Paul Patton - Deleuze and The Political-Routledge (2000)

THINKING THE POLITICAL
General editors:
Keith Ansell Pearson
University of Warwick
Simon Critchley
University of Essex
Recent decades have seen the emergence of a distinct and challenging body
of work by a number of Continental thinkers that has fundamentally
altered the way in which philosophical questions are conceived and dis-
cussed. This work poses a major challenge to anyone wishing to define
the essentially contestable concept of 'the political' and to think anew the
political import and application of philosophy. How does recent thinking
on time, history, language, humanity, alterity, desire, sexuality, gender
and culture open up the possibility of thinking the political anew? What
are the implications of such thinking for our understanding of and relation
to the leading ideologies of the modern world, such as liberalism, socialism
and Marxism? What are the political responsibilities of philosophy in the
face of the new world (dis)order?
This new series is designed to present the work of the major Continental
thinkers of our time, and the political debates their work has generated,
to a wider audience in philosophy and in political, social and cultural
theory. The aim is neither to dissolve the specificity of the 'philosophical'
into the 'political' nor evade the challenge that the 'political' poses the
'philosophical'; rather, each volume in the series will try to show it is only
in the relation between the two that the new possibilities of thought and
politics can be activated.
Volumes already published in the series are:
• Foucault & the Political by Jon Simons

• Derrida & the Political by Richard Beardsworth
• Nietzsche & the Political by Daniel W. Conway
• Heidegger & the Political by Miguel de Beistegui
• Lacan & the Political by Yannis Stavrakakis
• Lyotard & the Political by James Williams
DELEUZE AND THE
POLITICAL
Paul Patton
©* France
London and New York

First published 2000
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2000 Paul Patton
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Patton, Paul.
Deleuze and the political/Paul Patton.
p. cm. - (Thinking the political)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Deleuze, Gilles - Contributions in political science.
2. Political science - Philosophy.
I. Title. II. Series.
JC261.P37 2000
32(y.01^dc21 99-086552
ISBN O-415-10063-1 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-10064-X (pbk)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Concept and image of thought: Deleuze's conception
of philosophy 11
2 Difference and multiplicity 29
3 Power 49
4 Desire, becoming and freedom 68

5 Social machines and the state: the history and politics of
deterritorialisation 88
6 Nomads, capture and colonisation 109
Conclusion 132
Notes 138
References 149
Index 159
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the editors of this series, Simon Critchley and Keith Ansell
Pearson, and to the two Routledge editors with whom I have worked in the
course of this project, Adrian Driscoll and Tony Bruce, for their support
and patience. I am especially indebted to Keith Ansell Pearson and to the
two readers to whom Routledge sent the manuscript for their generous
and helpful editorial comments. I am also grateful to a number of people
who read draft versions of all or part of this book and made helpful
suggestions: Duncan Ivison, Saul Newman, Kara Shaw and Charles Stivale.
I would also like to thank Melissa McMahon for her work both as
research assistant and as Deleuze scholar, Carl Power for his helpful
guidance with regard to Bergson and Peter Cook for preparing the index.
Many others have helped me to understand the work of Deleuze and
Guattari, through their publications and in conference presentations and
discussions over the last decade, including Ronald Bogue, Bruce Baugh,
Rosi Braidotti, Constantin Boundas, Philip Goodchild, Michael Hardt,
Eugene Holland, Brian Massumi, Gregg Lambert, Dorothea Olkowski,
Jean-Clet Martin, Todd May, Alan Schrift, Daniel Smith and Charles
Stivale. Constantin Boundas has played a very special role in creating a
community of Deleuze scholars who share his passion. Finally, and most
of all, I am grateful to Moira Gatens for her presence, her support and
her constructive engagement with this work over many years.
Some of the material included here is drawn from my previously
published work. I am grateful for permission to reprint passages from the
following articles and chapters:
'Conceptual politics and the war-machine in Mille Plateaux', Substance,

no. 44/45, 1984, pp. 61-80.
'Anti-Platonism and art', in Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea
Olkowski (eds) Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, New York
and London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 141-56.
vn
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
'Concept and event', Man and World, vol. 29, no. 3, July 1996, pp. 315-
26. With kind permission from Kluwer Academic Publishers.
'Deleuze and political thought', in Andrew Vincent (ed.) Political Theory:
Tradition and Diversity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997,
pp. 237-53.
'Strange proximity: Deleuze et Derrida dans les parages du concept', The
Oxford Literary Review, 18, 1997, pp. 117-33.
Vlll
INTRODUCTION
Gilles Deleuze does not conform to the standard image of a political phil-
osopher. He has not written about Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau
and when he has written on philosophers who rate as political thinkers,
such as Spinoza or Kant, he has not engaged with their political writings.
He does not address issues such as the nature of justice, freedom or democ-
racy, much less the principles of procedural justification. His work shows an
almost complete lack of engagement with the central problems and norma-
tive commitments of Anglo-American political thought. Explicitly political
concerns are not the largest part of his oeuvre and they emerged relatively
late in his career. He co-authored with Félix Guattari only two overtly
political books: Anti-Oedipus (1977) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987). In
addition, he published a chapter of the Dialogues jointly composed with
Claire Parnet entitled 'Many politics' (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 124—47),
a book on Foucault (Deleuze 1988b), an essay on Foucauldian themes
entitled 'Postscript on control societies' (1995b: 177-82), and several inter-
views which address political issues. Despite his lack of engagement with
issues of normative political theory, Deleuze is a profoundly political phil-
osopher. His collaborative work with Guattari offers new concepts and a
new approach to thinking philosophically about the political.
The profusion of idiosyncratic terminology makes it difficult for many to
read this work as political philosophy.1 Deleuze and Guattari discuss
society and politics in terms of machinic assemblages, becomings, nomad-
ism, forms of capture and processes of deterritorialisation and reterritoria-
lisation. Thus, A Thousand Plateaus opens with the blunt declaration that
'All we talk about are multiplicities, lines, strata and segmentarities, lines
of flight and intensities, machinic assemblages and their various types'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 4). The difficulty in reading their work is
further compounded when many readers assume that Deleuze and Guattari
employ much of this terminology as metaphor, while the authors insist that
their use of language is not metaphoric but conceptual.2 So, for example, in
Anti-Oedipus they follow Lewis Mumford in arguing that a society may be
regarded as a machine 'in the strict sense, without metaphor' (Deleuze and
1
DELEUZE AND THE POLITICAL
Guattari 1977: 251). In support of their claim that Mumford described cer-
tain ancient forms of empire as megamachines in a literal rather than a
metaphoric sense of the term, they point out that he justified this term by
reference to Reuleaux's classic definition of a machine as 'a combination
of resistant parts, each specialised in function, operating under human con-
trol to transmit motion and perform work' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977:
141). Deleuze and Guattari's machinic concept of society is discussed in
Chapter 5, while their concept of 'concepts' is discussed in Chapter 1 and
compared with Derrida's specifically philosophical and deconstructive
concepts.
A guiding principle of this study is that Deleuze's contribution to politi-
cal thought must be assessed in relation to his own conception and practice
of philosophy. We start from the premise that Deleuze must be taken at his
word when he describes his work with Guattari as 'philosophy, nothing
but philosophy, in the traditional sense of the word' (Deleuze 1980: 99).
Accordingly, our approach is framed by the conception of philosophy as
the creation of concepts which is set out in What Is Philosophy? (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994). Chapter 1 points to connections between this distinc-
tive conception of philosophy and Deleuze's discussions of the nature of
thought in his earlier work. The aim is to show that both the distinctive
practice of philosophy in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus and the
concept of philosophy outlined in What Is Philosophy? are consistent
developments from Deleuze's earlier treatments of the nature and task of
philosophy. The chapters that follow seek to draw out the conceptual
structure that underlies Deleuze and Guattari's 'nomadic' style of thought
and writing, and to elucidate some of the key concepts specific to their
social and political philosophy.
As the discussion of concepts of power and freedom in Chapters 3 and 4
shows, it is possible to translate some of Deleuze and Guattari's termin-
ology into the language of Anglophone political theory. However, there is
always a remainder that does not translate and a series of points at which
the normative dimensions of their work do not correspond to those of
Anglo-American political theory. For example, their conception of power
is closer to the idea of capacity to act than to the normative notion of
action which adversely affects the capacity of others to act. Their concep-
tion of freedom is closer to Nietzsche's ideal of 'self-overcoming' than it is
to ideas of negative or positive freedom. This points to a further difficulty
in reading their work as political philosophy, namely that they propose
concepts that do not readily map on to even the most enduring fictions of
Western political thought. In their social theory as well as in their account
of individual subjectivity, Deleuze and Guattari privilege the processes of
creative transformation and the lines of flight along which individuals or
groups are transformed into something different to what they were before.
They do not refer to individual subjects of freedom or autonomy, much
2
INTRODUCTION
less to notions of contract or consent. Their work is couched entirely in

non-subjectivist terms and refers only to abstract lines, movements and
processes of various kinds. They appear to be more interested in ways in
which society is differentiated or divided than in ways in which it is held
together. They are concerned neither with the legitimation of government,
nor its delegitimation, but rather with the processes through which existing
forms of government of self and others are transformed.
Although not a political philosopher in the sense that he belongs to
the disciplinary genre, Deleuze has long held the view that philosophy is a
political activity. This becomes explicit in the final product of his partner-
ship with Guattari, What Is Philosophy? (1994), where the authors endow
philosophy with a political vocation. They define philosophy as the
creation of 'untimely' concepts in Nietzsche's sense of this term, namely
'acting counter to our time, and thereby acting on our time and, let us
hope, for the benefit of a time to come' (Nietzsche 1983: essay 2, 'On the
Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life', foreword). They argue that
philosophy should be 'utopian' in the sense of contributing to the emer-
gence of new forms of individual and collective identity, or as they put it,
summoning forth 'a new earth and a people that does not yet exist'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 108). Their use of the term 'utopia' must be
treated with caution since they reject authoritarian or transcendent Utopias
in favour of those that are immanent, revolutionary and libertarian. It is
with this relation to Utopia, they argue, 'that philosophy becomes political
and takes the criticism of its own time to its highest point' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 99).
The desire for a philosophy that would be both critical and creative may
be found throughout Deleuze's work. His first book was a study of Hume's
conception of human nature (Deleuze 1991) first published in 1953. In
answer to a question from Antonio Negri about the relation of his earlier
work to the political, Deleuze replies that what interested him in Hume
was not the forms of representation of political life but the forms of collec-
tive creation: 'in Hume I found a very creative conception of the institution
and right' (Deleuze 1995b: 169, trans, modified).3 He comments further in
response to Negri that a constant theme of his work has been the con-
ditions under which new institutions can arise. In this regard, it is not the
law which is interesting but jurisprudence in so far as it is 'truly creative
of rights' (Deleuze 1995b: 169, trans, modified). For this reason, he
suggests that this should not be left to judges but should also involve
those most directly affected in the elaboration of new principles of right.
Chapter 6 takes up the question of jurisprudence with reference to the
elaboration of common law aboriginal land rights in Australia and
Canada.
Aspects of Deleuze's earlier work have exercised considerable influence
on political thought in France. For example, his efforts during the late
3
1950s and early 1960s to reformulate and revalue the concept of difference
(Deleuze 1956, 1983, 1994) were an important contribution to the sub-
sequent development of unorthodox 'philosophies of difference' by a
number of French philosophers. His account of Nietzsche as a systematic
thinker who privileged difference over identity is credited with having
launched the enthusiasm for Nietzsche among left-wing French thinkers
during the late 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 2 looks at the concept of multi-
plicity that is specific to Deleuze's metaphysics of difference and at the
manner in which this concept informed his work with Guattari. This
chapter also discusses the anti-Platonism and the resistance to Hegel
which are manifest in Deleuze's critique of the philosophy of representa-
tion. The final section of this chapter takes up the relationship of Deleuze's
concept of difference to what has become known as the 'politics of differ-
ence'. Chapter 3 examines his reconstruction of the Nietzschean concept
of 'will to power' and shows how this was an important methodological
resource for Foucault's critical historical analyses during the 1970s. After
outlining his reconstruction of Nietzsche's concept in terms of active and
reactive force, affirmative and negative expressions of will to power, we
argue that this provides the prototype for the evaluative structure of
concepts developed in Anti-Oedipus (1977) and A Thousand Plateaus
(1987).
Deleuze belonged to a generation of French intellectuals whose political
consciousness was formed, as Guattari once said, 'in the enthusiasm and
naïveté of the Liberation'.4 Whereas Guattari had a long career of activism
in radical psychotherapy and left-wing organisations, Deleuze first came
into contact with political movements and activists after 1968. From this
period onwards, he became involved with a variety of groups and causes,
including the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons (GIP) begun by
Foucault and others in 1972, protests against the treatment of immigrant
workers, and support for homosexual rights. Later he took public positions
on issues such as the deportation by French authorities of a lawyer for the
Baader-Meinhof group, Klaus Croissant, and the imprisonment of Antonio
Negri and other Italian intellectuals on charges of complicity with terror-
ism. He also wrote several pieces in support of the Palestinian people,
declared his opposition to the French nuclear strike force, and signed letters
critical of French involvement in the Gulf War.5
This public intellectual activity did not distinguish Deleuze from a
variety of other neo-Marxist, existentialist, anarchist or left-wing liberal
intellectuals who signed the same petitions and took part in the same
demonstrations. By contrast, his conception of the political role of intel-
lectuals and the relationship between his own political activity and his
philosophy set him apart from many of his contemporaries. In a 1972
interview with Deleuze, Foucault tells the story of a Maoist who once said
to him:
INTRODUCTION
I can easily understand Sartre's purpose in siding with us; I can

