformer of the libido (metamorphosis). A whole approach to the dream follows from this; given a troubling image, it becomes a ques- tion of integrating it into its archetypal series. That series may include fem- inine, masculine, or infantile sequences, as well as animal, vegetable, even elementary or molecular sequences. In contrast to natural history, man is now no longer the eminent term of the series; that term may be an animal for man, the lion, crab, bird of prey, or louse, in relation to a given act or function, in accordance with a given demand of the unconscious.
Inasmuch as they are territorial, assemblages still belong to the strata. At least they pertain to them in one of their aspects, and it is under this aspect that we distinguish in every assemblage content
incident and social disorder). Moreover, the distribution of these thresh- olds and circles changes according to the case. Deception is fundamental to the system. Jumping from circle to circle, always moving the scene, playing it out somewhere else: such is the hysteric operation of the deceiver as sub- ject, answering to the paranoid operation of the despot installed in his cen- ter of signifiance.
Individual or group, we are traversed by lines, meridians, geodesies, tropics, and zones marching to different beats and differing in nature. We said that we are composed of lines, three kinds of lines. Or rather, of bun- dles of lines, for each kind is multiple. We may be more interested in a cer- tain line than in the others, and perhaps there is indeed one that is, not determining, but of greater importance ... if it is there.
infinitum. It is better to leave it where it is from the start, for it exists punc- tually, beyond the limit of the primitive series. It is enough for this point of comparison and appropriation to be effectively occupied in order for the apparatus of capture to function, an apparatus that overcodes the primi- tive codes, substitutes sets for the series, or reverses the direction of the signs. This point is necessarily occupied,
Information theory takes as its point of departure a homogeneous set of
inserted itself into them, filled them after its fashion, "between night and day," "noon-midnight." From this standpoint, the fundamental innovations of romanticism can be said to be the following: There were no longer substantial parts corresponding to forms, milieus corresponding to codes, or a matter in chaos given order in forms and by codes. The parts were instead like assemblages produced and dis- mantled at the surface. Form itself became a great form in continuous devel- opment, a gathering of the forces of the earth taking all the parts up into a sheaf. Matter itself was no longer a chaos to subjugate and organize but rather the moving matter of a continuous variation. The universal had become a relation, variation. The continuous variation of matter and the continuous development of form. The assemblages thus placed matter and form in a new relation: matter ceased to be a matter of content, becoming instead a matter of expression, and form ceased to be a code subduing the forces of chaos, becoming a force itself, the sum of the forces of the earth. There was a new relation to danger, madness, limits: romanticism did not go further than baroque classicism; it went elsewhere, with other givens and other vectors.
into bulbs and tubers. When rats swarm over each other. The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couchgrass, or the weed. Animal and plant, couchgrass is crabgrass. We get the distinct feeling that we will convince no one unless we enumerate certain approxi- mate characteristics of the rhizome.
into gradations. The central ring does not exist independently of a periph- ery that forms a new center, reacts back upon the first center, and in turn gives forth discontinuous epistrata.
into other assemblages? That is why we could not talk about the constitu- tion of the territory without also talking about its internal organization. We could not describe the infra-assemblage (posters or placards) without also discussing the intra-assemblage (motifs and counterpoints). Nor can we say anything about the intra-assemblage without already being on the path to other assemblages, or elsewhere. The passage of the Refrain. The refrain moves in the direction of the territorial assemblage and lodges itself there or leaves. In a general sense, we call a refrain any aggregate of matters of expression that draws a territory and develops into territorial motifs and landscapes (there are optical, gestural, motor, etc., refrains). In the narrow sense, we speak of a refrain when an assemblage is sonorous or "domi- nated" by sound—but why do we assign this apparent privilege to sound?
into play attitudes or positions that are like unfoldings and developments, however unexpected. Barbey has an evident fondness for body posture, in other words, states of the body when it is surprised by something that just happened. In the preface to the Diaboliques, Barbey even suggests that there is a diabolism of body postures, a sexuality, pornography, and scatol-ogy of postures quite different from those that also, and simultaneously, mark body attitudes or positions. Posture is like inverse suspense. Thus it is not a question of saying that the novella relates to the past and the tale to the future; what we should say instead is that the novella relates, in the present itself, to the formal dimension of something that has happened, even if that something is nothing or remains unknowable. Similarly, one should not try to make the distinction between the novella and the tale coincide with categories such as the fantastic, the fabulous, etc.; that is another problem, there is no reason why it should overlap. The links of the novella are: What happened? (the modality or expression), Secrecy (the form), Body Posture (the content).
Is Anne Querrien right to find yet another echo of the same story in the case of bridges in the eighteenth century? Doubtless, the conditions were very different, for the division of labor according to State norms was by then an accomplished fact. But the fact remains that in the government agency in charge of bridges and roadways, roadways were under a well-centralized administration while bridges were still the object of active,
is established a correspondence, a comparison ("the power of acquisition is created in direct conjunction with the set of real productions").
Is it by chance that structuralism so strongly denounced the prestige accorded the imagination, the establishment of resemblances in a series, the imitation pervading the entire series and carrying it to its term, and the identification with this final term? Nothing is more explicit than Levi-Strauss's famous texts on totemism: transcend external resem- blances to arrive at internal homologies. It is no longer a question of instituting a serial organization of the imaginary, but instead a symbolic and structural order of understanding. It is no longer a question of gradu- ating resemblances, ultimately arriving at an identification between Man and Animal at the heart of a mystical participation. It is a question of ordering differences to arrive at a correspondence of relations. The ani- mal is distributed according to differential relations or distinctive oppo- sitions between species; the same goes for human beings, according to the groups considered. When analyzing the institution of the totem, we do not say that this group of people identifies with that animal species. We say that what group A is to group B, species A' is to species B'. This method is profoundly different from the preceding one: given two human groups, each with its totem animal, we must discover the way in which the two totems entertain relations analogous to those between the two groups— the Crow is to the Falcon ...
Is it possible to conceive of an "exchange" between separate primitive groups, independent of any reference to such notions as stock, labor, and commodity? It seems that a modified marginalism provides a basis for a hypothesis. For the interest of marginalism resides not in its economic the- ory, which is extremely weak, but in a logical power that makes Jevons, for example, a kind of Lewis Carroll of economics.
is not at all to say that the strata speak or are language based. Double articulation is so extremely var- iable that we cannot begin with a general model, only a relatively simple case. The first articulation chooses or deducts, from unstable particle-flows, metastable molecular or quasi-molecular units {substances) upon which it imposes a statistical order of connections and successions (forms).
is produced by the attraction of the earth. The signpost now only indicates the road of no return. This is the ambiguity of the natal, as it appears in the lied (as well as in symphony and opera): the lied is simultaneously the terri- tory, the lost territory, and the earth vector. The intermezzo assumed increasing importance because it played on all the disjunctions between the earth and the territory,
Is the situation similar for painting, and if so, how? In no way do we believe in a fine-arts system; we believe in very diverse problems whose solutions are found in heterogeneous arts. To us, Art is a false concept, a
Is there absolute D, and what does "absolute" mean? We must first have a better understanding of the relations between D, the territory, reterritorialization, and the earth. To begin with, the terri- tory itself is inseparable from vectors of deterritorialization work-
Is this not the origin of an important theme, "the nomads as child stealers"? It is clear, especially in the last example, how the special body is instituted as an element determinant of power in the war machine. The war machine and nomadic existence have to ward off two things simultane- ously: a return of the lineal aristocracy and the formation of imperial functionaries. What complicates everything is that the State itself has often been determined in such a way as to use slaves as high functionaries. As we shall see, the reasons for this varied, and although the two currents con- verged in armies, they came from two distinct sources. For the power of slaves, foreigners, or captives in a war machine of nomadic origin is very different from the power of lineal aristocracies, as well as from that of State functionaries and bureaucrats. They are "commissars," emissaries, diplo- mats, spies, strategists, and logisticians, sometimes smiths. They cannot be explained away as a "whim of the sultan." On the contrary, it is the possibil- ity of the war chief having whims that is explained by the objective exis- tence and necessity of this special numerical body, this Cipher that has value only in relation to a nomos. There is both a deterritorialization and a becoming proper to the war machine; the special body, in particular the slave-infidel-foreigner, is the one who becomes a soldier and believer while remaining deterritorialized in relation to the lineages and the State. You have to be born an infidel to become a believer; you have to be born a slave to become a soldier. Specific schools or institutions are needed for this pur- pose: the special body is an invention proper to the war machine, which States always utilize, adapting it so totally to their own ends that it becomes unrecognizable, or restituting it in bureaucratic staff form, or in the tech- nocratic form of very special bodies, or in "esprit de corps" that serve the State as much as they resist it, or among the commissars who double the State as much as they serve it.
it Bi n~
it can mobilize gradients and thresholds of perception toward becomings-animal, becomings-molecular, but even this is done in the context of a relativity of thresholds that restrict themselves to imitating a plane of consistency rather than drawing it on an absolute threshold. What good does it do to perceive as fast as a quick-flying bird if speed and movement continue to escape somewhere else? The deterritorializations remain relative, compensated for by the most abject reterritorializations, so that the imperceptible and perception continually pursue or run after
it continually sets and then repels its own limits, but in so doing gives rise to numerous flows in all directions that escape its axiomatic. At the same time as capitalism is effec- tuated in the denumerable sets serving as its models, it necessarily consti- tutes nondenumerable sets that cut across and disrupt those models. It does not effect the "conjugation" of the deterritorialized and decoded flows without those flows forging farther ahead; without their escaping both the axiomatic that conjugates them and the models that reterritorialize them; without their tending to enter into "connections" that delineate a new Land; without their constituting a war machine whose aim is neither the
It is a multiplicity—but we don't know yet what the multiple entails when it is no longer attributed, that is, after it has been elevated to the status of a substantive. One side of a machinic assem- blage faces the strata, which doubtless make it a kind of organism, or signi- fying totality, or determination attributable to a subject; it also has a side facing a body without organs,
It is all there: there is a becoming-animal not content to proceed by resemblance and for which resemblance, on the contrary, would represent an obstacle or stoppage; the proliferation of rats, the pack, brings a becoming-molecular that undermines the great molar powers of family, career, and conjugality; there is a sinister choice since there is a "favorite" in the pack with which a kind of contract of alliance,
It is clear that the distinction between the two articulations is not between substances and forms. Substances are nothing other than formed matters. Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding. Substances as formed matters refer to territorialities and degrees of
It is easy to see what thought gains from this: a gravity it would never have on its own, a center that makes everything, including the State, appear to exist by its own efficacy or on its own sanction. But the State gains just as much. Indeed, by developing in thought in this way the State-form gains something essential: a whole consensus. Only thought is capable of invent- ing the fiction of a State that is universal by right, of elevating the State to the level of de jure universality. It is as if the sovereign were left alone in the world, spanned the entire ecumenon, and now dealt only with actual or potential subjects. It is no longer a question of powerful, extrinsic organiza- tions, or of strange bands: the State becomes the sole principle separating rebel subjects, who are consigned to the state of nature, from consenting subjects, who rally to its form of their own accord. If it is advantageous for thought to prop itself up with the State, it is no less advantageous for the State to extend itself in thought, and to be sanctioned by it as the unique, universal form. The particularity of States becomes merely an accident of fact, as is their possible perversity, or their imperfection. For the modern State defines itself in principle as "the rational and reasonable organiza- tion of a community": the only remaining particularity a community has is interior or moral (the spirit of a people), at the same time as the community is funneled by its organization toward the harmony of a universal (absolute spirit). The State gives thought a form of interiority, and thought gives that interiority a form of universality: "The goal of worldwide organization is the satisfaction of reasonable individuals within particular free States." The exchange that takes place between the State and reason is a curious one; but that exchange is also an analytic proposition, because realized rea- son is identified with the de jure State, just as the State is the becoming of
It is in terms not of indepen- dence, but of coexistence and competition in a perpetual field of interac- tion, that we must conceive of exteriority and interiority, war machines of
It is in this sense that nomads have no points, paths, or land, even though they do by all appearances. If the nomad can be called the Deterritorialized par excellence, it is precisely because there is no reterritorialization after- wardas with the migrant, or upon something else as with the sedentary (the sedentary's relation with the earth is mediatized by something else, a prop- erty regime, a State apparatus). With the nomad, on the contrary, it is deterritorialization that constitutes the relation to the earth, to such a degree that the nomad reterritorializes on deterritorialization itself. It is the earth that deterritorializes itself, in a way that provides the nomad with a territory. The land ceases to be land, tending to become simply ground (sol) or support. The earth does not become deterritorialized in its global and relative movement, but at specific locations, at the spot where the for-
It is indeed another pole of the State that arises, one that could be defined in summary fashion as follows. The public sphere no longer charac- terizes the objective nature of property but is instead the shared means for a now private appropriation; this yields the public-private mixes constitu- tive of the modern world. The bond becomes personal; personal relations of dependence, both between owners (contracts) and between owned and owners (conventions), parallel or replace community relations or relations based on one's public function. Even slavery changes; it no longer defines the public availability of the communal worker but rather private property as applied to individual workers.
It is instructive to contrast two models of science, after the manner of Plato in the Timaeus.
It is not enough, however, to replace the opposition between the One and the multiple with a distinction between types of multiplici-
It is not enough, therefore, to oppose the centralized to the segmentary. Nor is it enough to oppose two kinds of segmentarity, one supple and prim- itive, the other modern and rigidified. There is indeed a distinction between the two, but they are inseparable, they overlap, they are entangled. Primitive societies have nuclei of rigidity or arborification that as much anticipate the State as ward it off. Conversely, our societies are still suf- fused by a supple fabric without which their rigid segments would not hold. Supple segmentarity cannot be restricted to primitive peoples. It is not the vestige of the savage within us but a perfectly contemporary function, inseparable from the other. Every society, and every individual, are thus plied by both segmentarities simultaneously: one molar, the other molecu- lar. If they are distinct, it is because they do not have the same terms or the same relations or the same nature or even the same type of multiplicity. If they are inseparable, it is because they coexist and cross over into each other. The configurations differ, for example, between the primitives and us, but the two segmentarities are always in presupposition. In short, every- thing is political, but every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics. Take aggregates of the perception or feeling type: their molar organization, their rigid segmentarity, does not preclude the existence of an entire world of unconscious micropercepts, unconscious affects, fine segmentations that grasp or experience different things, are distributed and operate differently. There is a micropolitics of perception, affection, conversation, and so forth. If we consider the great binary aggregates, such as the sexes or classes, it is evident that they also cross over into molecular assemblages of a different nature, and that there is a double reciprocal dependency between them. For the two sexes imply a multiplicity of molec- ular combinations bringing into play not only the man in the woman and the woman in the man, but the relation of each to the animal, the plant, etc.: a thousand tiny sexes. And social classes themselves imply "masses" that do not have the same kind of movement, distribution, or objectives and do not wage the same kind of struggle. Attempts to distinguish mass from class effectively tend toward this limit: the notion of mass is a molecular notion operating according to a type of segmentation irreducible to the molar segmentarity of class. Yet classes are indeed fashioned from masses; they crystallize them. And masses are constantly flowing or leaking from classes. Their reciprocal presupposition, however, does not preclude a dif-
It is not that the ambulant sciences are more saturated with irrational procedures, with mystery and magic. They only get that way when they fall into abeyance. And the royal sciences, for their part, also surround them- selves with much priestliness and magic. Rather, what becomes apparent in the rivalry between the two models is that the ambulant or nomad sci- ences do not destine science to take on an autonomous power, or even to have an autonomous development. They do not have the means for that because they subordinate all their operations to the sensible conditions of intuition and construction—following the flow of matter, drawing and linking up smooth space. Everything is situated in an objective zone of fluctuation that is coextensive with reality itself. However refined or rigor- ous, "approximate knowledge" is still dependent upon sensitive and sensi- ble evaluations that pose more problems than they solve: problematics is still its only mode. In contrast, what is proper to royal science, to its theorematic or axiomatic power, is to isolate all operations from the condi- tions of intuition, making them true intrinsic concepts, or "categories." That is precisely why deterritorialization, in this kind of science, implies a reterritorialization in the conceptual apparatus. Without this categorical, apodictic apparatus, the differential operations would be constrained to
It is not very difficult to determine the essence of the "novella" as a literary genre: Everything is organized around the question, "What happened? Whatever could have happened?" The tale is the opposite of the novella, because it is an altogether different question that the reader asks with bated breath: What is going to happen? Something is always going to happen, come to pass. Something always happens in the novel also, but the novel integrates elements of the novella and the tale into the variation of its perpetual living present (duration). The detective novel is a particularly hybrid genre in this respect, since most often the something = Xthat has happened is on the order of a murder or theft, but exactly what it is that has happened remains to be discovered, and in the present determined by the model detective. Yet it would be an error to reduce these different aspects to the three dimensions of time. Something happened, something is going to happen, can designate a past so immediate, a future so near, that they are one (as Husserl would say) with retentions and protentions of the present
It is odd how music does not eliminate the bad or mediocre refrain, or the bad usage of the refrain, but on the contrary carries it along, or uses it as a springboard. "Ah, vous dirai-je maman" ("Ah, mamma, now you shall know"), "Elle avait une jambe de bois" ("She had a wooden leg"), "Frere Jacques." Childhood or bird refrain, folk song, drinking song, Viennese waltz, cow bells: music uses anything and sweeps everything away. Not that a folk song, bird song, or children's song is reducible to the kind of closed and associative formula we just mentioned. Instead, what needs to be shown is that a musician requires a first type of refrain, a territorial or assemblage refrain, in order to transform it from within, deterritorialize it, producing a refrain of the second type as the final end of music: the cosmic refrain of a sound machine. Gisele Brelet, discussing Bartok, gives a good formulation of the problem of the two types: beginning from popular and territorial melodies that are autonomous, self-sufficient, and closed in upon themselves, how can one construct a new chromaticism that places them in communication, thereby creating "themes" bringing about a devel-
It is possible to take any linguistic variable and place it in variation fol- lowing a necessarily virtual continuous line between two of its states. We are no longer in the situation of linguists who expect the constants of lan- guage to experience a kind of mutation or undergo the effects of changes accumulated in speech alone. Lines of change or creation are fully and directly a part of the abstract machine. Hjelmslev remarked that a
It is true that the nomads have no history; they only have a geography.
It is true that the same problems are reformulated at the level of these very transactions, in relation to other power centers. But the first zone of the power center is always defined by the State apparatus, which is the assem- blage that effectuates the abstract machine of molar overcoding; the sec- ond is defined in the molecular fabric immersing this assemblage; the third by the abstract machine of
It is true that we are bringing in considerations of content as well as expression. For even at the moment when the two planes are most distinct, as the regime of bodies and the regime of signs in an assemblage, they are still in reciprocal presupposition. The incorporeal transformation is the expressed of order-words, but also the attribute of bodies. Not only do lin- guistic variables of expression enter into relations of
It seems necessary to distinguish between three types of deterrito- rialization: the first type is relative, proper to the strata, and culminates in signifiance; the second is absolute, but still negative and stratic, and appears in subjectification {Ratio et Passio);
It was over. Only later on would all of this take on concrete meaning. The double-articulated mask had come undone, and so had the gloves and the tunic, from which liquids escaped. As they streamed away they seemed to eat at the strata of the lecture hall,
It would be a mistake to believe that it is possible to isolate this unitary, central layer of the stratum, or to grasp it in itself, by regression. In the first place, a stratum necessarily goes from layer to layer, and from the very beginning. It already has
It would be an error to proceed as though the face became inhuman only beyond a certain threshold: close-
It would be an error to take a disinterested stance toward struggle on the level of the axioms. It is sometimes thought that every axiom, in capitalism or in one of its States, constitutes a "recuperation." But this disenchanted concept is not a good one. The constant readjustments of the capitalist axi- omatic,
Itinerant metallurgy
its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human aliena- tion through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized "machinic enslavement," such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.).
its essential deception, connoting all of its aspects; its profound antics. The signifier reigns over every domestic squabble, and in every State apparatus.
IV. "Language Can Be Scientifically Studied Only under the Conditions of a Standard or Major Language"
judgment preferred by men: "guilty a priori" ... This is where the secret reaches its ultimate state: its content is molecularized, it has become molecular, at the same time as its form has been dismantled, becoming a pure moving line—in the sense in which it can be said a given line is the "secret" of a painter,
Jung elaborated a theory of the Archetype as collective unconscious; it assigns the animal a particularly important role in dreams, myths, and human collectivities. The animal is inseparable from a series exhibiting the double aspect of progression-regression,
Just as signs designate only a certain formalization of expression in a determinate group of strata, signifiance itself designates only one specific regime among a number of regimes existing in that particular formalization. Just as there are ase-miotic expressions, or expressions without signs, there are asemiological regimes of signs, asignifying signs, both on the strata and on the plane of consistency. The most that can be said of signifiance is that it characterizes one regime, which is not even the most interesting or modern or contemporary one, but is perhaps only more pernicious, cancerous, and despotic than the others, and more steeped in illusion than they.
just as the numbered number pertains to striated space. So we may say of every multiplicity that it is already a number, and still a unit. But the number and the unit, and even the way in which the unit divides, are differ- ent in each case. Minor science is continually enriching major science, communicating its intuitions to it, its way of proceeding, its itinerancy, its sense of and taste for matter, singularity, variation, intuitionist geometry and the numbering number.
Just as the paranoid regime had two axes—one sign referring to another (making the sign a signifier), and the signifier referring to the signified—so too the passional regime, the line of subjectification, has two axes, one syntagmatic and the other paradigmatic:
Kleist: everything with him, in his writing as in his life, becomes speed and slowness. A succession of catatonic freezes and extreme velocities, fainting spells and shooting arrows. Sleep on your steed, then take off at a gallop. Jump from one assemblage to another,
labor;  The Entrepreneur
LAND
language necessarily includes unexploited possibilities or potentialities and that the abstract machine must include these possibilities or potentialities. "Potential" and "virtual" are not at all in opposition to "real"; on the con- trary, the reality of the creative, or the placing-in-continuous variation of variables, is in opposition only to the actual determination of their con- stant relations. Each time we draw a line of variation, the variables are of a particular nature (phonological, syntactical or grammatical, semantic, and so on), but the line itself is apertinent, asyntactic or agrammatical, asemantic. Agrammaticality, for example, is no longer a contingent char- acteristic of speech opposed to the grammaticality of language; rather, it is the ideal characteristic of a line placing grammatical variables in a state of continuous variation. Let us take Nicolas Ruwet's examples of certain sin- gular expressions of Cummings's: "he danced his did," or "they went their came." It is possible to reconstitute the variations through which the gram- matical variables pass in virtuality in order to end up as agrammatical expressions of this kind ("he did his dance," "he danced his dance," "he danced what he did,"...; "they went as they came," "they went their way," .. .).
language. Thus it is the study of the signifying regime that first testifies to the inadequacy of linguistic presuppositions, and in the very name of regimes of signs.
launches forth. One opens the circle not on the side where the old forces of chaos press against it but in another region, one created by the circle itself. As though the circle tended on its own to open onto a future, as a function of the working forces it shel ters. This time, it is in order to join with the forces of the future, cosmic forces. One launches forth, hazards an improvisation. But to improvise is to join with the World, or meld with it. One ventures from home on the thread of a tune. Along sonorous, gestural, motor lines that mark the customary path of a child and graft themselves onto or begin to bud "lines
Let us consider the three great strata concerning us, in other words, the ones that most directly bind us: the organism, signifiance, and subjectifi-cation. The surface of the organism, the angle of signifiance and interpretation, and the point of subjectification or subjection. You will be organized, you will be an organism, you will articulate your body—otherwise you're just depraved. Y ou will be signifier and signified, interpreter and interpreted—otherwise you're just a deviant. You will be a subject, nailed down as one, a subject of the enunciation recoiled into a subject of the statement—otherwise you're just a tramp. To the strata as a whole, the BwO opposes disarticulation (or n articulations) as the property of the plane of consistency, experimentation as the operation on that plane (no signifier, never interpret!), and nomadism as the movement (keep moving, even in place, never stop moving, motionless voyage, desubjectification). What does it mean to disarticulate, to cease to be an organism? How can we
Let us consider three major cases from nineteenth-century German lit- erature, Holderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche. First, Holderlin's extraordinary composition, Hyperion, as analyzed by Robert Rovini: the importance of haecceities of the season type. These constitute, in two different ways, the "frame of the narrative" (plan[e]) and the details of what happens within that frame (the assemblages and interassemblages).
Let us return to the question of how this defines a language-function, a
Let us return to the simple opposition between the smooth and the stri- ated since we are not yet at the point where we can consider the dis- symmetrical and concrete mixes. The smooth and the striated are distinguished first of all by an inverse relation between the point and the line (in the case of the striated, the line is between two points, while in the smooth, the point is between two lines);
Let us return to the stagemaker,
Let us try to say it another way: There is no becoming-man because man is the molar entity par excellence, whereas becomings are molecular. The faciality function showed us the form under which man constitutes the majority, or rather the standard upon which the majority is based: white, male, adult, "rational," etc., in short, the average European, the subject of enunciation. Following the law of arborescence, it is this central Point that moves across all of space or the entire screen, and at every turn nourishes a certain distinctive opposition, depending on which faciality trait is retained: male-(female), adult-(child), white-(black, yellow, or red); rational-(animal). The central point, or third eye, thus has the property of organizing binary distributions within the dualism machines, and of reproducing itself in the principal term of the opposition; the entire oppo- sition at the same time resonates in the central point. The constitution of a
like the becoming-woman of Achil- les and the becoming-dog of Penthesilea. Kleist offers a wonderful explanation of how forms and persons are only appearances produced by the displacement of a center of gravity on an abstract line, and by the con- junction of these lines on a plane of immanence. He is fascinated by bears; they are impossible to fool because their cruel little eyes see through appearances to the true "soul of movement," the Gemut or nonsubjective affect: the becoming-bear of Kleist. Even death can only be conceptualized as the intersection of elementary reactions of different speeds. A skull exploding, one of Kleist's obsessions. All of Kleist's work is traversed by a war machine invoked against the State, by a musical machine invoked against painting or the "picture." It is odd how Goethe and Hegel hated this new kind of writing. Because for them the plan(e) must indissolubly be a harmonious development of Form and a regulated formation of the Sub- ject, personage, or character (the sentimental education, the interior and substantial solidity of the character, the harmony or analogy of the forms and continuity of development, the cult of the State, etc.). Their concep- tion of the Plane is totally opposed to that of Kleist. The anti-Goetheism, anti-Hegelianism of Kleist, and already of Holderlin. Goethe gets to the crux of the matter when he reproaches Kleist for simultaneously setting up a pure "stationary process" that is like the fixed plane, introducing voids
limited. In both psychoanalysis and its object, there is always a general, always a leader (General Freud). Schizoanalysis, on the other hand, treats the unconscious as an acentered system, in other words, as a machinic net- work of finite automata (a rhizome), and thus arrives at an entirely differ- ent state of the unconscious. These same remarks apply to linguistics; Rosenstiehl and Petitot are right to bring up the possibility of an "acentered organization of a society of words." For both statements and desires, the issue is never to reduce the unconscious or to interpret it or to make it signify according to a tree model. The issue is to produce the uncon- scious, and with it new statements, different desires: the rhizome is pre- cisely this production of the unconscious.
line of flight or deterritorialization that carries away all of the assemblages but also undergoes all kinds of reterritorializations and redundancies— redundancies of childhood, village-life, love, bureaucracy, etc.
line of flight, a smooth space of displacement. It is not the nomad who defines this constellation of characteristics; it is this constellation that defines the nomad, and at the same time the essence of the war machine. If guerrilla warfare, minority warfare, revolutionary and popular war are in conformity with the essence, it is because they take war as an object all the more necessary for being merely "supplementary": they can make war only on the condition that they simultaneously create something else, if only new nonorganic social relations. The difference between the two poles is great, even, and especially, from the point of view of death: the line of flight that creates, or turns into a line of destruction; the plane of consistency that constitutes itself, even piece by piece, or turns into a plan(e) of organiza- tion and domination. We are constantly reminded that there is communi- cation between these two lines or planes, that each takes nourishment from the other, borrows from the other: the worst of the world war machines reconstitutes a smooth space to surround and enclose the earth. But the earth asserts its own powers of deterritorialization, its lines of flight, its smooth spaces that live and blaze their way for a new earth. The question is not one of quantities but of the incommensurable character of the quanti- ties that confront one another in the two kinds of war machine, according to the two poles. War machines take shape against the apparatuses that appropriate the machine and make war their affair and their object: they bring connections to bear against the great conjunction of the apparatuses of capture or domination.
line; not a line of writing but a line of rigid segmentarity along which every- one will be judged and rectified according to his or her contours, individual or collective.
lines of deterritorialization positive and absolute, forming strange new becom- ings, new polyvocalities. Become clandestine, make rhizome everywhere, for the wonder of a nonhuman life to be created. Face, my love, you have finally become a probe-head... Year zen, year omega, year co... Must we leave it at that, three states, and no more: primitive heads, Christ-face, and probe-heads?
Look at what happened to Little Hans already, an example of child psycho- analysis at its purest: they kept on BREAKING HIS RHIZOME and BLOTCHING HIS MAP, setting it straight for him, blocking his every way out, until he began to desire his own shame and guilt, until they had rooted shame and guilt in him, PHOBIA (they barred him from the rhizome of the building, then from the rhizome of the street, they rooted him in his parents' bed, they radicled him to his own body, they fixated him on Professor Freud). Freud explicitly takes Little Hans's cartography into account, but always and only in order to project it back onto the family photo. And look what Melanie Klein did to Little Richard's geopolitical maps: she developed photos from them, made tracings of them. Strike the pose or follow the axis, genetic stage or structural destiny—one way or the other, your rhi- zome will be broken. You will be allowed to live and speak, but only after every outlet has been obstructed. Once a rhizome has been obstructed, arborified, it's all over, no desire stirs; for it is always by rhizome that desire moves and produces. Whenever desire climbs a tree, internal repercus- sions trip it up and it falls to its death; the rhizome, on the other hand, acts on desire by external, productive outgrowths.
lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not walk on your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly: the simple Thing, the Entity, the full Body, the stationary Voyage, Anorexia, cutaneous Vision, Yoga, Krishna, Love, Experimentation. Where psychoanalysis says, "Stop, find your self again," we should say instead, "Let's go further still, we haven't found our BwO yet, we haven't sufficiently dismantled our self." Substitute forgetting for anamnesis, experimentation for interpretation. Find your body without organs. Find out how to make it. It's a question of life and death, youth and old age, sad- ness and joy. It is where everything is played out.
lutionary instant, an experimental surge. A confused situation: each time it occurs, it is necessary to analyze tendencies and poles, the nature of the movements. All of a sudden, it is as if the collective body of the notary pub- lics were advancing like Arabs or Indians, then regrouping and reorganiz- ing: a comic opera where you never know what is going to happen next (even the cry "The police are with us!" is sometimes heard).
majority. What distinguishes them is that in the case of a majority the rela- tion internal to the number constitutes a set that may be finite or infinite, but is always denumerable, whereas the minority is defined as a non- denumerable set, however many elements it may have. What characterizes the nondenumerable is neither the set nor its elements; rather, it is the con- nection, the "and" produced between elements, between sets, and which belongs to neither, which eludes them and constitutes a line of flight. The axiomatic manipulates only denumerable sets, even infinite ones, whereas the minorities constitute "fuzzy," nondenumerable, nonaxiomizable sets, in short, "masses," multiplicities of escape and flux.
Make Yourself
MAKE YOURSELF A BODY WITHOUT ORGANS?
Making the absolute appear in a particular place—is that not a very gen- eral characteristic of religion (recognizing that the nature of the appear- ance, and the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of the images that reproduce it are open to debate)? But the sacred place of religion is fundamentally a center that repels the obscure nomos. The absolute of religion is essentially a hori- zon that encompasses, and, if the absolute itself appears at a particular place, it does so in order to establish a solid and stable center for the global. The encompassing role of smooth spaces (desert, steppe, or ocean) in monotheism has been frequently noted. In short, religion converts the absolute. Religion is in this sense a piece in the State apparatus (in both of
matter of the secret that interests him, even if he has succeeded in render- ing it entirely banal and unimportant. Now what counts is the form of the secret; the matter no longer even has to be discovered (we never find out, there are several possibilities, there is an objective indetermination, a kind of molecularization of the secret). In relation to this man, directly with him, the young telegraphist develops a strange passional complicity, a whole intense molecular life that does not even enter into rivalry with the life she leads with her fiance. What has happened, whatever could have happened? This life, however, is not in her head, it is not imaginary. Rather, we should say that there are two politics involved, as the young woman sug- gests in a remarkable conversation with her fiance: a macropohtics and a micropolitics that do not envision classes, sexes, people, or feelings in at all the same way. Or again, there are two very different types of relations: intrinsic relations of couples involving well-determined aggregates or ele- ments (social classes, men and women, this or that particular person), and less localizable relations that are always external to themselves and instead concern flows and particles eluding those classes, sexes, and persons. Why are the latter relations of doubles rather than of couples? "She was literally afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. He might be wait- ing; it was he who was her alternate self, and of him she was afraid."
matter on the plane of consistency. In a certain sense, the acceleration of relative deterritorializations reaches the sound barrier: if the particles bounce off this wall, or allow themselves to be captured by black holes, they fall back onto the strata, into the strata's relations and milieus; but if they cross the barrier they reach the unformed, destratified element of the plane of consistency. We may even say the the abstract machines that emit and combine particles have two very different modes of existence: the Ecumenon and the Planomenon. Either the abstract machines remain prisoner to stratifications, are enveloped in a certain specific stratum whose program or unity of composition they define (the abstract Animal, the abstract chemical Body, Energy in itself) and whose movements of relative deterritorialization they regulate, Or, on the contrary, the abstract machine cuts across all stratifications, develops alone and in its own right on the plane of consistency whose diagram it constitutes, the same machine at work in astrophysics and in microphysics, in the natural and in the artifi- cial, piloting flows of absolute deterritorialization (in no sense, of course, is unformed matter chaos of any kind). But this presentation is still too simplified.
megalopolis, or "megamachine" of which the States are parts, or neigh- borhoods.
