Together D&G wrote Anti-Oedipus and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature.
Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgments, xvi
Author's Note, xx
Bibliography (compiled by Brian Massumi), 579
Index, 587
List of Illustrations, 611
D&G root each chapter, however, in a concrete historical moment. Those moments are not laid out sequentially by chapter but jump around: chapter two deals with 1914, while chapter 3 deals with 10,000 BC. We note this rootedness in a study of a mode of thought, the postmodern, that indulges in the separation of reality from a simulated "reality" which humans take to be reality. From the point of view of THE PROGRAMME, we find this connectedness significant.
What are D&G doing in this book? We think that--whatever else--they are giving us a vocabulary with which to describe and analyze the experience of being conscious in the conditions of postmodernism. Their terms are novel and difficult therefore to put together. Their novelty, we sense, is necessary if we are to come to understand what is happening to us now and what we are doing to *make* happenings. When a world view dies, the terms that define and analyze it also die, even while they continue to live on human tongues through inertia, custom, unthought. The project in this book bears witness that the two authors feel the death of the pre-postmodern world view; their ambition is to give us the equipment to begin to know what has been happening. In one sense, it has not been happening until we use the equipment to say what has been happening: such a sense would be consistent with a major postmodern thread.
SPACE is central to D&G; it dominates much of the postmodern conversation. The "plateaus" of their title are borrowed from Gregory Bateson (STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND. NY: Ballantine Books, 1972, p. 113). D&G say:
Bateson "uses the term *plateau* for continuous regions of intensity constituted in such a way that they do not allow themselves to be interrupted by any external termination, any more than they allow themselves to build toward a climax....A plateau is a piece of immanence. Every Body Without Organs is made up of plateaus. Every BwO is itself a plateau in communiction with other plateaus on the plane of consistency. The BwO is a component of passage." (p.158)
DETERRITORIALIZATION is another key concept in D&G, derived from the spatial metaphor also. We understand that it describes the condition of the "plane of consistency" or "smooth space." Its opposite--territorialization--describes the condition of "striated space." That is where particularities of desire occur. And so on.
We run a risk, when we see these terms, of translating them into the Aristotelian/Platonic/Judeo-Christian language of ideas inherited in the west. We think that would be a misreading of D&G. It is to get out of the grip of that language that they create their terms. Rather, they know that that language has lost its grip on us but we have not yet lost our grip on it; and so we need a vocabulary to cope with what we have wrought; and they will try to give us one.
If that is what they are doing, then in the end we should judge how successful their project has turned out to be. THE PROGRAMME is not equipped to make that kind of judgment at this time. However, we are intrigued by similarities of the Body Without Organs (a plane of consistency) and the Zen state of Enlightenment or Satori. We also think of echoes of the western tradition when D&G describe the plane of consistency, especially the idea of beatitude, or of ecstasy in the presence of God--going outside oneself.
We see a possibly useful comparison to be made between the Body Without Organs and Satori. The comparison will be referenced in THE PROGRAMME when it has been written as an essay outside the computer.
D&G appear to move us toward a consideration of the nature of being in the postmodern frame of mind. That ordinarily would lead to a formal philosophy of ontology. We hold out the other expectation, however, that they are attempting to describe our sense of experience under postmodern conditions-- to enable us to avoid the dysfunction of the times by making a new sense out of it. Would they, therefore, want to lift us out of these times? To something other? Better? Or, at least, more comforting, or more fulfilling? These are questions for THE PROGRAMME to consider.
Go back a page or so and click on "Deleuze & Guattari" for a trip to their plateau at the University of Virginia. That file also opens windows on other postmodern figures, such as Baudrillard.
Below is a list of some of the important concepts in D&G. Each merits elaboration--work for THE PROGRAMME.
Abstract machines make the TERRITORIAL ASSEMBLAGE open onto something else. That is, they constitute becomings. They are singular and immanent. They "compose" both themselves and A PLANE OF CONSISTENCY. Only then are they "effectuated" within an assemblage in FORMS AND SUBSTANCES. They are then a PLATEAU of variation that places variables of content and expression in continuity. Abstract machines in themselves are abstract, singular, creative, real, non-concrete, actual, non-effectuated. They are a consolidated aggregate of "matters-functions." (Matters are such as conductivity, induction; functions are such as tensors.) In an assemblage, the creative connections of abstract machines can be replaced by conjunctions that cause BLOCKAGES. Blockages can be any of the following: axiomatics; organizations forming strata; reterritorializations forming black holes; conversions into lines of death. Abstract machines can (a) open and (b) close assemblages. All abstract machines are linked to other abstract machines: "their operations are convergent."
A REFRAIN is a TERRITORIAL ASSEMBLAGE. It marks off territory in chaos. It always carries earth with it--Natal.
MILIEUS are vibratory. They slide in relation to one another. They are a block of space-time periodically repeating their component. They are "of the living thing" an (a) exterior (materials); (b) interior (composing elements and composed substances); (c) intermediary (membranes and limits). They are "coded" for periodic repetition. They are perpetually transcoding or transducting. They pass into one another (communicating). They open to chaos, threatening exhaustion or intrusion. They are kept from chaos by RHYTHM.
RHYTHM answers chaos for the milieu. It occurs BETWEEN two milieus (e.g. between night and day). It occurs when a transcoded passage from one milieu to another occurs. Rhythm is a COMMUNICATION of milieus. It is NOT meter or cadence. It is the Unequal or Incommensurable undergoing transcoding. It ties together "critical moments." It ties itself together in passing from one milieu to another. It changes direction.
"Action occurs in a milieu, whereas rhythm is located between two milieus."
"From chaos, Milieus and Rhythms are born."
Alan Taylor's list of D&G materials on the WWW offers views of the two philosophers from varying points of view.