understand his goals and his involvement in politics; I can partially
understand your position, since you've always been concerned
with the problem of confinement. But Deleuze is an enigma.
(Foucault 1977b: 205)
In reply, Deleuze points to the emergence of a new conception of the rela-

tionships between theory and practice in his own work with Guattari as
well as in Foucault's writings: a conception that understands these relation-
ships in a partial and fragmentary manner, not as determinate relationships
between 'theory' understood as a totality and 'practice' understood as an
equally unified process of the application or implementation of theory,
but as 'a system of relays within . . . a multiplicity of parts that are both
theoretical and practical' (Foucault 1977b: 206). The conception of theory
as a relay of practice stands in marked contrast to the idea that the intellec-
tual represents the vanguard of a proletarian movement which embodies
the forces of social change.6 It is closer to the ideal expressed by Nietzsche
in 'Schopenhauer as Educator' when he draws a distinction between aca-
demic philosophers in the service of the State and true philosophers who
must remain 'private thinkers'(Nietzsche 1983: essay 3, 'Schopenhauer as
Educator', sections 7 and 8). Sartre, whom Deleuze admired during his
youth and regarded as an important influence, was a modern paradigm of
the private thinker who spoke and acted on his own behalf rather than as
the representative of a political party or social class. Such thinkers, Deleuze
wrote, seek to align themselves with the unrepresentable forces that intro-
duce disorder and a dose of permanent revolution into political and social
life (Deleuze 1985: 83—4).7 'Private' is perhaps not the best term to describe
such thinkers, since it suggests isolation from social forces and social move-
ments when, for Deleuze, these are essential conditions of the activity of
thinking.
Foucault's Discipline and Punish provides an example of this 'private'
use of reason, to the extent that this book might be regarded as a theoreti-
cal relay of the political activity undertaken by the GIP. Similarly, Deleuze
and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus might be understood as a theoretical relay of
practical resistance to the role of psychoanalysis in the repression of poten-
tially revolutionary expressions of desire. The aim of their 'schizoanalysis'
is practical rather than theoretical: the analysis of the forms of unconscious
desire and their political investments is conceived as a means to the
'liberation' or unblocking of the creative or 'schizo' processes present in a
given social field. At the same time, with regard to the other side of the
relation between theory and practice described above, Deleuze does not
hesitate to describe Anti-Oedipus as 'from beginning to end a book of
political philosophy' (Deleuze 1995b: 170). This book exemplifies his
view, which we discuss in Chapter 1, that philosophy is and should be a
5
response to problems that are posed outside of the academy. For Deleuze,
such problems are a crucial enabling condition of creativity in thought.
The idea that philosophy creates concepts that are inseparable from a
form of life and mode of activity points to a constant dimension of
Deleuze's conception of thought and philosophy. It implies that the test of
these concepts is ultimately pragmatic: in the end, their value is determined
by the uses to which they can be put, outside as well as within philosophy.
Anti-Oedipus brought notoriety to the authors as founders of the current
of post-1968 leftist thought known as 'the philosophy of desire'. It was
widely read in the belief that such periods of revolutionary ferment saw
the emergence of unadulterated desire and a will to change which was as
quickly suppressed by the established organisations of political opposition
(such as the communist party and trade unions) as it was by the forces of
order. Deleuze and Guattari shared many of the political and theoretical
orientations common to the post-1968 libertarian left. These included a
concern for the political effectivity of desire and the unconscious invest-
ments which play a part in macropolitical movements, a concern for the
micropolitics of social life, and a concern for the politics of language and
signification. While they were neither semioticians nor theorists of
'discourse' in Foucault's sense of the term, they did acknowledge the
importance of language and its pragmatic dimension for modern political
life. Finally, while they were not Marxists in any traditional doctrinal
sense, an anti-capitalist thematic pervades all their writings, up to and
including What Is Philosophy? (1994). In the interview with Negri cited
earlier, Deleuze reaffirms his sympathy with Marx and describes capitalism
as a fantastic system for the fabrication of great wealth and great suffering.
He asserts that any philosophy worthy of being called political must take
account of the nature and evolution of capitalism (Deleuze 1995b: 171).
In return, Negri finds in A Thousand Plateaus (1987) 'the fundamental
elements of the renewal of historical materialism, in function of the new
dimensions of capitalistic development' (Negri 1995: 104).
Despite their adoption of aspects of Marx's social and economic theory,
there are significant points at which Deleuze and Guattari abandon tradi-
tional Marxist views. They reject the Marxist philosophy of history in
favour of a differential typology of the macro- and micro-assemblages
which determine the character of social life. They reject the idea that
contradiction is the motor of historical progress and argue that a society
is defined less by its contradictions than by its lines of flight or deterritoria-
lisation. They reject any internal or evolutionist account of the origins of
the State in favour of a neo-Nietzschean view according to which the
form of the State has always existed even if only as a virtual tendency
resisted by other processes within a given social field. Actual States are
as often as not imposed from without. They reject economic determinism
in favour of a 'machinic determinism' according to which collective
6
INTRODUCTION
assemblages of enunciation determine the social usage of language and

even the tools employed in a given society 'presuppose a social machine
that selects them and takes them into its "phylum"' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 90).
In Anti-Oedipus (1977) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987), Deleuze and
Guattari develop their own account of capitalism as a unique mode of
economic and political coordination and regulation which is immanent to
the social field, in contrast to earlier forms of empire which operated by
the transcendent 'overcoding' or capture of existing social and economic
processes. Whereas earlier forms of empire extracted rent or other forms
of obligatory payment, Deleuze and Guattari argue that capital functions
in the manner of an 'axiomatic' system which is indifferent to the content
of the propositions it connects. It produces a surplus by means of the axio-
matic conjugation of decoded flows of labour, money, commodities and,
increasingly, information. Deleuze comments in the interview with Negri
that what they found most useful in Marx was 'his analysis^ capitalism
as an immanent system that's constantly overcoming its own limitations,
and then coming up against them once more in broader form, because its
fundamental limit is Capital itself (Deleuze 1995b: 171). The lesson he
and Guattari draw from this is that, at the macrosocial level of economic
and political institutions, there is a permanent possibility of piecemeal
social change. While the capitalist economy may constitute an axiomatic
system inseparable from the fabric of modern social life, this does not
mean that particular axioms cannot be removed or replaced by others.
In common with Foucault and other poststructuralist political thinkers,
Deleuze and Guattari do not envisage global revolutionary change but
rather a process of 'active experimentation'8 which is played out in
between economic and political institutions and the sub-institutional move-
ments of desire and affect. Hence their sympathy for minority groups,
where 'minority' should be understood in a qualitative rather than a
quantitative sense. The minor is that which deviates from the majority or
standard which is the bearer of the dominant social code. The importance
of minority does not reside in the fact of its relative exclusion from the
majority but in the political potential of its divergence from the norm.
Minority provides an element capable of deterritorialising the dominant
social codes. Conversely, it is the process of deterritorialisation which con-
stitutes the essence of revolutionary politics for Deleuze and Guattari: not
the incorporation of minority demands by adjustment to the axioms of
the social machine, nor the reconstitution of a code, but the process of
becoming-minor, of widening the gap between oneself and the norm.
What is important, in their view, is a 'revolutionary-becoming' which is in
principle open to anyone (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 147). What they
mean by this is not simply resistance to the mechanisms of capture and
reterritorialisation, but the invention of new forms of subjectivity and new
forms of connection between deterritorialised elements of the social field.