Memories of a Haecceity. A body is not defined by the form that deter- mines it nor as a determinate substance or subject nor by the organs it pos- sesses or the functions it fulfills. On the plane of consistency, a body is defined only by a longitude and a latitude: in other words the sum total of the material elements belonging to it under given relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness (longitude); the sum total of the intensive affects it is capable of at a given power or degree of potential (latitude). Nothing but affects and local movements, differential speeds. The credit goes to Spinoza for calling attention to these two dimensions of the Body,
Memories of a Molecule. Becoming-animal is only one becoming among others. A kind of order or apparent progression can be established for the segments of becoming in which we find ourselves; becoming-woman, becoming-child; becoming-animal, -vegetable, or -mineral; becomings-molecular of all kinds, becomings-particles. Fibers lead us from one to the other, transform one into the other as they pass through doors and across thresholds. Singing or composing, painting, writing have no other aim: to unleash these becomings. Especially music; music is traversed by a becoming-woman, becoming-child, and not only at the level of themes and motifs: the little refrain, children's games and dances, childhood scenes. Instrumentation and orchestration are permeated by becomings-animal, above all becomings-bird, but many others besides. The lapping, wailing of molecular discordances have always been present, even if instrumental evolution with other factors is now giving them growing importance, as the value of a new threshold for a properly musical content: the sound molecule, relations of speed and slowness between particles. Becomings-animal plunge into becomings-molecular. This raises all kinds of questions.
Memories of a Naturalist. One of the main problems of natural history was to conceptualize the relationships between animals. It is very different
Memories of a Spinozist, II. There is another aspect to Spinoza. To every relation of movement and rest, speed and slowness grouping together an infinity of parts, there corresponds a degree of power. To the relations com- posing, decomposing, or modifying an individual there correspond inten- sities that affect it, augmenting or diminishing its power to act; these intensities come from external parts or from the individual's own parts. Affects are becomings. Spinoza asks: What can a body do? We call the lati- tude of a body the affects of which it is capable at a given degree of power, or rather within the limits of that degree. Latitude is made up of intensive parts
Memories of a Theologian. Theology is very strict on the following point: there are no werewolves, human beings cannot become animal. That is because there is no transformation of essential forms; they are inalienable and only entertain relations of analogy. The Devil and the witch, and the pact between them, are no less real for that, for there is in reality a local movement that is properly diabolical. Theology distinguishes two cases, used as models during the Inquisition: that of Ulysses' companions, and that of Diomedes' companions, the imaginary vision and the spell. In the first, the subject believes him- or herself to be transformed into an animal, pig, ox, or wolf, and the observers believe it too; but this is an internal local movement bringing sensible images back to the imagination and bouncing them off external meanings. In the second, the Devil "assumes" real ani- mal bodies, even transporting the accidents and affects befalling them to other bodies (for example, a cat or a wolf that has been taken over by the
metamorphosis and State apparatuses of identity, bands and kingdoms, megamachines and empires. The same field circumscribes its interiority in States, but describes its exteriority in what escapes States or stands against States.
method for the people. A method of the rhizome type, on the contrary, can analyze language only by decentering it onto other dimensions and other registers. A language is never closed upon itself, except as a function of impotence.
minoritarian as a potential, creative and created, becoming. The problem is never to acquire the majority, even in order to install a new constant. There is no becoming-majoritarian; majority is never becoming. All becoming is minoritarian. Women, regardless of their numbers, are a minority, definable as a state or subset; but they create only by making pos- sible a becoming over which they do not have ownership, into which they themselves must enter; this is a becoming-woman affecting all of human- kind, men and women both. The same goes for minor languages: they are not simply sublanguages, idiolects or dialects, but potential agents of the major language's entering into a becoming-minoritarian of all of its dimen- sions and elements. We should distinguish between minor languages, the major language, and the becoming-minor of the major language. Minori- ties, of course, are objectively definable states, states of language, ethnicity, or sex with their own ghetto territorialities, but they must also be thought of as seeds, crystals of becoming whose value is to trigger uncontrollable movements and deterritorializations of the mean or majority. That is why Pasolini demonstrated that the essential thing, precisely in free indirect discourse, is to be found neither in language A, nor in language B, but "in language X, which is none other than language A in the actual process of becoming language B."
modifications and polymeri- zation. "First, the elements taken from the medium are combined through a series of transformations.. . .All this activity involves hundreds of chem- ical reactions. But ultimately, it produces a limited number of small com- pounds, a few dozen at most. In the second stage of cellular chemistry, the small molecules are assembled to produce larger ones. It is the polymeriza- tion of units linked end-to-end that forms the characteristic chains of mac-romolecules. . .. The two stages of cellular chemistry, therefore, differ in their function, products and nature. The first carves out chemical motifs; the second assembles them. The first forms compounds that exist only temporarily, for they are intermediaries on the path of biosynthesis; the second constructs stable products. The first operates by a series of different reactions; the second by repeating the same reaction."
molar structure. That is precisely what clarity is:
MONEY (as opposed to exchange)
money, whose quanta are defined by the mass of economic transactions.
money.. .)• Now the two systems of reference are in inverse relation to each other,
Most of the audience had left (the first to go were the Marinetians with their double articulation, followed by the Hjelmslevians with their content and expression, and the biologists with their proteins and nucleic acids). The only ones left were the mathematicians, accustomed to other follies, along with a few astrologers, archaeologists, and scattered individuals. Challenger, moreover, had changed since the beginning of his talk. His voice had become hoarser, broken occasionally by an apish cough. His dream was not so much to give a lecture to humans as to provide a program for pure computers. Or else he was dreaming of an axiomatic, for axi-omatics deals essentially with stratification. Challenger was addressing himself to memory only. Now that we had discussed what was constant and what varied in a stratum from the standpoint of substances and forms, the question remaining to be answered was what varied between strata from the standpoint of content and expression. For if it is true that there is always a real distinction constitutive of double articulation, a reciprocal presupposition of content and expression, then what varies from one stratum to another is the nature of this real distinction, and the nature and respective positions of the terms distinguished. Let us start with a certain group of strata that can be characterized summarily as follows: on these strata, content (form and substance) is molecular, and expression (form and substance) is molar. The difference between the two is primarily one of order of magnitude or scale. Resonance, or the communication occurring between the two independent orders, is what institutes the stratified system. The molecular content of that system has its own form corresponding to the distribution of elemental masses and the action of one molecule upon another; similarly, expression has a form manifesting the statistical aggregate and state of equilibrium existing on the macroscopic level. Expression is like an "operation of amplifying structuration carrying the active properties of the originally microphysical discontinuity to the macrophysical level."
movements also have cutting edges of deterritorialization oriented toward the absolute. The plane of consistency is always immanent to the strata;
multiplicities of every variety. Take the Wolf-Man's second dream during his so-called psychotic episode: in the street, a wall with a closed door, to the left an empty dresser; in front of the dresser, the patient, and a big woman with a little scar who seems to want to skirt around the wall; behind the wall, wolves, rushing for the door. Even Brunswick can't go wrong: although she recognizes herself in the big woman, she does see that this time the wolves are Bolsheviks, the revolutionary mass that had emptied the dresser and confiscated the Wolf-Man's fortune. The wolves, in a metastable state, have gone over to a large-scale social machine But psycho- analysis has nothing to say about all of these points—except what Freud already said: it all leads back to daddy (what do you know, he was one of the leaders of the liberal party in Russia, but that's hardly important; all that needs to be said is that the revolution "assuaged the patient's feelings of guilt"). You'd think that the investments and counterinvestments of the libido had nothing to do with mass disturbances, pack movements, collec- tive signs, and particles of desire.
Must a distinction then be made between two kinds of languages, "high" and "low," major and minor? The first would be defined precisely by the power (pouvoir) of constants, the second by the power (puissance) of varia- tion. We do not simply wish to make an opposition between the unity of a major language and the multiplicity of dialects. Rather, each dialect has a zone of transition and variation; or better, each minor language has a prop- erly dialectical zone of variation. According to Malmberg, it is rare to find clear boundaries on dialect maps; instead, there are transitional and limitrophe zones, zones of indiscernibility. It is also said that "the Quebecois language is so rich in modulations and variations of regional accents and in games with tonic accents that it sometimes seems, with no exaggeration, that it would be better preserved by musical notation than by
mutation, flows, and quanta.
mythology of conflict: a specification on any one level automatically calls forth a homologous specification on another.
nature and emplacement of the organs in question and make that body an organism, or even a system of strata of which the organism is only a part. It becomes apparent that the slowest of movements, or the last to occur or arrive, is not the least intense. And the fastest may already have converged with it, connected with it, in the disequilibrium of a nonsynchronic devel- opment of strata that have different speeds and lack a sequence of stages but are nevertheless simultaneous. The question of the body is not one of part-objects but of differential speeds.
nence, on the other hand, implies a destratification of all of Nature, by even the most artificial of means. The plane of consistency is the body without organs. Pure relations of speed and slowness between particles imply movements of deterritorialization, just as pure affects imply an enterprise of desubjectification. Moreover, the plane of consistency does not preexist the movements of deterritorialization that unravel it, the lines of flight that draw it and cause it to rise to the surface, the becomings that compose it. The plane of organization is constantly working away at the plane of consistency, always trying to plug the lines of flight, stop or inter- rupt the movements of deterritorialization, weigh them down, restratify them, reconstitute forms and subjects in a dimension of depth. Conversely, the plane of consistency is constantly extricating itself from the plane of organization, causing particles to spin off the strata, scrambling forms by dint of speed or slowness, breaking down functions by means of assem- blages or microassemblages. But once again, so much caution is needed to prevent the plane of consistency from becoming a pure plane of abolition or death, to prevent the involution from turning into a regression to the undifferentiated. Is it not necessary to retain a minimum of strata, a mini- mum of forms and functions, a minimal subject from which to extract materials, affects, and assemblages?
Neoevolutionism seems important for two reasons: the animal is defined not by characteristics (specific, generic, etc.) but by populations that vary from milieu to milieu or within the same milieu; movement occurs not only, or not primarily, by filiative productions but also by transversal communications between heterogeneous populations. Becoming is a rhizome, not a classificatory or genealogical tree. Becom- ing is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither is it regressing-progressing; neither is it corresponding, establishing corre- sponding relations; neither is it producing, producing a filiation or pro- ducing through filiation. Becoming is a verb with a consistency all its own; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, "appearing," "being," "equal- ing," or "producing."
never has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of lines, that is,
new functions such as building a dwelling, or the transformation of old functions, as when aggressiveness changes nature and becomes intra-specific). This is like a nascent theme of specialization or professionalism: if the territorial refrain so often passes into professional refrains, it is because professions assume that various activities are performed in the same milieu, and that the same activity has no other agents in the same territory. Professional refrains intersect in the milieu, like merchants' cries, but each marks a territory within which the same activity cannot be performed, nor the same cry ring out. In animals as in human beings, there are rules of critical distance for competition: my stretch of sidewalk. In short, a territorialization of functions is the condition for their emergence as "occupations" or "trades." Thus intraspecific or specialized aggressiveness is necessarily a territorialized aggressiveness; it does not explain the territory since it itself derives from it. It is immediately apparent that all activities within the territory adopt a new practical pace. But that is no reason to conclude that art in itself does not exist here, for it is present in the territorializing factor that is the necessary condition for the emergence of the work-function.
Next, if we consider regimes of signs using this restrictive definition, we see that they are not, or not necessarily, signifiers.
nizations to reshuffle their segments, their binary distributions of sexes, classes, and parties.
Nomad Chariot, Entirely of Wood, Altai, Fifth to Fourth Centuries B.C.
Nomad science does not have the same relation to work as royal science. Not that the division of labor in nomad science is any less thorough; it is different. We know of the problems States have always had with journey- men's associations, or compagnonnages, the nomadic or itinerant bodies of the type formed by masons, carpenters, smiths, etc. Settling, seden-tarizing labor power, regulating the movement of the flow of labor, assigning it channels and conduits, forming corporations in the sense of organisms, and, for the rest, relying on forced manpower recruited on the spot (corvee) or among indigents (charity workshops)—this has always been one of the principal affairs of the State, which undertook to conquer both a band vagabondage and a body nomadism. Let us return to the exam- ple of Gothic architecture for a reminder of how extensively the journey- men traveled, building cathedrals near and far, scattering construction sites across the land, drawing on an active and passive power (mobility and the strike) that was far from convenient for the State. The State's response was to take over management of the construction sites, merging all the divi- sions of labor in the supreme distinction between the intellectual and the manual, the theoretical and the practical, modeled upon the difference between "governors" and "governed." In the nomad sciences, as in the royal sciences, we find the existence of a "plane," but not at all in the same way. The ground-level plane of the Gothic journeyman is opposed to the metric plane of the architect, which is on paper and off site. The plane of consistency or composition is opposed to another plane, that of organiza- tion or formation. Stone cutting by squaring is opposed to stone cutting using templates, which implies the erection of a model for reproduction. It can be said not only that there is no longer a need for skilled or qualified labor, but also that there is a need for unskilled or unqualified labor, for a dequalification of labor. The State does not give power (pouvoir) to the intellectuals or conceptual innovators; on the contrary, it makes them a strictly dependent organ with an autonomy that is only imagined yet is suf- ficient to divest those whose job it becomes simply to reproduce or imple- ment of all of their power (puissance). This does not shield the State from more trouble, this time with the body of intellectuals it itself engendered,
Nomad war machine
not make it seem as though the poet gorged on metaphors: it may be that the sound molecules of pop music are at this very moment implanting here and there a people of a new type, singularly indifferent to the orders of the radio, to computer safeguards, to the threat of the atomic bomb. In this respect, the relation of artists to the people has changed significantly: the artist has ceased to be the One-Alone withdrawn into him- or herself, but has also ceased to address the people, to invoke the people as a constituted force. Never has the artist been more in need of a people, while stating most firmly that the people is lacking—the people is what is most lacking. We are not referring to popular or populist artists. Mallarme said that the Book needed a people. Kafka said that literature is the affair of the people. Klee said that the people is essential yet lacking. Thus the problem of the artist is that the modern depopulation of the people results in an open earth, and by means of art, or by means to which art contributes. Instead of being bom- barded from all sides in a limiting cosmos, the people and the earth must be like the vectors of a cosmos that carries them off; then the cosmos itself will be art. From depopulation, make a cosmic people; from deterritorializa-tion, a cosmic earth—that is the wish of the artisan-artist, here, there, locally. Our governments deal with the molecular and the cosmic, and our arts make them their affair also, with the same stakes, the people and the earth, and with unfortunately incomparable, but nevertheless competitive, means. Is it not of the nature of creations to operate in silence, locally, to seek consolidation everywhere, to go from the molecular to an uncertain cosmos, whereas the processes of destruction and conservation work in bulk, take center stage, occupy the entire cosmos in order to enslave the molecular and to stick it in a conservatory or a bomb?
Not only do strata come at least in pairs, but in a different way each stratum is double (it itself has several layers). Each stratum exhibits phenomena constitutive of dou- ble articulation. Articulate twice, B-A, BA. This
Not only does art not wait for human beings to begin, but we may ask if art ever appears among human beings, except under artificial and belated conditions. It has often been noted that human art was for a long time bound up with work and rites of a different nature. Saying this, however, perhaps has no more weight than saying that art begins with human beings. For it is true that a territory has two notable effects: a reorganization of functions and a regrouping of forces. On the one hand, when functional activities are territorialized they necessarily change pace (the creation of
Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling—every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequaled point of perfection, circulating capital neces- sarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. Striation, of course, survives in the most perfect and severest of forms (it is not only vertical but operates in all directions); however, it relates primarily to the state pole of capitalism, in other words, to the role of the modern State apparatuses in the organization of capital. On the other hand, at the complementary and dominant level of integrated (or rather integrating) world capitalism, a new smooth space is produced in which capital reaches its "absolute" speed, based on machinic components rather than the human component of labor. The multinationals fabricate a kind of deterritorialized smooth space in which points of occupation as well as poles of exchange become quite independent of the classical paths to striation. What is really new are always the new forms of turnover. The present-day accelerated forms of the circulation of capital are making the distinctions between constant and variable capital, and even fixed and cir- culating capital, increasingly relative; the essential thing is instead the dis- tinction between striated capital and smooth capital, and the way in which the former gives rise to the latter through complexes that cut across terri- tories and States, and even the different types of States.
Not only strata, assemblages are complexes of lines. We can identify a
Now if we ask ourselves where life fits into this distinction, we see that it
Now we are in a better position to draw a map.
object of the war machine. It is not at all obvious. To the extent that war (with or without the battle) aims for the annihilation or capitulation of enemy forces, the war machine does not necessarily have war as its object (for example, the raid can be seen as another object, rather than as a partic- ular form of war). But more generally, we have seen that the war machine was the invention of the nomad, because it is in its essence the constitutive element of smooth space, the occupation of this space, displacement within this space, and the corresponding composition of people: this is its sole and veritable positive object (nomos). Make the desert, the steppe, grow; do not depopulate it, quite the contrary. If war necessarily results, it is because the war machine collides with States and cities, as forces (of stri-ation) opposing its positive object: from then on, the war machine has as its enemy the State, the city, the state and urban phenomenon, and adopts as its objective their annihilation. It is at this point that the war machine becomes war: annihilate the forces of the State, destroy the State-form. The Attila, or Genghis Khan, adventure clearly illustrates this progression from the positive object to the negative object. Speaking like Aristotle, we would say that war is neither the condition nor the object of the war machine, but necessarily accompanies or completes it; speaking like Derrida, we would say that war is the "supplement" of the war machine. It may even happen that this supplementarity is comprehended through a progressive, anxiety-ridden revelation. Such, for example, was the adven- ture of Moses: leaving the Egyptian State behind, launching into the desert, he begins by forming a war machine, on the inspiration of the old past of the nomadic Hebrews and on the advice of his father-in-law, who came from the nomads. This is the machine of the Just, already a war machine, but one that does not yet have war as its object. Moses realizes, little by lit- tle, in stages, that war is the necessary supplement of that machine, because it encounters or must cross cities and States, because it must send ahead spies (armed observation), then perhaps take things to extremes (war of annihilation). Then the Jewish people experience doubt, and fear that they are not strong enough; but Moses also doubts, he shrinks before the revela- tion of this supplement. And it will be Joshua, not Moses, who is charged with waging war. Finally, speaking like Kant, we would say that the relation between war and the war machine is necessary but "synthetic" (Yahweh is necessary for the synthesis).
object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world. Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudomulti-plicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object, or to divide in the subject. There is not even the unity to abort in the object or "return" in the subject. A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows). Puppet strings, as a rhizome or multiplicity, are tied not to the supposed will of an artist or puppeteer but to a multiplicity of nerve fibers, which form another puppet in other dimensions connected to the first: "Call the strings or rods that move the puppet the weave. It might be objected that its multiplicity resides in the person of the actor, who projects it into the text. Granted; but the actor's nerve fibers in turn form a weave. And they fall through the gray matter, the grid, into the undifferentiated... . The interplay approximates the pure activity of weavers attributed in myth to the Fates or Norns." An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections. There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines. When Glenn Gould speeds up the performance of a piece, he is not just displaying virtuosity, he is transforming the musical points into lines, he is making the whole piece proliferate. The number is no longer a universal concept measuring elements according to their emplacement in a given dimension, but has itself become a multiplicity that varies according to the dimensions considered (the primacy of the domain over a complex of numbers attached to that domain). We do not have units (unites) of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement. The notion of unity {unite) appears only when there is a power takeover in the multiplicity by the signifier or a corresponding subjectification proceeding: This is the case for a pivot-unity forming the basis for a set of biunivocal relationships between objective elements or points, or for the One that divides following the law of a binary logic of differentiation in the subject. Unity always operates in an empty dimension supplementary to that of the system considered (overcoding).
Oedipalized wolf or dog, the castrated-castrating daddy-wolf, the dog in the kennel, the analyst's bow-wow.
of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an
OF CAPTURE D
Of course, there are Oedipal statements. For example, Kafka's story, "Jackals and Arabs," is easy to read in that way: you can always do it, you can't lose, it works every time, even if you understand nothing. The Arabs are clearly associated with the father and the jackals with the mother; between the two, there is a whole story of castration represented by the rusty scissors. But it so happens that the Arabs are an extensive, armed, organized mass stretching across the entire desert; and the jackals are an intense pack forever launching into the desert following lines of flight or deterritorialization ("they are madmen, veritable madmen"); between the two, at the edge, the Man of the North, the jackal-man. And aren't those big scissors the Arab sign that guides or releases jackal-particles, both to accel- erate their mad race by detaching them from the mass and to bring them back to the mass, to tame them and whip them, to bring them around? Dead camel: Oedipal food apparatus. Counter-Oedipal carrion apparatus: kill animals to eat, or eat to clean up carrion. The jackals formulate the problem well: it is not that of castration but of "cleanliness" (proprete, also "ownness"), the test of desert-desire. Which will prevail, mass territoriality or pack deterritorialization? The libido suffuses the entire desert, the body without organs on which the drama is played out.
Of course, we have already seen that signifiance and subjectification are semiotic systems that are entirely distinct in their principles and have
of intensities conjugates or forms a rhizome throughout the entire assem- blage the moment the assemblage is swept up by these vectors or tensions of flight. For the question was not how to elude the order-word but how to elude the death sentence it envelops, how to develop its power of escape, how to prevent escape from veering into the imaginary or falling into a black hole, how to maintain or draw out the revolutionary potentiality of the order-word. Hofmannsthal adopts the order-word, "Germany, Ger- many!", or the need to reterritorialize, even in a "melancholy mirror." But beneath this order-word he hears another, as if the old German "figures" were mere constants that were then effaced to uncover a relation with nature and life all the more profound for being variable. When should this relation to life be a hardening, when submission? At what moment is rebel- lion called for and at what moment surrender or impassibility? When is dry speech necessary and when exuberance or amusement?
of literature or art, or a society, depending on which system of coordinates is chosen.
of sending a tremor through it. A punc- tual system is most interesting when there is a musician, painter, writer, philosopher to oppose it, who even fabricates it in order to oppose it, like a springboard to jump from. History is made only by those who oppose his- tory (not by those who insert themselves into it, or even reshape it). This is
of shuffle toward the coffin-shaped clock ___ The figure had now reached
of Signs
of striation and smoothing are precisely the passages or combi- nations: how the forces at work within space continually striate it, and how in the course of its striation it develops other forces and emits new smooth spaces. Even the most striated city gives rise to smooth spaces: to live in the city as a nomad, or as a cave dweller. Movements, speed and slowness, are sometimes enough to reconstruct a smooth space. Of course, smooth spaces are not in themselves liberatory. But the struggle is changed or dis- placed in them, and life reconstitutes its stakes, confronts new obstacles, invents new paces, switches adversaries. Never believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us.
OF THE REFRAIN D
of this right, the pride of winning it, but also the dangers of winning it, the fall, shame .. . These are not phantasies or subjective reveries: it is not a question of imitating a horse, "playing" horse, identifying with one, or even experiencing feelings of pity or sympathy. Neither does it have to do with an objective analogy between assemblages. The question is whether Little Hans can endow his own elements with the relations of movement and rest, the affects, that would make it become horse, forms and subjects aside. Is there an as yet unknown assemblage that would be neither Hans's nor the horse's, but that of the becoming-horse of Hans? An assemblage, for example, in which the horse would bare its teeth and Hans might show something else, his feet, his legs, his peepee-maker, whatever? And in what way would that ameliorate Hans's problem, to what extent would it open a way out that had been previously blocked? When Hofmannsthal contem- plates the death throes of a rat, it is in him that the animal "bares his teeth at monstrous fate." This is not a feeling of pity, as he makes clear; still less an identification. It is a composition of speeds and affects involving entirely different individuals, a symbiosis; it makes the rat become a thought, a feverish thought in the man, at the same time as the man becomes a rat gnashing its teeth in its death throes. The rat and the man are in no way the same thing, but Being expresses them both in a single meaning in a lan- guage that is no longer that of words, in a matter that is no longer that of forms, in an affectability that is no longer that of subjects. Unnatural par- ticipation. But the plane of composition, the plane of Nature, is precisely for participations of this kind, and continually makes and unmakes their assemblages, employing every artifice.
On a different level, the cellular chemistry presiding over the constitu- tion of proteins also operates by double articulation. This double articula- tion is internal to the molecular, it is the articulation between small and large molecules, a segmentarity by successive
On the brighter side, painting has exploited all the resources of the Christ-face. Painting has taken the abstract white wall/black hole machine of faciality in all directions, using the face of Christ to produce every kind of facial unit and every degree of deviance. In this respect, there is an exultation in the painting of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, like an unbridled freedom. Not only did Christ preside over the facialization of the entire body (his own) and the landscapification of all milieus (his own), but he composed all of the elementary faces and had every divergence at his disposal: Christ-athlete at the fair, Christ-Mannerist queer, Christ-Negro, or at least a Black Virgin at the edge of the wall. The most prodigious strokes of madness appear on canvas under the auspices of the Catholic code. A single example chosen from many [Giotto, The Life of St. Francis, scene XII, The Transfiguration—Trans.]: against the white background of the landscape and the black-blue hole of the sky, the crucified Christ-turned-kite-machine sends stigmata to Saint Francis by rays; the stigmata effect the facialization of the body of the saint, in the image of the body of Christ; but the rays carrying the stigmata to the saint are also the strings Francis uses to pull the divine kite. It was under the sign of the cross
On the one hand, modifications of a code have an aleatory cause in the milieu of exteriority, and it is their effects on the interior milieus, their compatibility with them, that decide whether they will be popularized. Deterritorializations and reterritorializations do not bring about the mod- ifications; they do, however, strictly determine their selection. On the other hand, every modification has an associated milieu that in turn entails a certain deterritorialization in relation to the milieu of exteriority and a cer- tain reterritorialization on intermediate or interior milieus. Perceptions
On the other hand, at the other pole,
On the other hand, language becomes the new form of expression, or rather the set of formal traits defining the new expression in operation throughout the stratum. Just as manual traits exist only in forms and formed matters that shatter their continuity and determine the distribution of their effects, formal traits of expression exist only in a diversity of formal languages and imply one or several formable substances. The sub- stance involved is fundamentally vocal substance, which brings into play various organic elements: not only the larynx, but the mouth and lips, and the overall motricity of the face. Once again, a whole intensive map must be accounted for: the mouth as a deterritorialization of the snout (the whole "conflict between the mouth and the brain," as Perrier called it); the lips as a deterritorialization of the mouth (only humans have lips, in other words, an outward curling of the interior mucous membranes; only human females have breasts, in other words, deterritorialized mammary glands:
Once again, this is not to say that the struggle on the level of the axioms is
Once again, we turn to children. Note how they talk about animals, and are moved by them. They make a list of affects. Little Hans's horse is not representative but affective. It is not a member of a species but an element or individual in a machinic assemblage: draft horse-omnibus-street. It is defined by a list of active and passive affects in the context of the individuated assemblage it is part of: having eyes blocked by blinders, hav- ing a bit and a bridle, being proud, having a big peepee-maker, pulling heavy loads, being whipped, falling, making a din with its legs, biting, etc. These affects circulate and are transformed within the assemblage: what a horse "can do." They indeed have an optimal limit at the summit of horse- power, but also a pessimal threshold: a horse falls down in the street! It can't get back on its feet with that heavy load on its back, and the excessive whip- ping; a horse is going to die!—this was an ordinary sight in those days (Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Nijinsky lamented it). So just what is the becoming-horse of Little Hans? Hans is also taken up in an assemblage: his mother's bed, the paternal element, the house, the cafe across the street, the nearby warehouse, the street, the right to go out onto the street, the winning
One of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a means of communication in the service of striated space. It is a vital concern of every State not only to vanquish nomadism but to control migrations and, more generally, to establish a zone of rights over an entire "exterior," over all of the flows traversing the ecumenon. If it can help it, the State does not dissociate itself
only if a different criterion than that of Clausewitz is applied. The pure Idea is not that of the abstract elimination of the adversary but that of a war machine that does not have war as its object and that only entertains a potential or supplementary syn- thetic relation with war. Thus the nomad war machine does not appear to us to be one case of real war among others, as in Clausewitz, but on the con- trary the content adequate to the Idea, the invention of the Idea, with its own objects, space, and composition of the nomos. Nevertheless it is still an Idea, and it is necessary to retain the concept of the pure Idea, even though this war machine was realized by the nomads. It is the nomads, rather, who remain an abstraction, an Idea, something real and nonactual, and for several reasons: first, because the elements of nomadism, as we have seen, enter into de facto mixes with elements of migration, itinerancy, and transhumance; this does not affect the purity of the concept, but intro- duces always mixed objects, or combinations of space and composition, which react back upon the war machine from the beginning. Second, even in the purity of its concept, the nomad war machine necessarily effectuates its synthetic relation with war as supplement, uncovered and developed in opposition to the State-form, the destruction of which is at issue. But that is exactly it; it does not effectuate this supplementary object or this synthetic relation without the State, for its part, finding the opportunity to appropri- ate the war machine, and the means of making war the direct object of this turned-around machine (thus the integration of the nomad into the State is a vector traversing nomadism from the very beginning, from the first act of war against the State).
Opposed to the punctual system are linear, or rather multilinear, sys- tems. Free the line, free the diagonal:
or "relatively indivisible," in other words, they are not divisible below or above a certain threshold, they cannot increase or diminish without their elements changing in nature. A swarm of bees: here they come as a rumble of soccer players in striped jerseys, or a band of Tuareg. Or: the wolf clan doubles up with a swarm of bees against the gang of Deulhs, under the direction of Mowgli, who runs on the edge (yes, Kipling understood the call of the wolves, their libidinal meaning, better than Freud; and in the Wolf-Man's case the story about wolves is followed by one about wasps and butterflies, we go from wolves to wasps). What is the significance of these indivisible distances that are ceaselessly transformed, and cannot be divided or transformed without their elements changing in nature each time? Is it not the intensive character of this kind of multiplicity's elements and the relations between them? Exactly like a speed or a temperature, which is not composed of other speeds and temperatures but rather is enveloped in or envelops others, each of which marks a change in nature. The metrical principle of these multiplicities is not to be found in a homo- geneous milieu but resides elsewhere, in forces at work within them, in physical phenomena inhabiting them, precisely in the libido, which consti- tutes them from within, and in constituting them necessarily divides into distinct qualitative and variable flows. Freud himself recognizes the multi- plicity of libidinal "currents" that coexist in the Wolf-Man. That makes it all the more surprising that he treats the multiplicities of the unconscious the way he does. For him, there will always be a reduction to the One: the little scars, the little holes, become subdivisions of the great scar or supreme hole named castration; the wolves become substitutes for a single Father who turns up everywhere, or wherever they put him. (As Ruth Mack Brunswick says, Let's go all the way, the wolves are "all the fathers and doc- tors" in the world; but the Wolf-Man thinks, "You trying to tell me my ass isn't a wolf?")
or a given rhythmic cell, a given sound molecule (which does not constitute a theme or form) the "secret" of a musician.
or its tip has been destroyed; an immediate, indefinite multiplicity of secondary roots
or matters of the same kind, for example, a set of sonorous marks, the song of a bird. The song of the chaffinch normally has three distinct phases: the first has from four to fourteen notes rising in crescendo but decreasing in frequency; the second has from two to eight notes, lower than the first and of constant frequency; the third ends with a complex "flourish" or "orna- ment." From the standpoint of acquisition, this "full song" is preceded by a "subsong" that under normal conditions already assumes possession of the general tonal quality, overall duration and content of the stanzas, and even a tendency to end on a higher note. But the organization into three stan- zas, the order of the stanzas, the details and the ornament, are not pregiven; it is precisely the articulations from within that are missing, the intervals, the intercalary notes, everything making for motif and counterpoint. The distinction between subsong and full song could thus be presented as fol- lows: the subsong as mark or placard, the full song as style or motif, and the aptitude to pass from one to the other, for one to consolidate itself in the other. Clearly, artificial isolation will have very different effects depending on whether it takes place before or after the acquisition of the components ofthe subsong.
or psychoanalyst; what his specialty had been was long since forgotten. In fact, Professor Challenger was double, articulated twice, and that did not make things any easier, people never knew which of him was
orchids and wasps, sing or express themselves, but so do rocks and even riv- ers, every stratified thing on earth. The first articulation concerns content, the second expression. The distinction between
organic stratum.
organization of the social field, and in particular induces a division of labor, is part of that science itself. Royal science is inseparable from a "hylomorphic" model implying both a form that organizes matter and a matter prepared for the form; it has often been shown that this schema derives less from technology or life than from a society divided into gover- nors and governed, and later, intellectuals and manual laborers. What characterizes it is that all matter is assigned to content, while all form passes into expression. It seems that nomad science is more immediately in tune with the connection between content and expression in themselves, each of these two terms encompassing both form and matter. Thus matter, in nomad science, is never prepared and therefore homogenized matter, but is essentially laden with singularities (which constitute a form of con- tent). And neither is expression formal; it is inseparable from pertinent traits (which constitute a matter of expression). This is an entirely different schema, as we shall see. We can get a preliminary idea of this situation by recalling the most general characteristic of nomad art, in which a dynamic connection between support and ornament replaces the matter-form dia- lectic. From the point of view of nomad science, which presents itself as an art as much as a technique, the division of labor fully exists, but it does not employ the form-matter duality (even in the case of biunivocal corre- spondences). Rather, it follows the connections between singularities of matter and traits of expression, and lodges on the level of these connec- tions, whether they be natural or forced. This is another organization of work and of the social field through work.
organize a limited space. Many, very diverse, components have a part in this, landmarks and marks of all kinds. This was already true of the previous case. But now the components are used for organizing a space, not for the momentary deter mination of a center. The forces of chaos are kept outside as much as possi ble, and the interior space protects the germinal forces of a task to fulfill or a deed to do. This involves an activity of selection, elimination and extrac tion, in order to prevent the interior forces of the earth from being sub merged, to enable them to resist, or even to take something from chaos across the filter or sieve of the space that has been drawn. Sonorous or vocal components are very important: a wall of sound, or at least a wall with some sonic bricks in it. A child hums to summon the strength for the schoolwork she has to hand in. A housewife sings to herself, or listens to the radio, as she marshals the antichaos forces of her work. Radios and televi sion sets are like sound walls around every household and mark territories (the neighbor complains when it gets too loud). For sublime deeds like the foundation of a city or the fabrication of a golem, one draws a circle, or bet ter yet walks in a circle as in a children's dance, combining rhythmic vowels and consonants that correspond to the interior forces of creation as to the differentiated parts of an organism. A mistake in speed, rhythm, or har mony would be catastrophic because it would bring back the forces of chaos, destroying both creator and creation.
other imperceptible, without disjunction or conjunction but only a line of flight forever in the process of being drawn, toward a new acceptance, the opposite of renunciation or resignation—a new happiness?