Deleuze and Guattari provide a conceptual language in which to describe
the impact of social movements that impose new political demands upon
the qualitative or cultural dimensions of social life. More generally, they
contrast the dynamism of such forms of social nomadism with the essen-
tially parasitic and reactive character of forms of capture. They point to
examples from logic and computational theory as well as the natural
world to show that centralised control mechanisms are not essential to the
functioning of complex systems (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 15-18). It is
not the control of State power which interests them but rather the forms
of social change which take place alongside or beneath any given form of
State, and the manner in which these changes impact upon political institu-
tions themselves.
The anti-statist and minoritarian tenor of Deleuze and Guattari's politics
leads some commentators to represent them as a new species of anarchist.
Yet while they share the anarchist suspicion of political representation,
they are no less suspicious of attempts to turn the principles of non-
coercive and non-hierarchical organisation into a blueprint for society as a
whole. Todd May has suggested that the political perspective which they
share with some other poststructuralists such as Foucault and Lyotard
may be considered an offshoot of the anarchist tradition. He argues that
this new anarchism 'retains the ideas of intersecting and irreducible local
struggles, of a wariness about representation, of the political as investing
the entire field of social relationships, and of the social as a network
rather than a closed holism, a concentric field, or a hierarchy' (May 1994:
85). However, May also notes that, in common with other poststructuralist
thinkers, Deleuze and Guattari abandon several key assumptions of
classical anarchist thought, such as the repressive conception of power
and a belief in the essentially benign and cooperative character of human
nature. As he points out, their version of poststructuralist politics remains
a tactical rather than a strategic style of political thought, directed at par-
ticular or local forms of revolutionary-becoming rather than wholesale
social change. Such a political philosophy offers no guarantees: it is not a
narrative of inevitable progress, nor does it offer the security of commit-
ment to a single set of values against which progress may be judged. Does
this entail a pessimism or nihilism about the human condition, a certain
tragic note as Negri suggests (Deleuze 1995b: 173)? Deleuze replies that it
does not and that, on the contrary, the fact that movements can always
become bogged down in history or that revolutionary processes can turn
out badly implies the need for a permanent 'concern' or vigilance with
regard to the fate of the lines of flight along which movement is possible
(Deleuze 1995b: 173).
In the interview with Foucault referred to above, Deleuze describes
the political function of intellectual work in terms of relays between the
INTRODUCTION
theoretical and practical components of a 'multiplicity of parts'. This is an

allusion to the concept of machinic assemblage which he and Guattari
first employed in their theory of desire in Anti-Oedipus but subsequently
broadened to include social, linguistic and conceptual as well as 'practical'
assemblages. Their theory of assemblages provides the conceptual frame-
work for A Thousand Plateaus which, like Anti-Oedipus, is entirely a
work of political philosophy. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 discuss several of the
key concepts of the political philosophy presented in this mature work,
including 'becoming', 'minority', 'nomadism', 'war-machine', 'capture'
and 'deterritorialisation'. A central claim of the present study is that it is
the concept of 'deterritorialisation' which bears the weight of the Utopian
vocation which Deleuze and Guattari attribute to philosophy. This concept
is one that they invent in Anti-Oedipus (1977), then refine and extend in
A Thousand Plateaus (1987) before applying it to the nature of thought
in What Is Philosophy? (1994). The concept of deterritorialisation implies
a contrast between 'earth' and 'territory' (terre and territoire) understood
as the two fundamental dimensionsêf nature. Territory is in the first
instance territorialised earth, but it produces its own movements of
deterritorialisation, while conversely the earth gives rise to processes of
reterritorialisation and the constitution of new territories. Stable identities
or territories are therefore secondary formations upon the mobile earth.
Deleuze and Guattari describe a world in which the overriding tendency is
deterritorialisation.
A Thousand Plateaus is not political philosophy in the sense that it
provides tools for the justification or critique of political institutions and
processes. Rather, it is a political ontology that provides tools to describe
transformative, creative or deterritorialising forces and movements. At one
point the authors suggest that politics alone provides the horizon towards
which all their efforts are directed: 'before being there is politics' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 249). This ontology is an ethics in the sense that, as
for Spinoza, normative commitments are immanent to their philosophy of
nature as well as their social ontology.9 In all cases, it presents a world
understood as a complex of interconnected assemblages (earth, territory,
forms of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation), where the overriding
norm is that of deterritorialisation. It is because they conceive of phil-
osophy as an inherently political activity that What Is Philosophy? does
not have a separate section devoted to the political. When they describe
philosophy as Utopian in the sense that it summons forth new earths and
new peoples, Deleuze and Guattari align it with the creative aspect of this
complex process of reterritorialisation and deterritorialisation. By their
account, philosophy is Utopian in the sense that it opens up the possibility
of new forms of individual and collective identity, thereby effecting the
absolute deterritorialisation of the present in thought.10
The theory of assemblages developed in A Thousand Plateaus incorpo-

rates elements of the concept of multiplicity which was a constant concern
of Deleuze's earlier studies in the history of philosophy. Chapter 2 argues
that this concept of multiplicity provides the basis for his distinctive contri-
bution to the philosophy of difference, namely a concept of individuality
which does not conform to the logic of identity. One of the ways in
which Deleuze often sought to present the case for his philosophy of multi-
plicity was to argue for the priority of the conjunction 'and' over the verb
'to be'. By this means, he sought to carry out a partial overturning of the
philosophical tradition and to free the connective power of relationality
from its subordination to attribution: Thinking with AND instead of
thinking IS, instead of thinking for IS: empiricism has never had another
secret' (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 57). As the indeterminate conjunction
which subtends all relations, 'and' comes to stand for that which is
in-between any two things brought into relation with each other. It
becomes an axiom of Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy that
new 'becomings', events or beings always emerge from this 'in-between'.
In their view, 'and' is always a border between two elements and, as such,
a potential line of flight along which things happen and changes take
place. In this perspective, it is entirely appropriate that this book should
be called Deleuze and the political. It does not aim to present a definitive
characterisation of Deleuze's political philosophy, supposing that such a
thing were possible. Nor does it seek to recount in detail Deleuze's political
activities, although I have made some reference to these in order to help
situate his practice of conceptual creation. Rather, the aim of this book is
to present some of the ways in which Deleuze's philosophy has already
shown itself to be productive for political thought, and to suggest other
ways in which it might become so. Deleuze and the political can only
refer to an open-ended series of relations between philosophy and politics,
a series of encounters between philosophical concepts and political events.
10
1
CONCEPT AND IMAGE OF THOUGHT
Deleuze's conception of philosophy
For many critics, Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy remains an

enigma. Their language is often unfamiliar, confronting the reader with an
apparently endless series of new terms: plateaus, order-words, segmen-
tarity, becomings and nomadic war-machines, to mention only some of
their neologisms. The difficulty of their thought is a result both of the pro-
liferation of new concepts and of its form. A Thousand Plateaus (1987) is
an avowedly experimental work which appears to lack coherent argument
or structure of any kind. As the Introduction suggests, it is a rhizome
book which grows in all directions. Its aim is not to represent the world
but, through its specific form of conceptual deterritorialisation, to connect
with movements of deterritorialisation in other social assemblages. The
concept of 'assemblage' provides a kind of formal continuity to the book
to the extent that the successive 'plateaus' both define and describe a
series of assemblages: machinic assemblages of desire, collective assem-
blages of enunciation, territorial assemblages and so on. 1 The series is
open ended. In each plateau, specific concepts are proposed in order to
analyse the relevant content (language, desire, music, the social field) in
terms of the assemblages which inhabit that field. While there is a degree
of continuity across the different plateaus, there is also continuous concep-
tual variation: concepts recur, but always in different relations to other
concepts such that their identity in turn is transformed. The book itself is
a particular kind of assemblage of concepts and conceptual plateaus.
Yet Deleuze has always regarded his work with Guattari as philosophy
in a very traditional sense of the word: 'A philosophy is what Félix and I
tried to produce in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, especially in
A Thousand Plateaus, which is a long book putting forward many con-
cepts' (Deleuze 1995b: 136). 2 In order to reconcile such description with
the unorthodox content and style of this work, it is helpful to turn to the
conception of philosophy outlined by Deleuze and Guattari in What Is
Philosophy? (1994). At first glance, their definition of philosophy as the
creation of concepts is uncontroversial: political philosophy provides
many examples of conceptual invention, from Plato's Republic to modern
11
concepts of civil, liberal and democratic society. However, Deleuze and

Guattari's conception of philosophy appears much less traditional once
we understand what they mean by 'concept' and what they consider to be
the task of philosophy. They propose a constructivist conception of the
form of philosophy, agreeing with Nietzsche that philosophers 'must no
longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify and polish them, but
first make and create them, present them and make them convincing'
(Nietzsche 1968: para. 409). They also agree with Nietzsche that the
creation of new concepts is an inherently political activity. Its goal should
be not just the recognition of existing states of affairs or the justification
of existing opinions and forms of life, but the absolute deterritorialisation
of the present in thought. For this reason, they describe it as an 'untimely'
mode of thinking that calls for 'a new earth, a new people' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 99).
Deleuzian concepts as open multiplicities

Deleuze and Guattari conceive of concepts as complex acts which take the
form of singularities in thought: 'the concept as a specifically philosophical
creation is always a singularity' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 7). As a
complex singularity, every concept has components that may in turn be
considered as concepts. There are no concepts with only one component.
To take an example from the history of political philosophy, Hobbes's con-
cept of the social contract has a number of component concepts, each with
its own history and internal complexity. These include the state of nature,
the restless desire for power, the natural laws of human reason and the
artificial person or Leviathan which results from the compact. A change
in one or more of these elements changes the concept of the contract. For
example, in contrast to Hobbes, Locke characterises the parties to the con-
tract not as subjects of a relentless will to power without moral obligations
towards one another, but as property owners subject to obligations
towards themselves and others derived from divine natural law. Another
variation occurs in the shift from philosophers such as Hobbes and Rous-
seau, for whom the contract involves relinquishing power and authority
to a sovereign, to those such as Locke and Nozick, for whom power is
simply lent to a sovereign authority on condition that certain important
needs are met. In each case, the outcome is a singular concept of a social
contract where the nature of this singularity is determined by the compo-
nents and the complex relations between them.
As acts of thought, concepts are intensional rather than extensional
objects as in the set theoretical model of concepts as classes. Similarly, the
components of a concept are not like individual terms falling under a
given concept. Rather, they are intensive elements, pure singularities such
as the individual subject in a state of nature, the subject of natural law,
12
and so on. The relations between these components involve a certain kind
of 'rendering consistent' of their components. Deleuze and Guattari describe
concepts as the intensive and variable unity of their components: a concept
is 'the point of coincidence, condensation or accumulation of its own
components' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 20). In this sense, they suggest,
concepts are both absolute (considered as wholes, or as they say 'posited
all at once') and relative (to their components, to other concepts, and to
the problems which they are supposed to resolve). The components and
their consistency in a particular concept are two distinct dimensions of the
concept, but related in that the consistency is established only by means of
a certain 'communication' between the components. For example, in
Hobbes, the relative weakness of human beings combined with their
rationality ensures acceptance of those rational precepts of self-
preservation in a state of nature which lead directly to the compact to
establish a sovereign power.
Concepts have a history, which may include their history as components
of other concepts and their relations to particular problems. Concepts are
always created in relation to specific problems: 'A concept lacks meaning
to the extent that it is not connected to other concepts and is not linked
to a problem that it resolves or helps to resolve' (Deleuze and Guattari
1994: 79). The history of concepts therefore includes the variations they
undergo in their migration from one problem to another. In any concept,
Deleuze and Guattari suggest, 'there are usually bits or components that
come from other concepts, which correspond to other problems and pre-
suppose other planes' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 18). The concept of
contract has a long history in political thought prior to Hobbes, but this
does not mean that there is a single concept or contractarian tradition
which stretches all the way from the Greeks via Hobbes and Locke to
Rawls. Rather, there are 'a number of traditions in which the contract
takes on a distinct character and serves a specific end' (Boucher and Kelly
1994: 1). The contract is transformed in part by virtue of the specific
problem to which it relates in each case, whether this be the constitution
and legitimation of civil authority, of morality, or the distinctive political
relation between ruler and ruled. Hobbes's problem is the constitution
and legitimation of coercive political authority. Rawls's contractarian
theory of justice (Rawls 1971) is designed to solve a different problem,
namely the problem of the principles of a just society. His concept of poli-
tical liberalism is conceived as a response to yet another problem: 'how is
it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free
and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable though incompatible
religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?' (Rawls 1993: xviii, xxv).
To some degree, Deleuze and Guattari's concept of philosophical con-
cepts resembles the Wittgensteinian notion of 'open concepts' which was
once used to support the thesis of the 'essential contestability' of political
13
concepts (Connolly 1983: 225-31). In this view, concepts such as democ-

racy are essentially contestable because they are complex and involve a
number of component features, the relative importance of which may be
weighted differently. As a result, the conditions of applicability of the con-
cept leave room for dispute in particular cases. For Deleuze and Guattari,
too, concepts are open or indeterminate in this sense. However, their
primary concern is not with the difficulty of determining the limits of par-
ticular concepts but rather with the manner in which concepts are defined
by the 'bridges' or pathways along which they may be transformed into
other concepts. Because concepts are always created in relation to particu-
lar problems, and because different problems themselves may be inter-
connected, any given concept will be located in a series of virtual relations
to other concepts. These virtual relations with other concepts constitute
the 'becoming' of the concept in question. Concepts enter into such virtual
relations when the elements of one become indiscernible from those of
another. These relations in turn form particular paths along which the con-
cept might be transformed into something else. Consider the concept of
power which informs Hobbes's account of the social contract: his argu-
ment that individuals in the state of nature become caught up in a competi-
tive drive for ever more power appears to anticipate Nietzsche's will to
power. In fact, it is not the same concept of power in each case. From the
Nietzschean perspective of power as an active force, Hobbes's conception
of power is reactive and his social contract amounts to the constitution of
a community of slaves, whose only remedy for the inability to keep
promises is to establish a power sufficient to compel observance by fear of
punishment. Nevertheless, Hobbes does canvass - only to put aside as
implausible - another basis upon which people might be held to their con-
tracts, namely the moral strength of those individuals whose pride does not
permit them to break their word. By contrast, Nietzsche invokes precisely
this noble character type in envisaging the possibility of a sovereign indi-
vidual 'who has the right to make a promise' (Nietzsche 1994: essay 2,
para. 2). Nietzsche is commonly criticised for his individualism and his
lack of any concept of political community. Yet by retracing this path
from a reactive towards an active power, which must be regarded as a
potential inherent in Nietzsche's concept of will to power, we can envisage
a transformation in the concept of political community which is the out-
come of the social contract (Patton 1993: 158-9).
Deleuze's reconstructions of the work of philosophers such as Bergson,
Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche or Foucault were always attentive to the problems
addressed in their work. However, What Is Philosophy? (1994) goes further
in making the inherent susceptibility to variation or transformation a defin-
ing characteristic of philosophical concepts. Here, the essential indeter-
minacy of philosophical concepts is contrasted with the determinacy of the
mathematical or propositional functions which are the objects of science
14
and logic. Whereas philosophy forms 'concepts' on a 'plane of immanence',

science establishes 'functions' on a 'plane of reference'. The history of
science involves the construction of such planes of reference and the specifi-
cation of relevant coordinates in terms of which functions may be deter-
mined. In the case of logic, the Fregean definition of a concept as a
function from individuals to a truth value defines a thoroughly determinate
extensional multiplicity. In both science and logic, the determinate character
of functions is ensured by the independence of the variables which define the
relevant system of reference. By contrast, in philosophy the components of
conceptsare neither constants nor variables but 'pure and simple variations
ordered according to their neighbourhood' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994:
20). Within a given concept, these components are like so many intensive
ordinates arranged in zones of neighbourhood or indiscernibility which
define the consistency of the concept: 'components remain distinct, but
something passes from one to the other, something that is undecidable
between them' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 19-20).
At this point, Deleuze and Guattari's concept of philosophical concepts
enters into a strange proximity with that of Derrida. In their terms, we
might say that it is precisely such a zone of undecidability between spoken
and written signification or communication that defines the deconstructive
concept of writing in general. More generally, there are surprising simi-
larities between the Deleuzian and deconstructive concepts of specifically
philosophical concepts. Just as Deleuze and Guattari insist upon the
specificity of concepts as they define them to 'philosophy', so Derrida
distinguishes his distinctively deconstructive 'concepts' from ordinary
philosophical concepts by calling them 'quasi-concepts' or 'aconceptual
concepts'. Derrida accepts the ordinary logic of concept-formation accord-
ing to which a concept only exists when there is distinction: 'it is impos-
sible or illegitimate to form a philosophical concept outside this logic of
all or nothing' (Derrida 1988: 117). At the same time, his practice of phil-
osophy as a kind of 'double writing' produces its own distinctive series of
philosophical 'quasi-concepts': writing, mark, trace, supplement, différance^
iterability and so on. In effect, the procedure is one by which deconstruc-
tion moves from ordinary concepts (of writing, or of cinders) to another
kind of concept 'heterogeneous to the philosophical concept of the concept'
(Derrida 1988: 118). By 'philosophical concept of the concept', Derrida
means the traditional view according to which concepts are determinate
ideal entities serving to identify regular kinds. Such concepts are not indeter-
minate or fuzzy but conform to the logic of exclusive disjunction: things
either do or do not fall under them.
Iterability implies repetition or recurrence of the same and to the extent
that a concept identifies something common to a range of particulars, con-
ceptualisation implies iterability in this sense. Frege's formal definition of
concepts as functions from singular terms to truth values captures precisely
15
this feature of concepts. By contrast, Derrida argues that iterability in this

pure sense is never attained in natural language and it is precisely in order
to account for this fact that deconstructive philosophy proposes to think
the concept of concept otherwise. Iterability in the straightforward sense is
never attained because in reality things are never simply instantiations of
a uniform concept. In his discussion of concept-formation in 'On truth
and lies in an extra-moral sense' (1979), Nietzsche comments that
a word becomes a concept in so far as it simultaneously has to fit

countless more or less similar cases . . . One leaf is always different
from another one, so the concept 'leaf is formed by arbitrarily
discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distin-
guishing aspects.
(Nietzsche 1979: section 1)
Derrida points out that this implies that a rigorous concept of the
'iterability' which characterises concept formation would not only signify
repeatability of the same but would also signify 'alterability of this
idealised same in the singularity of the event' (Derrida 1988: 119 trans.
modified). In other words, concepts must be supposed to involve at once
repetition of the same and realisation or instantiation of that same in dif-
ferent particulars: 'leaf is both this leaf and that leaf as well as leafhood
in general. Since leafhood is determined by the totality of particulars to
which the concept applies, past and future, and since there is no possibility
of measuring any particular against that ideal totality in the present, a
necessary openness or indeterminacy affects the concept. To the extent
that the concept of iterability takes this feature of concepts into account,
it becomes a complex concept which combines (horizontal) sameness and
(vertical) difference: 'it entails the necessity of thinking at once both the
rule and the event, concept and singularity' (Derrida 1988: 119).
Considered as ideal objects defined in terms of the deconstructive logic of
iterability, Derridean aconceptual concepts are open multiplicities. They
lack the determinacy associated with the traditional concept of concepts.
In What Is Philosophy? (1994) Deleuze and Guattari also define concepts
as open-ended and potentially variable multiplicities: Every concept 'is a
multiplicity, although not every multiplicity is conceptual' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 25). The 'zones of undecidability' which render concepts
consistent also render them iterable in Derrida's sense of the term. More-
over, in their earlier collaborative works they invent concepts which exhibit
these formal characteristics. Like Derrida's 'aconceptual concepts', the con-
cepts put forward in A Thousand Plateaus (1987) are not restricted by the
logic of exclusive disjunction which is supposed to govern concept forma-
tion in the sciences and all 'rigorous' thought. They undergo continuous
variation in their migration from one plateau to another. Against the
arborescent image which has been prevalent in the history of philosophy,

they propose a rhizomatic image of thought in which concepts are never
stable but in a state of constant flux as they are modified or transformed
in the passage from one problem to the next. The novelty of this concep-
tion of thought does not lie in its refusal of any systematic character but
rather in the nature of the system which it develops. That is why when
Deleuze describes himself as a philosopher in a very classical sense who
believes in philosophy as a system, he immediately qualifies this comment
by pointing out that he envisages a 'system in perpetual heterogeneity'
(Deleuze 1993b: 7).
It is in Deleuze's earlier writings that the requirements of such a con-
ceptual heterogenesis are worked out in explicit engagement with the philo-
sophical tradition. From his essay on Proust (Deleuze 1972) through to
What Is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari 1994), Deleuze has pursued
the question of the nature of thought. What is at stake in this question is
the effort to describe an exercise of thought which is 'opposed to the tradi-
tional image which philosophy has projected or erected in thought in order
to subjugate it and prevent it from functioning' (Deleuze and Parnet 1987:
16). Chapter 3 of Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994) provides the
most developed analysis of the dominant image of thought and his own
alternative conception. In his retrospective comments on this book, Deleuze
repeatedly singles out this chapter as the most important with respect to his
subsequent practice of philosophy, describing it as 'the most necessary and
the most concrete', and as the one which 'serves to introduce subsequent
books up to and including the research undertaken with Guattari where
we invoked a vegetal model of thought: the rhizome in opposition to the
tree' (Deleuze 1994: xvii; cf. 1995b: 204; 1993b: 8).
In the Introduction to Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994), Deleuze
explains the theatrical forms of thought common to Nietzsche and Kierke-
gaard by reference to their shared interest in movement, not in the sense
that they wrote about motion but in the sense that 'they want to put meta-
physics in motion' (Deleuze 1994: 8). His own adoption of a method of
dramatisation is evidence that he too shared this interest in a thought
which moves. However, as he comments in an interview, it is not enough
simply to say that concepts possess movement, 'you also have to construct
intellectually mobile concepts' (Deleuze 1995b: 122). A Thousand Plateaus
(1987) is the realisation of this goal. It does more than simply record the
movement to which concepts are subject in the course of the history of
philosophy. It creates concepts that are defined by their relations to the
outside and hence their capacities for movement and transformation. Only
in this way is it possible to map rather than trace the variability inherent
in all rhizomatic assemblages. The 'anexactitude' of mobile concepts is
unavoidable, Deleuze and Guattari suggest: 'anexactitude is in no way an
17
approximation; on the contrary, it is the precise movement of that which is

under way' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 20, trans, modified).
The dogmatic image of thought