Our present concern, however, is to find out what happens when these components effectively develop into the motifs and counterpoints of the full song. We must leave behind the conditions of qualitative homogeneity we set for ourselves. For as long as we confine ourselves to marks, marks of one kind coexist with marks of another kind, period: the sounds of an ani- mal coexist with its colors, gestures, silhouettes; or else the sounds of a given species coexist with the sounds of other species, perhaps quite differ- ent but close in space. The organization of qualified marks into motifs and counterpoints necessarily entails a taking on of consistency, or a capture of the marks of another quality, a mutual branching of sounds-colors-gestures, or a capture of sounds from different animal species, etc. Consistency necessarily occurs between heterogeneities, not because it is the birth of a differentiation, but because heterogeneities that were formerly content to coexist or succeed one another become bound up with one another through the "consolidation" of their coexistence and succession. The intervals, intercalations, and articulations constitutive of motifs and counterpoints in the order of an expressive quality also envelop other qualities of a different order, or qualities of the same order but of another sex or even another species of animal. A color will "answer to" a sound. If a quality has motifs and counterpoints, if there are rhythmic characters and melodic landscapes in a given order, then there is the constitution of a veritable machinic opera tying together orders, species, and heterogeneous qualities. What we term machinic is precisely this synthesis of heterogeneities as such. Inasmuch as these heterogeneities are matters of expression, we say
ously. It stretches from the rigid segments with their overcoding and reso- nance to the fine segmentations with their diffusion and interactions, and back again. Every man of power jumps from one line to the other, alternat- ing between a petty and a lofty style, the rogue's style and the grandiloquent style, drugstore demagoguery and the imperialism of the high-ranking gov- ernment man. But this whole chain and web of power is immersed in a world of mutant flows that eludes them. It is precisely its impotence that makes power so dangerous. The man of power will always want to stop the lines of flight, and to this end to trap and stabilize the mutation machine in the overcoding machine. But he can do so only by creating a void, in other words, by first stabilizing the overcoding machine itself by containing it within the local assemblage charged with effectuating it, in short, by giving the assemblage the dimensions of the machine. This is what takes place in the artificial conditions of totalitarianism or the "closed vessel."
over and above the multiplicity of num- bers attached to those lines. All multiplicities are flat, in the sense that they fill or occupy all of their dimensions: we will therefore speak of a plane of consistency of multiplicities, even though the dimensions of this "plane" increase with the number of connections that are made on it. Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. The plane of consistency (grid) is the outside of all multiplicities. The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills; the impossibility of a sup- plementary dimension, unless the multiplicity is transformed by the line of flight; the possibility and necessity of flattening all of the multiplicities on a single plane of consistency or exteriority, regardless of their number of dimensions. The ideal for a book would be to lay everything out on a plane of exteriority of this kind, on a single page, the same sheet: lived events, his- torical determinations, concepts, individuals, groups, social formations. Kleist invented a writing of this type, a broken chain of affects and variable speeds, with accelerations and transformations, always in a relation with the outside. Open rings. His texts, therefore, are opposed in every way to the classical or romantic book constituted by the interiority of a substance or subject. The war machine-book against the State apparatus-book. Flat multiplicities of n dimensions are asignifying and asubjective. They are designated by indefinite articles, or rather by partitives {some couchgrass, some of a rhizome . ..).
phrase that connects with Odette's face, to the point that the little phrase becomes only a signal. The white wall becomes populous, the black holes are arrayed. This entire mechanism of signifiance, with its referral of interpretations, prepares the way for the second, passional subjective, moment, during which Swann's jealousy, querulous delusion, and erotomania develop. Now Odette's face races down a line hurtling toward a single black hole, that of Swann's Passion. The other lines, of landscapity, picturality, and musicality, also rush toward this catatonic hole and coil around it, border- ing it several times.
Plane of Consistency, Body without Organs
point of view since it shows that subjectifications are not primary but result from a complex assemblage.)
point, a tree-point or root; he flows with the current rather than sitting under a tree; Buddha's tree itself becomes a rhizome; Mao's river and Louis's tree. Has not America acted as an intermediary here as well? For it proceeds both by internal exterminations and liquidations (not only the Indians but also the farmers, etc.), and by successive waves of immigration from the outside. The flow of capital produces an immense channel, a quantification of power with immediate "quanta," where each person profits from the passage of the money flow in his or her own way (hence the reality-myth of the poor man who strikes it rich and then falls into poverty again): in America everything comes together, tree and channel, root and rhizome. There is no universal capitalism, there is no capitalism in itself; capitalism is at the crossroads of all kinds of formations, it is neocapitalism by nature. It invents its eastern face and western face, and reshapes them both—all for the worst.
Power (Pouvoir) is the third danger,
Pragmatics as a whole would consist in this: making a tracing of the mixed semiotics, under the generative component; making the transfor- mational map of the regimes, with their possibilities for translation and creation, for budding along the lines of the tracings; making the diagram of the abstract machines that are in play in each case, either as potentialities or as effective emergences; outlining the program of the assemblages that
Pragmatics is a politics of language. A study such as Jean-Pierre Faye's on the constitution of Nazi statements in the German social field is in this respect exemplary (and cannot be directly transferred to the constitution of Fascist statements in Italy). Transformational research of this kind is
present, and the vertical line of the order of time (stratigraphy), which goes from the present to the past, or to the representation of the old present. This is, of course, a basic schema that cannot be developed further without running into major complications, but it is the one found in representa- tions of art forming a "didactic" system, in other words, a mnemotechnics. Musical representation, on the one hand, draws a horizontal, melodic line, the bass line, upon which other melodic lines are superposed; points are assigned that enter into relations of counterpoint between lines. On the other hand, it draws a vertical, harmonic line or plane, which moves along the horizontals but is no longer dependent upon them; it runs from high to low and defines a chord capable of linking up with the following chords. Pictorial representation has an analogous form, with means of its own: this is not only because the painting has a vertical and a horizontal, but because the traits and colors, each on its own account, relate to verticals of displace- ment and horizontals of superposition (for example, the vertical cold form, or white, light and tonality; the horizontal warm form, or black, chromatics and modality, etc.). To cite only relatively recent examples, this is evident in the didactic systems of Kandinsky, Klee, and Mondrian, which neces- sarily imply an encounter with music.
present. He (?) claimed to have invented a discipline he referred to by various names: rhizomatics, stratoanalysis, schizoanalysis, nomadology, micropolitics, pragmatics, the science of multiplicities. Yet no one clearly understood what the goals, method, or principles of this discipline were. Young Professor Alasca, Challenger's pet student, tried hypocritically to defend him by explaining that on a given stratum the passage from one articulation to the other was easily verified because it was always accompanied by a loss of water, in genetics as in geology, and even in linguistics, where the importance of the "lost saliva" phenomenon is measured. Challenger took offense, preferring to cite his friend, as he called him, the Danish Spinozist geologist, Hjelmslev, that dark prince descended from Hamlet who also made lan- guage his concern, precisely in order to analyze its "stratification." Hjelmslev was able to weave a net out of the notions of matter, content and expression,form and substance. These were the strata, said Hjelmslev. Now this net had the advantage of breaking with the form-content duality, since there was a form of content no less than a form of expression. Hjelmslev's enemies saw this merely as a way of rebaptizing the discredited notions of the signified and signifier, but something quite different was actually going on. Despite what Hjelmslev himself may have said, the net is not linguistic in scope or origin (the same must be said of double articulation: if language has a specificity of its own, as it most certainly does, that specificity con- sists neither in double articulation nor in Hjelmslev's net, which are gen- eral characteristics of strata).
presignifying regimes the sub- jective or signifying regimes one wishes to impose upon the expressions, but which they resist by themselves imposing upon these regimes an unex- pected segmentarity and polyvocality. Christianity underwent strange cre- ative translations in its transmission to "barbarian" or even "savage" peoples. The introduction of monetary signs into certain commercial cir- cuits in Africa caused those signs to undergo an analogical transformation that was very difficult to control (except when the circuits underwent a destructive transformation instead). The songs of black Americans, including, especially, the words, would be a better example, since they show how the slaves "translated" the English signifier and made presig- nifying or even countersignifying use of the language, blending it with their own African languages just as they blended old African work songs with their new forced labor; these songs also show how, with Christianization and the abolition of slavery, the slaves underwent a proceeding of "subjectification" or even "individuation" that transformed their music, while the music simultaneously transformed the proceeding by analogy; and also how unique problems of "faciality" were posed when whites in "blackface" appropriated the words and songs and blacks responded by darkening their faces another hue, taking back their dances and songs, even transforming or translating those of the whites.
primitive series and draws them toward a threshold at which, after passing their limits, the wave itself changes direction. Primitive peoples have always existed only as ves- tiges, already plied by the reversible wave that carries them off (vector of deterritorialization). What is contingent upon external circumstances is only the place where the apparatus is effectuated—the place where the agricultural "mode of production" was able to arise: the Orient. It is in this sense that the apparatus is abstract. But in itself, it marks not simply an abstract possibility of reversibility but the real existence of a point of inver- sion as an autonomous, irreducible phenomenon.
primitive societies do not, strictly speaking, work, even if their activities are very constrained and regulated; and the man of war, in his capacity as a man of war, does not work either (the "labors" of Hercules assume submis- sion to a king). The technical element becomes a tool when it is abstracted from the territory and is applied to the earth as an object; but at the same time, the sign ceases to be inscribed upon the body and is written upon an immobile, objective matter. For there to be work, there must be a capture of activity by the State apparatus, and a semiotization of activity by writ- ing. Hence the affinity between the assemblages signs-tools, and signs of writing-organization of work. Entirely different is the case of the weapon, which is in an essential relation with jewelry. Jewelry has undergone so many secondary adaptations that we no longer have a clear understanding of what it is. But something lights up in our mind when we are told that metalworking was the "barbarian," or nomad, art par excellence, and when we see these masterpieces of minor art. These fibulas, these gold or silver plaques, these pieces of jewelry, are attached to small movable objects; they are not only easy to transport, but pertain to the object only as object in motion. These plaques constitute traits of expression of pure speed, car- ried on objects that are themselves mobile and moving. The relation between them is not that of form-matter but of motif-support, where the earth is no longer anything more than ground (sol), where there is no longer even any ground at all because the support is as mobile as the motif. They lend colors the speed of light, turning gold to red and silver to white light. They are attached to the horse's harness, the sheath of the sword, the warrior's garments, the handle of the weapon; they even decorate things used only once, such as arrowheads. Regardless of the effort or toil they imply, they are of the order of free action, related to pure mobility, and not of the order of work with its conditions of gravity, resistance, and expendi- ture. The ambulant smith links metalworking to the weapon, and vice versa. Gold and silver have taken on many other functions but cannot be understood apart from this nomadic contribution made by the war machine, in which they are not matters but traits of expression appropriate to weapons (the whole mythology of war not only subsists in money but is the active factor in it). Jewels are the affects corresponding to weapons, that are swept up by the same speed vector.
PROBLEM II. Is there a way to extricate thought from the State model? PROPOSITION IV. The exteriority of the war machine is attested to, finally, by noology.
productive of surplus value and that the circulation of capital would chal- lenge the distinction between variable and constant capital. In these new conditions, it remains true that all labor involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in
PROPOSITION II. The exteriority of the war machine is also attested to by ethnology (a tribute to the memory of Pierre Clastres).
PROPOSITION III. The exteriority of the war ma chine is also attested to by epistemology, which intimates the existence and perpetuation of a "nomad"or "minor science."
PROPOSITION IX. War does not necessarily have the battle as its object, and more important, the war machine does not necessarily have war as its object, although war and the battle may be its necessary result (under certain conditions).
PROPOSITION V. Nomad existence necessarily effectuates the conditions of the war machine in space.
PROPOSITION VI. Nomad existence necessarily implies the numerical elements of a war machine.
PROPOSITION VII. Nomad existence has for "affects" the weapons of a war machine.
PROPOSITION VIII. Metallurgy in itself constitutes a flow necessarily confluent with nomadism.
PROPOSITION X. The State and its poles.
PROPOSITION XI. Which comes first?
PROPOSITION XII. Capture.
PROPOSITION XIII. The State and its forms.
PROPOSITION XIV. Axiomatics and the presentday situation.
proximity of the animal molecule. You become animal only molecularly. You do not become a barking molar dog, but by barking, if it is done with enough feeling, with enough necessity and composition, you emit a molec- ular dog. Man does not become wolf, or vampire, as if he changed molar species; the vampire and werewolf are becomings of man, in other words, proximities between molecules in composition, relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between emitted particles. Of course there are werewolves and vampires, we say this with all our heart; but do not look for a resemblance or analogy to the animal, for this is becoming-animal in action, the production of the molecular animal (whereas the "real" animal is trapped in its molar form and subjectivity). It is within us that the animal bares its teeth like Hofmannsthal's rat, or the flower opens its petals; but this is done by corpuscular emission, by molecular proximity, and not by the imitation of a subject or a proportionality of form. Albertine can always imitate a flower, but it is when she is sleeping and enters into composition with the particles of sleep that her beauty spot and the texture of her skin enter a relation of rest and movement that place her in the zone of a molec- ular vegetable: the becoming-plant of Albertine. And it is when she is held prisoner that she emits the particles of a bird. And it is when she flees, launches down a line of flight, that she becomes-horse, even if it is the horse of death.
Quilt
rate, he already invoked a whole interplay of molecules.
Rather than stages, subjection and enslavement constitute two coexistent poles.
ready-made signifying messages that are already functioning as elements in biunivocal relationships, or the elements of which are biunivocally organized between messages. Second, the picking of a combination depends on a certain number of subjective binary choices that increase pro- portionally to the number of elements. But the problem is that all of this biunivocalization and binarization (which is not just the result of an increase in calculating skills, as some say) assumes the deployment of a wall or screen, the installation of a central computing hole without which no message would be discernible and no choice could be implemented. The black hole/white wall system must already have gridded all of space and outlined its arborescences or dichotomies for those of signifier and subjectification even to be conceivable. The mixed semiotic of signifiance and subjectification has an exceptional need to be protected from any intrusion from the outside. In fact, there must not be any exterior: no nomad machine, no primitive poly vocality must spring up, with their com- binations of heterogeneous substances of expression. Translatability of any kind requires a single substance of expression. One can constitute sig- nifying chains operating with deterritorialized, digitalized, discrete ele- ments only if there is a semiological screen available, a wall to protect them. One can make subjective choices between two chains or at each point in a chain only if no outside tempest sweeps away the chains and subjects. One can form a web of subjectivities only if one possesses a central eye, a black hole capturing everything that would exceed or transform either the assigned affects or the dominant significations. Moreover, it is absurd to believe that language as such can convey a message. A language is always embedded in the faces that announce its statements and ballast them in relation to the signifiers in progress and subjects concerned. Choices are guided by faces, elements are organized around faces: a common grammar is never separable from a facial education. The face is a veritable mega- phone. Thus not only must the abstract machine of faciality provide a pro- tective screen and a computing black hole; in addition, the faces it produces draw all kinds of arborescences and dichotomies without which the signifying and the subjective would not be able to make the arbor- escences and dichotomies function that fall within their purview in lan- guage. Doubtless, the binarities and biunivocalities of the face are not the same as those of language, of its elements and subjects. There is no resem- blance between them. But the former subtend the latter. When the faciality machine translates formed contents of whatever kind into a single sub- stance of expression, it already subjugates them to the exclusive form of
realities of the molecular type with aleatory relations are caught up in crowd phenomena or statistical aggregates determining an order (the protein fiber and its sequence or segmentarity); on the other hand, these
reason.
refrain necessarily territorial, or is it not already used for very subtle deterritorializations, for selective lines of flight? The difference between noise and sound is definitely not a basis for a definition of music, or even for the distinction between musician birds and nonmusician birds. Rather, it is the labor of the refrain: Does it remain territorial and territorializing, or is it carried away in a moving block that draws a transversal across all coordinates—and all of the intermediaries between the two? Music is pre- cisely the adventure of the refrain: the way music lapses back into a refrain (in our head, in Swann's head, in the pseudo-probe-heads on TV and radio, the music of a great musician used as a signature tune, a ditty); the way it lays hold of the refrain, makes it more and more sober, reduced to a few notes, then takes it down a creative line that is so much richer, no origin or end of which is in sight. ..
relation to the circumstances of the exterior milieu whose relation to the territory they express. For this relation can be given without the circum- stances being given, just as the relation to the impulses can be given with- out the impulse being given. And even when the impulses and circum- stances are given, the relation is prior to what it places in relation. Relations between matters of expression express relations of the territory to internal impulses and external circumstances: they have an autonomy within this very expression. In truth, territorial motifs and counterpoints explore potentialities of the interior or exterior milieu. Ethologists have grouped these phenomena under the concept of "ritualization" and have demonstrated the link between animal rituals and territory. But this word is not necessarily appropriate for these nonpulsed motifs and nonlocalized counterpoints, since it accounts for neither their variability nor their fixity. It is not one or the other, fixity or variability; certain motifs or points are fixed only if others are variable, or else they are fixed on one occasion and variable on another.
Rent is not the only apparatus of capture. The stock has as its correlate not only the land, from the double point of view of the comparison of lands and the monopolistic appropriation of land; it has work as another corre- late, from the double point of view of the comparison of activities and the monopolistic appropriation of labor (surplus labor). Once again, it is by
Rent The Landowner
represents a distance and not a magnitude. The ordinal, directional, no- madic, articulated number, the numbering number, pertains to smooth space,
represents a power of another order, potentially acting as a threat as well as a trainer, outsider, etc. In any case, no band is without this phenomenon of bordering, or the anomalous. It is true that bands are also undermined by extremely varied forces that establish in them interior centers of the conju- gal, familial, or State type, and that make them pass into an entirely differ- ent form of sociability, replacing pack affects with family feelings or State intelligibilities. The center, or internal black holes, assumes the principal role. This is what evolutionism sees as progress, this adventure also befalls bands of humans when they reconstitute group familialism, or even authoritarianism or pack fascism.
Returning to the simple opposition, the striated is that which inter- twines fixed and variable elements, produces an order and succession of distinct forms, and organizes horizontal melodic lines and vertical har- monic planes. The smooth is the continuous variation, continuous devel- opment of form; it is the fusion of harmony and melody in favor of the production of properly rythmic values, the pure act of the drawing of a diagonal across the vertical and the horizontal.
Rhizome
ritory; yet it is never solitary, it is always filled by a nomadic population that divides or regroups, contests or laments, attacks or suffers. This time, the hero is a hero of the people, and not of the earth; her is related to the One-Crowd, not the One-All. It certainly cannot be said that there is more or less nationalism on one side or the other because nationalism is everywhere in the figures of romanticism, sometimes as the driving force, sometimes as a black hole (fascism used Verdi much less than nazism did Wagner). The problem is a truly musical one, technically musical, and all the more politi- cal for that. The romantic hero, the voice of the romantic hero, acts as a subject, a subjectified individual with "feelings"; but this subjective vocal element is reflected in an orchestral and instrumental whole that on the contrary mobilizes nonsubjective "affects" and that reaches its height in romanticism. It should not be thought that the vocal element and the orchestral-instrumental whole are only in an extrinsic relation to one another: the orchestration imposes a given role on the voice, and the voice envelops a given mode of orchestration. Orchestration-instrumentation brings sound forces together or separates them, gathers or disperses them; but it changes, and the role of the voice changes too, depending on whether the forces are of the Earth or of the People, of the One-All or the One-Crowd. In the first case, it is a question of effecting grouping of powers, and these are what constitute affects; in the second case, it is group individuations that constitute affect and are the object of orchestration. Groupings of power are fully diversified, but they are like the relations proper to the Universal; we must use another word, the Dividual, to desig- nate the type of musical relations and the intra- or intergroup passages occurring in group individuation. The sentimental or subjective element of the voice has a different role and even a different position depending on whether it internally confronts nonsubjectified groupings of power or nonsubjectified group individuation, the relations of the universal or the relations of the "dividual." Debussy formulated the problem of the One-Crowd well when he reproached Wagner for not knowing how to "do" a crowd or a people: a crowd must be fully individuated, but by group individuations that are not reducible to the individuality of the subjects that compose the crowd.
s***/
say that it is located between the two heads of the State, between the two articulations, and that it is necessary in order to pass from one to the other. But "between" the two, in that instant, even ephemeral, if only a flash, it proclaims its own irreducibility. The State has no war machine of its own; it can only appropriate one in the form of a military institution, one that will continually cause it problems. This explains the mistrust States have toward their military institutions, in that the military institution inherits an extrinsic war machine. Karl von Clausewitz has a general sense of this situation when he treats the flow of absolute war as an Idea that States par- tially appropriate according to their political needs, and in relation to which they are more or less good "conductors."
Scherer and Hocquenghem made this essential point in their reconsid- eration of the problem of wolf-children. Of course, it is not a question of a real production, as if the child "really" became an animal; nor is it a ques- tion of a resemblance, as if the child imitated animals that really raised it; nor is it a question of a symbolic metaphor, as if the autistic child that was abandoned or lost merely became the "analogue" of an animal. Scherer and Hocquenghem are right to expose this false reasoning, which is based on a culturalism or moralism upholding the irreducibility of the human order: Because the child has not been transformed into an animal, it must only have a metaphorical relation to it, induced by the child's illness or rejection. For their own part, they appeal to an objective zone of indetermi-nation or uncertainty, "something shared or indiscernible," a proximity "that makes it impossible to say where the boundary between the human and animal lies," not only in the case of autistic children, but for all children; it is as though, independent of the evolution carrying them toward adulthood, there were room in the child for other becomings, "other contemporaneous possibilities" that are not regressions but creative involutions bearing witness to "an inhumanity immediately experienced in the body as such," unnatural nuptials "outside the programmed body." There is a reality of becoming-animal, even though one does not in reality become animal. It is useless, then, to raise the objection that the dog-child only plays dog within the limits of his formal constitution, and does nothing canine that another human being could not have done if he or she had so
second aspect (we have already encountered a theorem according to which it is always on the most deterritorialized element that reterritorialization takes place). For example, the merchant bourgeoisie of the cities conju- gated or capitalized a domain of knowledge, a technology, assemblages and circuits into whose dependency the nobility, Church, artisans, and even peasants would enter. It is precisely because the bourgeoisie was a cutting edge of deterritorialization, a veritable particle accelerator, that it also per- formed an overall reterritorialization.
Second Novella: "The Crack-up," F. Scott Fitzgerald
seeds that would force it to change assemblage. We may say, then, that the seed-ax relation is determined by the last quantity of seeds (for group B) corresponding to the last ax (for group A). The last as the object of a collec- tive evaluation determines the value of the entire series. It marks the exact point at which the assemblage must reproduce itself, begin a new operation period or a new cycle, lodge itself on another territory, and beyond which the assemblage could not continue as such. This is indeed a next-to-the-last, a penultimate, since it comes before the ultimate. The ultimate is when the assemblage must change its nature: B would have to plant the excess seeds. A would have to increase the rhythm of its own plantings and remain on the same land.
Segmentarities (Overview of the Types)
segmentarity and centralization of the latter was more classical and less fluid. What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power, for it is a mass movement: a cancerous body rather than a totalitar- ian organism. American film has often depicted these molecular focal points; band, gang, sect, family, town, neighborhood, vehicle fascisms spare no one. Only microfascism provides an answer to the global ques- tion: Why does desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression? The masses certainly do not passively submit to power; nor do they "want" to be repressed, in a kind of masochistic hysteria; nor are they tricked by an ideological lure. Desire is never separable from complex assemblages that necessarily tie into molecular levels, from microforma-tions already shaping postures, attitudes, perceptions, expectations, semiotic systems, etc. Desire is never an undifferentiated instinctual energy, but itself results from a highly developed, engineered setup rich in interactions: a whole supple segmentarity that processes molecular energies and potentially gives desire a fascist determination. Leftist organizations will not be the last to secrete microfascisms. It's too easy to be antifascist on the molar level, and not even see the fascist inside you, the fascist you yourself sustain and nourish and cherish with molecules both personal and collective.
semisedentary, sedentary, or nomadic, without by the same token being preparatory stages for the State, which is already there, elsewhere or beside.
sense even though they are perfectly real. They are distinguished solely by movement and rest, slowness and speed. They are not atoms, in other words, finite elements still endowed with form. Nor are they indefinitely divisible. They are infinitely small, ultimate parts of an actual infinity, laid out on the same plane of consistency or composition. They are not defined by their number since they always come in infinities. However, depending on their degree of speed or the relation of movement and rest into which they enter, they belong to a given Individual, which may itself be part of another Individual governed by another, more complex, relation, and so on to infinity. There are thus smaller and larger infinities, not by virtue of their number, but by virtue of the composition of the relation into which their parts enter. Thus each individual is an infinite multiplicity, and the whole of Nature is a multiplicity of perfectly individuated multiplicities. The plane of consistency of Nature is like an immense Abstract Machine, abstract yet real and individual; its pieces are the various assemblages and individuals, each of which groups together an infinity of particles entering into an infinity of more or less interconnected relations. There is therefore a unity to the plane of nature, which applies equally to the inanimate and the animate, the artificial and the natural. This plane has nothing to do with a form or a figure, nor with a design or a function. Its unity has nothing to do with a ground buried deep within things, nor with an end or a project in the mind of God. Instead, it is a plane upon which everything is laid out, and which is like the intersection of all forms, the machine of all functions; its dimensions, however, increase with those of the multiplicities of indi- vidualities it cuts across. It is a fixed plane, upon which things are dis- tinguished from one another only by speed and slowness. A plane of immanence or univocality opposed to analogy. The One is said with a single meaning of all the multiple. Being expresses in a single meaning all that differs. What we are talking about is not the unity of substance but the infinity of the modifications that are part of one another on this unique plane of life.
sequence, or a cutaneous one, or a rhythmic one, etc. Lizot, for example, shows how "the dissociation of duty, ritual and daily life is almost total... it is strange, inconceivable to us": during mourning behavior, certain people make obscene jokes while others cry; or an Indian abruptly stops crying and begins to repair his flute; or everybody goes to sleep. "The same goes for incest. There is no incest prohibition; instead, there are sequences of incest that connect with sequences of prohibition following specific coordinates. Paintings, tattoos, or marks on the skin embrace the multidi-mensionality of bodies. Even masks ensure the head's belonging to the body, rather than making it a face. Doubtless, there are profound movements of deterritorialization that shake up the coordinates of the body and outline particular assemblages of power; however, they connect the body not to faciality but to becomings-animal, in particular with the help of drugs. Of course, there is no less spirituality for that, for these becomings-animal involve an animal Spirit—a jaguar-spirit, bird-spirit, ocelot-spirit, toucan-spirit—that takes possession of the body's interior, enters its cavities, and fills its volumes instead of making a face for it. Possession expresses a direct relation between Voices and the body rather than a relation to the face. Shaman, warrior, and hunter organizations of power, fragile and precarious, are all the more spiritual by virtue of the fact that they operate through corporeality, animality, and vegetality. When we said earlier that the human head still belongs to the stratum of the organism, we obviously were not denying the existence of culture and society among these peoples; we were merely saying that these cultures' and societies' codes pertain to bodies, to the belonging of heads to bodies, to the ability of the body-head system to become and receive souls, and to receive them as friends while repulsing enemy souls. "Primitives" may have the most human of heads, the most beautiful and most spiritual, but they have no face and need none.
several layers. It goes from a center to a periphery, at the same time as the periphery reacts back upon the center to form a new center in relation to a new periphery. Flows constantly radiate outward, then turn back. There is an outgrowth and multiplication of intermediate states, and this process is one of the local conditions of the central ring (different concentrations, variations that are tolerated below a certain threshold of identity). These intermediate states present new figures of milieus or materials, as well as of elements and compounds. They are inter- mediaries between the exterior milieu and the interior element, substantial elements and their compounds, compounds and substances, and between the different formed substances (substances of content and substances of expression). We will use the term epistrata for these intermediaries and superpositions, these outgrowths, these levels. Returning to our two exam- ples, on the crystalline stratum there are many intermediaries between the exterior milieu or material and the interior seed: a multiplicity of perfectly discontinuous states of metastability constituting so many hierarchical degrees. Neither is the organic stratum separable from so-called interior milieus that are interior elements in relation to exterior materials but also exterior elements in relation to interior substances." These internal organic milieus are known to regulate the degree of complexity or differen- tiation of the parts of an organism. A stratum, considered from the stand- point of its unity of composition, therefore exists only in its substantial epistrata, which shatter its continuity, fragment its ring, and break it down
Should we not sing the praise of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire?
Signifier enthusiasts take an oversimplified situation as their implicit model: word and thing. From the word they extract the signifier, and from the thing a signified in conformity with the word, and therefore subjugated to the signifier. They operate in a sphere interior to and homogeneous with language. Let us follow Foucault in his exemplary analysis, which, though it seems not to be, is eminently concerned with linguistics. Take a thing like the prison: the prison is a form, the "prison-form"; it is a form of content on a stratum and is related to other forms of content (school, barracks, hospi- tal, factory). This thing or form does not refer back to the word "prison" but to entirely different words and concepts, such as "delinquent" and "delinquency," which express a new way of classifying, stating, translating, and even committing criminal acts. "Delinquency" is the form of expres- sion in reciprocal presupposition with the form of content "prison." Delin- quency is in no way a signifier, even a juridical signifier, the signified of which would be the prison. That would flatten the entire analysis. More- over, the form of expression is reducible not to words but to a set of state- ments arising in the social field considered as a stratum (that is what a regime of signs is). The form of content is reducible not to a thing but to a complex state of things as a formation of power (architecture, regimenta-
signifying and subjective expression. It carries out the prior gridding that makes it possible for the signifying elements to become discernible, and for the subjective choices to be implemented. The faciality machine is not an annex to the signifier and the subject; rather, it is subjacent (connexe) to them and is their condition of possibility. Facial biunivocalities and bina-rities double the others; facial redundancies are in redundancy with signifying and subjective redundancies. It is precisely because the face depends on an abstract machine that it does not assume a preexistent subject or signifier; but it is subjacent to them and provides the substance necessary to them. What chooses the faces is not a subject, as in the Szondi test; it is faces that choose their subjects. What interprets the black blotch/white hole figure, or the white page/black hole, is not a signifier, as in the Rorschach test; it is that figure which programs the signifiers.
signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come.
Similarly, or actually in a different way, it would be an error to interpret courtly love in terms of a law of lack or an ideal of transcendence. The renunciation of external pleasure, or its delay, its infinite regress, testifies on the contrary to an achieved state in which desire no longer lacks any- thing but fills itself and constructs its own field of immanence. Pleasure is an affection of a person or a subject; it is the only way for persons to "find themselves" in the process of desire that exceeds them; pleasures, even the most artificial, are reterritorializations. But the question is precisely whether it is necessary to find oneself. Courtly love does not love the self, any more than it loves the whole universe in a celestial or religious way. It is a question of making a body without organs upon which intensities pass, self and other—not in the name of a higher level of generality or a broader extension, but by virtue of singularities that can no longer be said to be per- sonal, and intensities that can no longer be said to be extensive. The field of immanence is not internal to the self, but neither does it come from an external self or a nonself. Rather, it is like the absolute Outside that knows no Selves because interior and exterior are equally a part of the immanence in which they have fused. "Joy" in courtly love, the exchange of hearts, the test or "assay": everything is allowed, as long as it is not external to desire or transcendent to its plane, or else internal to persons. The slightest caress may be as strong as an orgasm; orgasm is a mere fact, a rather deplorable one, in relation to desire in pursuit of its principle. Everything is allowed: all that counts is for pleasure to be the flow of desire itself, Immanence, instead of a measure that interrupts it or delivers it to the three phantoms,
simple sample, the decisive importance of molecular populations and microbiological rates (for exam- ple, the endlessness of the sequence composing a chain, and the chance var- iation of a single segment in the sequence).
Since everybody knows that language is a heterogeneous, variable reality, what is the meaning of the linguists' insistence on carving out a homoge-
Since strata are judgments of God, one should not hesitate to apply all the subtleties of medieval Scholasticism and theology. There is a real dis- tinction between content and expression because the corresponding forms are effectively distinct in the "thing" itself, and not only in the mind of the observer. But this real distinction is quite special; it is only formal since the two forms compose or shape a single thing, a single stratified subject. Vari- ous examples of formal distinction can be cited: between scales or orders of magnitude (as between a map and its model; or, in a different fashion, between the micro- and macrophysical levels, as in the parable of Eddington's two offices); between the various states or formal reasons through which a thing passes; between the thing in one form, and as affected by a possibly exterior causality giving it a different form; and so forth. (There is a proliferation of distinct forms because, in addition to content and expression each having its own forms, intermediate states introduce forms of expression proper to content and forms of content proper to expression.)
singularities, the State constitutes a form of expression that subjugates the phylum: the phylum or matter is no longer anything more than an equa- lized, homogenized, compared content, while expression becomes a form of resonance or appropriation. Apparatus of capture—the semiological operation par excellence... (In this sense, the associationist philosophers were not wrong in explaining political power by operations of the mind dependent upon the association of ideas.)
sion, the segments of which they intertwine. Finally, it misconstrues the nature of content, which is in no way economic "in the last instance," since there are as many directly economic signs or expressions as there are noneconomic contents. Nor can the status of social formations be analyzed by throwing some signifier into the base, or vice versa, or a bit of phallus or castration into political economy, or a bit of economics or politics into psychoanalysis.