In many respects, Deleuze's constant engagement in his earlier writings
with the question of the nature of thought is a prolegomenon to the distinc-
tive practice of philosophy developed in collaboration with Guattari.
Throughout his work from Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983) and Proust
and Signs (1972), through Difference and Repetition (1994) to What Is
Philosophy? (1994), Deleuze returns to the criticism of the 'images' of
thought that have held sway in philosophy. All too often, he argues, these
images have served to set limits to philosophy's own capacity for thought.
By contrast, he finds in the works of philosophers such as Lucretius,
Hume, Spinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche the outlines of a critical and
untimely form of thought that breaks with these prevailing images.3 It is
from the perspective of the approach to thought shared by these phil-
osophers that he undertakes the analysis and critique of conservative and
conformist images of the nature of thinking, along with the characterisa-
tion of an alternative form of thinking which would be 'opposed to the
traditional image which philosophy has projected or erected in thought'
(Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 16).
By the 'image' of thought, Deleuze means more than just a representa-
tion of thought but 'something deeper that's always taken for granted, a
system of coordinates, dynamics, orientations: what it means to think and
to "orient oneself in thought"' (Deleuze 1995b: 148). The image of
thought is a pre-philosophical series of presuppositions which structures
both the understanding of thinking and the character of the conceptual
production which ensues on that basis. It is an image of this kind which
allows Descartes to suppose at the outset of his Meditations 'that every-
body knows and is presumed to know what it means to think' (Deleuze
1994: 131). In Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983) and Difference and
Repetition (1994), Deleuze argues that philosophical reflection upon the
nature of thought has been dominated by a series of presuppositions
which together make up a single 'dogmatic' image of thought. These pre-
suppositions recur throughout the history of philosophy in variant forms,
empiricist as well as rationalist. Together they form an image of thought
which is all the more effective because it remains largely implicit.
The essential theses of this image of thought derive from the idea that
thought is a natural capacity with an inbuilt affinity with the true. Thought
naturally seeks truth, 'it loves and wills truth "by right'" (Deleuze 1983:
95; 1994: 131). On this basis, thought is supposed to be naturally sound
and the process of true judgement automatic in the sense that it results
from the normal operation of the faculties. Conversely, error must be the
18
effect of forces external to thought and hostile to its normal operation: 'the
inflation of the concept of error in philosophy shows the persistence of the
dogmatic image of thought' (Deleuze 1983: 105). Thought has many mis-
adventures, Deleuze points out, including the effects of madness and mal-
evolence, yet the dogmatic image tends to reduce all these to the single
form of error understood as misrecognition or failure of the will. He
argues that the analysis of thought should instead take seriously the fact
of stupidity: unlike truth or falsity, stupidity comes in many forms and
degrees. Whereas the dogmatic image supports the view that thought
needs a method, an artifice which enables the thinker to ward off error
(Deleuze 1983: 103), Deleuze defends a conception of thought as an
involuntary activity which is always the effect of outside forces and
elements: 'something in the world forces us to think' (Deleuze 1994: 139).
From this perspective, there is no place for the idea that thought must be
under the control of a good will and no basis for a conception of method.
In Difference and Repetition (1994), Deleuze argues that the dogmatic
image of thought which dominates the history of philosophy takes its
model from acts of recognition: 'whether one considers Plato's Theaetetus,
Descartes' Meditations or Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, this model
remains sovereign and defines the orientation of the philosophical analysis
of what it means to think' (Deleuze 1994: 134). 4 Implicit in this model is
the conflation of thought with knowledge and the supposition that
knowledge is ultimately a form of recognition. Recognition is defined by
the harmonious exercise of the different faculties upon an object which is
supposed to be the same throughout its different representations (sensory,
memorial, intellectual, etc). The model of recognition therefore implies an
underlying agreement among the faculties which is typically grounded in
the unity of the thinking subject: 'For Kant as for Descartes, it is the
identity of the Self in the "I think" which grounds the harmony of all the
faculties and their agreement on the form of a supposed Same object'
(Deleuze 1994: 133; cf. 1963: 135). 5
Deleuze objects that recognition offers a timid conception of thought
which draws its exemplars from among the most banal acts of everyday
thinking: 'this is a table, this is an apple . . . good morning Theaetetus . . .
who can believe that the destiny of thought is at stake in these acts . . . ?'
(Deleuze 1994: 135). In opposition to this model, he argues that it is not
the reassuring familiarity of the known which should provide us with the
paradigm of thinking, but those hesitant gestures which accompany our
encounters with the unknown. Examples that point to an alternative
model of thought may be found in Plato, when he draws attention to the
responses of the subject of contradictory perceptions which 'provoke
thought to reconsideration', or in Heidegger, when he points to the situa-
tion of someone learning to swim.6 Apprenticeship or learning may be
contrasted with recognition at every point: it is an involuntary activity
19
which need not involve the application of a method. Apprenticeship is not

the natural exercise of a faculty but something to which we are driven by
necessity or puzzlement, in any case by the perception of a problem. The
antithesis of thought in this case is not error but the failure adequately to
perceive a problem or the inadequate specification of the dimensions of a
problem which confronts us - in other words, stupidity.
The dogmatic image of thought assumes that the primary task of think-
ing is knowledge, where this is understood in terms of solutions to par-
ticular puzzles or problems which can be expressed in propositional form.
As a result, this image privileges the propositional form of thought and
the relation of designation or reference as the locus of truth. By contrast,
apprenticeship is an activity in which progress cannot be measured
solely by reference to propositions since it requires familiarity with a
given material or milieu. We acquire such familiarity when we acquire the
capacity to discern and to pose problems correctly. Deleuze argues that it
is from acts of apprenticeship or learning that we ought to derive the trans-
cendental conditions of thought (Deleuze 1994: 166). His objection to the
recognition model is therefore normative. He does not deny that recogni-
tion occurs or that the faculties may be employed in this manner. Rather,
he wants to retain the name of thinking for a different activity which
takes place when the mind is provoked by an encounter with the unknown
or the unfamiliar. The process of thinking must be brought into being by
forces external to the thinker: T o think is to create - there is no other
creation - but to create is first of all to engender "thinking" in thought'
(Deleuze 1994: 147).
Deleuze's second objection to the dogmatic image is that it tells us
nothing about the conditions that give rise to thought: 'We are never
referred to the real forces that form thought, thought itself is never related
to the real forces that it presupposes as thought' (Deleuze 1983: 103-4).
By contrast, he argues for a 'genetic' conception of thought, the purpose
of which is to give an account of the real conditions which give rise to
thought and which determine the form it assumes. By real conditions, he
means the transcendental field or field of immanence in terms of which
the different forms of thought must be understood. Different philosophers
propose different accounts of the nature of this field. Thus, in Nietzsche
and Philosophy (1983), Deleuze takes the will to power as the basis for a
'genetic and differential' genealogical analysis of thought, on the grounds
that, for Nietzsche, it is the different varieties of will to power that give
rise to thought. In these terms, thought may be either affirmative or nega-
tive in relation to life, active or reactive in its modality of realising will to
power. This principle sustains Nietzsche's questioning of the will to truth
in Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche 1973) and in On the ^Genealogy of
Morality (Nietzsche 1994) when he asks: What is the value of truth? or
What it is in us which really wants truth? Understood in this manner, the
20
'element' of thought is no longer truth and falsity but 'the noble and the
base, the high and the low, depending on the nature of the forces that
take hold of thought itself (Deleuze 1983: 104).
By contrast, in Difference and Repetition (1994), Deleuze's shift from the
recognition model of thought to 'a point of view of effective genesis'
(Deleuze 1994: 162) proceeds by way of an account of problems as the
transcendental ground of thinking. The importance attached to the inven-
tion of problems in philosophy is a recurrent theme in Deleuze's phil-
osophy which may be traced back to his essay on Bergson (Deleuze
1956). He endorses Bergson's view that 'true freedom' and therefore the
highest power of thought lies in the capacity to discover or constitute new
problems, thereby rejecting the pedagogic conception of thinking as the
solving of problems given to us by others or by 'society' (Deleuze 1988a:
15). Similarly, in Difference and Repetition (1994), Deleuze argues that
thought must be understood as the exploration of problems thrown up by
history, social life or the development of particular sciences, and in its
highest form as the expression or actualisation of transcendental problems.
Deleuze's conception of transcendental problems is modelled upon Kant's
account of transcendental Ideas. In this respect, Descombes is right to sug-
gest that in his metaphysics of difference Deleuze is above all a post-
Kantian (Descombes 1980: 152). For Kant, the Idea of nature may be
regarded as a problem in the sense that it is the undetermined object of
empirical knowledge and the embodiment of the ideal of a complete con-
ceptual determination of that object. As such, it regulates the practice of
scientific inquiry.
For Deleuze, Kant's account of the transcendental ground of reason
provides the basis for a novel understanding of the nature and function of
problems. In opposition to the traditional view, which defines problems in
terms of the possibility of finding solutions, and which sees truth as essen-
tially propositional and prior to problems, he argues that problems must
be regarded as the source of all truths: 'problems are the differential
elements in thought, the genetic elements in the true' (Deleuze 1994:
162)7 Problems here are understood as the specific objects of thought
and, as such, accessible only to thought in its transcendental operation.
These objects of pure thought can only be empirically discerned by means
of their particular conceptually determined forms: in relation to ordinary
empirical thought they remain unthinkable. They are paradoxical objects
in the sense that they are at once that which cannot be thought and that
which can only be thought. Deleuze's conception of transcendental prob-
lems as the genetic elements of thought implies a twofold genesis: a logical
genesis of truths in the form of solutions to particular problems and a
transcendental genesis of the act of thinking in the discovery or constitu-
tion of Ideas or problems. Both genèses are implicated in the activity
which Deleuze takes as his model for thought: 'The exploration of Ideas
21
and the elevation of each faculty to its transcendent exercise amounts to

the same thing. These are two aspects of an essential apprenticeship or
process of learning' (Deleuze 1994: 164).
Deleuze is by no means the only philosopher to suggest that thought is
essentially a problem-solving activity. In political philosophy it is hardly
controversial to claim that philosophical theories of the nature and founda-
tions of government, or the principles of a just society, arise in response to
real problems. Thus, as we saw above, Rawls's concept of political liberal-
ism (Rawls 1993) was designed to solve the problem of defining a stable
and just society in which there are divergent and incompatible views of
the good. However, there are not only different kinds of problems in phil-
osophy but also different stances which philosophy can take in relation to
its problems. Although the aims of political liberalism differ substantially
in a number of ways from Kant's defence of reasonable faith, there is a
sense in which both seek an apologetic solution to their respective
problems. Rawls follows Kant in seeking a solution to his problem based
upon practical rather than theoretical reason, and adds that an adequate
solution will be subject to the test of 'reflective equilibrium': that is, it will
be found when the principles of justice which flow from the principles of
construction accord with the widely held convictions of free citizens of a
stable and just society. As he describes the procedure, 'we begin from
shared fundamental values implicit in the public political culture in the
hope of developing from them a political conception that can gain free
and reasoned agreement in judgement' (Rawls 1993: 100-1). To the
extent that the goal of reflective equilibrium implies a form of recognition
of the fundamental values presupposed at the outset, this approach to the
problem remains bound to the dogmatic image of thought.
By contrast, Deleuze's principal reason for claiming that the classical
image of thought is a profound betrayal of what it means to think is that
it sustains a complacent conception of thought which is incapable of
criticising established values. Kant is his prime example of a thinker who
proposed an all-encompassing critique but who in the end settled for com-
promise. His version of critique proved incapable of questioning the value
of knowledge, faith or morality: There has never been a more conciliatory
or respectful total critique' (Deleuze 1983: 89). The reason is^fhat the value
of knowledge, morality and beauty is presupposed by the manner in which
Kant understands the different systems of collaboration among the facul-
ties. Deleuze points out that there are as many kinds of common sense as
there are natural interests of reason (Deleuze 1963: 118; 1994: 136-7).
Knowledge, morality and beauty are thus presupposed by the terms of
Kantian critique. Claims to knowledge, moral judgement or aesthetic value
may be called into question, but not knowledge, morality or aesthetic
value themselves.
22
Deleuze contrasts Kant's critique with Nietzsche's genealogy, arguing

that Nietzsche sought the radicalisation and extension of Kantian critique.
Nietzsche's objection was that Kant did not pursue critique to the point at
which it would become a true critique of values: 'we need a critique of
moral values: the value of these values themselves must first be called into
question' (Nietzsche 1994: Pref. 6). It follows that the nature of critique
itself must be transformed, for if Nietzsche's critique were to be undertaken
in the manner of Kant's, on the basis of some unchallenged set of funda-
mental values, then it would be vulnerable to the same objection. That is
why Nietzsche's genealogy is an immanent critique, in which there is no
external standard by which to evaluate but only the will to power as a
principle of internal genesis, both of values and of thought: 'only the will
to power as genetic and genealogical principle, as legislative principle, is
capable of realising internal critique' (Deleuze 1983: 91). Deleuze attributes
to Nietzsche an ideal of thought which could equally be considered the
goal of his own philosophy, namely a 'thought that would affirm life
instead of a knowledge that is opposed to life . . . Thinking would then
mean discovering, inventing new possibilities of life' (Deleuze 1983: 101).
The nature and task of philosophy