Smiths are not nomadic among the nomads and sedentary among the sedentaries, nor half-nomadic among the nomads, half-sedentary among sedentaries. Their relation to others results from their internal itinerancy,
Smooth or nomad space lies between two striated spaces: that of the for- est, with its gravitational verticals, and that of agriculture, with its grids and generalized parallels, its now independent arborescence, its art of extracting the tree and wood from the forest. But being "between" also means that smooth space is controlled by these two flanks, which limit it, oppose its development, and assign it as much as possible a communica-tional role; or, on the contrary, it means that it turns against them, gnawing away at the forest on one side, on the other side gaining ground on the cultivated lands, affirming a noncommunicating force or a force of divergence like a "wedge" digging in. The nomads turn first against the forest and the mountain dwellers, then descend upon the farmers. What we have here is something like the flipside or the outside of the State-form—but in what sense? This form, as a global and relative space, implies a certain number of components: forest-clearing of fields; agriculture-grid laying; animal raising subordinated to agricultural work and sedentary food production; commerce based on a constellation of town-country (polis-nomos) communications. When historians inquire into the reasons for the victory of the West over the Orient, they primarily mention the following characteris-
Smooth space
Smooth space and striated space—nomad space and sedentary space—the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus—are not of the same nature. No sooner do we note a sim- ple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mix- ture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a stri- ated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space. In the first case, one organizes even the desert; in the second,
So how are we to define this matter-movement, this matter-energy, this matter-flow, this matter in variation that enters assemblages and leaves them? It is a destratified, deterritorialized matter. It seems to us that Husserl brought thought a decisive step forward when he discovered a region of vague and material essences (in other words, essences that are vagabond, anexact and yet rigorous), distinguishing them from fixed, metric and formal, essences. We have seen that these vague essences are as distinct from formed things as they are from formal essences. They con- stitute fuzzy aggregates. They relate to a corporeality (materiality) that is not to be confused either with an intelligible, formal essentiality or a sen- sible, formed and perceived, thinghood. This corporeality has two char- acteristics: on the one hand, it is inseparable from passages to the limit as changes of state, from processes of deformation or transformation that oper- ate in a space-time itself anexact and that act in the manner of events (ablation, adjunction, projection . . .); on the other hand, it is inseparable from expressive or intensive qualities, which can be higher or lower in degree, and are produced in the manner of variable affects (resistance,
So just what is a refrain? Glass harmonica: the refrain is a prism, a crys- tal of space-time. It acts upon that which surrounds it, sound or light, extracting from it various vibrations, or decompositions, projections, or transformations. The refrain also has a catalytic function: not only to increase the speed of the exchanges and reactions in that which surrounds it, but also to assure indirect interactions between elements devoid of so-called natural affinity, and thereby to form organized masses. The refrain is therefore of the crystal or protein type. The seed, or internal structure, then has two essential aspects: augmentations and diminutions, additions and withdrawals, amplifications and eliminations by unequal
Some believe that these variations do not express the usual labor of cre- ation in language and remain marginal, confined to poets, children, and lunatics. That is because they wish to define the abstract machine by con- stants that can be modified only secondarily, by a cumulative effect or syntagmatic mutation. But the abstract machine of language is not univer- sal, or even general, but singular; it is not actual, but virtual-real; it has, not invariable or obligatory rules, but optional rules that ceaselessly vary with the variation itself, as in a game in which each move changes the rules. That is why abstract machines and assemblages of enunciation are complemen- tary, and present in each other. The abstract machine is like the diagram of an assemblage. It draws lines of continuous variation, while the concrete assemblage treats variables and organized their highly diverse relations as a function of those lines. The assemblage negotiates variables at this or that level of variation, according to this or that degree of deterritorialization, and determines which variables will enter into constant relations or obey obligatory rules and which will serve instead as a fluid matter for variation. We should not conclude from this that the assemblage brings only a certain resistance or inertia to bear against the abstract machine; for even "con- stants" are essential to the determination of the virtualities through which the variation passes, they are themselves optionally chosen. There is indeed braking and resistance at a certain level, but at another level of the assemblage there is nothing but a come-and-go between different types of variables, and corridors of passage traveled in both directions: the varia- bles effectuate the machine in unison, in the sum of their relations. There is therefore no basis for a distinction between a constant and collective lan- guage, and variable and individual speech acts. The abstract machine is always singular, designated by the proper mane of a group or individual, while the assemblage of enunciation is always collective, in the individual as in the group. The Lenin abstract machine, and the Bolshevik collective assemblage .. . The same goes for literature, for music. There is no primacy of the individual; there is instead an indissolubility of a singular Abstract and a collective Concrete. The abstract machine does not exist indepen- dently of the assemblage, any more than the assemblage functions inde- pendently of the machine.
Something is still bothering us: the story of Oedipus. Oedipus is almost unique in the Greek world. The whole first part is imperial, despotic, para- noid, interpretive, divinatory. But the whole second part is Oedipus's wan- dering, his line of flight, the double turning away of his own face and that of God. Rather than very precise limits to be crossed in order, or which one does not have the right to cross (hybris), there is a concealed limit toward which Oedipus is swept. Rather than interpretive signifying irradiation, there is a subjective linear proceeding permitting Oedipus to keep a secret, but only as a residue capable of starting a new linear proceeding. Oedipus,
something less differentiated. But to involve is to form a block that runs its own line "between" the terms in play and beneath assignable relations.
space. "Haptic" is a better word than "tactile" since it does not establish an opposition between two sense organs but rather invites the assumption that the eye itself may fulfill this nonoptical func- tion. It was Alois Riegl who, in some marvelous pages, gave fundamental
Speak white and loud
State apparatus, drawing a deterritorialization that cuts across both the lin- eal territorialities and the territory or deterritoriality of the State.
state of a flow that is no longer contained in (compris dans) it own code, that escapes it own code. On the one hand, when the primitive codes cease to be self-regulating and are subordinated to the higher agency, flows that had been coded in a relative way by the primitive communities find the opportunity to escape. But on the other hand, the overcoding of the archaic State itself makes possible and gives rise to new flows that escape from it. The State does not created large-scale works without a flow of independent labor escaping its bureaucracy (notably in the mines and in metallurgy). It does not create the monetary form of the tax without flows of money escaping, and nourishing or bringing into being other powers (notably in commerce and banking). And above all, it does not created a system of public property without a flow of private appropriation growing up beside it, then beginning to pass beyond its grasp; this private property does not itself issue from the archaic system but is constituted on the margins, all the more necessarily and inevitably, slipping through the net of overcoding. It is undoubtedly Tokei who has formulated the problem of an origin of private property in the most serious way, in the context of a system that seems to exclude it from every angle. For private property can arise neither on the side of the emperor-despot not on the side of the peasants, whose autonomy is tied to communal possession, nor on the side of the functionaries whose existence and income are based on that public communal form ("the aristocrats can under these conditions become petty despots but not private landowners"). Even the slaves belong to the community or the public function. The question then becomes, Are there people who are constituted in the overcoding empire, but constituted as necessarily excluded and decoded? Tokei's answer is the freed slaves. It is they who have no place. It is their lamentations that are heard the length and breadth of the Chinese Empire: the plaint (elegy) has always been a political factor. But it is also they who form the first seeds of private property, who develop trade, and with metallurgy invent a kind of private slavery in which they will be the new master.
State, and a polymorphy organized by the Third World States. Once again, it would be absurd to think that the insertion of popular movements is con- demned in advance throughout this field of immanence, and to assume that there are either "good" States that are democratic, social democratic or at the other extreme socialist, or that on the contrary all States are equiv- alent and homogeneous.
States, through the war they waged against one another, had after a long period of appropriation reconstituted an autonomous war machine. But this unchained or liberated war machine continued to have as its object war in action, a now total, unlimited kind of war. The entire fascist economy became a war economy, but the war economy still needed total war as its object. For this reason, fascist war still fell under Clausewitz's formula, "the continuation of politics by other means," even though those other means had become exclusive, in other words, the political aim had entered into contradiction with the object (hence Virilio's idea that the fascist State was a "suicidal" State more than a totalitarian one). It was only after World War II that the automatization, then automation of the war machine had their true effect. The war machine, the new antagonisms traversing it con- sidered, no longer had war as its exclusive object but took in charge and as its object peace, politics, the world order, in short, the aim. This is where the inversion of Clausewitz's formula comes in: it is politics that becomes the continuation of war; // is peace that technologically frees the unlimited material process of total war. War ceases to be the materialization of the war machine; the war machine itself becomes materialized war. In this sense, there was no longer a need for fascism. The Fascists were only child precur- sors, and the absolute peace of survival succeeded where total war had failed. The Third World War was already upon us. The war machine reigned over the entire axiomatic like the power of the continuum that sur- rounded the "world-economy," and it put all the parts of the universe in contact. The world became a smooth space again (sea, air, atmosphere), over which reigned a single war machine, even when it opposed its own parts. Wars had become a part of peace. More than that, the States no longer appropriated the war machine; they reconstituted a war machine of which they themselves were only the parts.
Still from the standpoint of the assemblage, there is an essential relation between tools and signs. That is because the work model that defines the tool belongs to the State apparatus. It has often been said that people in
Still, we do not yet have a Territory, which is not a milieu, not even an additional milieu, nor a rhythm or passage between milieus. The territory is in fact an act that affects milieus and rhythms, that "territorializes" them. The territory is the product of a territorialization of milieus and rhythms. It amounts to the same thing to ask when milieus and rhythms become territorialized, and what the difference is between a nonterritorial animal and a territorial animal. A territory borrows from all the milieus; it bites into them, seizes them bodily (although it remains vulnerable to intrusions). It is built from aspects or portions of milieus. It itself has an exterior milieu, an interior milieu, an intermediary milieu, and an annexed milieu. It has the interior zone of a residence or shelter, the exte- rior zone of its domain, more or less retractable limits or membranes, intermediary or even neutralized zones, and energy reserves or annexes. It is by essence marked by "indexes," which may be components taken from
Stock a) Direct comparison of activities, Profit
straight lines, if only virtual. D is negative or relative (yet already effective) when it conforms to the second case and operates either by principal reterritorializations that obstruct the lines of flight, or by secondary reterritorializations that segment and work to curtail
Strata, stratification
strate that the novella is defined by living lines, flesh lines, about which it brings a special revelation. Marcel Arland is correct to say that the novella "is nothing but pure lines right down to the nuances, and nothing but the pure and conscious power of the word."
stratum. The epistrata and parastrata subdi- viding a stratum can be considered strata themselves (so that the list is never exhaustive). A given stratum retains a unity of composition in spite of the diversity in its organization and development. The unity of composition relates to formal traits common to all of the forms or codes of a stratum, and to substantial elements, materials common to all of the stratum's substances or milieus.
Strictly speaking, therefore, there are no regimes of signs on the dia- grammatic level, or on the plane of consistency, because form of expression is no longer really distinct from form of content. The diagram knows only traits and cutting edges that are still elements of content insofar as they are material and of expression insofar as they are functional, but which draw one another along, form relays, and meld in a shared deterritorialization: particles-signs. There is nothing surprising in this, for the real distinction between form of expression and form of content appears only with the strata, and is different on each one. It is on the strata that the double articu- lation appears that formalizes traits of expression and traits of content,
structuralist critique of the series seems irrefutable. To become is not to progress or regress along a series. Above all, becoming does not occur in the imagination, even when the imagination reaches the highest cosmic or dynamic level, as in Jung or Bachelard. Becomings-animal are neither dreams nor phantasies. They are perfectly real. But which reality is at issue here? For if becoming animal does not consist in playing animal or imitat- ing an animal, it is clear that the human being does not "really" become an animal any more than the animal "really" becomes something else. Becom- ing produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes. Becoming can and should be qualified as be- coming-animal even in the absence of a term that would be the animal become. The becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the ani- mal the human being becomes is not; and the becoming-other of the animal is real, even if that something other it becomes is not. This is the point to clarify: that a becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself; but also that it has no term, since its term in turn exists only as taken up in another becom- ing of which it is the subject, and which coexists, forms a block, with the first. This is the principle according to which there is a reality specific to becoming (the Bergsonian idea of a coexistence of very different "dura- tions," superior or inferior to "ours," all of them in communication).
structures or cutting across a single structure. A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed. Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees. There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. These lines always tie back to one another. That is why one can never posit a dualism or a dichot- omy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad. You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there is still a danger that you will reencounter organizations that restratify everything, formations that restore power to a signifier, attributions that reconstitute a subject— anything you like, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concretions. Groups
Substance
substantive, "multiplicity," that it ceases to have any relation to the One as subject or
Subtract and place in variation, remove and place in variation: a single operation. Minor languages are characterized not by overload and poverty in relation to a standard or major language, but by a sobriety and variation that are like a minor treatment of the standard language, a becoming-minor of the major language. The problem is not the distinction between major and minor language; it is one of a becoming. It is a question not of reterritorializing oneself on a dialect or a patois but of deterritorializing the major language. Black Americans do not oppose Black to English, they transform the American English that is their own language into Black
such is like everything else; madness is as intrinsic to it as reorderings. The same scientists may participate in both aspects, having their own madness, police, signifiances, or subjectifications, as well as their own abstract machines, all in their capacity as scientists. The phrase "the politics of sci- ence" is a good designation for these currents, which are internal to science and not simply circumstances and State factors that act upon it from the outside, leading it to make as atomic bomb here and embark upon a space program there. These political influences or determinations would not exist if science itself did not have its own poles, oscillations, strata, and destratifications, its own lines of flight and reorderings, in short, the more or less potential events of its own politics, its own particular "polemics," its own internal war machine (of which thwarted, persecuted, or hindered sci- entists are historically a part). It is not enough to say that axiomatics does not take invention and creation into account: it possesses a deliberate will to halt or stabilize the diagram, to take its place by lodging itself on a level of coagulated abstraction too large for the concrete but too small for the real. We will see in what sense this is the "capitalist" level.
surplus accumulated by a local State apparatus: even if the peasant suffered an exploitation as bad as or worse
Swann's Love: Proust was able to make the face, landscape, painting, music, etc., resonate together. Three moments in the story of Swann and Odette. First, a whole signifying mechanism is set up. The face of Odette with her broad white or yellow cheeks, and her eyes as black hoes. But this face continually refers back to other things, also arrayed on the wall. That is Swann's aetheticism, his amateurism: a thing must always recall some- thing else, in a network of interpretations under the sign of the signifier. A face refers back to a landscape. A face must "recall" a painting, or a
SYLVANO BUSSOTI
symmetrical double deterritorialization it is possible to assign a deter-ritorializing force and a deterritorialized force, even if the same force switches from one value to the other depending on the "moment" or aspect considered; furthermore, it is the least deterritorialized element that always triggers the deterritorialization of the most deterritorializing element, which then reacts back upon it in full force. Theorem Seven: the deterritorializing element has the relative role of expression, and the deterritorialized element the relative role of content (as evident in the arts); but not only does the content have nothing to do with an external sub- ject or object, since it forms an asymmetrical block with the expression, but the deterritorialization carries the expression and the content to a proxim- ity where the distinction between them ceases to be relevant, or where the deterritorialization creates their indiscernibility (example: the sound diag- onal as the musical form of expression, and becomings-woman, -child, -animal as the contents proper to music, as refrains). Theorem Eight: one assemblage does not have the same forces or even speeds of deterrito- rialization as another; in each instance, the indices and coefficients must be calculated according to the block of becoming under consideration, and in relation to the mutations of an abstract machine (for example, there is a certain slowness, a certain viscosity, of painting in relation to music; but one cannot draw a symbolic boundary between the human being and ani- mal. One can only calculate and compare powers of deterritorialization). Fernandez demonstrates the presence of becomings-woman, becom- ings-child in vocal music. Then he decries the rise of instrumental and orchestral music; he is particularly critical of Verdi and Wagner for having resexualized the voice, for having restored the binary machine in response to the requirements of capitalism, which wants a man to be a man and a woman a woman, each with his or her own voice: V erdi-voices, Wagner-voices, are reterritorialized upon man and woman. He explains the premature disappearance of Rossini and Bellini (the retirement of the first and death of the second) by their hopeless feeling that the vocal becomings of the opera were no longer possible. However, Fernandez does not ask under what auspices, and with what new types of diagonals, this occurs. To begin with, it is true that the voice ceases to be machined for itself, with simple instrumental accompaniment; it ceases to be a stratum or a line of expression that stands on its own. But why? Music crossed a new threshold of deterritorialization, beyond which it is the instrument that machines the voice, and the voice and instrument are carried on the same plane in a relation that is sometimes one of confrontation, sometimes one of compensation, sometimes one of exchange and complementarity. The lied, in particular Schumann's lieder, perhaps marks the first appearance of this pure movement that places the voice and the piano on the same plane of
Take two abstract groups, one of which (A) gives seeds and receives axes, while the other (B) does the opposite. What is the collective evaluation of the objects based on? It is based on the idea of the last objects received, or rather receivable, on each side. By "last" or "marginal" we must understand not the most recent, nor the final, but rather the penultimate, the next to the last, in other words, the last one before the apparent exchange loses its appeal for the exchangers, or forces them to modify their respective assemblages, to enter another assemblage. We will consider that the farmer-gatherer group A, which receives axes, has an "idea" of the number of axes that would force it to change assemblage; and the manufacturing group B, of the quantity of
tary dimension. Lines of this type are molar, and form a segmentary, circular, binary, arborescent system.
telegraphic machines on the plane of consistency (once again, we are reminded of the procedures of Chinese poetry and the rules for translation suggested by the best commentators).
Tens, hundreds, thousands, myriads: all armies retain these decimal groupings, to the point that each time they are encountered it is safe to assume the presence of a military organization. Is this not the way an army deterritorializes its soldiers? An army is composed of units, companies, and divisions. The Numbers may vary in function, in combination; they may enter into entirely different strategies; but there is always a connection between the Number and the war machine. It is a question not of quantity but of organization or composition. When the State creates armies, it always applies this principle of numerical organization; but all it does is adopt the principle, at the same time as it appropriates the war machine. For so peculiar an idea—the numerical organization of people—came
territorial assemblage and interassemblages. In short,
territorialization and deterritorialization. But each articulation has a code and a territoriality; therefore each possesses both form and substance. For now, all we can say is that each articulation has a corresponding type of segmentarity or multi- plicity: one type is supple, more molecular, and merely ordered; the other is more rigid, molar, and organized. Although the first articulation is not lacking in systematic interactions, it is in the second articulation in partic- ular that phenomena constituting an overcoding are produced, phenom- ena of centering, unification, totalization, integration, hierarchization, and finalization. Both articulations establish binary relations between their respective segments. But between the segments of one articulation and the segments of the other there are biunivocal relationships obeying far more complex laws. The word "structure" may be used to designate the sum of these relations and relationships, but it is an illusion to believe that structure is the earth's last word. Moreover, it cannot be taken for granted that the distinction between the two articulations is always that of the molecular and the molar.
than that of the Orient, the artisan and the merchant enjoyed a freer status and a more diversified market, prefiguring a middle class. Many metallur- gists and merchants from the Orient moved to the Aegean world, where they were to find freer, more varied and more stable conditions. In short, the same flows that are overcoded in the Orient tend to become decoded in Europe, in a new situation that is like the flipside or correlate of the other. Surplus value is no longer surplus value of code (overcoding) but becomes surplus value of flow. It is as if two solutions were found for the same prob- lem, the Oriental solution and then the Western one, which grafts itself upon the first and brings it out of the impasse while continuing to presup- pose it. The European metallurgist and merchant faced a much less thor- oughly coded international market, one not limited to an imperial house or class. And as Childe said, the Western and Aegean States were immersed in a supranational economic system from the start; they bathed in it, instead of containing it within the limits of their own net.
than the secret. It matters little what the goal is, and whether the aim of the perception is a denunciation, final divulging, or disclosure. From an anec- dotal standpoint, the perception of the secret is the opposite of the secret, but from the standpoint of the concept, it is a part of it. What counts is that the perception of the secret must necessarily be secret itself: the spy, the voyeur, the blackmailer, the author of anonymous letters are no less secre- tive than what they are in a position to disclose, regardless of their ulterior motives. There is always a woman, a child, a bird to secretly perceive the secret. There is always a perception finer than yours, a perception of your imperceptible, of what is in your box. We can even envision a profession of secrecy for those who are in a position to perceive the secret. The protector of the secret is not necessarily in on it, but is also tied to a perception, since he or she must perceive and detect those who wish to discover the secret (counterespionage). There is thus a first direction, in which the secret moves toward an equally secretive perception, a perception that seeks to be imperceptible itself. A wide variety of very different figures may revolve around this first point. And then there is a second point, just as inseparable from the secret as its content: the way in which it imposes itself and spreads. Once again, whatever the finalities or results, the secret has a way of spreading that is in turn shrouded in secrecy. The secret as secretion. The secret must sneak, insert, or introduce itself into the arena of public forms; it must pressure them and prod known subjects into action (we are refer- ring to influence of the "lobby" type, even if the lobby is not in itself a secret society).
That covers singular and immanent abstract machines. What we have said does not preclude the possibility of "the" abstract machine serving as a transcendent model, under very particular conditions. This time the concrete assemblages are related to an abstract idea of the Machine and,
That day, the Wolf-Man rose from the couch particularly tired. He knew that Freud had a genius for brushing up against the truth and passing it by, then filling the void with associations. He knew that Freud knew nothing about wolves, or anuses for that matter. The only thing Freud understood was what a dog is, and a dog's tail. It wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough. The Wolf-Man knew that Freud would soon declare him cured, but that it was not at all the case and his treatment would continue for all eternity under Brunswick, Lacan, Leclaire. Finally, he knew that he was in the pro- cess of acquiring a veritable proper name, the Wolf-Man, a name more properly his than his own, since it attained the highest degree of singularity
That is why we push the question further back, asking if war itself is the
that it is affect in itself, the drive in person, and represents nothing. There exist no other drives than the assemblages themselves. There are two classic texts in which Freud sees nothing but the father in the becoming-horse of Hans, and Ferenczi sees the same in the becoming-cock of Arpad. The horse's blind- ers are the father's eyeglasses, the black around its mouth is his mustache, its kicks are the parents' "lovemaking." Not one word about Hans's rela- tion to the street, on how the street was forbidden to him, on what it is for a child to see the spectacle "a horse is proud, a blinded horse pulls, a horse falls, a horse is whipped..." Psychoanalysis has no feeling for unnatural
that of continuous varia- tion. An incorporeal transformation is still attributed to bodies, but it is now a passage to the limit: that is the only way, not to eliminate death, but to reduce it or make it a variation itself. This movement pushes language to its own limits, while bodies are simultaneously caught up in a movement of metamorphosis of their contents or a process of exhaustion causing them to reach or overstep the limit of their figures. This is an appropriate place to
that people learned to steer the face and processes of facialization in all directions.
that their synthesis itself, their consistency or capture, forms a properly machinic "statement" or "enunciation." The varying relations into which a color, sound, gesture, movement, or position enters in the same species, and in different species, form so many machinic enunciations.
the abnormal clock, and the watchers saw through the dense fumes a blurred black claw fumbling with the tall, hieroglyphed door. The fumbling made a queer, clicking sound. Then the figure entered the coffin-shaped
The abstract is not directly opposed to the figurative. The figurative as such is not inherent to any "will to art." In fact, we may oppose a figurative line in art to one that is not. The figurative, or imitation and representa- tion, is a consequence, a result of certain characteristics of the line when it
The abstract machine crops up when you least expect it, at a chance juncture when you are just falling asleep, or into a twilight state or halluci-
The Aesthetic Model: Nomad Art. Several notions, both practical and the- oretical, are suitable for defining nomad art and its successors (barbarian, Gothic, and modern). First, "close-range" vision, as distinguished from long-distance vision; second, "tactile," or rather "haptic" space, as distin- guished from optical
The ambiguity of the far-seers' situation is that they are able to detect the slightest microinfraction in the abyss, things the others do not see; they also observe, beneath its apparent geometrical justice, the dreadful damage caused by the Cutting Telescope. They feel as though they foresee things and are ahead of the others because they see the smallest thing as already having happened; but they know that their warnings are to no avail because the cutting telescope will set everything straight without being warned, without the need for or possibility of prediction. At times they feel that they do indeed see something the others do not, but at other times that what they see differs only in degree and serves no purpose. Although they are collaborators with the most rigid and cruelest project of control, how could they not feel a vague sympathy for the subterranean activity revealed to them? An ambiguity in the molecular line, as if it vacillated between two sides. One day (what will have happened?), a far-seer will abandon his or her segment and start walking across a narrow overpass above the dark abyss, will break his or her telescope and depart on a line of flight to meet a blind Double approaching from the other side.
the analysand assumes the burden of interpretation; as for the psychoanalyzed patient, the more he or she thinks about "his" or "her" next session, or the preced- ing one, in segments, the better a subject he or she is.
The becoming-woman, the becoming-child of music are present in the problem of the machining of the voice. Machining the voice was the first musical operation. As we know, the problem was resolved in Western music in two different ways, in Italy and in England: the head voice of the countertenor, who sings "above his voice," or whose voice operates inside the sinuses and at the back of the throat and the palate without relying on the diaphragm or passing through the bronchial tubes; and the stomach voice of the castrati, "stronger, more voluminous, more languid," as if they gave carnal matter to the imperceptible, impalpable, and aerial. Dominique Fernandez wrote a fine book on this subject; he shows, fortu- nately refraining from any psychoanalytic discussion of a link between music and castration, that the musical problem of the machinery of the
The BwO is desire; it is that which one desires and by which one de- sires. And not only because it is the plane of consistency or the field of immanence of desire. Even when it falls into the void of too-sudden destra-tification, or into the proliferation of a cancerous stratum, it is still desire. Desire stretches that far: desiring one's own annihilation, or desiring the power to annihilate. Money, army, police, and State desire, fascist desire, even fascism is desire. There is desire whenever there is the constitution of a BwO under one relation or another. It is a problem not of ideology but of pure matter, a phenomenon of physical, biological, psychic, social, or cosmic matter. That is why the material problem confronting schizoanalysis is knowing whether we have it within our means to make the selection, to distinguish the BwO from its doubles: empty vitreous bodies, cancerous bodies, totalitarian and fascist. The test of desire: not denouncing false desires, but distinguishing within desire between that which pertains to stratic proliferation, or else too-violent destratification, and that which pertains to the construction of the plane of consistency (keep an eye out for all that is fascist, even inside us, and also for the suicidal and the demented). The plane of consistency is not simply that which is constituted by the sum of all BwO's. There are things it rejects; the BwO chooses, as a function of the abstract machine that draws it. Even within a BwO (the masochist body, the drugged body, etc.), we must distinguish what can be composed on the plane and what cannot. There is a fascist use of drugs, or a suicidal use, but is there also a possible use that would be in conformity with the plane of consistency? Even paranoia: Is there a possibility of using it that way in part? When we asked the question of the totality of all BwO's, considered as substantial attributes of a single substance, it should have been understood, strictly speaking, to apply only to the plane. The plane is the totality of the full BwO's that have been selected (there is no positive totality including the cancerous or empty bodies). What is the nature of this totality? Is it solely logical? Or must we say that each BwO, from a basis in its own genus, produces effects identical or analogous to the effects other
The BwO is the egg. But the egg is not regressive; on the contrary, it is perfectly contemporary, you always carry it with you as your own milieu of experimentation, your associated milieu. The egg is the milieu of pure intensity, spatium not extension, Zero intensity as principle of production. There is a fundamental convergence between science and myth, embryol- ogy and mythology, the biological egg and the psychic or cosmic egg: the egg always designates this intensive reality, which is not undifferentiated, but is where things and organs are distinguished solely by gradients, migra- tions, zones of proximity. The egg is the BwO. The BwO is not "before" the organism; it is adjacent to it and is continually in the process of construct- ing itself. If it is tied to childhood, it is not in the sense that the adult regresses to the child and the child to the Mother, but in the sense that the child, like the Dogon twin who takes a piece of the placenta with him, tears from the organic form of the Mother an intense and destratified matter that on the contrary constitutes his or her perpetual break with the past, his or her present experience, experimentation. The BwO is a childhood block, a becoming, the opposite of a childhood memory. It is not the child "before" the adult, or the mother "before" the child: it is the strict contem- poraneousness of the adult, of the adult and the child, their map of compar- ative densities and intensities, and all of the variations on that map. The BwO is precisely this intense germen where there are not and cannot be either parents or children (organic representation). This is what Freud failed to understand about Weissmann: the child as the germinal contem- porary of its parents. Thus the BwO is never yours or mine. It is always a body. It is no more projective than it is regressive. It is an involution, but always a contemporary, creative involution. The organs distribute them- selves on the BwO, but they distribute themselves independently of the form of the organism; forms become contingent, organs are no longer any- thing more than intensities that are produced, flows, thresholds, and gradi- ents. "A" stomach, "an" eye, "a" mouth: the indefinite article does not lack anything; it is not indeterminate or undifferentiated, but expresses the pure determination of intensity, intensive difference. The indefinite arti- cle is the conductor of desire. It is not at all a question of a fragmented, splintered body, of organs without the body (OwB). The BwO is exactly the opposite. There are not organs in the sense of fragments in relation to a lost
the capitalist axiomatic, it is due to the existence of a single external world market, which remains the deciding factor here, even above and beyond the relations of production from which it results. It can even hap- pen that the socialist bureaucraticplan(e) takes on a parasitic function in relation to the plan(e) of capital, which manifests a greater creativity, of the "virus" type.
The case of fascism ("national socialism") is distinct from totalitarian- ism. It coincides with the totalitarian pole in the collapse of the domestic market and the reduction in the number of axioms. However, the promo- tion of the foreign sector does not at all take place through an appeal to for-
The classical conflicts among the States of the center (as well as periph- eral colonization) have been joined, or rather replaced, by two great conflictual lines, between West and East and North and South; these lines intersect and together cover everything. But the overarmament of the West and East not only leaves the reality of local wars entirely intact and gives them a new force and new stakes; it not only founds the "apocalyptic" pos- sibility of a direct confrontation along the two great axes; it also seems that the war machine takes on a specific supplementary meaning: industrial, political, judicial, etc. It is indeed true that the States, throughout their his- tory, have repeatedly appropriated the war machine; and it was after the war machine was appropriated that war, its preparation and effectuation, became the exclusive object of the machine, but as a more or less "limited" war. As for the aim, it remained the political aim of the States. The various factors that tended to make war a "total war," most notably the fascist fac- tor, marked the beginning of an inversion of the movement: as though the
The classical image of thought, and the striating of mental space it effects, aspires to universality. It in effect operates with two "universals," the Whole as the final ground of being or all-encompassing horizon, and the Subject as the principle that converts being into being-for-us.
the confrontation between the East and the West. According to V. Gordon Childe's great archaeological thesis, the archaic imperial State implies a stockpiled agricultural surplus, which makes possible the maintenance of a specialized body of mercantile and metallurgical artisans. Indeed, the sur- plus as the content proper to overcoding must be not only stockpiled but absorbed, consumed, realized. Doubtless, this economic requirement that the surplus be absorbed is one of the principal aspects of the appropriation of the war machine by the imperial State: The military institution is from the start one of the most effective means of absorbing surplus. If, however, we assume that the bureaucratic and military institutions are not enough, the way is cleared for this specialized body of nonagricultural artisans, whose labor will reinforce the sedentarization of agriculture. It was in Afro-Asia and the Orient that all of these conditions were fulfilled and that the State apparatus was invented: in the Middle East, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, but also in the valley of the Indus (and in the Far East). That was where agricultural stock and its bureaucratic, military, but also metallurgical and commercial concomitants came into being. But this oriental or imperial "solution" is threatened by an impasse: State overcoding keeps the metallurgists, both craft and mercantile, within strict bounds, under powerful bureaucratic control, with monopolistic appropriation of foreign trade in the service of a ruling class, so that the peasants themselves benefit little from the State innovations. So it is indeed true that the State-form spreads and that archaeology discovers it everywhere on the horizon of Western history in the Aegean world. But not under the same conditions. Minos and Mycenae are more a caricature of an empire, Agamemnon of Mycenae is not the Chinese emperor or Egyptian pharaoh; the Egyptian can say to the Greeks: "You will always be like children..." That is because the Aegean peoples were both too far away to fall into the oriental sphere and too poor to stockpile a surplus themselves, but neither far enough away nor impoverished enough to ignore the markets of the Orient. Moreover, oriental overcoding itself assigned its merchants a long-distance role. Thus the Aegean peoples found themselves in a situation where they could take advantage of the oriental agricultural stock without having to constitute one for themselves: they plundered it when they could, and on a more regular basis procured a share of it in exchange for raw materials (notably wood and metals), coming from as far away as Central and Western Europe. Of course, the Orient continually had to reproduce its stocks; but formally, it had made a move "once and for all," from which the West benefited without having to reproduce it. It follows that the metallurgical artisans and the merchants assumed an entirely different status in the West, since their existence did not directly depend on a
The contradiction between the two themes, "contagion through the ani- mal as pack," and "pact with the anomalous as exceptional being," is pro- gressively fading. It is with good reason that Leach links the two concepts of
the desert gains and grows; and the two can happen simultaneously. But the de facto mixes do not preclude a de jure, or abstract, distinction between the two spaces. That there is such a distinction is what accounts for the fact that the two spaces do not communicate with each other in the same way: it is the de jure distinction that determines the forms assumed by a given de facto mix and the direction or meaning of the mix (is a smooth space cap- tured, enveloped by a striated space, or does a striated space dissolve into a smooth space, allow a smooth space to develop?). This raises a number of simultaneous questions: the simple oppositions between the two spaces; the complex differences; the de facto mixes, and the passages from one to another; the principles of the mixture, which are not at all symmetrical, sometimes causing a passage from the smooth to the striated, sometimes from the striated to the smooth, according to entirely different move- ments. We must therefore envision a certain number of models, which would be like various aspects of the two spaces and the relations between them.
the distinctions that appear in what used to seem full, the holes in what used to be compact; and conversely, where just before we saw end points of clear-cut segments, now there are indistinct fringes, encroachments, overlappings, migrations, acts of segmentation that no longer coincide with the rigid segmentarity. Every- thing now appears supple, with holes in fullness, nebulas in forms, and flut- ter in lines. Everything has the clarity of the microscope. We think we have understood everything, and draw conclusions. We are the new knights; we even have a mission. A microphysics of the migrant has replaced the macrogeometry of the sedentary. But this suppleness and clarity do not only present dangers, they are themselves a danger. First, supple segmen- tarity runs the risk of reproducing in miniature the affections, the affecta- tions, of the rigid: the family is replaced by a community, conjugality by a regime of exchange and migration; worse, micro-Oedipuses crop up, microfascisms lay down the law, the mother feels obliged to titillate her child, the father becomes a mommy. A dark light that falls from no star and emanates such sadness: this shifting segmentarity derives directly from the most rigid, for which it is indirect compensation. The more molar the aggregates become, the more molecular become their elements and the relations between their elements: molecular man for molar humanity. One deterritorializes, massifies, but only in order to knot and annul the mass movements and movements of deterritorialization, to invent all kinds of marginal reterritorializations even worse than the others. But above all, supple segmentarity brings dangers of its own that do not merely reproduce in small scale the dangers of molar segmentarity, which do not derive from them or compensate for them. As we have seen, microfascisms have a spe- cificity of their own that can crystallize into a macro fascism, but may also float along the supple line on their own account and suffuse every little cell. A multitude of black holes may very well not become centralized, and acts instead as viruses adapting to the most varied situations, sinking voids in molecular perceptions and semiotics. Interactions without resonance. Instead of the great paranoid fear, we are trapped in a thousand little mono- manias, self-evident truths, and clarities that gush from every black hole and no longer form a system, but are only rumble and buzz, blinding lights giving any and everybody the mission of self-appointed judge, dispenser of justice, policeman, neighborhood SS man. We have overcome fear, we have sailed from the shores of security, only to enter a system that is no less concentricized, no less organized: the system of petty insecurities that leads everyone to their own black hole in which to turn dangerous, possess- ing a clarity on their situation, role, and mission even more disturbing than the certitudes of the first line.
The Dogon Egg and the Distribution of Intensities
the Earth, the terri- tory and the Earth! With romanticism, the artist abandons the ambition of de jure universality and his or her status as creator: the artist territorializes, enters a territorial assemblage. The seasons are now territorialized. The earth is certainly not the same thing as the territory. The earth is the intense point at the deepest level of the territory or is projected outside it like a
the enemy, an entirely necessary enemy, the furniture we are forever rearranging.
The error we must guard against is to believe that there is a kind of logi- cal order to this string, these crossings or transformations. It is already going too far to postulate an order descending from the animal to the vege- table, then to molecules, to particles. Each multiplicity is symbiotic; its becoming ties together animals, plants, microorganisms, mad particles, a whole galaxy. Nor is there a preformed logical order to these heterogenei- ties, the Wolf-Man's wolves, bees, anuses, little scars. Of course, sorcery always codifies certain transformations of becomings. Take a novel steeped in the traditions of sorcery, Alexandre Dumas's Menem de loups; in a first pact, the man of the fringes gets the Devil to agree to make his wishes come true, with the stipulation that a lock of his hair turn red each time he gets a wish. We are in the hair-multiplicity, hair is the borderline. The man himself takes a position on the wolves' borderline, as leader of the pack. Then when he no longer has a single human hair left, a second pact makes him become-wolf himself; it is an endless becoming since he is only vulnerable one day in the year. We are aware that between the hair-multiplicity and the wolf-multiplicity it is always possible to induce an order of resemblance (red like the fur of a wolf); but the resemblance remains quite secondary (the wolf of the transformation is black, with one white hair). In fact, there is a first multiplicity, of hair, taken up in a becoming-red fur; and a second multiplicity, of wolves, which in turn takes up the becoming-animal of the man. Between the two, there is threshold and fiber, symbiosis of or passage between heterogeneities. That is how we sorcerers operate. Not following a logical order, but following alogical con- sistencies or compatibilities. The reason is simple. It is because no one, not even God, can say in advance whether two borderlines will string together or form a fiber, whether a given multiplicity will or will not cross over into another given multiplicity, or even if given heterogeneous elements will enter symbiosis, will form a consistent, or cofunctioning, multiplicity sus- ceptible to transformation. No one can say where the line of flight will pass: Will it let itself get bogged down and fall back to the Oedipal family animal, a mere poodle? Or will it succumb to another danger, for example, turning into a line of abolition, annihilation, self-destruction, Ahab,Ahab... ?We are all too familiar with the dangers of the line of flight, and with its ambi- guities. The risks are ever-present, but it is always possible to have the good fortune of avoiding them. Case by case, we can tell whether the line is con- sistent, in other words, whether the heterogeneities effectively function in a multiplicity of symbiosis, whether the multiplicities are effectively trans- formed through the becomings of passage. Let us take an example as simple as: x starts practicing piano again. Is it an Oedipal return to childhood? Is it
The face, what a horror. It is naturally a lunar landscape, with its pores, planes, matts, bright colors, whiteness, and holes: there is no need for a close-up to make it inhuman; it is naturally a close-up, and naturally inhuman, a monstrous hood. Necessarily so because it is produced by a machine and in order to meet the requirements of the special apparatus of power that triggers the machine and takes deterritorialization to the abso- lute while keeping it negative. Earlier, when we contrasted the primitive, spiritual, human head with the inhuman face, we were falling victim to a nostalgia for a return or regression. In truth, there are only inhumanities, humans are made exclusively of inhumanities, but very different ones, of very different natures and speeds. Primitive inhumanity, prefacial inhu- manity, has all the polyvocality of a semiotic in which the head is a part of the body, a body that is already deterritorialized relatively and plugged into becomings-spiritual/animal. Beyond the face lies an altogether differ- ent inhumanity: no longer that of the primitive head, but of "probe-heads";
The first and primary itinerant is the artisan. But artisans are neither hunters, farmers, nor animal raisers. Neither are they winnowers or pot- ters, who only secondarily take up craft activity. Rather, artisans are those who follow the matter-flow as pure productivity: therefore in mineral
The four principal flows that torment the representatives of the world economy, or of the axiomatic, are the flow of matter-energy, the flow of population, the flow of food, and the urban flow. The situation seems inex- tricable because the axiomatic never ceases to create all of these problems, while at the same time its axioms, even multiplied, deny it the means of resolving them (for example, the circulation and distribution that would make it possible to feed the world). Even a social democracy adapted to the Third World surely does not undertake to integrate the whole poverty-stricken population into the domestic market; what it does, rather, is to effect the class rupture that will select the integratable elements. And the States of the center deal not only with the Third World, each of them has not only an external Third World, but there are internal Third Worlds that rise up within them and work them from the inside. It could even be said in certain respects that the periphery and the center exchange determinations: a deterritorialization of the center, a decoding of the center in relation to national and territorial aggregates, cause the peripheral formations to become true centers of investment, while the central formations
The important thing is the princi- ple of the simultaneous unity and variety of the stratum: isomorphism of forms but no correspondence; identity of elements or components but no identity of compound substances.
the Jew and the non-Jew, enter into a becoming-Jewish (the same thing happens in Focus).
the last exchangeable blow, or of the last woman to conquer, etc. Thus there is a certain ritualization of violence. War, at least when linked to the war machine, is another regime, because it implies the mobilization and autonomization of a violence directed first and essentially against the State apparatus (the war machine is in this sense the invention of a primary nomadic organization that turns against the State). Crime is something else, because it is a violence of illegality that consists in taking possession of something to which one has no "right," in capturing something one does not have a "right" to capture. But State policing or lawful violence is some- thing else again, because it consists in capturing while simultaneously constituting a right to capture. It is an incorporated, structural violence distinct from every kind of direct violence. The State has often been defined by a "monopoly of violence," but this definition leads back to another definition that describes the State as a "state of Law" (Rechts-staat). State overcoding is precisely this structural violence that defines the law, "police" violence and not the violence of war. There is lawful violence wherever violence contributes to the creation of that which it is used against, or as Marx says, wherever capture contributes to the creation of that which it captures. This is very different from criminal violence. It is also why, in contradistinction to primitive violence, State or lawful violence always seems to presuppose itself, for it preexists its own use: the State can in this way say that violence is "primal," that it is simply a natural phenomenon the responsibility for which does not lie with the State, which uses violence only against the violent, against "criminals"—against primitives, against nomads—in order that peace may reign.
The layers are the strata. They come at least in pairs, one serving as substratum for the other. The surface of stratification is a machinic assemblage distinct from the strata. The assemblage is between two layers, between two strata; on one side it faces the strata (in this direction, the assemblage is an interstratum), but the other side faces something else, the body without organs or plane of consistency (here, it is a metastratum). In effect, the body without organs is itself the plane of consistency, which becomes compact or thickens at the level of the strata.
the magic bird or bird of the opera. He is not brightly colored (as though there were an inhibition). But his song, his refrain, can be heard from a great distance (is this a compensation, or on the contrary the prime factor?). He sings perched on his singing stick, a vine or branch located just above the display ground he has prepared by marking it with cut leaves turned upside down to contrast with the color of the earth. As he sings, he uncovers the yellow root of certain feathers under- neath his beak: he makes himself visible at the same time as sonorous. His song forms a varied and complex motif interweaving his own notes and those of other birds that he imitates in the intervals.
The major and minor mode are two different treatments of language, one of which consists in extracting constants from it, the other in placing it in continuous variation. The order-word is the variable of enunciation that effectuates the condition of possibility of language and defines the usage of its elements according to one of the two treatments; we must therefore return to it as the only "metalanguage" capable of accounting for this dou- ble direction, this double treatment of variables. The problem of the func- tions of language is in general poorly formulated because this order-word
the man also becomes- or can become-woman. It is, of course, indispensa- ble for women to conduct a molar politics, with a view to winning back their own organism, their own history, their own subjectivity: "we as women .. ." makes its appearance as a subject of enunciation. But it is dan- gerous to confine oneself to such a subject, which does not function with- out drying up a spring or stopping a flow. The song of life is often intoned by the driest of women, moved by ressentiment, the will to power and cold mothering. Just as a dessicated child makes a much better child, there being no childhood flow emanating from it any longer. It is no more ade- quate to say that each sex contains the other and must develop the opposite pole in itself. Bisexuality is no better a concept than the separateness of the sexes. It is as deplorable to miniaturize, internalize the binary machine as it is to exacerbate it; it does not extricate us from it. It is thus necessary to conceive of a molecular women's politics that slips into molar confronta- tions, and passes under or through them.
The Mathematical Model. It was a decisive event when the mathematician Riemann uprooted the multiple from its predicate state and made it a
The matters of expression themselves must present characteristics mak- ing this taking on of consistency possible. We have seen that they have an aptitude to enter into internal relations forming motifs and counterpoints: the territorializing marks become territorial motifs or counterpoints, the signatures and placards constitute a "style." These are the elements of a discrete or fuzzy aggregate; but they become consolidated, take on consis- tency. To this extent, they have effects, such as reorganizing functions and gathering forces. To get a better grasp on the mechanism of this aptitude, we may lay down certain conditions of homogeneity, beginning with marks
The method also applies to Man-child, man-woman relations, etc. If we note, for example, that the warrior has a certain astonishing relation to the young woman, we refrain from establishing an imaginary series tying the two together; instead, we look for a term effecting an equivalence of rela- tions. Thus Vernant can say that marriage is to the woman what war is to the man. The result is a homology between the virgin who refuses marriage and the warrior who disguises himself as a woman.
The most recent figure of the priest is the psychoanalyst, with his or her three principles: Pleasure, Death, and Reality. Doubtless, psychoanalysis demonstrated that desire is not subordinated to procreation, or even to
The move from the body-head system to the face system has nothing to do with an evolution or genetic stages. Nor with phenomenological posi- tions. Nor with integrations of part-objects, or structural or structuring sys- tems. Nor can there be any appeal to a preexisting subject, or one brought into existence, except by this machine specific to faciality. In the literature of the face, Sartre's text on the look and Lacan's on the mirror make the error of appealing to a form of subjectivity or humanity reflected in a phenomenological field or split in a structural field. The gaze is but secon- dary in relation to thegazeless eyes, to the black hole of faciality. The mirror is but secondary in relation to the white wall of faciality. Neither will we speak of a genetic axis, or the integration of part-objects. Any approach based on stages in ontogenesis is arbitrary: it is thought that what is fastest is primary, or even serves as a foundation or springboard for what comes next. An approach based on part-objects is even worse; it is the approach of a demented experimenter who flays, slices, and anatomizes everything in sight, and then proceeds to sew things randomly back together again. You can make any list of part-objects you want: hand, breast, mouth, eyes... It's still Frankenstein. What we need to consider is not fundamentally organs without bodies, or the fragmented body; it is the body without organs, animated by various intensive movements that determine the
The Musical Model. Pierre Boulez was the first to develop a set of simple oppositions and complex differences, as well as reciprocal nonsymmetrical correlations, between smooth and striated space. He created these con- cepts and words in the field of music, defining them on several levels pre- cisely in order to account for the abstract distinction at the same time as the concrete mixes. In the simplest terms, Boulez says that in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space-time one counts in order to occupy. He makes palpable or perceptible the difference between nonmetric and metric multiplicities, directional and dimensional spaces. He renders them sonorous or musical. Undoubtedly, his personal work is composed of these relations, created or recreated musically.
The never-ending debate between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: both agree at least in denouncing resemblances, or imaginary, sensible analogies, but in Cuvier, scientific definition concerns the relations between organs, and between organs and functions. Cuvier thus takes anal- ogy to the scientific stage, making it an analogy of proportionality. The unity of the plane, according to him, can only be a unity of analogy, there- fore a transcendent unity that cannot be realized without fragmenting into distinct branches, according to irreducible, uncrossable, heterogeneous compositions. Baer would later add: according to noncommunicating types of development and differentiation. The plane is a hidden plan(e) of organization, a structure or genesis. Geoffroy has an entirely different
the notion of behav- ior proves inadequate, too linear,
The opposite objection is more complex: it is that speed does indeed seem to be as much a part of the tool as of the weapon, and is no way specific to the war machine. The history of the motor is not only military. But per- haps there is too much of a tendency to think in terms of quantities of movement, instead of seeking qualitative models. The two ideal models of the motor are those of work and free action. Work is a motor cause that meets resistances, operates upon the exterior, is consumed and spent in its effect, and must be renewed from one moment to the next. Free action is also a motor cause, but one that has no resistance to overcome, operates only upon the mobile body itself, is not consumed in its effect, and contin- ues from one moment to the next. Whatever its measure or degree, speed is relative in the first case, absolute in the second (the idea of a perpetuum mobile). In work, what counts is the point of application of a resultant force exerted by the weight of a body considered as "one" (gravity), and the rela- tive displacement of this point of application. In free action, what counts is the way in which the elements of the body escape gravitation to occupy absolutely a nonpunctuated space. Weapons and weapon handling seem to be linked to a free-action model, and tools to a work model. Linear dis- placement, from one point to another, constitutes the relative movement of the tool, but it is the vortical occupation of a space that constitutes the absolute movement of the weapon. It is as though the weapon were moving, self-propelling, while the tool is moved. This link between tools and work remains obscured unless work receives the motor, or real, definition we have just given it. The tool does not define work; just the opposite. The tool presupposes work. It must be added that weapons, also, obviously imply a renewal of the cause, an expending or even disappearance in the effect, the encountering of external resistances, a displacement of force, etc. It would be futile to credit weapons with a magical power in contrast to the con- straints of tools: weapons and tools are subject to the same laws, which define, precisely, their common sphere. But the principle behind all tech- nology is to demonstrate that a technical element remains abstract,
The Order of the Ark of the Israelites
The Order-word Assemblage
The other mistake (which is combined with the first as needed) is to believe in the adequacy of the form of expression as a linguistic system. This system may be conceived as a signifying phonological structure, or as a deep syntactical structure. In either case, it is credited with engendering semantics, therefore of fulfilling expression, whereas contents are rele- gated to the arbitrariness of a simple "reference" and pragmatics to the exteriority of nonlinguistic factors. What all of these undertakings have in common is to erect an abstract machine of language, but as a synchronic set of constants. We will not object that the machine thus conceived is too abstract. On the contrary, it is not abstract enough, it remains "linear." It remains on an intermediate level of abstraction allowing it to consider lin- guistic factors in themselves, independently of nonlinguistic factors, and
The Physical Model. The various models confirm a certain idea of stria-tion: two series of parallels that intersect perpendicularly, some of which, the verticals, are more in the role of fixed elements or constants, whereas the others, the horizontals, are more in the role of variables. This is roughly the case for the warp and the woof, harmony and melody, longitude and latitude. The more regular the intersection, the tighter the striation, the more homogeneous the space tends to become; it is for this reason that from the beginning homogeneity did not seem to us to be a characteristic of smooth space, but on the contrary, the extreme result of striation, or the limit-form of a space striated everywhere and in all directions. If the smooth and the homogeneous seem to communicate, it is only because when the striated attains its ideal of perfect homogeneity, it is apt to reimpart smooth space, by a movement that superposes itself upon that of the homogeneous but remains entirely different from it. In each model, the smooth actually seemed to pertain to a fundamental heterogeneity: felt or patchwork rather than weaving, rhythmic values rather than harmony-melody, Riemannian space rather than Euclidean space—a continuous variation that exceeds any distribution of constants and variables, the freeing of a line that does not pass between two points, the formation of a plane that does not proceed by parallel and perpendicular lines.
The plane of consistency or of composition (planomenon) is opposed
The point is that a rhizome or multiplicity never allows itself to be overcoded,
The politics of becomings-animal remains, of course, extremely ambig- uous. For societies, even primitive societies, have always appropriated
The preferred method would be severely restrictive, as opposed to the expansive method that places signs on all strata or signifier in all signs (although at the limit it may forgo signs entirely). First, there exist forms of expression without signs (for example, the genetic code has nothing to do with a language). It is only under certain conditions that strata can be said to include signs; signs cannot be equated with language in general but are defined by regimes of statements that are so many real usages or functions of language. Then why retain the word sign for these regimes, which forma- lize an expression without designating or signifying the simultaneous con- tents, which are formalized in a different way? Signs are not signs of a thing; they are signs of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, they mark a certain threshold crossed in the course of these movements, and it is for
The principle of evolution is internal, whatever the external factors that contribute to it. The archaic State does not overcode without also freeing a large quantity of decoded flows that escape from it. Let us recall that "decod- ing" does not signify the state of a flow whose code is understood (compris) (deciphered, translatable, assimilable), but, in a more radical sense, the
the problem lies else- where. The numerous "convergence" theories that attempt to demonstrate a certain homogenization of the States of the East and West are not very convincing. Even isomorphism is not applicable: there is a real heteromorphy, not only because the mode of production is not capitalist, but also because the relation of production is not Capital (rather, it is the Plan). If the socialist States are nevertheless still models of realization for
The problem of consistency concerns the manner in which the compo- nents of a territorial assemblage hold together. But it also concerns the manner in which different assemblages hold together, with components of passage and relay. It may even be the case that consistency finds the totality of its conditions only on a properly cosmic plane, where all the disparate and heterogeneous elements are convoked. However, from the moment heterogeneities hold together in an assemblage or interassemblages a prob- lem of consistency is posed, in terms of coexistence or succession, and both simultaneously. Even in a territorial assemblage, it may be the most deter- ritorialized component, the deterritorializing vector, in other words, the refrain, that assures the consistency of the territory. If we ask the general question, "What holds things together?", the clearest, easiest answer seems to be provided by a formalizing, linear, hierarchized, centralized arborescent model. Take Tinbergen's schema, which presents a coded link- age of spatiotemporal forms in the central nervous system: a higher func- tional center goes automatically into operation and releases an appetitive behavior in search of specific stimuli (the migrational center); through the intermediary of the stimulus, a second center that had been inhibited up to this point is freed and releases a new appetitive behavior (the territorial center); then other subordinate centers are activated, centers of fighting,
The problem of music is different, if it is true that its problem is the refrain. Deterritorializing the refrain, inventing lines of deterritorializa- tion for the refrain, implies procedures and constructions that have noth- ing to do with those of painting (outside of vague analogies of the sort painters have often tried to establish). Again, it is not certain whether we can draw a dividing line between animals and human beings: Are there not, as Messiaen believes, musician birds and nonmusician birds? Is the bird's
The problem of the nation is aggravated in the two extreme cases of a land with- out a people and a people without a land.
The psychoanalytic cogito: the psychoanalyst presents him- or herself as an ideal point of subjectification that brings the patient to abandon old, so-called neurotic, points. The patient is partially a subject of enunciation in all he or she says to the psychoanalyst, and under the artificial mental conditions of the session: the patient is therefore called the "analysand."
The question is therefore less the realization of war than the appropria- tion of the war machine. It is at the same time that the State apparatus appropriates the war machine, subordinates it to its "political" aims, and gives it war as its direct object. And it is one and the same historical ten-
The question of war, in turn, is pushed further back and is subordinated to the relations between the war machine and the State apparatus. States were not the first to make war: war, of course, is not a phenomenon one finds in the universality of Nature, as nonspecific violence. But war is not the object of States, quite the contrary. The most archaic States do not even seem to have had a war machine, and their domination, as we will see, was
The question we must ask is what on a given stratum varies and what does not. What accounts for the unity and diversity of a stratum? Matter, the pure matter of the plane of consistency (or inconsistency) lies outside the strata. The molecular materials borrowed from
The radicle-system, or fascicular root, is the second figure of the book, to
The reason is simple. The face is not a universal. It is not even that of the white man; it is White Man himself, with his broad white cheeks and the black hole of his eyes. The face is Christ. The face is the typical European, what Ezra Pound called the average sensual man, in short, the ordinary everyday Erotomaniac (nineteenth-century psychiatrists were right to say that erotomania, unlike nymphomania, often remains pure and chaste; this is because it operates through the face and facialization). Not a univer- sal, but fades totius universi. Jesus Christ superstar: he invented the facialization of the entire body and spread it everywhere (the Passion of Joan of Arc, in close-up). Thus the face is by nature an entirely specific idea, which did not preclude its acquiring and exercising the most general of functions: the function of biuni vocalization, or binarization. It has two aspects: the abstract machine of faciality, insofar as it is composed by a
the relation of the proper name as an intensity to the multiplicity it instan- taneously apprehends. For Freud, when the thing splinters and loses its identity, the word is still there to restore that identity or invent a new one. Freud counted on the word to reestablish a unity no longer found in things. Are we not witnessing the first stirrings of a subsequent adventure, that of the Signifier, the devious despotic agency that substitutes itself for asignifying proper names and replaces multiplicities with the dismal unity of an object declared lost?
The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing. The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies without organs onto a plane of consistency. It is itself a part of the rhizome. The map is open and connectable in all of its dimen- sions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation. Per- haps one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways; in this sense, the burrow is an animal rhi- zome, and sometimes maintains a clear distinction between the line of flight as passageway and storage or living strata (cf. the muskrat). A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back "to the same." The map has to do with performance, whereas the trac-
the rigid specialist, is pitted against Geoffroy, always ready to switch specialities. Cuvier hates Geoffroy, he can't stomach Geoffroy's lighthearted formulas, his humor (yes, Hens do indeed have teeth, the Lobster has skin on its bones, etc.). Cuvier is a man of Power and Terrain, and he won't let Geoffroy forget it; Geoffroy, on the other hand, prefigures the nomadic man of speed. Cuvier reflects a Euclidean space, whereas Geoffroy thinks topologically. Today let us invoke the folds of the cortex with all their paradoxes. Strata are topological, and Geoffroy is a great artist of the fold, a formidable artist; as such, he already has a presentiment of a certain kind of animal rhizome with aberrant paths of communication—Monsters. Cuvier reacts in terms of discontinuous photographs, and casts of fossils. But we're a little lost, because distinctions have proliferated in all directions.
The role of the refrain has often been emphasized: it is territorial, a terri- torial assemblage. Bird songs: the bird sings to mark its territory. The Greek modes and Hindu rhythms are themselves territorial, provincial, regional. The refrain may assume other functions, amorous, professional or social, liturgical or cosmic: it always carries earth with it; it has a land (sometimes a spiritual land) as its concomitant; it has an essential relation to a Natal, a Native. A musical "nome" is a little tune, a melodic formula that seeks recognition and remains the bedrock or ground of polyphony {cantus firmus). The nomos as customary, unwritten law is inseparable from a distribution of space, a distribution in space. By that token, it is ethos, but the ethos is also the Abode. Sometimes one goes from chaos to the threshold of a territorial assemblage: directional components, infra-assemblage. Sometimes one organizes the assemblage: dimensional components, intra-assemblage. Sometimes one leaves the territorial assemblage for other assemblages, or for somewhere else entirely: interassem-blage, components of passage or even escape. And all three at once. Forces of chaos, terrestrial forces, cosmic forces: all of these confront each other and converge in the territorial refrain.
the root the image of the world-tree. This is the classical book, as noble, signifying,
The second articulation establishes functional, compact, stable structures (forms),
The second aspect, complementary but very different, consists in the possibility of transforming one abstract or pure semiotic into another, by virtue of the translatability ensuing from overcoding as the special charac- teristic of language. This time, it is no longer a question of concrete mixed semiotics but of transformations of one abstract semiotic into another (even though that transformation is not itself abstract, in other words, effectively takes place without being performed by a "translator" in the role of pure knower). All transformations taking a given semiotic into the presignifying regime may be called analogical transformations; those that take it into the signifying regime are symbolic; into the countersignifying regime, polemical or strategic; into the postsignifying regime, conscious- ness-related or mimetic; finally, transformations that blow apart semiotics systems or regimes of signs on the plane of consistency of a positive abso- lute deterritorialization are called diagrammatic. A transformation is not the same thing as a statement in a pure semiotic; nor even an ambiguous statement requiring a whole pragmatic analysis to determine the semiotic it belongs to; nor a statement belonging to a mixed semiotic (although the transformation may have that effect). A transformational statement marks the way in which a semiotic translates for its own purposes a statement originating elsewhere, and in so doing diverts it, leaving untransformable residues and actively resisting the inverse transformation. Furthermore, transformations are not limited to the ones we just listed. It is always through transformation that a new semiotic is created in its own right. Translations can be creative. New pure regimes of signs are formed through transformation and translation. Again, there is no general semiology but rather a transsemiotic.
The second danger, Clarity, seems less obvious.
The second kind is very different, molecular and of the "rhizome" type. The diagonal frees itself, breaks or twists. The line no longer forms a contour, and instead passes between things, between points. It
The second problem concerns the respective importance of the lines. You can begin with the rigid segmentarity, it's the easiest, it's pregiven; and then you can look at how and to what extent it is crosscut by a supple segmentarity, a kind of rhizome surrounding its roots. Then you can look at how the line of flight enters in. And alliances and battles. But it is also possible to begin with the line of flight: perhaps this is the primary line,
THE SMOOTH AND THE STRIATED D
The State indeed proceeds otherwise: it is a phenomenon of intracon-sistency. It makes points resonate together, points that are not necessarily already town-poles but very diverse points of order, geographic, ethnic, linguistic, moral, economic, technological particularities. It makes the town resonate with the countryside. It operates by stratification; in other words, it forms a vertical, hierarchized aggregate that spans the horizontal lines in a dimension of depth. In retaining given elements, it necessarily cuts off their relations with other elements, which become exterior, it inhibits, slows down, or controls those relations; if the State has a circuit of its own, it is an internal circuit dependent primarily upon resonance, it is a zone of recurrence that isolates itself from the remainder of the network, even if in order to do so it must exert even stricter controls over its relations with that remainder. The question is not to find out whether what is retained is natural or artificial (boundaries), because in any event there is deterntorialization. But in this case deterritorialization is a result of the territory itself being taken as an object, as a material to stratify, to make resonate. Thus the central power of the State is hierarchical, and constitutes a civil-service sector; the center is not in the middle {au milieu), but on top, because the only way it can recombine what it isolates is through subordination. Of course, there is a multiplicity of States no less than of towns, but it is not the same type of multiplicity: there are as many States as there are vertical cross sections in a dimension of depth, each separated from the others, whereas the town is inseparable from the horizontal network of towns. Each State is a global (not local) integration, a redundancy of resonance (not of frequency), an operation of the stratification of the territory (not of the polarization of the milieu).
The story of the quilt is particularly interesting in this connection. A quilt comprises two layers of fabric stitched together, often with a filler in between. Thus it is possible for there to be no top or bottom. If we follow the history of the quilt over a short migration sequence (the settlers who left Europe for the New World), we see that there is a shift from a formula dominated by embroidery (so-called "plain" quilts) to a patchwork for- mula ("applique quilts," and above all "pieced quilts"). The first settlers of the seventeenth century brought with them plain quilts, embroidered and striated spaces of extreme beauty. But toward the end of the century patchwork technique was developed more and more, at first due to the scarcity of textiles (leftover fabric, pieces salvaged from used clothes, remnants taken from the "scrap bag"), and later due to the popularity of Indian chintz. It is as though a smooth space emanated, sprang from a striated space, but not without a correlation between the two, a recapitu- lation of one in the other, a furtherance of one through the other. Yet the complex difference persists. Patchwork, in conformity with migration, whose degree of affinity with nomadism it shares, is not only named after trajectories, but "represents" trajectories, becomes inseparable from speed or movement in an open space.
The strata are extremely mobile. One stratum is always capable of serving as the substratum of another, or of colliding with another, independently of any evolutionary order. Above all, be-ween two strata or between two stratic divisions, there are inter-stratic phenomena: transcodings and passages
The strata are phenomena of thickening on the Body of the earth,  simultaneously molecular and molar: accumulations, coagulations, sedimentations, foldings. They are Belts, Pincers, or Articulations. Summarily and traditionally, we distinguish three major strata: physicochemical, organic, and
The subjectifications, conjunctions, and appropriations do not prevent the decoded flows from continuing to flow, and from ceaselessly engender- ing new flows that escape (we saw this, for example, at the level of a micropolitics of the Middle Ages). This is where there is an ambiguity in these apparatuses: they can only function with decoded flows, and yet they do not let them stream together; they perform topical conjunctions that stand as so many knots or recodings. This accounts for the historians' impression that capitalism "could have" developed beginning at a certain moment, in China, in Rome, in Byzantium, in the Middle Ages, that the conditions for it existed but were not effectuated or even capable of being effectuated. The situation is that the pressure of the flows draws capitalism in negative outline, but for it to be realized there must be a whole integral of decoded flows, a whole generalized conjunction that overspills and over- turns the preceding apparatuses. And in fact when Marx sets about defin- ing capitalism, he begins by invoking the advent of a single unqualified and global Subjectivity, which capitalizes all of the processes of subjectifica-tion, "all activities without distinction": "productive activity in general," "the sole subjective essence of wealth . . ." And this single Subject now expresses itself in an Object in general, no longer in this or that qualitative state: "Along with the abstract universality of wealth-creating activity we have now the universality of the object defined as wealth, viz. the product in general, or labor in general, but as past, materialized labor."
the substrata may be the same throughout a stratum,
The system of the strata thus has nothing to do with signifier and signi- fied, base and superstructure, mind and matter. All of these are ways of reducing the strata to a single stratum, or of closing the system in on itself
The Technological Model. A fabric presents in principle a certain number of characteristics that permit us to define it as a striated space. First, it is constituted by two kinds of parallel elements; in the simplest case, there are vertical and horizontal elements, and the two intertwine, intersect perpen- dicularly. Second, the two kinds of elements have different functions; one is fixed, the other mobile, passing above and beneath the fixed. Leroi-Gourhan has analyzed this particular figure of "supple solids" in basketry and weaving: stake and thread, warp and woof.' Third, a striated space of this kind is necessarily delimited, closed on at least one side: the fabric can be infinite in length but not in width, which is determined by the frame of the warp; the necessity of a back and forth motion implies a closed space (circular or cylindrical figures are themselves closed). Finally, a space of this kind seems necessarily to have a top and a bottom; even when the warp yarn and woof yarn are exactly the same in nature, number, and density, weaving reconstitutes a bottom by placing the knots on one side. Was it not these characteristics that enabled Plato to use the model of weaving as the paradigm for "royal science," in other words, the art of governing people or operating the State apparatus?
The territorial assemblage is inseparable from lines or coefficients of deterritorialization, passages, and relays toward other assemblages. There have been many studies on the influence of artificial conditions on bird song, but the results vary both by species and according to the kind and timing of the artifice. Many birds are receptive to the songs of other spe- cies, if they are exposed to them during the critical period, and will repro- duce the alien songs later on. The chaffinch, however, seems much more devoted to its own matters of expression and retains an innate sense of its own tonal quality even if exposed to synthetic sounds. The outcome also depends on whether the birds are isolated before or after the critical period. In the first case, chaffinches develop a nearly normal song; in the second, the subjects in the isolated group (who cannot hear each other) develop an abnormal, nonspecies-specific song that is nevertheless common to the group (see Thorpe). In any event, it is necessary to consider the effects of deterritorialization or denatalization on a given species at a given moment. Whenever a territorial assemblage is taken up by a movement that deterritorializes it (whether under so-called natural or artificial condi- tions), we say that a machine is released. That in fact is the distinction we would like to propose between machine and assemblage: a machine is like a set of cutting edges that insert themselves into the assemblage undergoing deterritorialization, and draw variations and mutations of it. For there are no mechanical effects; effects are always machinic, in other words, depend on a machine that is plugged into an assemblage and has been freed through deterritorialization. What we call machinic statements are machine effects that define consistency or enter matters of expression. Effects of this kind can be very diverse but are never symbolic or imagi- nary; they always have a real value of passage or relay.
The territory is not primary in relation to the qualitative mark; it is the mark that makes the territory. Functions in a territory are not primary; they presuppose a territory-producing expressiveness. In this sense, the territory, and the functions performed within it, are products of territorialization. Territorialization is an act of rhythm that has become expressive, or of milieu components that have become qualitative. The marking of a territory is dimensional, but it is not a meter, it is a rhythm. It retains the most general characteristic of rhythm, which is to be inscribed on a different plane than that of its actions. But now the distinction between the two planes is between territorializing expressions and territorialized functions. That is why we cannot accept a thesis like Lorenz's, which tends to make aggressiveness the basis of the territory: the territory would then be the product of the phylogenetic evolution of an
The tetravalence of the assemblage. Taking the feudal assemblage as an example, we would have to consider the interminglings of bodies defining feudalism: the body of the earth and the social body; the body of the over- lord, vassal, and serf; the body of the knight and the horse and their new relation to the stirrup; the weapons and tools assuring a symbiosis of bodies—a whole machinic assemblage. We would also have to consider statements, expressions, the juridical regime of heraldry, all of the incorpo- real transformations, in particular, oaths and their variables (the oath of obedience, but also the oath of love, etc.): the collective assemblage of enunciation. On the other axis, we would have to consider the feudal territorialities and reterritorializations, and at the same time the line of deterritorialization that carries away both the knight and his mount, state- ments and acts. We would have to consider how all this combines in the Crusades.
The threshold comes "after" the limit, "after" the last receivable objects: it marks the moment when the apparent exchange is no longer of interest. We believe that it is precisely at this moment that stockpiling begins; be- forehand, there may be exchange granaries, granaries specifically for exchange purposes, but there is no stock in the strict sense. Exchange does not assume a preexistent stock, it assumes only a certain "elasticity." Stock- piling begins only once exchange has lost its interest, its desirability for both parties. Additionally, conditions must exist giving stockpiling an interest in its own right, a desirability of its own (otherwise, the objects would be destroyed or depleted rather than stockpiled: depletion is the means by which primitive groups ward off the stock and maintain their assemblage). The stock depends on a new type of assemblage. The expres- sions "after," "new," "to be superseded" are doubtless very ambiguous. The threshold is in fact already there, but outside the limit, which is satisfied to place the threshold at a distance, keep it at a distance. The problem is to know what this other assemblage is that gives the stock an actual interest, a desirability. The stock seems to us to have a necessary correlate: either the coexistence of simultaneously exploited territories, or a succession of exploi- tations on one and the same territory. It is at this point that the territories form a Land, are superseded by a Land. This is the assemblage that neces- sarily includes stockpiling, and which constitutes in the first case an exten- sive system of cultivation, in the second case an intensive system of cultivation (following Jane Jacobs's paradigm). The way in which the stock-threshold differs from the exchange-limit is now clear: primitive assemblages of hunter-gatherers have an operation period defined by the exploitation of a territory; the law is one of temporal succession because the assemblage perseveres only by switching territories at the conclusion of each operation period (itinerancy, itineration); and within each operation period there is a repetition or temporal series that tends toward the last object as an "index," as the marginal or limit-object of the territory (this iteration will govern the apparent exchange). On the other hand, in the other assemblage, in the stock assemblage, the law is one of spatial coexis- tence and concerns the simultaneous exploitation of different territories; or, when the exploitation is successive, the succession of operation periods bears on one and the same territory; and in the framework of each opera- tion period or exploitation the force of serial iteration is superseded by a power of symmetry, reflection, and global comparison. In solely descrip- tive terms, we therefore distinguish between serial, itinerant, or territorial assemblages (which operate by codes) and sedentary, global, or Land assemblages (which operate by overcoding).