In What Is Philosophy? (1994), Deleuze and Guattari set out three distinct
conditions of the production of concepts. The first of these is the image of
thought redescribed as the 'plane of immanence' 8 upon which the produc-
tion of concepts takes place: 'The plane of immanence is not a concept
that is or can be thought but rather the image of thought, the image
thought gives itself of what it means to think, to make use of thought, to
find one's bearings in thought' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 37). Distinct
images of thought are defined by reference to the presuppositions which
define the nature of thought in principle. Merely contingent or empirical
features of thought in a given context are not relevant, since the image of
thought implies 'a strict division between fact and right' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 37). Deleuze and Guattari point to a number of such
images in the history of philosophy, including the Greek, the classical, the
eighteenth-century and the 'modern' image shared by Nietzsche, Heidegger
and others (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 54-5). Deleuze's own conception
of thought shares several features of this 'modern' image. His earlier
approaches to this problem occasionally invoke the language of Heidegger's
question concerning the nature of thinking. Thus, in Nietzsche and Phil-
osophy (1983), he interprets Heidegger's declaration that we are not yet
thinking as a variant of the Nietzschean claim that we have yet to make
thought absolutely active and affirmative: in so far as our thinking is con-
trolled by reactive forces, Deleuze argues, 'we must admit that we are not
23
yet thinking' (Deleuze 1983: 108). In Difference and Repetition (1994), he

refers in passing to Heidegger's 'profound texts' which argue that thinking
remains only an abstract human possibility. Ultimately, however, Deleuze
does not believe that Heidegger manages to break with the presuppositions
of the dominant image of thought or to provide an adequate conception of
the highest form of the human capacity for thought (Deleuze 1994: 144
andfn. 11).
The second condition of philosophical concept-creation involves recourse
to particular characters or conceptual personae who speak in and through
the utterances of a given philosophy: 'conceptual personae are . . . the
true agents of enunciation' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 65). Like
Nietzsche, who employs a whole cast of personae in order to work through
the consequences of the death of God, Deleuze invokes a variety of concep-
tual personae throughout his works. These include, in Difference and
Repetition, the apprentice who learns how to deal with problems (Deleuze
1994: 164-6), and in A Thousand Plateaus, the nomad thinker who is
aligned with a singular race or tribe rather than a universal thinking sub-
ject. Nietzsche's account of Kierkegaard as a 'private thinker' rather than
a philosopher in the service of the State, as well as Nietzsche himself, pro-
vides the model for this persona (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 376-9). In
What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari appear in the role of friends
of the concept, where 'friend' itself is a complex concept which draws
upon Nietzsche and Blanchot as well as the Greek conception of friendship
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 1-12).
Third, thought understood as the creation of concepts requires as its
means and raw materials a supply of existing concepts. The definition of
philosophy as the creation of concepts is a stipulative definition in which
the term 'concept' is used to distinguish the object and materials ô& phil-
osophy from those of science and art: 'only philosophy creates conceptîn
the strict sense' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 5). By contrast, science aims
at the representation of states of affairs by means of mathematical or pro-
positional functions. Art does not aim at representation at all but at the
capture and expression in a given medium of the objective content of par-
ticular sensations. Philosophy's exclusive right to concept-creation means
that it has a distinct object and vocation, but no 'pre-eminence or privilege'
with regard to these other activities (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 8). It
shares certain characteristics with science and art, but also differs from
each of these neighbouring forms of thought. Whereas scientific functions
provide knowledge of states of affairs and processes which are external to
them, philosophy creates concepts which are like artworks in that they do
not refer to or represent independently existing objects or states of affairs.
Concepts are defined not by their relations to things or states of affairs
but by the relations between their elements as well as by their relations to
other concepts. In this sense, they argue, the concept 'has no reference: it
24
is self-referential, it posits itself and its object at the same time as it is

created' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 22).
Deleuze and Guattari argue for a twofold semantic difference between
scientific functions and philosophical statements, encompassing not only
the nature of their respective objects but also their relation to those objects:
scientific functions refer to bodies and states of affairs while philosophical
statements express pure events. This implies that philosophy does not pro-
vide discursive knowledge of the kind provided by the sciences. In particu-
lar, it does not provide proof of its claims in a manner that may be
disputed from the standpoint of the facts or even from that of another con-
cept. A philosophical concept cannot be disproved, it can only be displaced
or discarded. For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that philosophy
does not provide empirical knowledge nor is it 'inspired by truth. Rather, it
is categories like Interesting, Remarkable or Important that determine
success or failure' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 82). Philosophy, as they
understand it, is a form of practical reason and, as such, not subject to
the norm of truth.
Deleuze's criticisms of the dogmatic image had already condemned as an
illusion the idea that the genetic element of thought is truth and falsity. In
Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983), as we saw above, he took as the basis
for a genetic and differential analysis of thought Nietzsche's account of
the different qualities of the will to power and the types of forces which
correspond to them. This account breaks the connection between thought
and truth assumed by the dogmatic image. It points to the forces that deter-
mine thought to take a particular form and to pursue particular objects.
Having argued that for Nietzsche the sense and value of things are deter-
mined by the qualities of the will to power expressed within them, Deleuze
writes: 'We always have the truths we deserve as a function of the sense of
what we conceive, of the value of what we believe' (Deleuze 1983: 104).
The point is not to deny the possibility of truth, but rather to suggest that
truth is no more than an 'abstract universal', the precise character of
which remains 'entirely undetermined' (Deleuze 1983: 103). There are
base truths which are of no interest to a critical thought, while conversely
there may be falsehoods which serve the 'higher' purpose of the critique
of established values and the creation of new values. Deleuze always
aligned his conception of philosophy with that of Nietzsche on two
points: opposition to those whose ultimate aim is the recognition of what
exists, and preference for an untimely thought which seeks to invent new
possibilities for life. Foucault invokes a similar conception when he
suggests that philosophy consists in 'the critical work that thought brings
to bear on itself, and asks rhetorically: 'In what does it consist, if not the
endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think
differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?' (Foucault
1985: 9). In effect, in describing philosophical concepts as non-referential
25
and not subject to the norm of truth and falsity, Deleuze and Guattari
say no more and no less than Foucault does in claiming that political
philosophy (his own included) produces fictions.9 Their account of philo-
sophical concepts as autopoetic, self-positing entities gives a precise sense in
which such concepts are fictions. Moreover, it spells out a sense in which
philosophical fictions can nevertheless produce real effects and, as Foucault
says, help to 'fiction' or bring into being something that does not exist.
At the same time, Deleuze and Guattari's own collaborative work is a
sustained exercise in concept-creation, culminating in their concept of
philosophy as the creation of concepts. In their own terms, the concepts
they create cannot be supposed to represent external processes or states of
affairs. Yet much of this work appears descriptive and intended to fulfil a
cognitive function. As we shall see in Chapter 5, they offer an account of
capitalism and trace the evolution of its forms of economic, social and
political regulation as an immanent axiomatic system. Deleuze's 'Postscript
on control societies' (1995b: 177-82) seeks to supplement Foucault's
analysis of disciplinary power by defining new mechanisms of control
which, it is suggested, have largely displaced the techniques of power
described by Foucault. Commentators such as Negri see in such overtly
empirical claims 'a perfectly operational phenomenology of the present'
(Negri 1995: 108). 10 However, on Deleuze and Guattari's account, their
work is philosophy rather than neo-Marxist social science. How then
does philosophy, as they understand it, fulfil a cognitive function?
In What Is Philosophy? (1994), the task of philosophy is to create con-
cepts that provide knowledge of pure events: the concept is knowledge,
they argue, but 'what it knows is the pure event' (Deleuze and Guattari
1994: 33). One way to approach the question of what is meant here by
'pure event', and what is the nature of this knowledge, is via Deleuze's
earlier account of the task of philosophy in Difference and Repetition
(1994). Here Deleuze outlines an alternative to the dogmatic image in
terms of which it is transcendental Ideas or problems which are the genetic
elements of thought. The task of philosophy then is to specify the elements
and relations which make up these Ideas or problems. Pure events share
several features of these transcendental problems. Deleuze defines problems
as the differential and virtual multiplicities which are the transcendental
conditions of both thought and reality. At one point he suggests that
'problems are of the order of events' (Deleuze 1994: 188). n Just as prob-
lems are not reducible to the particular solutions in which they become
incarnated, so pure events subsist independently of their actualisations in
bodies and states of affairs. An example which Deleuze frequently uses to
illustrate this difference is Blanchot's distinction between death as a realis-
able event towards which T may have a personal relation, and death as
an impersonal and inaccessible event towards which T can have no
relation (Deleuze 1990: 151-2; 1994: 112).
26
In these terms, the concept of the social contract may be considered

to express the pure event of incorporation of a legal and political system.
As such, the contract is a pure event irreducible to its particular incarna-
tions as the putative origin of morality or civil society. It is as though
actual events were doubled by a series of ideal or virtual events which are
both immanent and transcendent in relation to them. Deleuze cites Péguy's
'wonderful description' of events in which he deploys 'two lines, one hori-
zontal and another vertical which repeated in depth the distinctive points
corresponding to the first, and even anticipated and eternally engendered
these distinctive points and their incarnation in the first'.12 Deleuze and
Guattari suggest that all historical events are similarly doubled or divided
between two planes: 'what History grasps of the event is its effectuation
in states of affairs or in lived experience, but the event in its becoming, in
its specific consistency, in its self-positing concept, escapes History'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 110). Pure events are therefore incorporeal
abstractions, irreducible to their actualisations in different societies at
different times but also immanent in those real events. In this sense, they
represent a 'pure reserve' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 156) of being and
the guarantee of an open future. Kant makes a similar point when he dis-
tinguishes between the concept of a revolution in favour of universal
rights of man as this was expressed in the 'enthusiasm' of Europeans for
those ideals and the manner in which that concept and those ideals were
acrualised in the bloody events of 1789. 13 In Chapter 6 we shall consider
the event of colonisation and the different constitutional forms this can
assume.
When they suggest that the pure events expressed in concepts are identi-
cal with the 'pure sense' that runs through their components (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 144), Deleuze and Guattari hint at the continuity between
this account of the task of philosophy and Deleuze's theory of sense or
meaning in The Logic of Sense (Deleuze 1990). In the course of outlining
a theory of sense as that which is expressed in propositions, Deleuze drew
upon the Stoic concept of the 'sayable' in order to distinguish the sense or
event expressed in a proposition from the mixtures of bodies to which
this sense or event is attributed. The Stoics, he argues, were the first to
create a philosophical concept of the event, discovering this along with
sense or the expressed of the proposition: 'an incorporeal, complex and
irreducible entity, at the surface of things, a pure event which inheres or
subsists in the proposition' (Deleuze 1990: 19). Deleuze and Guattari
re-utilise this Stoic concept of events in their 'Postulates of linguistics' when
they characterise the pragmatic function of language in terms of the effec-
tuation of events or 'incorporeal transformations' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 80-8). Following the Stoics, they argue that all events are incor-
poreal transformations which are expressed in language but attributed to
bodies and states of affairs. In so far as language serves to express such
27
incorporeal transformations, it does not simply represent the world but