The town is the correlate of the road. The town exists only as a function of circulation, and of circuits; it is a remarkable point on the circuits that create it, and which it creates. It is defined by entries and exits; something must enter it and exit from it. It imposes a frequency. It effects a polariza- tion of matter, inert, living or human; it causes the phylum, the flow, to pass through specific places, along horizontal lines. It is a phenomenon of transconsistency, a network, because it is fundamentally in contact with other towns. It represents a threshold of deterritorialization, because what- ever the material involved, it must be deterritorialized enough to enter the network, to submit to the polarization, to follow the circuit of urban and road recoding. The maximum deterritorialization appears in the tendency of maritime and commercial towns to separate off from the backcountry, from the countryside (Athens, Carthage, Venice). The commercial charac- ter of the town has often been emphasized, but the commerce in question is also spiritual, as in a network of monasteries or temple-cities. Towns are circuit-points of every kind, which enter into counterpoint along horizon- tal lines; they effect a complete but local, town-by-town, integration. Each one constitutes a central power, but it is a power of polarization or of the middle {milieu), of forced coordination. That is why this kind of power has egalitarian pretensions, regardless of the form it takes: tyrannical, demo- cratic, oligarchic, aristocratic. Town power invents the idea of the magis-
the two articulations is not between forms and substances but between content and expression, expression having just as much substance as content and content just as much form as expression. The double articulation sometimes coincides with the molecular and the molar, and sometimes not; this is because con- tent and expression are sometimes divided along those lines and some- times along different lines. There is never correspondence or conformity between content and expression, only isomorphism with reciprocal pre- supposition. The distinction between content and expression is always real, in various ways, but it cannot be said that the terms preexist their dou- ble articulation. It is the double articulation that distributes them accord- ing to the line it draws in each stratum; it is what constitutes their real distinction. (On the other hand, there is no real distinction between form and substance, only a mental or modal distinction: since substances are nothing other than formed matters, formless substances are inconceivable, although it is possible in certain instances to conceive of substanceless forms.)
the two states of the abstract machine always coexist as two different states of intensities.
The two together exhaust the field of the function." They are the principal elements of a State apparatus that proceeds by a One-Two, distributes binary distinctions, and forms a milieu of interiority. It is a double articulation that makes the State appara- tus into a stratum.
the type desert, steppe, or sea are not without people; they are not depopulated but rather are populated by multiplicities of this second kind (mathematics and music have gone quite far in the elaboration of this theory of multiplicities).
The very general primacy of the collective and machinic assemblage over the technical element applies generally, for tools as for weapons. Weapons and tools are consequences, nothing but consequences. It has often been remarked that a weapon is nothing outside of the combat organ- ization it is bound up with. For example, "hoplite" weapons existed only by
The wolves designate an intensity, a band of intensity, a threshold of intensity on the Wolf-Man's body without organs.
their uncertain relations, in order to explain the diversity within a stratum—degrees of development or perfection and types of forms. They now undergo a pro- found transformation. There is a double tendency for types of forms to be
Them that plants them is soon forgotten But old man river he just keeps rollin' along
them. D is absolute when it conforms to the first case and brings about the creation of a new earth, in other words, when it connects lines of flight, raises them to the power of an abstract vital line, or draws a plane of consistency. Now what complicates everything is that this absolute D necessarily proceeds by way of relative D, pre- cisely because it is not transcendent. Conversely, relative or negative D itself requires an absolute for its operation: it makes the absolute something "encompassing," something totalizing that overcodes the earth and then conjugates lines of flight in order to stop them, destroy them—rather than connecting them in order to create (it is in this sense that we have opposed conjunction to connection, although we have often treated them as synonyms from a very general point of view). Thus there is a limitative absolute already at work in properly
Then there is an altogether different plane, or an altogether different conception of the plane. Here, there are no longer any forms or develop- ments of forms; nor are there subjects or the formation of subjects. There is no structure, any more than there is genesis. There are only relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules and particles of all kinds. There are only haecceities, affects, subjectless indi- viduations that constitute collective assemblages. Nothing develops, but things arrive late or early, and form this or that assemblage depending on their compositions of speed. Nothing subjectifies, but haecceities form according to compositions of nonsubjectified powers or affects. We call this plane, which knows only longitudes and latitudes, speeds and haec- ceities, the plane of consistency or composition (as opposed to the plan(e) of organization or development). It is necessarily a plane of immanence and univocality. We therefore call it the plane of Nature, although nature has nothing to do with it, since on this plane there is no distinction between the natural and the artificial. However many dimensions it may have, it never has a supplementary dimension to that which transpires upon it. That alone makes it natural and immanent. The same goes for the principle of contradiction: this plane could also be called the plane of noncontradiction. The plane of consistency could be called the plane of nonconsistency. It is a geometrical plane, no longer tied to a mental design
Then there was the Reformation: the extraordinary figure of Luther, as traitor to all things and all people; his personal relation with the Devil resulting in betrayal, through good deeds as well as bad.
Then there was the system of the strata. On the intensive continuum, the strata fashion forms and form matters into substances. In combined emis- sions, they make the distinction between expressions and contents, units of expression and units of content, for example, signs and particles. In con- junctions, they separate flows, assigning them relative movements and diverse territorialities, relative deterritorializations and complementary reterritorializations. Thus the strata set up everywhere double articula- tions animated by movements: forms and substances of content and forms and substances of expression constituting segmentary multiplicities with relations that are determinable in every case. Such are the strata. Each stra- tum is a double articulation of content and expression, both of which are really distinct and in a state of reciprocal presupposition. Content and expression intermingle, and it is two-headed machinic assemblages that place their segments in relation. What varies from stratum to stratum is the nature of the real distinction between content and expression, the nature of the substances as formed matters, and the nature of the relative move- ments. We may make a summary distinction between three major types of real distinction: the real-formal distinction between orders of magnitude, with the establishment of a resonance of expression (induction); the real-real distinction between different subjects, with the establishment of a linearity of expression (transduction); and the real-essential distinction between different attributes or categories, with the establishment of a superlinearity of expression (translation).
there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories;
There are many regimes of signs. Our own list is arbitrarily limited. There is no reason to identify a regime or a semiotic system with a people or historical moment. There is such mixture within the same period or the same people that we can say no more than that a given people, language, or period assures the relative dominance of a certain regime. Perhaps all semiotics are mixed and not only combine with various forms of content but also combine different regimes of signs. Presignifying elements are always active in the signifying regime; countersignifying elements are always present and at work within it; and postsignifying elements are already there. Even that is to mark too much temporality. The semiotics and their mixtures may appear in a history of confrontation and inter- mingling of peoples, but also in languages in which there are several com- peting functions, or in a psychiatric hospital in which different forms of insanity coexist among the patients or even combine in a single patient; or in an ordinary conversation in which people are speaking the same tongue but different languages (all of a sudden a fragment of an unex- pected semiotic surfaces). We are not suggesting an evolutionism, we are not even doing history. Semiotic systems depend on assemblages, and it is the assemblages that determine that a given people, period, or language, and even a given style, fashion, pathology, or minuscule event in a limited situation, can assure the predominance of one semiotic or another. We are trying to make maps of regimes of signs: we can turn them around or retain selected coordinates or dimensions, and depending on the case we will be dealing with a social formation, a pathological delusion (d'elire), a historical event, etc. We will see this on another occasion when we deal with a dated social system, "courtly love," and then switch to a private enterprise called "masochism." We can also combine maps or separate them. To make the distinction between two types of semiotics (for exam- ple, the postsignifying regime and the signifying regime), we must con- sider very diverse domains simultaneously.
There are no individual statements, only statement-producing ma-chinic assemblages. We say that the assemblage is fundamentally libidinal and unconscious. It is the unconscious in person. For the moment, we will note that assemblages have elements (or multiplicities) of several kinds: human, social, and technical machines, organized molar machines; molecular machines with their particles of becoming-inhuman; Oedipal apparatuses (yes, of course there are Oedipal statements, many of them); and counter-Oedipal apparatuses, variable in aspect and functioning. We will go into it later. We can no longer even speak of distinct machines, only of types of interpenetrating multiplicities that at any given moment form a single machinic assemblage, the faceless figure of the libido. Each of us is caught up in an assemblage of this kind, and we reproduce its statements when we think we are speaking in our own name; or rather we speak in our own name when we produce its statement. And what bizarre statements they are; truly, the talk of lunatics. We mentioned Kafka, but we could just
There are not, therefore, two kinds of languages but two possible treat- ments of the same language. Either the variables are treated in such a way as to extract from them constants and constant relations or in such a way as to place them in continuous variation. We were wrong to give the impres- sion at times that constants existed alongside variables, linguistic con- stants alongside variables of enunciation: that was only for convenience of presentation. For it is obvious that the constants are drawn from the varia- bles themselves; universals in linguistics have no more existence in them- selves than they do in economics and are always concluded from a universalization or a rendering-uniform involving variables. Constant is not opposed to variable; it is a treatment of the variable opposed to the other kind of treatment, or continuous variation. So-called obligatory rules cor- respond to the first kind of treatment, whereas optional rules concern the construction of a continuum of variation. Moreover, there are a certain number of categories or distinctions that cannot be invoked, that are inap- plicable and useless as a basis for objections because they presuppose the first treatment and are entirely subordinated to the quest for constants: for example, language as opposed to speech; synchrony as opposed to diachrony; competence as opposed to performance; distinctive features as opposed to nondistinctive (or secondarily distinctive) features. For nondistinctive features, whether prosodic, stylistic, or pragmatic, are not only omnipresent variables, in contrast to the presence or absence of a con- stant; they are not only superlinear and "suprasegmental" elements, in contrast to linear segmental elements; their very characteristics give them the power to place all the elements of language in a state of continuous
There is a redundancy of consciousness and love that is not the same as the signifying redundancy of the other regime. In the signifying regime, redundancy is a phenomenon of objective frequency involving signs or ele- ments of signs (the phonemes, letters, and groups of letters in a language): there is both a maximum frequency of the signifier in relation to each sign, and a comparative frequency of one sign in relation to another. In any case,
there is an abstract machine of mutation, which operates by decoding and deterritorialization. It is what draws the lines of flight: it steers the quantum flows, assures the connec- tion-creation of flows, and emits new quanta. It itself is in a state of flight, and erects war machines on its lines. If it constitutes another pole, it is because molar or rigid segments always seal, plug, block the lines of flight, whereas this machine is always making them flow, "between" the rigid seg- ments and in another, submolecular, direction. But between the two poles there is also a whole realm of properly molecular negotiation, translation,
There is an entire politics of becomings-animal, as well as a politics of sorcery, which is elaborated in assemblages that are neither those of the family nor of religion nor of the State. Instead, they express minoritarian groups, or groups that are oppressed, prohibited, in revolt, or always on the fringe of recognized institutions, groups all the more secret for being extrinsic, in other words, anomic. If becoming-animal takes the form of a Temptation, and of monsters aroused in the imagination by the demon, it is because it is accompanied, at its origin as in its undertaking, by a rupture with the central institutions that have established themselves or seek to become established.
There is no individual enunciation. There is not even a subject of enun- ciation. Yet relatively few linguists have analyzed the necessarily social
There is no question, however, of establishing a dualist opposition between the two types of multiplicities, molecular machines and molar machines', that would be no better than the dualism between the One and the multiple. There are only multiplicities of multiplicities forming a single assemblage, operating in the same assemblage: packs in masses and masses in packs. Trees have rhizome lines, and the rhizome points of arbor-escence. How could mad particles be produced with anything but a gigantic cyclotron? How could lines of deterritorialization be assignable outside of circuits of territoriality? Where else but in wide expanses, and in major upheavals in those expanses, could a tiny rivulet of new intensity suddenly start to flow? What do you not have to do in order to produce a new sound? Becoming-animal, becoming-molecular, becoming-inhuman, each involves a molar extension, a human hyperconcentration, or prepares the way for them. In Kafka, it is impossible to separate the erection of a great paranoid bureaucratic machine from the installation of little schizo machines of becoming-dog or becoming-beetle. In the case of the Wolf-Man, it is impossible to separate the becoming-wolf of his dream from the military and religious organization of his obsessions. A military man does a wolf; a military man does a dog. There are not two multiplicities or two machines; one and the same machinic assemblage produces and distributes the whole, in other words, the set of statements corresponding to the "complex." What does psychoanalysis have to say about all of this? Oedipus, nothing but Oedipus, because it hears nothing and listens to nobody. It flattens everything, masses and packs, molecular and molar machines,
There is not much to say about the center of signifiance, or the Signifier
There is not only an external coexistence of formations but also an intrinsic coexistence of machinic processes. Each process can also function at a "power" other than its own; it can be taken up by a power correspond- ing to another process. The State as apparatus of capture has a power of appropriation; but this power does not consist solely in capturing all that it can, all that is possible, of a matter defined as phylum. The apparatus of capture also appropriates the war machine, the instruments of polariza- tion, and the anticipation-prevention mechanisms. This is to say, con- versely, that anticipation-prevention mechanisms have a high power of transference: they are at work not only in primitive societies, but move into the towns that ward off the State-form, into the States that ward off capital- ism, into capitalism itself, insofar as it wards off and repels its own limits. And they are not satisfied to switch over to other powers but form new focal points of resistance and contagion, as we have seen in the case of "band" phenomena, which have their own towns, their own brand of international- ism, etc. Similarly, war machines have a power of metamorphosis, which of course allows them to be captured by States, but also to resist that capture and rise up again in other forms, with other "objects" besides war (revolu- tion?). Each power is a force of deterritorialization that can go along with the others or go against them (even primitive societies have their vectors of deterritorialization). Each process can switch over to other powers, but also subordinate other processes to its own power.
There is one other aspect: the signifying regime is not simply faced with the task of organizing into circles signs emitted from every direction; it must constantly assure the expansion of the circles or spiral, it must pro- vide the center with more signifier to overcome the entropy inherent in the system and to make new circles blossom or replenish the old. Thus a secon- dary mechanism in the service of signifiance is necessary: interpretance or interpretation. This time the signifier assumes a new figure: it is no longer the amorphous continuum that is given without being known and across which the network of signs is strung. A portion of signified is made to corre- spond to a sign or group of signs for which that signified has been deemed suitable, thus making it knowable. To the syntagmatic axis of the sign refer- ring to other signs is added a paradigmatic axis on which the sign, thus for- malized, fashions for itself a suitable signified (once again there is abstraction of the content, but in a new way). The interpretive priest, the seer, is one of the despot-god's bureaucrats. A new aspect of deception arises, the deception of the priest: interpretation is carried to infinity and never encounters anything to interpret that is not already itself an interpre- tation. The signified constantly reimparts signifier, recharges it or pro- duces more of it. The form always comes from the signifier. The ultimate signified is therefore the signifier itself, in its redundancy or "excess." It is perfectly futile to claim to transcend interpretation or even communica- tion through the production of signifier, because communication and interpretation are what always serve to reproduce and produce signifier. That is certainly not the way to revive the notion of production. The dis- covery of the psychoanalyst-priests (a discovery every kind of priest or seer made in their time) was that interpretation had to be subordinated to signifiance, to the point that the signifier would impart no signified with- out the signified reimparting signifier in its turn. Actually, there is no longer even any need to interpret, but that is because the best interpreta- tion, the weightiest and most radical one, is an eminently significant silence. It is well known that although psychoanalysts have ceased to speak, they interpret even more, or better yet, fuel interpretation on the part of the subject, who jumps from one circle of hell to the next. In truth, signifiance and interpretosis are the two diseases of the earth or the skin, in other words, humankind's fundamental neurosis.
there is real distinction, reciprocal presupposition, and only isomor-phy. But content and expression are not distinguished from each other in the same fashion on each stratum: the distribution of content and expression is not the same on the three major strata (there is, for example, a "linearization" of
These acts seem to be defined as the set of all incorporeal transforma- tions current in a given society and attributed to the bodies of that society. We may take the word "body" in its broadest sense (there are mental bod- ies, souls are bodies, etc.). We must, however, distinguish between the actions and passions affecting those bodies, and acts, which are only noncorporeal attributes or the "expressed" of a statement. When Ducrot asks what an act consists of, he turns precisely to the juridical assemblage, taking the example of the judge's sentence that transforms the accused into a convict. In effect, what takes place beforehand (the crime of which some- one is accused), and what takes place after (the carrying out of the penalty), are actions-passions affecting bodies (the body of the property, the body of the victim, the body of the convict, the body of the prison); but the transfor- mation of the accused into a convict is a pure instantaneous act or incorpo-
these alogical linkages always effected in the middle, through which the plane is constructed piece by piece in ascending or descending fractional order? The plane is like a row of doors. And the concrete rules for the construction of the plane obtain to the extent that they exercise a selective role. It is the plane, in other words, the mode of connection, that provides the means of eliminating the empty and cancerous bodies that rival the body without organs, of rejecting the homogeneous surfaces that overlay smooth space, and neutralizing the lines of death and destruction that divert the line of flight. What is retained and preserved, therefore created, what consists, is only that which increases the number of connections at each level of division or composition, thus in descending as well as ascending order (that which is cannot be divided without changing in nature, or enter into a larger composition without requiring a new criterion of comparison...).
These are different ways of stating the same distinction, which seems much broader than the one we are looking for: it is, in effect, a distinction between matter and life, or rather, since there is only one matter, between two states, two tendencies of atomic matter (for example, there are bonds that immobilize the linked atoms in relation to one another, and other bonds that allow free rotation). Stating the distinction in the most general way, we could say that it is between stratified systems or systems of stratifi- cation on the one hand, and consistent, self-consistent aggregates on the other. But the point is that consistency, far from being restricted to com- plex life forms, fully pertains even to the most elementary atoms and parti- cles. There is a coded system of stratification whenever, horizontally, there are linear causalities between elements; and, vertically, hierarchies of order between groupings; and, holding it all together in depth, a succession of framing forms, each of which informs a substance and in turn serves as a substance for another form. These causalities, hierarchies, and framings constitute a stratum, as well as the passage from one stratum to another, and the stratified combinations of the molecular and molar. On the other hand, we may speak of aggregates of consistency when instead of a regu- lated succession of forms-substances we are presented with consolidations of very heterogeneous elements, orders that have been short-circuited or even reverse causalities, and captures between materials and forces of a dif- ferent nature: as if a machinic phylum, a destratifying transversality, moved through elements, orders, forms and substances, the molar and the molec- ular, freeing a matter and tapping forces.
these dates, incorporeal yet attributed to bodies, inserted into them? The independence of the form of expression and the form of content is not the basis for a parallelism between them or a representation of one by the other, but on the contrary a parceling of the two, a manner in which expressions are inserted into contents, in which we ceaselessly jump from one register to another, in which signs are at work in things themselves just as things extend into or are deployed through signs. An assemblage of enunciation does not speak "of" things; it speaks on the same level as states of things and states of content. So that the same x, the same particle, may function either as a body that acts and undergoes actions or as a sign constituting an act or order-word, depending on which form it is taken up by (for example, the theoretico-experimental aggregate of physics). In short, the functional in- dependence of the two forms is only the form of their reciprocal presup- position, and of the continual passage from one to the other. We are never presented with an interlinkage of order-words and a causality of contents each in its own right; nor do we see one represent the other, with the second serving as referent. On the contrary, the independence of the two lines is distributive, such that a segment of one always forms a relay with a segment of the other, slips into, introduces itself into the other. We constantly pass from order-words to the "silent order" of things, as Foucault puts it, and vice versa.
these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary,
These multiplicities with heterogeneous terms, cofunctioning by conta- gion, enter certain assemblages; it is there that human beings effect their becomings-animal. But we should not confuse these dark assemblages, which stir what is deepest within us, with organizations such as the institu- tion of the family and the State apparatus. We could cite hunting societies, war societies, secret societies, crime societies, etc. Becomings-animal are proper to them. We will not expect to find filiative regimes of the family type or modes of classification and attribution of the State or pre-State type or even serial organizations of the religious type. Despite appearances and possible confusions, this is not the site of origin or point of application for myths. These are tales, or narratives and statements of becoming. It is therefore absurd to establish a hierarchy even of animal collectivities from the standpoint of a whimsical evolutionism according to which packs are lower on the scale and are superseded by State or familial societies. On the contrary, there is a difference in nature. The origin of packs is entirely dif- ferent from that of families and States; they continually work them from within and trouble them from without, with other forms of content, other forms of expression. The pack is simultaneously an animal reality, and the reality of the becoming-animal of the human being; contagion is simulta- neously an animal peopling, and the propagation of the animal peopling of the human being. The hunting machine, the war machine, the crime machine entail all kinds of becomings-animal that are not articulated in myth, still less in totemism. Dumezil showed that becomings of this kind pertain essentially to the man of war, but only insofar as he is external to families and States, insofar as he upsets filiations and classifications. The war machine is always exterior to the State, even when the State uses it,
These relative movements should most assuredly not be confused with the possibility of absolute deterritorialization, an absolute line of flight, absolute drift. The former are stratic or interstratic, whereas the latter con- cern the plane of consistency and its destratification (its "combustion," as Geoffroy would say). There is no doubt that mad physical particles crash through the strata as they accelerate, leaving minimal trace of their pas- sage, escaping spatiotemporal and even existential coordinates as they tend toward a state of absolute deterritorialization, the state of unformed
These three "ages," the classical, romantic, and modern (for lack of a better term), should not be interpreted as an evolution, or as structures sep- arated by signifying breaks. They are assemblages enveloping different Machines, or different relations to the Machine. In a sense, everything we attribute to an age was already present in the preceding age. Forces, for example: it has always been a question of forces, designated either as forces of chaos or forces of the earth. Similarly, for all of time painting has had the project of rendering visible, instead of reproducing the visible, and music of rendering sonorous, instead of reproducing the sonorous. Fuzzy aggre- gates have been constituting themselves and inventing their processes of consolidation all along. A freeing of the molecular was already found in classical matters of content, operating by destratification, and in romantic matters of expression, operating by decoding. The most we can say is that when forces appear as forces of the earth or of chaos, they are not grasped directly as forces but as reflected in relations between matter and form. Thus it is more a question of thresholds of perception, or thresholds of
they are already stratified, and come from "substrata." But of course substrata should not be thought of only as substrata: in particular, their organization is no less complex than, nor is it inferior to, that of the strata; we should be on our guard against any kind of ridiculous cosmic evolutionism. The materials fur- nished by a substratum are no doubt simpler than the compounds of a stra- tum, but their level of organization in the substratum is no lower than that of the stratum itself. The difference between materials and substantial ele- ments is one of organization; there is a change in organization, not an aug- mentation. The materials furnished by the substratum constitute an exterior milieu for the elements and compounds of the stratum under con- sideration, but they are not exterior to the stratum. The elements and com- pounds constitute an interior of the stratum, just as the materials constitute an exterior of the stratum; both belong to the stratum, the latter because they are materials that have been furnished to the stratum and selected for it, the former because they are formed from the materials. Once again, this exterior and interior are relative; they exist only through their exchanges and therefore only by virtue of the stratum responsible for the relation between them. For example, on a crystalline stratum, the amorphous milieu, or medium, is exterior to the seed before the crystal has formed; the crystal forms by interiorizing and incorporating masses of amorphous material. Conversely, the interiority of the seed of the crystal must move out to the system's exterior, where the amorphous medium can crystallize (the aptitude to switch over to the other form of organization). To the point that the seed itself comes from the outside. In short, both exte- rior and interior are interior to the stratum. The same applies to the organic stratum: the materials furnished by the substrata are an exterior medium constituting the famous prebiotic soup, and catalysts play the role of seed
they are strictly complementary and coexistent, because one exists only as a func- tion of the other; yet they are different and in direct relation to each other, although corresponding term by term, because the second only effectively arrests the first on a "plane" that is not the plane specific to the
they have extrinsic and situational properties, or relations irreducible to the intrinsic properties of a structure; activity is continuous, so segmen- tarity is not grasped as something separate from a segmentation-in-progress operating by outgrowths, detachments, and mergings. Primitive segmentarity is characterized by a polyvocal code based on lineages and their varying situations and relations, and an itinerant territoriality based on local, overlapping divisions. Codes and territories, clan lineages and tribal territorialities, form a fabric of relatively supple segmentarity.
Things are even more complicated than we have let on. Subjectification assigns the line of flight a positive sign, it carries deterritorialization to the absolute, intensity to the highest degree, redundancy to a reflexive form, etc. But it has its own way of repudiating the positivity it frees, or of relativizing the absoluteness it attains, without, however, falling back to the preceding regime. In this redundancy of resonance, the absolute of con- sciousness is the absolute of impotence and the intensity of passion, the heat of the void. This is because subjectification essentially constitutes finite linear proceedings, one of which ends before the next begins: thus the cogito is always recommenced, a passion or grievance is always recapitu- lated. Every consciousness pursues its own death, every love-passion its own end, attracted by a black hole, and all the black holes resonate together.
This brings us back to the paradox of fascism, and the way in which fas- cism differs from totalitarianism. For totalitarianism is a State affair: it essentially concerns the relation between the State as a localized assem- blage and the abstract machine of overcoding it effectuates. Even in the case of a military dictatorship, it is a State army, not a war machine, that takes power and elevates the State to the totalitarian stage. Totalitarianism is quintessentially conservative. Fascism, on the other hand, involves a war machine. When fascism builds itself a totalitarian State, it is not in the sense of a State army taking power, but of a war machine taking over the State. A bizarre remark by Virilio puts us on the trail: in fascism, the State is far less totalitarian than it is suicidal. There is in fascism a realized nihil- ism. Unlike the totalitarian State, which does its utmost to seal all possible lines of flight, fascism is constructed on an intense line of flight, which it transforms into a line of pure destruction and abolition. It is curious that from the very beginning the Nazis announced to Germany what they were bringing: at once wedding bells and death, including their own death, and the death of the Germans. They thought they would perish but that their undertaking would be resumed, all across Europe, all over the world, throughout the solar system. And the people cheered, not because they did not understand, but because they wanted that death through the death of others. Like a will to wager everything you have every hand, to stake your own death against the death of others, and measure everything by "deleometers." Klaus Mann's novel, Mephisto, gives samplings of entirely ordinary Nazi speeches and conversations: "Heroism was something that
This brings us to the second factor, the nature of these multiplicities and their elements. RHIZOME. One of the essential characteristics of the dream of multiplicity is that each element ceaselessly varies and alters its distance in relation to the others. On the Wolf-Man's nose, the elements, deter- mined as pores in the skin, little scars in the pores, little ruts in the scar tis- sue, ceaselessly dance, grow, and diminish. These variable distances are not extensive quantities divisible by each other; rather, each is indivisible,
this factor that at the same time organizes the functions of the milieu into occupations and binds the forces of chaos in rites and religions, which are forces of the earth. Territorializing marks simultaneously develop into motifs and counterpoints, and reorganize functions and regroup forces. But by virtue of this, the territory already unleashes something that will surpass it.
This has many consequences. The new configuration of expression and content conditions not only the organism's power to reproduce but also its power to deterritorialize or accelerate deterritorialization. The alignment of the code or linearity of the nucleic sequence in fact marks a threshold of deterritorialization of the "sign" that gives it a new ability to be copied and makes the organism more deterritorialized than a crystal: only something
This is a white wall/black hole system of the kind that, as we have seen, constitutes the face of the despot. A point of resonance circu- lates in a space of comparison and constitutes that space as it circulates. That is what distinguishes the State apparatus from primitive mecha- nisms, with their noncoexistent territories and nonresonating centers. What begins with the State or the apparatus of capture is a general semiology that overcodes the primitive semiotic systems. Instead of traits of expression that follow a machinic phylum and wed it in a distribution of
This is an affair not of ideology but of economy and the organization of power (pouvoir). We are certainly not saying that the face, the power of the face (la puissance du visage), engenders and explains social power (pouvoir). Certain assem- blages of power (pouvoir) require the production of a face, others do not. If we consider primitive societies, we see that there is very little that operates through the face: their semiotic is nonsignifying, nonsubjective, essentially collective, polyvocal, and corporeal, playing on very diverse forms and substances. This polyvocality operates through bodies, their volumes, their internal cavities, their variable exterior connections and coordinates (territorialities). A fragment from a manual semiotic, a manual sequence, may be coordinated, without subordination or unification, with an oral
This is how you tell the difference between the segmented line and the quantum flow.
This is not surprising since the texture lies between the line of overcoding with rigid segments and the ultimate quantum line. It continu- ally swings between the two, now channeling the quantum line back into the segmented line, now causing flows and quanta to escape from the seg- mented line. This is the third aspect of power centers, or their limit. For the only purpose these centers have is to translate as best they can flow quanta into line segments (only segments are totalizable, in one way or another). But this is both the principle of their power and the basis of their impo- tence. Far from being opposites, power and impotence complement and reinforce each other in a kind of fascinating satisfaction that is found above all in the most mediocre Statesmen, and defines their "glory." For they extract glory from their shortsightedness, and power from their impotence, because it confirms that there is no choice. The only "great" Statesmen are those who connect with flows, like pilot-signs or particles-signs, and who emit quanta that get out of the black holes: it is not by chance that these men encounter each other only on lines of flight, in the act of drawing them, sounding them out, following them, or forging ahead of them, even
This is what we are getting at: a generalized chromaticism. Placing ele- ments of any nature in continuous variation is an operation that will per- haps give rise to new distinctions, but takes none as final and has none in advance. On the contrary, this operation in principle bears on the voice, speech, language, and music simultaneously. There is no reason to make prior, principled distinctions. Linguistics in general is still in a kind of major mode, still has a sort of diatonic scale and a strange taste for domi- nants, constants, and universals. All languages, in the meantime, are in immanent continuous variation: neither synchrony nor diachrony, but asynchrony, chromaticism as a variable and continuous state of language. For a chromatic linguistics according pragmatism its intensities and values.
This problem is in no way behind us. Ideas do not die. Not that they survive simply as archaisms. At a given moment they may reach a scien- tific stage, and then lose that status or emigrate to other sciences. Their application and status, even their form and content, may change; yet they retain something essential throughout the process, across the displace- ment, in the distribution of a new domain. Ideas are always reusable, because they have been usable before, but in the most varied of actual modes. For, on the one hand, the relationships between animals are the object not only of science but also of dreams, symbolism, art and poetry, practice and practical use. And on the other hand, the relationships between animals are bound up with the relations between man and ani- mal, man and woman, man and child, man and the elements, man and the physical and microphysical universe. The twofold idea "series-structure" crosses a scientific threshold at a certain moment; but it did not start there and it does not stay there, or else crosses over into other sciences, animating, for example, the human sciences, serving in the study of dreams, myths, and organizations. The history of ideas should never be continuous; it should be wary of resemblances, but also of descents or filiations; it should be content to mark the thresholds through which an idea passes, the journeys it takes that change its nature or object. Yet the objective relationships between animals have been applied to certain sub- jective relations between man and animal, from the standpoint of a col- lective imagination or a faculty of social understanding.
This problem of specific causality is an important one. Invoking causali- ties that are too general or are extrinsic (psychological or sociological) is as good as saying nothing. There is a discourse on drugs current today that does no more than dredge up generalities on pleasure and misfortune, on difficulties in communication, on causes that always come from some- where else. The more incapable people are of grasping a specific causality in extension, the more they pretend to understand the phenomenon in question. There is no doubt that an assemblage never contains a causal infrastructure. It does have, however, and to the highest degree, an abstract line of creative or specific causality, its line of flight or of deterritorializa- tion; this line can be effectuated only in connection with general causalities of another nature, but is in no way explained by them. It is our belief that the issue of drugs can be understood only at the level where desire directly invests perception, and perception becomes molecular at the same time as the imperceptible is perceived. Drugs then appear as the agent of this becoming. This is where pharmacoanalysis would come in, which must be both compared and contrasted to psychoanalysis. For psychoanalysis must be taken simultaneously as a model, a contrasting approach, and a betrayal. Psychoanalysis can be taken as a model of reference because it was able,
This question of appropriation is so varied historically that it is neces- sary to distinguish between several kinds of problems. The first concerns the possibility of the operation: it is precisely because war is only the sup- plementary or synthetic object of the nomad war machine that it experi- ences the hesitation that proves fatal to it, and that the State apparatus for its part is able to lay hold of war and thus turn the war machine back against the nomads. The hesitation of the nomad is legendary: What is to be done with the lands conquered and crossed? Return them to the desert, to the steppe, to open pastureland? Or let a State apparatus survive that is capa- ble of exploiting them directly, at the risk of becoming, sooner or later, sim- ply a new dynasty of that apparatus: sooner or later because Genghis Khan and his followers were able to hold out for a long time by partially integrat- ing themselves into the conquered empires, while at the same time main- taining a smooth space on the steppes to which the imperial centers were subordinated. That was their genius, the Pax Mongolica. It remains the case that the integration of the nomads into the conquered empires was one of the most powerful factors of appropriation of the war machine by the
this reason that the word should be retained (as we have seen, this applies even to animal "signs").
This represents a whole behavioral-biological "machinics," a whole molecular engineering that should help increase our understanding of the nature of problems of consistency. The philosopher Eugene Dupreel pro- posed a theory of consolidation; he demonstrated that life went not from a center to an exteriority but from an exterior to an interior, or rather from a discrete or fuzzy aggregate to its consolidation. This implies three things. First, that there is no beginning from which a linear sequence would derive, but rather densifications, intensifications, reinforcements, injections, showerings, like so many intercalary events ("there is growth only by inter- calation"). Second, and this is not a contradiction, there must be an arrangement of intervals, a distribution of inequalities, such that it is sometimes necessary to make a hole in order to consolidate. Third, there is
This schema, according to its author, is very difficult to understand, and yet it is operative. It consists in bringing into relief an abstract machine of capture or of extortion by presenting a very specific "order of reasons." For example, remuneration is not itself a purchase since purchasing power derives from it. As Schmitt says, there is neither thief nor victim, for the producer only loses what he does not have and has no chance of acquiring: as in seventeenth-century philosophy, there are negations but not priva- tion .. . And everything coexists in this logical apparatus of capture. Any succession is purely logical: the capture in itself appears between B and C, but exists as well between A and B, between C and A; it impregnates the entire apparatus, it acts as a nonlocalizable liaison for the system. The same goes for surplus labor: How could one specify its location since labor presupposes it? Now the State—the archaic imperial State in any case—is this very apparatus. It is always a mistake to appeal to a supplementary explanation for the State: this pushes the State back behind the State, ad
This story of two kinds of delusions without intellectual diminishment is of great importance. For it is not a disruption of a preexisting discipline of psychiatry; it lies at the heart of the constitution of the psychiatrist in the nineteenth century and explains why he or she was from the start what he or she has been ever since: the psychiatrist was born cornered, caught between legal, police, humanitarian demands, accused of not being a true doctor, suspected of mistaking the sane for mad and the mad for sane, prey to quandaries of conscience, the last Hegelian belle ame. If we consider the two types of intact delusions, we can say that people in the first group seem to be completely mad, but aren't: President Schreber developed his radiat- ing paranoia and relations with God in every direction, but he was not mad in that he remained capable of managing his wealth wisely and distinguish- ing between circles. At the other pole are those who do not seem mad in any way, but are, as borne out by their sudden actions, such as quarrels, arsons, murders (Esquirol's four great monomanias, erotic, intellectual, arson, and homocidal, already belong in this category). In short, psychiatry was not at all constituted in relation to the concept of madness, or even as a modification of that concept, but rather by its split in these two opposite directions. And is it not our own double image, all of ours, that psychiatry
This synthesis of disparate elements is not without ambiguity. It has the same ambiguity, perhaps, as the modern valorization of children's draw- ings, texts by the mad, and concerts of noise. Sometimes one overdoes it, puts too much in, works with a jumble of lines and sounds; then instead of
this working of matters, and the exteriority of their relations. It is to fabricate a
This, however, is only one very partial aspect of capital. If it is true that we are not using the word axiomatic as a simple metaphor, we must review what distinguishes an axiomatic from all manner of codes, overcodings, and recodings: the axiomatic deals directly with purely functional ele- ments and relations whose nature is not specified, and which are immedi- ately realized in highly varied domains simultaneously; codes, on the other hand, are relative to those domains and express specific relations between qualified elements that cannot be subsumed by a higher formal unity (overcoding) except by transcendence and in an indirect fashion. The immanent axiomatic finds in the domains it moves through so many mod- els, termed models of realization. It could similarly be said that capital as right, as a "qualitatively homogeneous and quantitatively commensurable element," is realized in sectors and means of production (or that "unified capital" is realized in "differentiated capital"). However, the different sec- tors are not alone in serving as models of realization—the States do too. Each of them groups together and combines several sectors, according to its resources, population, wealth, industrial capacity, etc. Thus the States, in capitalism, are not canceled out but change form and take on a new meaning: models of realization for a worldwide axiomatic that exceeds them. But to exceed is not at all the same thing as doing without. We have already seen that capitalism proceeds by way of the State-form rather than the town-form; the basis for the fundamental mechanisms described by Marx (the colonial regime, the public debt, the modern tax system and indirect taxation, industrial protectionism, trade wars) may be laid in the towns, but the towns function as mechanisms of accumulation, accelera- tion, and concentration only to the extent that they are appropriated by States. Recent events tend to confirm this principle from another angle.
though they may make a mistake and take a fall
Thought contents are sometimes criticized for being too conformist. But the primary question is that of form itself. Thought as such is already in conformity with a model that it borrows from the State apparatus, and which defines for it goals and paths, conduits, channels, organs, an entire organon. There is thus an image of thought covering all of thought; it is the special object of "noology" and is like the State-form developed in thought. This image has two heads, corresponding to the two poles of sovereignty: the imperium of true thinking operating by magical capture, seizure or
Throughout his work, Kleist celebrates the war machine, setting it against the State apparatus in a struggle that is lost from the start. Doubt- less Arminius heralds a Germanic war machine that breaks with the imper- ial order of alliances and armies, and stands forever opposed to the Roman State. But the Prince of Homburg lives only in a dream and stands con- demned for having reached victory in disobedience of the law of the State. As for Kohlhaas, his war machine can no longer be anything more than
Thus consistency of matters of expression relates, on the one hand, to their aptitude to form melodic and rhythmic themes and, on the other hand, to the power of the natal. Finally, there is one other aspect: their very special relation to the molecular (the machine starts us down this road). The very words, "matters of expression," imply that expression has a pri- mary relation to matter. As matters of expression take on consistency they constitute semiotic systems, but the semiotic components are inseparable from material components and are in exceptionally close contact with molecular levels. The whole question is thus whether or not the molar-molecular relation assumes a new figure here. In general, it has been possible to distinguish "molar-molecular" combinations that vary greatly depending on the direction followed. First, individual atoms can enter into probabilistic or statistical accumulations that tend to efface their individu- ality; this already happens on the level of the molecule, and then again in the molar aggregate. But they can become complicated in interactions and
Thus it does not suffice to attribute molar multiplicities and mass machines to the preconscious, reserving another kind of machine or multi- plicity for the unconscious. For it is the assemblage of both of these that is the province of the unconscious, the way in which the former condition the latter, and the latter prepare the way for the former, or elude them or return to them: the libido suffuses everything. Keep everything in sight at the same time—that a social machine or an organized mass has a molecular unconscious that marks not only its tendency to decompose but also the current components of its very operation and organization; that any indi- vidual caught up in a mass has his/her own pack unconscious, which does not necessarily resemble the packs of the mass to which that individual belongs; that an individual or mass will live out in its unconscious the masses and packs of another mass or another individual. What does it mean to love somebody? It is always to seize that person in a mass, extract him or her from a group, however small, in which he or she participates, whether it be through the family only or through something else; then to find that person's own packs, the multiplicities he or she encloses within himself or herself which may be of an entirely different nature. To join them to mine, to make them penetrate mine, and for me to penetrate the other person's. Heavenly nuptials, multiplicities of multiplicities. Every love is an exercise in depersonalization on a body without organs yet to be formed, and it is at the highest point of this depersonalization that some- one can be named, receives his or her family name or first name, acquires the most intense discernibility in the instantaneous apprehension of the multiplicities belonging to him or her, and to which he or she belongs. A pack of freckles on a face, a pack of boys speaking through the voice of a
Thus numerical composition, or the numbering number, implies several operations: the arithmetization of the starting aggregates or sets (the line- ages); the union of the extracted subsets (the constitution of groups often, one hundred, etc.); and the formation by substitution of another set in cor- respondence with the united set (the special body). It is this last operation that implies the most variety and originality in nomad existence. The same problem arises even in State armies, when the war machine is appropriated by the State. In effect, if the arithmetization of the social body has as its cor-
Thus pragmatics (or schizoanalysis) can be represented by four circular components that bud and form rhizomes.
Thus subjectification imposes on the line of flight a segmentarity that is forever repudiating that line, and upon absolute deterritorialization a point of abolition that is forever blocking that deterritorialization or diverting it. The reason for this is simple: forms of expression and regimes of signs are still strata (even considered in themselves, after abstracting forms of content); subjectification is no less a stratum than signifiance.
tinues to imply a heterogeneity of social formations, it gives rise to and organizes its "Third World."
tion can at will plan the liquidation of a factory inside a country). The resulting danger of a worldwide labor bureaucracy or technocracy taking charge of these problems can be warded off only to the extent that local struggles directly target national and international axioms, at the precise point of their insertion in the field of immanence (the potential of the rural world in this respect). There is always a fundamental difference between living flows and the axioms that subordinate them to centers of control and decision making, that make a given segment correspond to them, which measure their quanta. But the pressure of the living flows, and of the prob- lems they pose and impose, must be exerted inside the axiomatic, as much in order to fight the totalitarian reductions as to anticipate and precipitate the additions, to orient them and prevent their technocratic perversion.
tion of a plane that is necessarily given at the same time as that to which it gives rise (the plane of consistency or composition).
tion of a tribe that peoples and traverses a smooth space. All of thought is a becoming, a double becoming, rather than the attribute of a Subject and the representation of a Whole.
tion of striation of space-time, a subjection of free action, a nullification of smooth spaces, the origin and means of which is in the essential enterprise of the State, namely, its conquest of the war machine.
tions of shelter, supply, movement, evasion, and breakout. The rhizome itself
tions, that give the new semiotic system the means of its imperialism, in other words, the means both to crush the other semiotics and protect itself against any threat from outside. A concerted effort is made to do away with the body and corporeal coordinates through which the multidimensional or polyvocal semiotics operated. Bodies are disciplined, corporeality dis- mantled, becomings-animal hounded out, deterritorialization pushed to a new threshold—a jump is made from the organic strata to the strata of signifiance and subjectification. A single substance of expression is pro- duced. The white wall/black hole system is constructed, or rather the abstract machine is triggered that must allow and ensure the almightiness of the signifier as well as the autonomy of the subject. You will be pinned to the white wall and stuffed in the black hole. This machine is called the faciality machine because it is the social production of face, because it per- forms the facialization of the entire body and all its surroundings and objects, and the landscapification of all worlds and milieus. The deter- ritorialization of the body implies a reterritorialization on the face; the decoding of the body implies an overcoding by the face; the collapse of cor- poreal coordinates or milieus implies the constitution of a landscape. The semiotic of the signifier and the subjective never operates through bodies. It is absurd to claim to relate the signifier to the body. At any rate it can be related only to a body that has already been entirely facialized. The differ- ence between our uniforms and clothes and primitive paintings and garb is that the former effect a facialization of the body, with buttons for black holes against the white wall of the material. Even the mask assumes a new function here, the exact opposite of its old one. For there is no unitary func- tion of the mask, except a negative one (in no case does the mask serve to dissimulate, to hide, even while showing or revealing). Either the mask assures the head's belonging to the body, its becoming-animal, as was the case in primitive societies. Or, as is the case now, the mask assures the erec- tion, the construction of the face, the facialization of the head and the body: the mask is now the face itself, the abstraction or operation of the face. The inhumanity of the face. Never does the face assume a prior signifier or subject. The order is totally different: despotic and authoritar- ian concrete assemblage of power —► triggering of the abstract machine of faciality, white wall/black hole —> installation of the new semiotic of signifiance and subjectification on that holey surface. That is why we have been addressing just two problems exclusively: the relation of the face to the abstract machine that produces it, and the relation of the face to the assemblages of power that require that social production. The face is a politics.
tions. Organic forms are nevertheless different from one another, as are organs,
To begin with, a stratum does indeed have a unity of composition, which is what allows it to be called a stratum: molecular materials, substantial ele- ments, and formal relations or traits. Materials are not the same as the unformed matter of the plane of consistency;
to regain a plane of consistency that inserts itself into the most diverse sys- tems of stratification and jumps from one to the other, it suffices to prolong the lines of flight working the strata, to connect the dots, to conjugate the processes of deterritorialization. We have seen that signifiance and inter- pretation, consciousness and passion, can prolong themselves following these lines, and at the same time open out onto a properly diagrammatic experience. All of these states or modes of the abstract machine coexist in what we call the machinic assemblage. The assemblage has two poles or vectors: one vector is oriented toward the strata, upon which it distributes territorialities, relative deterritorializations, and reterritorializations; the other is oriented toward the plane of consistency or destratification, upon which it conjugates processes of deterritorialization, carrying them to the absolute of the earth. It is along its stratic vector that the assemblage differ- entiates a form of expression (from the standpoint of which it appears as a collective assemblage of enunciation) from a form of content (from the standpoint of which it appears as a machinic assemblage of bodies); it fits one form to the other, one manifestation to the other, placing them in recip- rocal presupposition. But along its diagrammatic or destratified vector, it no longer has two sides; all it retains are traits of expression and content from which it extracts degrees of deterritorialization that add together and cutting edges that conjugate.
trait is said to be "deterritorializing" in relation to the other precisely because it diagrams it, carries it off, raises it to its own power. The most deterritorialized element causes the other element to cross a threshold ena- bling a conjunction of their respective deterritorializations, a shared accel- eration. This is the abstract machine's absolute, positive deterritoria-lization. That is why diagrams must be distinguished from indexes, which are territorial signs, but also from icons, which pertain to reterrito-rialization, and from symbols, which pertain to relative or negative deterri-torialization.
TREATISE ON NOMADOLOGY—THE WAR MACHINE D
trifle, why we will never know. Others can be invented, drawn, without a model and without chance: we must invent our lines of flight, if we are able, and the only way we can invent them is by effectively drawing them, in our lives. Aren't lines of flight the most diffi- cult of all? Certain groups or people have none and never will. Certain groups or people lack a given kind of line, or have lost it. The painter Flor- ence Julien has a special interest in lines of flight: she invented a procedure by which she extracts from photographs lines that are nearly abstract and formless. But once again, there is a bundle of very diverse lines: the line of flight of children leaving school at a run is different from that of demon- strators chased by the police, or of a prisoner breaking out. There are differ- ent animal lines of flight: each species, each individual, has its own. Fernand Deligny transcribes the lines and paths of autistic children by means of maps: he carefully distinguishes "lines of drift" and "customary lines." This does not only apply to walking; he also makes maps of percep- tions and maps of gestures (cooking or collecting wood) showing custom- ary gestures and gestures of drift. The same goes for language, if it is
tutes is no longer subordinated to the One, but takes on a consistency of its own. These are multiplicities of masses or packs, not of classes; anomalous and nomadic multiplicities, not normal or legal ones; multiplicities of becoming, or transformational multiplicities, not countable elements
Two objections immediately arise. According to the first, the war machine possesses as much weight and gravity as it does speed (the distinc- tion between the heavy and the light, the dissymmetry between defense and attack, the opposition between rest and tension). But it would be easy to demonstrate that phenomena of "temporization," and even of immobility
Under the second aspect, the abstract machine of faciality assumes a role of selective response, or choice: given a concrete face, the machine judges whether it passes or not, whether it goes or not, on the basis of the elementary facial units. This time, the binary relation is of the "yes-no" type. The empty eye or black hole absorbs or rejects, like a half-doddering despot who can still give a signal of acquiescence or refusal. The face of a given teacher is contorted by tics and bathed in an anxiety that makes it "no go." A defendant, a subject, displays an overaffected submission that turns into insolence. Or someone is too polite to be honest. A given face is neither a man's nor a woman's. Or it is neither a poor person's nor a rich person's. Is it someone who lost his fortune? At every moment, the machine rejects faces that do not conform, or seem suspicious. But only at a given level of choice. For it is necessary to produce successive divergence-types of devi- ance for everything that eludes biunivocal relationships, and to establish binary relations between what is accepted on first choice and what is only tolerated on second, third choice, etc. The white wall is always expanding, and the black hole functions repeatedly. The teacher has gone mad, but madness is a face conforming to the «th choice (not the last, however, since there are mad faces that do not conform to what one assumes madness should be). A ha! It's not a man and it's not a woman, so it must be a trans-vestite: The binary relation is between the "no" of the first category and the "yes" of the following category, which under certain conditions may just as easily mark a tolerance as indicate an enemy to be mowed down at all costs. At any rate, you've been recognized, the abstract machine has you inscribed in its overall grid. It is clear that in its new role as deviance
undoubtedly implies a gain in consistency, in other words, a surplus value (surplus value of destratificatiori). For example, it contains a greater num- ber of self-consistent aggregates and processes of consolidation and gives them molar scope. It is destratifying from the outset, since its code is not distributed throughout the entire stratum but rather occupies an eminently specialized genetic line. But the question is almost contradictory, because asking where life fits in amounts to treating it as a particular stratum having its own order and befitting order, having its own forms and sub- stances. It is true that it is both at once: a particularly complex system of stratification and an aggregate of consistency that disrupts orders, forms, and substances. As we have seen, the living thing performs a transcoding of milieus that can be considered both to constitute a stratum and to effect reverse causalities and transversals of destratification. The same question can be asked when life no longer restricts itself to mixing milieus but assembles territories as well. The territorial assemblage implies a decoding and is inseparable from its own deterritorialization (two new types of sur- plus value). "Ethology" then can be understood as a very privileged molar domain for demonstrating how the most varied components (biochemical, behavioral, perceptive, hereditary, acquired, improvised, social, etc.) can crystallize in assemblages that respect neither the distinction between orders nor the hierarchy of forms. What holds all the components together are transversals, and the transversal itself is only a component that has taken upon itself the specialized vector of deterritorialization. In effect, what holds an assemblage together is not the play of framing forms or linear causalities but, actually or potentially, its most deterritorialized compo- nent, a cutting edge of deterritorialization. An example is the refrain: it is more deterritorialized than the grass stem, but this does not preclude its being "determined," in other words, connected to biochemical and molec- ular components. The assemblage holds by its most deterritorialized com- ponent, but deterritorialized is not the same as indeterminate (the refrain may be narrowly connected to the presence of male hormones).
unity, nor is there a return to the undifferentiated in relation to a differen-tiable totality. There is a distribution of intensive principles of organs, with their positive indefinite articles, within a collectivity or multiplicity, inside an assemblage, and according to machinic connections operating on a BwO. Logos spermaticos. The error of psychoanalysis was to understand BwO phenomena as regressions, projections, phantasies, in terms of an image of the body. As a result, it only grasps the flipside of the BwO and immediately substitutes family photos, childhood memories, and part-objects for a worldwide intensity map. It understands nothing about the egg nor about indefinite articles nor about the contemporaneousness of a continually self-constructing milieu.
Up to now we have known three major types of human organization: lin- eal, territorial, and numerical. Lineal organization allows us to define so-called primitive societies. Clan lineages are essentially segments in action; they meld and divide, and vary according to the ancestor consid- ered, the tasks, and the circumstances. Of course, number plays an impor- tant role in the determination of lineage, or in the creation of new lineages—as does the earth, since a clan segmentarity is doubled by a tribal segmentarity. The earth is before all else the matter upon which the dynamic of lineages is inscribed, and the number, a means of inscription: the lineages write upon the earth and with the number, constituting a kind of "geodesy." Everything changes with State societies: it is often said that the territorial principle becomes dominant. One could also speak of deterritorialization, since the earth becomes an object, instead of being an active material element in combination with lineage. Property is precisely the deterritorialized relation between the human being and the earth; this is so whether property constitutes a good belonging to the State, superposed upon continuing possession by a lineal community, or whether it itself becomes a good belonging to private individuals constituting a new community. In both cases (and according to the two poles of the State), something like an overcoding of the earth replaces geodesy. Of course, line- ages remain very important, and numbers take on their own importance. But what moves to the forefront is a "territorial" organization, in the sense that all the segments, whether of lineage, land, or number, are taken up by an astronomical space or a geometrical extension that overcodes them— but certainly not in the same way in the archaic imperial State and in mod- ern States. The archaic State envelops a spatium with a summit, a differentiated space with depth and levels, whereas modern States (begin- ning with the Greek city-state) develop a homogeneous extensio with an immanent center, divisible homologous parts, and symmetrical and reversible relations. Not only do the two models, the astronomical and the geometrical, enter into intimate mixes, but even when they are supposedly pure, both imply the subordination of lineages and numbers to this metric power, as it appears either in the imperial spatium or in the political
variable, which subsumes all possible functions, is overlooked. Following Canetti's suggestions, we may begin from the following pragmatic situa- tion: the order-word is a death sentence; it always implies a death sentence, even if it has been considerably softened, becoming symbolic, initiatory, temporary, etc. Order-words bring immediate death to those who receive the order, or potential death if they do not obey, or a death they must them- selves inflict, take elsewhere. A father's orders to his son, "You will do this," "You will not do that," cannot be separated from the little death sen- tence the son experiences on a point of his person. Death, death; it is the only judgment, and it is what makes judgment a system. The verdict. But the order-word is also something else, inseparably connected: it is like a warning cry or a message to flee. It would be oversimplifying to say that flight is a reaction against the order-word; rather, it is included in it, as its other face in a complex assemblage, its other component. Canetti is right to invoke the lion's roar, which enunciates flight and death simultaneously.
variation—for example, the impact of tone on phonemes, accent on mor- phemes, or intonation on syntax. These are not secondary features but another treatment of language that no longer operates according to the pre- ceding categories.
visual perception very quickly assumes decisive importance for the act of eating, in relation to the breast as a volume and the mouth as a cavity, both experienced through touch.
Von Uexkull, in defining animal worlds, looks for the active and passive affects of which the animal is capable in the individuated assemblage of which it is a part. For example, the Tick, attracted by the light, hoists itself up to the tip of a branch; it is sensitive to the smell of mammals, and lets itself fall when one passes beneath the branch; it digs into its skin, at the least hairy place it can find. Just three affects; the rest of the time the tick sleeps, sometimes for years on end, indifferent to all that goes on in the immense forest. Its degree of power is indeed bounded by two limits: the optimal limit of the feast after which it dies, and the pessimal limit of the fast as it waits. It will be said that the tick's three affects assume generic and specific characteristics, organs and functions, legs and snout. This is true from the standpoint of physiology, but not from the standpoint of Ethics. Quite the contrary, in Ethics the organic characteristics derive from longi- tude and its relations, from latitude and its degrees. We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of another body, either to destroy that body or to be destroyed by it, either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in com- posing a more powerful body.
Was this salvation through art necessary? For neither Swann nor Proust was saved. Was it necessary to break through the wall and out of the hole in this way, by renouncing love? Was not that love rotten from the start, made of signifiance and jealousy? Was it possible to do anything else, considering Odette's mediocrity and Swann's aestheticism? In a way, the madeleine is the same story. The narrator munches his madeleine: redundancy, the black hole of involuntary memory. How can he get out of that? And it is, above all, something one has to get out of, escape from. Proust knows that quite well, even if his commentators do not. But the way he gets out is through art, uniquely through art.
We always get back to this definition: the machinic phylum is ma- teriality, natural or artificial, and both simultaneously; it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression. This has obvious consequences: namely, this matter-flow can only he followed. Doubtless, the operation that consists in following can be carried out in one place: an artisan who planes follows the wood, the fibers of the wood, without changing location. But this way of following is only one particular sequence in a more general process. For artisans are obliged to follow in another way as well, in other words, to go find the wood where it lies, and to find the wood with the right kind of fibers. Otherwise, they must have it brought to them: it is only because merchants take care of one segment of the journey in reverse that the artisans can avoid making the trip themselves. But artisans are complete only if they are also prospectors; and the organization that separates prospectors, merchants, and artisans already mutilates artisans in order to make "workers" of them. We will therefore define the artisan as one who is determined in such a way as to follow a flow of matter, a machinic phylum. The artisan is the itinerant, the ambulant. To follow the flow of matter is to itinerate, to ambulate. It is intuition in action. Of course, there are second-order itinerancies where it is no longer a flow of matter that one prospects and follows, but, for example, a market. Nevertheless, it is always a flow that is followed, even if the flow is not always that of matter. And, above all, there are secondary itinerancies, which derive from another "condition," even if they are necessarily entailed by it. For example, a transhumant, whether a farmer or an animal raiser, changes land after it is worn out, or else seasonally; but transhumants only secondarily follow a land flow, because they undertake a rotation meant from the start to return them to the point from which they left, after the forest has regenerated, the land has rested, the weather has changed. Transhumants do not follow a flow, they draw a circuit; they only
We are always brought back to the literal question of the models of real- ization of a worldwide axiomatic: there is in principle an isomorphy of the States of the center, a heteromorphy imposed by the bureaucratic socialist
We are compelled to say that there has always been a State, quite perfect, quite complete. The more discoveries archaeologists make, the more empires they uncover. The hypothesis of the Urstaat seems to be verified: "The State clearly dates back to the most remote ages of humanity." It is hard to imagine primitive societies that would not have been in contact with imperial States, at the periphery or in poorly controlled areas. But of greater importance is the inverse hypothesis: that the State itself has always been in a relation with an outside and is inconceivable independent of that relationship. The law of the State is not the law of All or Nothing (State societies or counter-State societies) but that of interior and exterior. The State is sovereignty. But sovereignty only reigns over what it is capable of internalizing, of appropriating locally. Not only is there no universal State, but the outside of States cannot be reduced to "foreign policy," that is, to a set of relations among States. The outside appears simultaneously in two directions: huge worldwide machines branched out over the entire ecumenon at a given moment, which enjoy a large measure of autonomy in relation to the States (for example, commercial organization of the "multi- national" type, or industrial complexes, or even religious formations like Christianity, Islam, certain prophetic or messianic movements, etc.); but also the local mechanisms of bands, margins, minorities, which continue to affirm the rights of segmentary societies in opposition to the organs of State power. The modern world can provide us today with particularly well developed images of these two directions: worldwide ecumenical machines, but also a neoprimitivism, a new tribal society as described by Marshall McLuhan. These directions are equally present in all social fields, in all periods. It even happens that they partially merge. For exam- ple, a commercial organization is also a band of pillage, or piracy, for part of its course and in many of its activities; or it is in bands that a religious formation begins to operate. What becomes clear is that bands, no less than worldwide organizations, imply a form irreducible to the State and that this form of exteriority necessarily presents itself as a diffuse and polymorphous war machine. It is a nomos very different from the "law." The State-form, as a form of interiority, has a tendency to reproduce itself, remaining identical to itself across its variations and easily recognizable within the limits of its poles, always seeking public recognition (there is no masked State). But the war machine's form of exteriority is such that it exists only in its own metamorphoses; it exists in an industrial innovation as well as in a technological invention, in a commercial circuit as well as in a religious creation, in all flows and currents that only secondarily allow themselves to be appropriated by the State.
We are not at all saying that the refrain is the origin of music, or that music begins with it. It is not really known when music begins. The refrain is rather a means of preventing music, warding it off, or forgoing it. But music exists because the refrain exists also, because music takes up the refrain, lays hold of it as a content in a form of expression, because it forms a block with it in order to take it somewhere else. The child's refrain, which is not music, forms a block with the becoming-child of music: once again, this asymmetrical composition is necessary. "Ah, vous dirai-je maman" ("Ah, mamma, now you shall know") in Mozart, Mozart's refrains. A theme in C, followed by twelve variations; not only is each note of the theme doubled, but the theme is doubled internally. Music submits the refrain to this very special treatment of the diagonal or transversal, it uproots the refrain from its territoriality. Music is a creative, active opera- tion that consists in deterritorializing the refrain. Whereas the refrain is essentially territorial, territorializing, or reterritorializing, music makes it a deterritorialized content for a deterritorializing form of expression. Par- don that sentence: what musicians do should be musical, it should be writ- ten in music. Instead, we will give a figurative example: Mussorgsky's "Lullaby," in Songs and Dances of Death, presents an exhausted mother sit- ting up with her sick child; she is relieved by a visitor, Death, who sings a lullaby in which each couplet ends with an obsessive, sober refrain, a repet- itive rhythm with only one note, a point-block: "Shush, little child, sleep my little child" (not only does the child die, but the deterritorialization of the refrain is doubled by Death in person, who replaces the mother).
We are not invoking any kind of death drive. There are no internal drives in desire, only assemblages. Desire is always assembled; it is what the assemblage determines it to be. The assemblage that draws lines of flight is on the same level as they are, and is of the war machine type. Muta- tions spring from this machine, which in no way has war as its object, but rather the emission of quanta of deterritorialization, the passage of mutant
We are now ready to return to the refrain. We can propose a new classifi- cation system: milieu refrains, with at least two parts, one of which answers the other (the piano and the violin); natal refrains, refrains of the territory, where the part is related to the whole, to an immense refrain of the earth, according to relations that are themselves variable and mark in each instance the disjunction between the earth and the territory (the lullaby, the drinking song, hunting song, work song, military song, etc.); folk and popular refrains, themselves tied to an immense song of the people, according to variable relations of crowd individuations that simultane- ously bring into play affects and nations (the Polish, Auvergnat, German, Magyar, or Romanian, but also the Pathetic, Panicked, Vengeful, etc.); molecularized refrains (the sea and the wind) tied to cosmic forces, the Cosmos refrain. For the Cosmos itself is a refrain, and the ear also (every- thing that has been taken for a labyrinth is in fact a refrain). But precisely why is the refrain eminently sonorous? Why this privileging of the ear, when even animals and birds present us with so many visual, chromatic, postural, and gestural refrains? Does the painter have fewer refrains than the musician? Are there fewer refrains in Cezanne or Klee than in Mozart, Schumann, or Debussy? Taking Proust's examples: Does Vermeer's little yellow span of wall, or a painter's flowers, Elstir's roses, constitute less of a refrain than Vinteuil's little phrase? There is surely no question here of declaring a given art supreme on the basis of a formal hierarchy of absolute criteria. Our problem is more modest: comparing the powers or coeffi- cients of deterritorialization of sonorous and visual components. It seems that when sound deterritorializes, it becomes more and more refined; it becomes specialized and autonomous. Color clings more, not necessarily to the object, but to territoriality. When it deterritorializes, it tends to dissolve, to let itself be steered by other components. This is evident in phenomena of synesthesia, which are not reducible to a simple color-sound correspondence; sounds have a piloting role and induce colors that are
We are segmented from all around and in every direction. The human being is a segmentary animal. Segmentarity is inherent to all the strata composing us. Dwelling, getting around, working, playing: life is spatially and socially segmented. The house is segmented according to its rooms' assigned pur- poses; streets, according to the order of the city; the factory, according to the nature of the work and operations performed in it. We are segmented in a binary fashion, following the great major dualist oppositions: social classes, but also men-women, adults-children, and so on. We are segmented in a cir-
We are trying, then, to make a distinction between a paranoid, signify- ing, despotic regime of signs and a passional or subjective, postsignifying, authoritarian regime. Authoritarian is assuredly not the same as despotic, passional is not the same as paranoid, and subjective is not the same as sig- nifying. What happens in the second regime, by comparison with the signi- fying regime as we have already defined it? In the first place, a sign or packet of signs detaches from the irradiating circular network and sets to work on its own account, starts running a straight line, as though swept into a narrow, open passage. Already the signifying system drew a line of flight or deterritorialization exceeding the specific index of its deterritorialized signs, but the system gave that line a negative value and sent the scapegoat fleeing down it. Here, it seems that the line receives a positive sign, as though it were effectively occupied and followed by a people who find in it their reason for being or destiny. Once again, we are not, of course, doing history: we are not saying that a people invents this regime of signs, only that at a given moment a people effectuates the assemblage that assures the relative dominance of that regime under certain historical conditions (and that regime, that dominance, that assemblage may be assured under other conditions, for example, pathological, literary, romantic, or entirely mun- dane). We are not saying that a people is possessed by a given type of delusion but that the map of a delusion, its coordinates considered, may
We call any specific formalization of expression a regime of signs, at least when the expression is linguistic. A regime of signs constitutes a semiotic system. But it appears difficult to analyze semiotic systems in themselves: there is always a form of content that is simultaneously inseparable from and independent of the form of expression, and the two forms pertain to assemblages that are not principally linguistic. However, one can proceed as though the formalization of expression were autonomous and self-sufficient. Even if that is done, there is such diversity in the forms of expression, such a mixture of these forms, that it is impossible to attach any particular privilege to the form or regime of the "signifier." If we call the signifying semiotic system semiology, then semiology is only one regime of signs among others, and not the most important one. Hence the necessity of a return to pragmatics, in which language never has universal- ity in itself, self-sufficient formalization, a general semiology, or a meta-
We call order-words, not a particular category of explicit statements (for example, in the imperative), but the relation of every word or every state- ment to implicit presuppositions, in other words, to speech acts that are, and can only be, accomplished in the statement. Order-words do not con- cern commands only, but every act that is linked to statements by a "social obligation." Every statement displays this link, directly or indirectly. Ques- tions, promises, are order-words. The only possible definition of language is the set of all order-words, implicit presuppositions, or speech acts cur- rent in a language at a given moment.
We can now propose the following distinction: the face is part of a surface-holes, holey surface, system. This system should under no cir- cumstances be confused with the volume-cavity system proper to the (proprioceptive) body. The head is included in the body, but the face is not. The face is a surface: facial traits, lines, wrinkles; long face, square face, tri- angular face; the face is a map, even when it is applied to and wraps a vol- ume, even when it surrounds and borders cavities that are now no more than holes. The head, even the human head, is not necessarily a face. The face is produced only when the head ceases to be a part of the body, when it ceases to be coded by the body, when it ceases to have a multidimensional, polyvocal corporeal code—when the body, head included, has been decoded and has to be overcoded'by something we shall call the Face. This amounts to saying that the head, all the volume-cavity elements of the head, have to be facialized. What accomplishes this is the screen with holes, the white wall/black hole, the abstract machine producing faciality. But the operation does not end there: if the head and its elements are facialized, the entire body also can be facialized, comes to be facialized as part of an inevi- table process. When the mouth and nose, but first the eyes, become a holey surface, all the other volumes and cavities of the body follow. An operation worthy of Doctor Moreau: horrible and magnificent. Hand, breast, stom- ach, penis and vagina, thigh, leg and foot, all come to be facialized. Fetish- ism, erotomania, etc., are inseparable from these processes of facializa-tion. It is not at all a question of taking a part of the body and making it resemble a face, or making a dream-face dance in a cloud. No anthropomorphism here. Facialization operates not by resemblance but by an order of reasons. It is a much more unconscious and machinic operation that draws the entire body across the holey surface, and in which the role of the face is not as a model or image, but as an overcoding of all of the decoded parts. Everything remains sexual; there is no sublimation, but there are new coordinates. It is precisely because the face depends on an abstract machine that it is not content to cover the head, but touches all other parts of the body, and even, if necessary, other objects without resemblance. The question then becomes what circumstances trigger the machine that produces the face and facialization. Although the head, even the human head, is not necessarily a face, the face is produced in humanity. But it is produced by a necessity that does not apply to human beings "in general." The face is not animal, but neither is it human in general; there is even something absolutely inhuman about the face.