intervenes in it. It follows from the account of incorporeals as the
'expressed' of statements, that the individuation of what occurs as an
event of a particular kind is dependent upon language. Event attributions
do not simply describe or report pre-existing events, they help to actualise
particular events in the social field. The manner in which a given occur-
rence is described determines it as a particular kind of event. That is why
politics frequently takes the form of struggle over the appropriate descrip-
tion of events.
The Deleuzian conception of events points to the role of language and
other forms of representation in the actualisation or effectuation of every-
day events. It also points to a critical role for philosophy in relation to the
common-sense understanding of events. Deleuze and Guattari see the
invention of concepts as a means of breaking with self-evidence. They
contrast the effectuation or actualisation of a given pure event in particular
circumstances with the 'counter-effectuation' which occurs when a concept
is extracted from things: 'the event is actualised or effectuated whenever it
is inserted, willy-nilly, into a state of affairs; but it is counter-effectuated
whenever it is abstracted from states of affairs so as to isolate its concept'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 159). In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze calls
this doubling of the actualised event with a counter-effectuation a process
of 'miming' what effectively occurs: 'to the extent that the pure event is
each time imprisoned forever in its actualisation, counter-actualisation
liberates it, always for other times' (Deleuze 1990: 161). In What Is
Philosophy?, philosophy appears in the persona of the mime who isolates
the event by constructing concepts: 'Philosophy's sole aim is to become
worthy of the event, and it is precisely the conceptual persona who
counter-effectuates the event' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 160). In these
terms, the concept of a social contract can be regarded as an expression
of the pure and indeterminate event of a political system based upon
equality before the law. To counter-effectuate everyday events is to con-
sider these events as processes whose outcome is not yet determined. It is
to relate them back to the pure event or problem of which they appear
only as one particular determination or solution. In counter-effectuating
the event, we attain and express the sense of what happens, thereby dis-
sociating the pure event from the particular determinate form in which it
has been actualised and pointing to the possibility of other determinate
actualisations. For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, 'the concept
is the contour, the configuration, the constellation of an event to come'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 32-3). 1 4
28
2
DIFFERENCE AND MULTIPLICITY
Philosophy of difference
Deleuze has long been described, along with Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva,
Irigaray, Lyotard and others, as a philosopher of difference. The work of
these French philosophers is often assimilated to the 'politics of difference'
which characterises a number of 'minority' social groups and interests:
feminists, racial minorities, gay and lesbian movements have all demanded
the recognition of differences that were previously assimilated, denied or
simply unknown. In some cases, elements of the philosophy of difference
Jâve even contributed to the formulation and theoretical expression of
such a politics of difference.1 Our ultimate concern in this chapter is the
relationship between the 'politics of difference' and Deleuze's approach to
the concept of difference. We shall return to the relations between philos-
ophy and politics of difference at the end of the chapter, but we must first
ask in what sense may Deleuze be described as a philosopher of difference?
The answer to this question may be found in the concern throughout his
work with the nature of multiplicity. Deleuze never claimed to abandon or
overthrow the concepts of identity, sameness, the One, etc. Rather, he was
concerned with the question of how identity is constituted and what forms
it takes. The real question is not whether or not there is unity but what
form this takes: 'what is the form of unification?' (Mengue 1994: 11-12).
In particular, the problem to which he returns over and over again is the
problem of how to conceive of a form of identity or unity which is not
identical to itself. In this context he insists on the importance of the concept
of multiplicity, on condition that this is understood as a substantive and
independently of any relation to identity:
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
29
element of a Unity or Totality yet to come, and instead distinguish

between different types of multiplicity.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 32)
Deleuze's distinctive contribution to the philosophy of difference lies in his

elaboration of a philosophical theory of multiplicities. This concept pro-
vides a key to the structure of the concepts invented with Guattari, and
thereby to the ethico-political implications of their collaborative work.
In the chapter of his Modern French Philosophy (1980) entitled
'Difference', Vincent Descombes argues that, with the work of Deleuze and
Derrida, 'We come finally to that remarkable point of modern metaphysics
which all preceding discourse had indicated like a flickering compass.' This
point was the attempt to elaborate 'a non-contradictory, non-dialectical
consideration of difference, which would not envisage it as the simple con-
trary of identity, nor be obliged to see itself as "dialectically" identical with
identity' (Descombes 1980: 136). 2 As Descombes' remark suggests, the
revaluation of difference by many French philosophers of the 1960s and
1970s was bound up with a reaction against the prevailing Hegelianism
of the preceding decades. Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983) was
both a significant contribution and a stimulus to this reaction.3 It offered
an interpretation of Nietzsche as a philosopher of difference in terms that
subsequently became the hallmark of much poststructuralist theory.
For Deleuze, Nietzsche's metaphysics of the will to power is the basis of
a profoundly anti-Hegelian ontology and an ethics, at the heart of which
lies difference: 'For the speculative element of negation, opposition, or
contradiction, Nietzsche substitutes the practical element of difference, the
object of affirmation and enjoyment' (Deleuze 1983: 9). In this account,
Nietzsche's theory that in all events a will to power is operating is based
upon a concept of force, where forces are defined by their differences
from other forces, both in quantity and in quality: 'We must remember
that every force has an essential relation to other forces, that the essence
of force is its quantitative difference from other forces and that this differ-
ence is expressed as the force's quality' (Deleuze 1983: 50).
Deleuze defines the will to power as the genetic and differential element
which produces the difference in quantity and subsequent difference in
quality between forces. He draws on Nietzsche's description of the modes
of evaluation characteristic of masters and slaves in order to distinguish
between active and reactive forces, and to align the denial of difference
with reactive force and the affirmation of difference with active force:
'only active force asserts itself, it affirms its difference and makes its
difference an object of affirmation' (Deleuze 1983: 55-6). Nietzsche's
characterisation of master and slave morality already dramatises this
order of priority: the master affirms himself and his difference from the
slave, while the slave negates the values of the other, and affirms himself
30
only by negating those negated values in turn. This is the strange syllogism
of the slave: he needs two negations in order to produce the appearance of
affirmation' (Deleuze 1983: 121).
We will see in Chapter 3 how the distinction between active and reative
force points to an ethical hierarchy among the kinds of interaction possible
between bodies of different powers and capacities and how, according to
Deleuze, this hierarchy is expressed in Nietzsche's concept of eternal
return. Deleuze interprets eternal return as a selective conception of being
which functions both as an ethical and a physical doctrine. As an ethical
doctrine it favours those forms of interaction associated with productive,
affirmative modes of interaction at the expense of restrictive, negative
modes. In contrast to a Hegelian world oriented towards the reunification
of absolute spirit or species being which has become divided or alienated
from itself, the outcome is a world in which reactive forces do not return
but only the active, excessive and life-enhancing modes of being. This is a
world in which 'multiplicity, becoming and chance are adequate objects of
joy by themselves and . . . only joy returns' (Deleuze 1983: 190). As a
physical principle too, eternal return implies the primacy of difference
over identity: Deleuze points out that, for Nietzsche, natural science seeks
to deny difference in favour of logical identity, mathematical equality and
thermodynamic equilibrium. To the extent that it denies difference in
these ways, Nietzsche considers science to be bound up with the more
general enterprise of denying life and depreciating existence that constitutes
the nihilism of modern thought (Deleuze 1983: 45). By contrast, eternal
return allows us to understand the world not as being or the permanence
of the same but as becoming or the repetition of the different. We mis-
interpret Nietzsche's concept of eternal return, Deleuze argues, if we take
it to mean the return of the same:
It is not being that returns but rather returning itself that consti-
tutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which
passes. It is not some one thing which returns but rather returning
is the one thing which is affirmed of diversity or multiplicity. In
other words, identity in the eternal return does not describe the
nature of that which returns, but, on the contrary, the fact of
returning for that which differs.
(Deleuze 1983: 48)
In Difference and Repetition (1994) Deleuze sought to elaborate a con-

cept of difference which involves no necessary connection with the negative
or with negation. He rejects the link which Hegel forged between difference
and contradiction, arguing that contradiction is not the condition or
ground of difference but the contrary: 'It is not difference which pre-
supposes opposition but opposition which presupposes difference, and far
31
from resolving difference by tracing it back to a foundation, opposition

betrays and distorts it' (Deleuze 1994: 51). Limitation or opposition is a
distortion of difference, according to Deleuze, because difference in itself
implies 'a swarm of differences, a pluralism of free, wild or untamed
differences' (Deleuze 1994: 50). However, the notion of a primary field of
differences is only the point of departure for Deleuze's concept of differ-
ence. He suggests that further conceptual articulation is required in order
to speak of oppositions or limitations, and that these presuppose a more
complex play of divergence and disparity as well as overlap and communi-
cation between the multiple formations of difference. In particular, 'a more
profound real element must be defined . . . one which is determined as an
abstract and potential multiplicity' (Deleuze 1994: 50). The importance of
this figure of abstract multiplicity for Deleuze's concept of difference will
be examined below.
For Deleuze, as for other philosophers of difference such as Derrida,
Hegel was a focus of criticism because he represented the culmination of a
metaphysical tradition which treated identity as primary and difference as
the derivative or secondary term. A philosophy that seeks to make differ-
ence an object of affirmation, and to produce a concept of difference in
itself, must therefore overturn the traditional hierarchy between identity
and difference. But the mere inversion of hierarchy does not change the
fundamental relation between the elements involved, nor does it change
the nature of those elements: 'A slave does not cease to be a slave by
taking power' (Deleuze 1994: 54). For this reason, deconstruction always
envisaged a further stage after the initial hierarchy has been overturned.
This would involve 'the irruptive emergence of a new "concept", a concept
that can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime'
(Derrida 1981: 42 ). In this manner, the philosophical concept of différance
enabled Derrida to evoke the movement of deferral and differentiation
which underlies all production of meaning (Derrida 1976: 56-65). For
Deleuze, the concept of simulacra played a similar role in relation to the
structure of representation first laid down by Plato. It served to evoke the
movement within Platonism by which the primacy of identity and the idea
of a model are overthrown.
Overturning Platonism
To the extent that he outlines a conception of a world whose basic struc-
ture is that of a system of representation, Plato is both a source and a
privileged example of the subordination of difference to identity and resem-
blance. In the Platonic world, only the Forms are ultimately and absolutely
real, while the earthly manifestations of qualities or material objects are
mere copies or imitations of the Forms. Difference is here a derivative
term, coming in third place behind the exemplary identity of the Forms
32
and the resemblance of copies: 'Difference is only understood in terms of