We cannot, however, content ourselves with a dualism between the plane of consistency and its diagrams and abstract machines on the one hand, and the strata and their programs and concrete assemblages on the other. Abstract machines do not exist only on the plane of consistency, upon which they develop diagrams; they are already present enveloped or "encasted" in the strata in general, or even erected on particular strata upon which they simultaneously organize a form of expression and a form of content. What is illusory in the second case is the idea of an exclusively expressive or language-based abstract machine, not the idea of an abstract machine internal to the stratum and accounting for the relativity of those two distinct forms. Thus there are two complementary movements, one by which abstract machines work the strata and are constantly setting things loose, another by which they are effectively stratified, effectively captured by the strata. On the one hand, strata could never organize themselves if they did not harness diagrammatic matters or functions and formalize them from the standpoint of both expression and content; every regime of signs, and even signifiance and subjectification, is still a diagrammatic effect (although relativized and negativized). One the other hand, abstract machines would never be present, even on the strata, if they did not have the power or potentiality to extract and accelerate destratified particles-signs (the passage to the absolute). Consistency is neither totalizing nor structuring; rather, it is deterritorializing (a biological stratum, for example, evolves not according to statistical phenomena but rather according to cutting edges of deterritorialization). The security, tranquillity, and ho-meostatic equilibrium of the strata are thus never completely guaranteed:
We define social formations by machinic processes and not by modes of production (these on the contrary depend on the processes). Thus primi- tive societies are defined by mechanisms of prevention-anticipation; State societies are defined by apparatuses of capture; urban societies, by instru- ments of polarization; nomadic societies, by war machines; and finally international, or rather ecumenical, organizations are defined by the encompassment of heterogeneous social formations. But precisely because these processes are variables of coexistence that are the object of a social topology, the various corresponding formations are coexistent. And they coexist in two fashions, extrinsically and intrinsically. Primitive societies cannot ward off the formation of an empire or State without anticipating it, and they cannot anticipate it without its already being there, forming part of their horizon. And States cannot effect a capture unless what is captured coexists, resists in primitive societies, or escapes under new forms, as towns or war machines. . . The numerical composition of the war machine is superposed upon the primitive lineal organization and simultaneously opposes the geometric organization of the State and the physical organiza- tion of the town. It is this extrinsic coexistence—interaction—that is brought to its own expression in international aggregates. For these obvi- ously did not wait for capitalism before forming: as early as Neolithic times, even Paleolithic, we find traces of ecumenical organizations that tes- tify to the existence of long-distance trade, and simultaneously cut across the most varied of social formations (as we have seen in the case of metal- lurgy). The problem of diffusion, or of diffusionism, is badly formulated if one assumes a center at which the diffusion would begin. Diffusion occurs only through the placing in communication of potentials of very different orders: all diffusion happens in the in-between, goes between, like every- thing that "grows" of the rhizome type. An international ecumenical organization does not proceed from an imperial center that imposes itself upon and homogenizes an exterior milieu; neither is it reducible to rela- tions between formations of the same order, between States, for example (the League of Nations, the United Nations). On the contrary, it constitutes an intermediate milieu between the different coexistent orders. Therefore it is not exclusively commercial or economic, but is also religious, artistic, etc. From this standpoint, we shall call an international organization any- thing that has the capacity to move through diverse social formations simultaneously: States, towns, deserts, war machines, primitive societies. The great commercial formations in history do not simply have city-poles, but also primitive, imperial, and nomadic segments through which they pass, perhaps issuing out again in another form. Samir Amin is totally cor-
We distinguish machinic enslavement and social subjection as two sepa- rate concepts. There is enslavement when human beings themselves are
We have considered in particular two great alloplastic and anthro- pomorphic assemblages, the war machine and the State apparatus. These two assemblages not only differ in nature but are quantifiable in relation to "the" abstract machine in different ways. They do not have the same relation to the phylum, the diagram; they do not have the same lines, or the same components. This analysis of the two
We have gone from forces of chaos to forces of the earth. From milieus to territory. From functional rhythms to the becoming-expressive of rhythm. From phenomena of transcoding to phenomena of decoding. From milieu functions to territorialized functions. It is less a question of evolution than of passage, bridges and tunnels. We saw that milieus continually pass into one another. Now we see that the milieus pass into the territory. The
We have gone from stratified milieus to territorialized assemblages and simultaneously, from the forces of chaos, as broken down, coded, trans-coded by the milieus, to the forces of the earth, as gathered into the assemblages. Then we went from territorial assemblages to interassemblages, to' the opening of assemblages along lines of deterritorialization; and simultaneously, the same from the ingathered forces of the earth to the deterritorialized, or rather deterritorializing, Cosmos. How does Paul Klee present this last movement, which is not a terrestrial "pace" but instead a cosmic "breakaway" [echappee: also "opening," "outlet," "vista";
We have in mind in particular two pathetic texts, in the sense that in them thought is truly a pathos (an antilogos and an antimythos). One is a
We have not even taken Darwin, evolutionism, or neoevolutionism into account yet. This, however, is where a decisive phenomenon occurs: our puppet theater becomes more and more nebulous, in other words, collec- tive and differential. Earlier, we invoked two factors, and
We have not, of course, managed to eliminate forms of content (for example, the role of the Temple, or the position of a dominant Reality, etc.). What we have done is to isolate, under artificial conditions, a certain number of semiotics displaying very diverse characteristics. The presigni-fying semiotic, in which the "overcoding" marking the privileged status of language operates diffusely: enunciation is collective, statements themselves are polyvocal, and substances of expression are multiple; relative deterritorialization is determined by the confrontation between the territorialities and segmentary lineages that ward off the State apparatus. The signifying semiotic: overcoding is fully effectuated by the signifier, and by the State apparatus that emits it; there is uniformity of enunciation, unification of the substance of expression, and control over statements in a regime of circularity; relative deterritorialization is taken as far as it can go by a redundant and perpetual referral from sign to sign. The countersig-nifying semiotic: here, overcoding is assured by the Number as form of expression or enunciation, and by the War Machine upon which it depends; deterritorialization follows a line of active destruction or abolition. The postsignifying semiotic, in which overcoding is assured by the redundancy of consciousness; a subjectification of enunciation occurs on a passional line that makes the organization of power (pouvoir) immanent and raises deterritorialization to the absolute, although in a way that is still negative.
We have to hurry, Challenger said, we're being rushed by the line of time on this third stratum. So we have a new organization of content and expression, each with its own forms and substances: technological content, semiotic or symbolic expression. Content should be understood not sim- ply as the hand and tools but as a technical social machine that preexists them and constitutes states of force or formations of power. Expression should be understood not simply as the face and language, or individual languages, but as a semiotic collective machine that preexists them and constitutes regimes of signs. A formation of power is much more than a tool; a regime of signs is much more than a language. Rather, they act as determining and selective agents, as much in the constitution of languages and tools as in their usages and mutual or respective diffusions and com- munications. The third stratum sees the emergence of Machines that are fully a part of that stratum but at the same time rear up and stretch their pincers out in all directions at all the other strata. Is this not like an interme- diate state between the two states of the abstract Machine?—the state in which it remains enveloped in a corresponding stratum (ecumenon), and the state in which it develops in its own right on the destratified plane of consistency (planomenon). The abstract machine begins to unfold, to stand to full height, producing an illusion exceeding all strata, even though the machine itself still belongs to a determinate stratum. This is, obviously, the illusion constitutive of man (who does man think he is?). This illusion derives from the overcoding immanent to language itself. But what is not illusory are the new distributions between content and expression: techno- logical content characterized by the hand-tool relation and, at a deeper level, tied to a social Machine and formations of power; symbolic expres- sion characterized by face-language relations and, at a deeper level, tied to a semiotic Machine and regimes of signs. On both sides, the epistrata and parastrata, the superposed degrees and abutting forms, attain more than ever before the status of autonomous strata in their own right. In cases where we can discern two different regimes of signs or two different forma- tions of power, we shall say that they are in fact two different strata in human populations.
We may now return to the two fundamental contributions of Darwinism and answer the question of why forms or types of forms in the parastrata must be understood in relation to populations, and degrees of develop- ment in the epistrata as rates or differential relations. First, parastrata envelop the very codes upon which the forms depend, and these codes nec- essarily apply to populations. There must already be an entire molecular population to be coded, and the effects of the code, or a change in the code, are evaluated in relation to a more or less molar population, depending on the code's ability to propagate in the milieu or create for itself a new associ- ated milieu within which the modification will be popularizable. Yes, we must always think in terms of packs and multiplicities: a code does or does not take hold because the coded individual belongs to a certain population, "the population inhabiting test tubes, a flask full of water, or a mammal's intestine." What does it mean to say that new forms and associated milieus potentially result from a change in the code, a modification of the code, or a variation in the parastratum? The change is obviously not due to a passage from one preestablished form to another, in other words, a translation from one code to another. As long as the problem was formulated in that
We must distinguish three kinds of animals. First, individuated ani- mals, family pets, sentimental, Oedipal animals each with its own petty history, "my" cat, "my" dog. These animals invite us to regress, draw us into a narcissistic contemplation, and they are the only kind of animal psy- choanalysis understands, the better to discover a daddy, a mommy, a little brother behind them (when psychoanalysis talks about animals, animals learn to laugh): anyone who likes cats or dogs is a fool. And then there is a second kind: animals with characteristics or attributes; genus, classifica- tion, or State animals; animals as they are treated in the great divine myths,
We shall call the first pole of capture imperial or despotic. It corresponds to Marx's Asiatic formation. Archaeology discovers it everywhere, often lost in oblivion, at the horizon of all systems or States—not only in Asia, but also in Africa, America, Greece, Rome. Immemorial Urstaat, dating as far back as Neolithic times, and perhaps farther still. Following the Marxist description: a State apparatus is erected upon the primitive agricultural communities, which already have lineal-territorial codes; but it overcodes
We should say, rather, that territorial motifs form rhythmic faces or char- acters, and that territorial counterpoints form melodic landscapes. There is a rhythmic character when we find that we no longer have the simple situa- tion of a rhythm associated with a character, subject, or impulse. The rhythm itself is now the character in its entirety; as such, it may remain con- stant, or it may be augmented or diminished by the addition or subtraction of sounds or always increasing or decreasing durations, and by an amplifi- cation or elimination bringing death or resuscitation, appearance or disap- pearance. Similarly, the melodic landscape is no longer a melody associ- ated with a landscape; the melody itself is a sonorous landscape in counterpoint to a virtual landscape. That is how we get beyond the placard stage: although each expressive quality, each matter of expression consid- ered in itself, is a placard or poster, the analysis of them is nevertheless abstract. Expressive qualities entertain variable or constant relations with one another (that is what matters of expression do); they no longer consti- tute placards that mark a territory, but motifs and counterpoints that express the relation of the territory to interior impulses or exterior circum- stances, whether or not they are given. No longer signatures, but a style. What objectively distinguishes a musician bird from a nonmusician bird is precisely this aptitude for motifs and counterpoints that, if they are varia- ble, or even when they are constant, make matters of expression something other than a poster—a style—since they articulate rhythm and harmonize melody. We can then say that the musician bird goes from sadness to joy or that it greets the rising sun or endangers itself in order to sing or sings better than another, etc. None of these formulations carries the slightest risk of anthropomorphism, or implies the slightest interpretation. It is instead a
We start with the archaic imperial State: overcoding, apparatus of cap- ture, machine of enslavement. It comprises a particular kind of property, money, public works—a formula complete in a single stroke but one that presupposes nothing "private" and does not even assume a preexistent mode of production since it is what gives rise to the mode of production. The point of departure that the preceding analyses give us is well estab- lished by archaeology. The question now becomes: Once the State has appeared, formed in a single stroke, how will it evolve? What are its factors of evolution or mutation, and what is the relation between evolved States and the archaic imperial State?
We still have not answered the question of why there are so many dan- gers, and so many necessary precautions. It is not enough to set up an abstract opposition between the strata and the BwO. For the BwO already exists in the strata as well as on the destratified plane of consistency, but in a totally different manner. Take the organism as a stratum: there is indeed a
We think the material or machinic aspect of an assemblage relates not to the production of goods but rather to a precise state of intermingling of bodies in a society, including all the attractions and repulsions, sympathies and antipathies, alterations, amalgamations, penetrations, and expansions that affect bodies of all kinds in their relations to one another. What regulates the obligatory, necessary, or permitted interminglings of bodies is above all an alimentary regime and a sexual regime. Even technology makes the mistake of considering tools in isolation: tools exist only in rela- tion to the interminglings they make possible or that make them possible. The stirrup entails a new man-horse symbiosis that at the same time entails new weapons and new instruments. Tools are inseparable from symbioses or amalgamations defining a Nature-Society machinic assemblage. They presuppose a social machine that selects them and takes them into its "phy- lum": a society is defined by its amalgamations, not by its tools. Similarly, the semiotic or collective aspect of an assemblage relates not to a produc- tivity of language but to regimes of signs, to a machine of expression whose variables determine the usage of language elements. These elements do not stand on their own any more than tools do. There is a primacy of the machinic assemblage of bodies over tools and goods, a primacy of the col- lective assemblage of enunciation over language and words. The articula- tion of the two aspects of the assemblage is effected by the movements of deterritorialization that quantify their forms. That is why a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of flight running through it. An assemblage has neither base nor superstructure, neither deep structure nor superficial structure; it flattens all of its dimen- sions onto a single plane of consistency upon which reciprocal presupposi- tions and mutual insertions play themselves out.
We thought it possible to assign the invention of the war machine to the nomads. This was done only in the historical interest of demonstrating that the war machine as such was invented, even if it displayed from the begin- ning all of the ambiguity that caused it to enter into composition with the other pole, and swing toward it from the start. However, in conformity with the essence, the nomads do not hold the secret: an "ideological," scientific, or artistic movement can be a potential war machine, to the precise extent to which it draws, in relation to aphylum, a plane of consistency, a creative
We took as our point of departure cases of this kind on the geological stratum, the crystalline stratum, and physicochemical strata, wherever the molar can be said to express microscopic molecular interactions ("the crys- tal is the macroscopic expression of a microscopic structure"; the "crystal- line form expresses certain atomic or molecular characteristics of the constituent chemical categories"). Of course, this still leaves numerous possibilities, depending on the number and nature of the intermediate
We wish to make a simple point about psychoanalysis: from the begin- ning, it has often encountered the question of the becomings-animal of the human being: in children, who continually undergo becomings of this kind; in fetishism and in particular masochism, which continually con- front this problem. The least that can be said is that the psychoanalysts, even Jung, did not understand, or did not want to understand. They killed becoming-animal, in the adult as in the child. They saw nothing. They see the animal as a representative of drives, or a representation of the parents. They do not see the reality of a becoming-animal,
We would like to go into greater detail on a fourth regime of signs, the postsignifying regime, which has different characteristics opposing it to signifiance and is defined by a unique procedure, that of "subjecti-fication."
We're a little lost now. There is so much going on in these retorts. So many endlessly proliferating distinctions. So much getting even, for episte-mology is not innocent. The sweet and subtle Geoffroy and the violent and serious Cuvier do battle around Napoleon. Cuvier,
We're not far from wolves. For the Wolf-Man, in his second so-called psychotic episode, kept constant watch over the variations or changing path of the little holes or scars on the skin of his nose. During the first epi- sode, which Freud declares neurotic, he recounted a dream he had about six or seven wolves in a tree, and drew five. Who is ignorant of the fact that wolves travel in packs? Only Freud. Every child knows it. Not Freud. With false scruples he asks, How are we to explain the fact that there are five, six, or seven wolves in this dream? He has decided that this is neurosis, so he uses the other reductive procedure:
What counts is not the particular case of the freed slave.What counts is the collective figure of the Outsider. What counts is that in one way or another the apparatus of overcoding gives rise to flows that are themselves decoded—flows of money, labor, property. . . These flows are the correlate of the apparatus. And the correlation is not only social, internal to the archaic empire, it is also geographical. This would be the place to bring up
What is a center or focal point of power?
What is a semiotic, in other words, a regime of signs or a formalization of expression? They are simultaneously more and less than language. Language as a whole is defined by "superlinearity," its condition of possi- bility; individual languages are defined by constants, elements, and rela- tions of a phonological, syntactical, and semantic nature. Doubtless, every regime of signs effectuates the condition of possibility of language and utilizes language elements, but that is all. No regime can be identical to that condition of possibility, and no regime has the property of con- stants. As Foucault clearly shows, regimes of signs are only functions of existence of language that sometimes span a number of languages and are sometimes distributed within a single language; they coincide neither with a structure nor with units of a given order, but rather intersect them and cause them to appear in space and time. This is the sense in which regimes of signs are assemblages of enunciation, which cannot be ade- quately accounted for by any linguistic category: what makes a proposi- tion or even a single word a "statement" pertains to implicit presupposi- tions that cannot be made explicit, that mobilize pragmatic variables proper to enunciation (incorporeal transformations). This precludes explaining an assemblage in terms of the signifier or the subject, because both pertain to variables of enunciation within the assemblage. It is signifiance and subjectification that presuppose the assemblage, not the reverse. The names we gave to the regimes of signs ("presignifying," "sig- nifying," "countersignifying," "postsignifying") would remain evolution- ist if heterogeneous functions or varieties of assemblages did not effectively correspond to them (segmentarization, signifiance and inter- pretation, numeration, subjectification). Regimes of signs are thus defined by variables that are internal to enunciation but remain external to the constants of language and irreducible to linguistic categories.
What is called a nation-state, in the most diverse forms, is precisely the State as a model of realization. And the birth of nations implies many arti- fices: Not only are they constituted in an active struggle against the imper- ial or evolved systems, the feudal systems, and the autonomous cities, but they crush their own "minorities," in other words, minoritarian phenom- ena that could be termed "nationalitarian," which work from within and if need be turn to the old codes to find a greater degree of freedom. The con- stituents of the nation are a land and a people: the "natal," which is not nec- essarily innate, and the "popular," which is not necessarily pregiven.
What is called a style can be the most natural thing in the world; it is nothing other than the procedure of a continuous variation. Of the dual- isms established by linguistics, there are few with a more shaky foundation than the separation between linguistics and stylistics: Because a style is not an individual psychological creation but an assemblage of enunciation, it unavoidably produces a language within a language. Take an arbitrary list of authors we are fond of: Kafka once again, Beckett, Gherasim Luca, Jean-
what need to be determined in order to understand both the repression it encounters and the interaction "containing" it.
What romanticism lacks most is a people. The territory is haunted by a solitary voice; the voice of the earth resonates with it and provides it per- cussion rather than answering it. Even when there is a people, it is mediatized by the earth, it rises up from the bowels of the earth and is apt to return there: more a subterranean than a terrestrial people. The hero is a hero of the earth; he is mythic, rather than being a hero of the people and historical. Germany, German romanticism, had a genius for experiencing the natal territory not as deserted but as "solitary," regardless of popula- tion density; for the population is only an emanation of the earth,
What should have been done is the opposite, all of this should be under- stood in intensity: the Wolf is the pack, in other words, the multiplicity instantaneously apprehended as such insofar as it approaches or moves away from zero, each distance being nondecomposable. Zero is the body without organs of the Wolf-Man. If the unconscious knows nothing of negation, it is because there is nothing negative in the unconscious, only indefinite moves toward and away from zero, which does not at all express lack but rather the positivity of the full body as support and prop ("for an afflux is necessary simply to signify the absence of intensity").
Whatever the causes of each of these movements, it is clear that the nature of the movement is different. It is no longer adequate to say that there is interassemblage, passage from a territorial assemblage to another type of assemblage; rather, we should say that one leaves all assemblages behind, that one exceeds the capacities of any possible assemblage, enter- ing another plane. In effect, there is no longer a milieu movement or rhythm, nor a territorialized or territorializing movement or rhythm; there is something of the Cosmos in these more ample movements. The localiza- tion mechanisms are still extremely precise, but the localization has become cosmic. These are no longer territorialized forces bundled together as forces of the earth; they are the liberated or regained forces of a deterritorialized Cosmos. In migration, the sun is no longer the terrestrial sun reigning over a territory, even an aerial one; it is the celestial sun of the Cosmos, as in the two Jerusalems, the Apocalypse. Leaving aside these two grandiose cases where deterritorialization becomes absolute while losing nothing of its precision (because it weds cosmic variables), we must remark that the territory is constantly traversed by movements of deterrito- rialization that are relative and may even occur in place, by which one passes from the intra-assemblage to interassemblages, without, however, leaving the territory or issuing from the assemblages in order to wed the Cosmos. A territory is always en route to an at least potential deterrito- rialization, even though the new assemblage may operate a reterritoriali-zation (something that "has-the-value-of' home). We saw that the territory constituted itself on a margin of decoding affecting the milieu; we now see that there is a margin of deterritorialization affecting the territory itself. There is a series of unclaspings. The territory is inseparable from certain coefficients of deterritorialization (which can be evaluated in each case) that place the relations of each territorialized function to the territory in variation, as well as the relations of the territory to each deterritorialized assemblage. It is the same "thing" that appears first as a territorialized function taken up in the intra-assemblage, and again as a deterritorialized or autonomous assemblage, as an interassemblage.
whatever the speed of the former or the tardiness of the latter. Strictly speaking, it cannot be said that a body that is dropped has a speed, however fast it falls; rather it has an infinitely decreasing slowness in accor- dance with the law of falling bodies. Laminar movement that striates space, that goes from one point to another, is weighty; but rapidity, celerity, applies only to movement that deviates to the minimum extent and there- after assumes a vortical motion, occupying a smooth space, actually draw- ing smooth space itself. In this space, matter-flow can no longer be cut into parallel layers, and movement no longer allows itself to be hemmed into biunivocal relations between points. In this sense, the role of the qualita- tive opposition gravity-celerity, heavy-light, slow-rapid is not that of a quantifiable scientific determination but of a condition that is coextensive to science and that regulates both the separation and the mixing of the two models, their possible interpenetration, the domination of one by the other, their alternative. And the best formulation, that of Michel Serres, is indeed couched in terms of an alternative, whatever mixes or composi-
When a prophet declines the burden God entrusts to him (Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.), it is not because the burden would have been too heavy, as with an imperial oracle or seer who refuses a dangerous mission. It is instead a case like Jonah's, who by hiding and fleeing and betraying anticipates the will of God more effectively than if he had obeyed. The prophet is always being forced by God, literally violated by him, much more than inspired by him. The prophet is not a priest. The prophet does not know how to talk, God puts the words in his mouth: word-ingestion, a new form of semiophagy. Unlike the seer, the prophet interprets nothing: his delusion is active rather than ideational or imaginative, his relation to God is passional and authoritative rather than despotic and signifying; he anticipates and detects the powers {puissances) of the future rather than applying past and present powers (pouvoirs). Faciality traits no longer func- tion to prevent the formation of a line of flight, or to form a body of signifiance controlling that line and sending only a faceless goat down it. Rather, it is faciality itself that organizes the line of flight, in the face-off between two countenances that become gaunt and turn away in profile. Betrayal has become an idee fixe, the main obsession, replacing the deceit of the paranoiac and the hysteric. The "persecutor-persecuted" relation has no relevance whatsoever: its meaning is altogether different in the authoritarian passional regime than in the despotic paranoid regime.
When the schoolmistress instructs her students on a rule of grammar or arithmetic, she is not informing them, any more than she is informing her- self when she questions a student. She does not so much instruct as "insign," give orders or commands. A teacher's commands are not external or additional to what he or she teaches us. They do not flow from primary significations or result from information: an order always and already con- cerns prior orders, which is why ordering is redundancy. The compulsory education machine does not communicate information; it imposes upon the child semiotic coordinates possessing all of the dual foundations of
When Virginia Woolf was questioned about a specifically women's writ- ing, she was appalled at the idea of writing "as a woman." Rather, writing should produce a becoming-woman as atoms of womanhood capable of crossing and impregnating an entire social field, and of contaminating men, of sweeping them up in that becoming. Very soft particles—but also very hard and obstinate, irreducible, indomitable. The rise of women in English novel writing has spared no man: even those who pass for the most virile, the most phallocratic, such as Lawrence and Miller, in their turn continually tap into and emit particles that enter the proximity or zone of indiscernibility of women. In writing, they become-women. The question is not, or not only, that of the organism, history, and subject of enunciation that oppose masculine to feminine in the great dualism machines. The question is fundamentally that of the body—the body they steal from us in order to fabricate opposable organisms. This body is stolen first from the girl: Stop behaving like that, you're not a little girl anymore, you're not a tomboy, etc. The girl's becoming is stolen first, in order to impose a history, or prehistory, upon her. The boy's turn comes next, but it is by using the girl as an example, by pointing to the girl as the object of his desire, that an opposed organism, a dominant history is fabricated for him too. The girl is the first victim, but she must also serve as an example and a trap. That is why, conversely, the reconstruction of the body as a Body without Organs, the anorganism of the body, is inseparable from a becoming-woman, or the production of a molecular woman. Doubtless, the girl becomes a woman in the molar or organic sense. But conversely, becoming-woman or the molec- ular woman is the girl herself. The girl is certainly not defined by virginity; she is defined by a relation of movement and rest, speed and slowness, by a combination of atoms, an emission of particles: haecceity. She never ceases
When we oppose speed and slowness, the quick and the weighty, Celeritas and Gravitas, this must not be seen as a quantitative opposition, or as a mythological structure (although Dumezil has established the myth- ological importance of this opposition, precisely in relation to the State apparatus and its natural "gravity"). The opposition is both qualitative and scientific, in that speed is not merely an abstract characteristic of movement in general but is incarnated in a moving body that deviates, however slightly, from its line of descent or gravity. Slow and rapid are not quantitative degrees of movement but rather two types of qualified move- ment,
Whether it be the infinite set of the nonwhites of the periphery, or the restricted set of the Basques, Corsicans, etc., everywhere we look we see the conditions for a worldwide movement: the minorities recreate "nationali-tarian" phenomena that the nation-states had been charged with controlling and quashing. The bureaucratic socialist sector is certainly not spared by these movements, and as Amalrik said, the dissidents are nothing, or serve only as pawns in international politics, if they are abstracted from the minorities working the USSR. It matters little that the minorities are incapable of constituting viable States from the point of view of the axiomatic and the market, since in the long run they promote compositions that do not pass by way of the capitalist economy any more than they do the State-form. The response of the States, or of the axiomatic, may obviously be to accord the minorities regional or federal or statutory autonomy, in short, to add axioms. But this is not the problem: this operation consists only in translating the minorities into denumerable sets or subsets, which would enter as elements into the majority, which could be counted among the majority. The same applies for a status accorded to women, young people, erratic workers, etc. One could even imagine, in blood and crisis, a more radical reversal that would make the white world the periphery of a yellow world; there would doubtless be an entirely different axiomatic. But what we are talking about is something else, something even that would not resolve: women, nonmen, as a minority, as a nondenumerable flow or set, would receive no adequate expression by becoming elements of the majority, in other words, by becoming a denumerable finite set. Nonwhites would receive no adequate expression by becoming a new yellow or black majority, an infinite denumerable set. What is proper to the minority is to assert a power of the nondenumerable, even if that minority is composed of a single member. That is the formula for multiplicities. Minority as a universal figure, or becoming-everybody/everything (devenir tout le monde). Woman: we all have to become that, whether we are male or female. Non-white: we all have to become that, whether we are white, yellow, or black.
which is continually dismantling the organ- ism, causing asignifying particles or pure intensities to pass or circulate, and attributing to itself subjects that it leaves with nothing more than a name as the trace of an intensity. What is the body without organs of a book? There are several, depending on the nature of the lines considered, their particular grade or density, and the possibility of their converging on a "plane of consistency" assuring their selection. Here, as elsewhere, the units of measure are what is essential: quantify writing. There is no differ- ence between what a book talks about and how it is made. Therefore a book also has no object. As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. We will ask what it functions with, in con- nection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities, in which other multiplicities its own are inserted and metamorphosed, and with what bodies without organs it makes its own converge. A book exists only through the outside and on the outside. A book itself is a little machine; what is the relation (also measurable) of this literary machine to a war machine, love machine, revolutionary machine, etc.—and an abstract machine that sweeps them along? We have been criticized for overquoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work. Kleist and a mad war machine, Kafka and a most extraordi- nary bureaucratic machine . . . (What if one became animal or plant through literature, which certainly does not mean literarily? Is it not first through the voice that one becomes animal?) Literature is an assemblage. It has nothing to do with ideology. There is no ideology and never has been. All we talk about are multiplicities, lines, strata and segmentarities, lines of flight and intensities, machinic assemblages and their various types, bodies without organs and their construction and selection, the plane of consistency, and in each case the units of measure. Stratometers, deleometers, BwO units of density, BwO units of convergence: Not only do these constitute a quantification of writing, but they define writing as always the measure of something else. Writing has nothing to do with
which our modernity pays willing allegiance. This time, the principal root has aborted,
which was filled with fumes of olibanum and "hung with strangely figured arras." Disarticulated, deterritorialized, Challenger muttered that he was taking the earth with him, that he was leaving for the mysterious world, his poison garden. He whispered some- thing else: it is by headlong flight that things progress and signs proliferate. Panic is creation. A young woman cried out, her face "convulsed with a wilder, deeper,
Why return to the primitives, when it is a question of our own life? The fact is that the notion of segmentarity was constructed by ethnologists to account for so-called primitive societies, which have no fixed, central State apparatus and no global power mechanisms or specialized political institu- tions. In these societies, the social segments have a certain leeway, between the two extreme poles of fusion and scission, depending on the task and the situation; there is also considerable communicability between heterogene- ous elements, so that one segment can fit with another in a number of different ways;
with its absolute deterritorialization. It is clear that the line of flight does not come afterward; it is there from the beginning, even if it awaits its hour, and waits for the others to explode. Supple segmentarity, then, is only a kind of compromise operating by relative deterritorializations and permitting reterritorializations that cause blockages and reversions to the rigid line. It is odd how supple segmentarity is caught between the two other lines, ready to tip to one side or the other; such is its ambiguity. It is also necessary to look at the various combinations: it is quite possible that one group or individual's line of flight may not work to benefit that of another group or individual; it may on the contrary block it, plug it, throw it even deeper into rigid segmentarity. It can happen in love that one per- son's creative line is the other's imprisonment. The composition of the lines, of one line with another, is a problem, even of two lines of the same type. There is no assurance that two lines of flight will prove compatible, compossible. There is no assurance that the body without organs will be easy to compose. There is no assurance that a love, or a political ap- proach, will withstand it.
with the aid of a faint, by crossing a void. Kleist multiplies "life plan(e)s," but his voids and failures, his leaps, earthquakes, and plagues are always included on a single plane. The plane is not a principle of organization but a means of transportation. No form develops, no subject forms; affects are displaced, becomings cata- pult forward and combine into blocks,
without changing anything in the constant object; or the magnitudes can vary with no other result than an increase or a decrease in the amount of space they striate. Bergson thus brought to light "two very different kinds of multiplicity," one qualitative and fusional, continuous, the other numerical and homogeneous, discrete. It will be noted that matter goes back and forth between the two; sometimes it is already enveloped in quali- tative multiplicity, sometimes already developed in a metric "schema" that draws it outside of itself. The confrontation between Bergson and Einstein on the topic of Relativity is incomprehensible if one fails to place it in the context of the basic theory of Riemannian multiplicities, as modi- fied by Bergson.
without importance; on the contrary, it is determining (at the most diverse levels: women's struggle for the vote, for abortion, for jobs; the struggle of the regions for autonomy; the struggle of the Third World; the struggle of the oppressed masses and minorities in the East or West...). But there is also always a sign to indicate that these struggles are the index of another, coexistent combat. However modest the demand, it always constitutes a point that the axiomatic cannot tolerate: when people demand to formu- late their problems themselves, and to determine at least the particular conditions under which they can receive a more general solution
WITHOUT ORGANS?
woman, a clutch of girls in Charlus's voice, a horde of wolves in somebody's throat, a multiplicity of anuses in the anus, mouth, or eye one is intent upon. We each go through so many bodies in each other. Albertine is slowly extracted from a group of girls with its own number, organization, code, and hierarchy; and not only is this group or restricted mass suffused by an unconscious, but Albertine has her own multiplicities that the narrator, once he has isolated her, discovers on her body and in her lies—until the end of their love returns her to the indiscernible.
WORK
works in a material that is not meager but prodigiously simplified, crea- tively limited, selected. For there is no imagination outside of technique. The modern figure is not the child or the lunatic, still less the artist, but the cosmic artisan: a homemade atomic bomb—it's very simple really, it's been proven, it's been done. To be an artisan and no longer an artist, cre- ator, or founder, is the only way to become cosmic, to leave the milieus and the earth behind. The invocation to the Cosmos does not at all operate as a metaphor; on the contrary, the operation is an effective one, from the moment the artist connects a material with forces of consistency or consolidation.
would be disfigured and mis- spelled, retranscribed as a patronymic.
yes what a wonderful language for hiring
Yes, all becomings are molecular: the animal, flower, or stone one becomes are molecular collectivities, haecceities, not molar subjects, objects, or form that we know from the outside and recognize from experi- ence, through science, or by habit. If this is true, then we must say the same of things human: there is a becoming-woman, a becoming-child, that do not resemble the woman or the child as clearly distinct molar entities (al- though it is possible—only possible—for the woman or child to occupy privileged positions in relation to these becomings). What we term a molar entity is, for example, the woman as defined by her form, endowed with organs and functions and assigned as a subject. Becoming-woman is not imitating this entity or even transforming oneself into it. We are not, how- ever, overlooking the importance of imitation, or moments of imitation, among certain homosexual males, much less the prodigious attempt at a real transformation on the part of certain transvestites. All we are saying is that these indissociable aspects of becoming-woman must first be under- stood as a function of something else: not imitating or assuming the female form, but emitting particles that enter the relation of movement and rest, or the zone of proximity, of a microfemininity, in other words, that produce in us a molecular woman, create the molecular woman. We do not mean to say that a creation of this kind is the prerogative of the man, but on the con- trary that the woman as a molar entity has to become-woman in order that
Yet the question remains: When does the abstract machine of faciality enter into play? When is it triggered? Take some simple examples: the maternal power operating through the face during nursing; the passional power operating through the face of the loved one, even in caresses; the political power operating through the face of the leader (streamers, icons, and photographs), even in mass actions; the power of film operating through the face of the star and the close-up; the power of television. It is not the individuality of the face that counts but the efficacy of the cipher- ing it makes possible, and in what cases it makes it possible.
Yet this movement is still under earth's command, the repulsion from the territory
Yet we must consider two aspects: on the one hand, these semiotics are still concrete even after forms of content have been abstracted, but only to the extent that they are mixed, that they constitute mixed combinations. Every semiotic is mixed and only functions as such; each one necessarily captures fragments of one or more other semiotics (surplus value of code). Even from this perspective, the signifying semiotic has no privileged status to apply toward the formation of a general semiology: in particular, the way in which it combines with the passional semiotic of subjectification ("the signifier for the subject") implies nothing that would privilege it over other combinations, for example, the combination of the passional semiotic and the countersignifying semiotic, or of the countersignifying semiotic and the signifying semiotic itself (when the Nomads turn imperial), etc. There is no general semiology.
You can fail twice, but it is the same failure, the same danger. Once at the level of the constitution of the BwO and again at the level of what passes or does not pass across it. You think you have made yourself a good BwO, that you chose the right Place, Power {Puissance), and Collectivity (there is always a collectivity, even when you are alone), and then nothing passes, nothing circulates, or something prevents things from moving. A paranoid point, a point of blockage, an outburst of delirium: it comes across clearly in Speed, by William Burroughs, Jr. Is it possible to locate this danger point, should the block be expelled, or should one instead "love, honor, and serve degeneracy wherever it surfaces"? To block, to be blocked, is that not still an intensity? In each case, we must define what comes to pass and what does not pass, what causes passage and prevents it. As in the meat circuit
You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of signifiance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it, when things, persons, even situations, force you to; and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. Mimic the strata. You don't reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying. That is why we encountered the paradox of those emptied and dreary bodies at the very beginning: they
YOU MAKE YOURSELF A BODY WITHOUT ORGANS?

How are these lines selected from the book?