the comparative play of two similitudes: the exemplary similitude of an
identical original and the imitative similitude of a more or less alike copy'
(Deleuze 1994: 127). Yet, Deleuze argues, even within Plato's dialogues,
the ordered and hierarchical world of representation is constantly
threatened by another kind of figure whose essence lies not in resemblance
to the real nature of things but in its capacity to simulate such natures.
Figures of this kind appear in a variety of guises throughout the dialogues.
They include the Sophist, who is described as 'a sort of wizard, an imitator
of real things' (Sophist, 235a); writing, which is 'a kind of image' of living
discourse that does not produce true wisdom but only its semblance
(Phaedrus, 275b, 276a); and the 'imitative poets' in Book X of The
Republic, who do not produce imitations of the true nature of things, but
only imitations of their appearances. However, the paradigm of such
figures is the mere 'semblances' or simulacra which Plato distinguishes in
the Sophist from true \likenesses' of things. In the case of such likenesses,
the difference between original and copy is a difference within resemblance,
a difference between things that are, in the essential respects, the same. By
contrast, the simulacrum is not in essential respects the same as what it
simulates: it reproduces the appearance of the original, but only as an
effect. This effect is produced on the basis of internal differences between
the simulacrum and the object it resembles. The simulacrum 'is built upon
a disparity or upon a difference. It internalises a dissimilarity' (Deleuze
1990: 258). With simulacra, in other words, the priority of identity and
sameness over difference that characterises the world of representation is
reversed: it is difference which is primary, while the appearance of identity
or resemblance is a secondary and derived relation.
Deleuze argues that the crucial task of Platonism is to establish the dis-
tinction between copies and simulacra: 'Platonism as a whole is erected on
the basis of this wish to hunt down the phantasms or simulacra which are
identified with the Sophist himself, that devil, that insinuator or simulator,
that always disguised and displaced false pretender' (Deleuze 1994: 127). 4
The underlying motivation is to establish the priority of the well-founded
copy and to exclude the 'false claimant' or simulacrum. It is in the hostility
towards these figures, Deleuze argues, that we perceive the moral choice
embedded in Platonism. This is a preference for a stable and hierarchical
world where neither persons nor things appear as other than they are.
Platonism represents a preference for the calm, ordered life of the soul
governed by reason to the disorderly and passionate life of the soul
moved by poetry. 'What appears then, in its purest state, before the logic
of representation could be deployed, is a moral vision of the world. It is
in the first instance for these moral reasons that simulacra must be
exorcised and difference thereby subordinated to the same and the similar'
(Deleuze 1994: 127). However, the victory is by no means assured.
33
Deleuze's deconstructive reading of Platonism argues that it offers both the

elements of a representational conception of the world, albeit in the meagre
resources of the theory of Forms, and the means to overturn that con-
ception. To the extent that simulacra are defined in terms of their power
successfully to imitate the appearances of things, their existence threatens
to undermine the very possibility of distinguishing between real things and
mere illusions. Deleuze suggests that this is what occurs at the end of the
Sophist, where the Eleatic Stranger offers a definition of the Sophist such
that he can no longer be distinguished from Socrates himself: 'Socrates dis-
tinguishes himself from the sophist, but the sophist does not distinguish
himself from Socrates and places the legitimacy of such a distinction in
question' (Deleuze 1994: 128). Simulacra therefore provide the means to
overturn Platonism, where 'overturning' means 'denying the primacy of
original over copy, of model over image; glorifying the reign of simulacra
and reflections' (Deleuze 1994: 66). Deleuze's analysis of the overturning
of Platonism prefigures his own account of a world in which the play of
difference rather than the relations of identity and resemblance expresses
the ultimate nature of things. To assert the primacy of simulacra is to
affirm a world in which difference rather than sameness is the primary rela-
tion. In such a world, there are no ultimate foundations or original identi-
ties: everything becomes simulation where this refers not to copying, nor
even to copying copies, but to 'the act by which the very idea of a model
or privileged position is challenged and overturned' (Deleuze 1994: 69).
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze seeks a concept of pure difference
or difference 'in itself that would not be subject to the structure of repre-
sentation first laid down in Platonism. The production of a concept of
difference 'in itself goes hand in hand with the elaboration of an ontology
in which disparity or difference is the fundamental principle and the iden-
tity of objects is understood as something produced from the differences
of which they are composed. In effect, the logic and ontology of pure
difference are two sides of one and the same project. Deleuze argues for a
categorical reversal according to which being is said of becoming,

identity of that which is different, the one of the multiple, etc.
That identity not be first, that it exist as a principle but as a
second principle, as a principle become-, that it revolve around the
Different: such would be the nature of a Copernican revolution
which opens up the possibility of difference having its own
concept.
(Deleuze 1994:40-1)
The characterisation of a such a world in which difference rather than

identity is primary necessarily affects other related concepts. Thus, in
accordance with the interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal
34
return put forward in Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983), Deleuze argues

that repetition must not be taken to mean the return of the same but
rather the production of sameness through the returning of that which dif-
fers. He treats the doctrine of eternal return as Nietzsche's formulation of a
principle of the univocity of being which presupposes the ontological
primacy of difference: 'Returning is being but only the being of becoming'
(Deleuze 1994: 41).
From the outset, this project is aligned with the conception of a world of
simulacra in which identities are only produced as effects by 'the more pro-
found game of difference and repetition' (Deleuze 1994: ix). Ultimately,
however, the importance of the conceptVpf simulacra is limited to the pre-
dominantly negative phase of Deleuze's project, namely the deconstruction
of the world of representation. In a letter published in 1993, Deleuze com-
mented that he had 'completely abandoned the notion of simulacra, which
was not worth very much' (Deleuze 1993b: 8). His choice of words
suggests that he did not regard 'simulacra' as a well-formed philosophical
concept, despite the fact that it was widely taken up and employed to con-
siderable effect, not only in philosophy but in the analysis of social media
and contemporary visual art. 5 In Deleuze's own work, the sphere of influ-
ence of this concept is largely confined to his analysis of Platonism. As we
shall see in the remainder of this chapter, the positive task of producing a
new concept of difference relies upon other concepts, the most important
of which for his later work with Guattari are the concepts of multiplicity
and virtuality. Both of these components of Deleuze's concept of difference
are introduced in his 1966 account of Bergsonism.
Virtual multiplicity and the concept of difference

According to Deleuze, Bergson practised a method of analysis that shares
some features with Kantian transcendental analysis. Whereas Kant sought
to discover the conditions of all possible experience, Bergson sought virtual
conditions of real experience (Deleuze 1988a: 27). However, in both
cases the aim is to decompose the given into its underlying conditions. For
Bergson, time understood as duration is the ultimate element in which
these differences occur, and the method of analysis thus progresses from
the superficial, extensive nature of things to their underlying temporal
nature. Deleuze argues that Bergson's ontological distinction between dura-
tion and extensity corresponds to a distinction between kinds of multi-
plicity. The extensive or objective reality of things takes the form of
'numerical multiplicity', where this is understood as the kind of multiplicity
which divides by differences in degree and where the process of division
does not involve changes in kind. Arithmetical number is an example of
this kind of multiplicity: numbers are infinitely divisible but the outcome
is always further numbers of the same kind. Space is another example.
35
By contrast, the other type of multiplicity 'appears in pure duration: It is

an internal multiplicity of succession, of fusion, of organization, of hetero-
geneity, of qualitative discrimination, or of difference in kind; it is a virtual
and continuous multiplicity that cannot be reduced to numbers' (Deleuze
1988a: 38). These qualitative or non-numerical multiplicities change in
kind as they divide. Bergson draws examples of such multiplicities from
the domain of consciousness. Here, a complex multiplicity such as a feeling
may contain a number of elements imperfectly perceived, but once these
elements are distinctly perceived by consciousness, the feeling inevitably
changes its nature as a result. Deleuze points to examples from other
domains such as intensities of sound or temperature, or the movements of
horses which can be divided into several qualitatively distinct gaits: walk,
trot, lope, canter, etc. In all these cases, what is divided 'changes in nature
at each moment of the division, without any one of these moments entering
into the composition of any other' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 483). The
problem of distinguishing between types of multiplicity originated with
Reimann and is taken up in different ways by Husserl, Meinong and
Russell. Bergson transformed the problem to his own ends in arguing that
qualitative multiplicity is characteristic of duration.6 As we shall see below,
Deleuze transforms it further by using the Bergsonian distinction between
two kinds of multiplicity as part of the logical framework for the theory
of assemblages in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). The characterisation of
qualitative multiplicities as virtual provides another dimension of that theory.
In Bergson's ontology, duration as qualitative multiplicity is linked to the
concept of virtuality. According to Deleuze, Bergson bases his philosophy
of memory and life on the concept of the virtual, treating duration, pure
memory and life or élan vital equally as virtual realities, where the concept
of the virtual implies a process of actualisation or 'différenciation'. Deleuze
argues that 'the characteristic of virtuality is to exist in such a way that it is
actualised by being differenciated and is forced to differenciate itself, to
create its lines of différenciation in order to be actualised' (Deleuze 1988a:
97). Virtuality is distinguished from the concept of possibility externally
by its relations to other concepts: possibility is contrasted with reality
whereas virtuality is contrasted with actuality. Deleuze employs a formula
from Proust to describe the virtual as 'real without being actual, ideal with-
out being abstract' (Deleuze 1988a: 96). Virtuality is also distinguished
from the concept of possibility internally by virtue of its content: that
which is possible typically resembles or prefigures the real, while the real
is typically considered a subset of that which is possible. The virtual, by
contrast, does not have to resemble the actual and 'the rules of actualisa-
tion are not those of resemblance and limitation' (Deleuze 1988a: 97).
The virtual is actualised by a process of différenciation in which difference
is primary in two senses: there are differences between the virtual point of
departure and the actual outcome, and there are differences between the
36
various lines along which actualisation can take place, so that, for
example, life may be actualised as plant or animal, etc.
One of Deleuze's last published texts begins with the claim that 'Philos-
ophy is the theory of multiplicities' (Deleuze 1996: 179). 7 This is an appro-
priate description of his own philosophy of difference. His studies in the
history of philosophy involve recurrent efforts t(\elucidate a vision of
a world in which all things are the expression of yirtual multiplicities.
His descriptions of a Platonic world of simulacra, Nietzsche's will to
power and Bergson's realm of qualitative multiplicities of duration are all
examples of this metaphysics of virtual multiplicities. Even in What Is
Philosophy? (1994), the pure events to which philosophical concepts give
expression are understood as virtual multiplicities which may be incarnated
in an indeterminate number of actual states of affairs. However, the
clearest exposition of this differential metaphysics is to be found in
Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994), where Chapter 4 outlines the
theory of a transcendental field, the constituent elements of which are
qualitative or pure multiplicities. These are the 'more profound' real
elements which, Deleuze had argued in Chapter 1 of that book, must be
determined as abstract and potential multiplicities in order to enable an
account of a world of free differences (Deleuze 1994: 50). These positive
and differential elements are unique to Deleuze's metaphysics of difference.
They provide the key to his conception of difference 'in itself and to his
dynamic conception of difference as the 'ground' of being.
In Chapter 4 of Difference and Repetition (1994), virtual multiplicities
are specified as Ideas, Problems or Structures. They are structures in the
sense that these were understood by the structuralist theories of the
period. That is, they are composed of purely formal elements defined by
the reciprocal relations between their component elements. In the case of
language, the ultimate signifying units or phonemes are defined by their
reciprocal relations to other phonemes. It is the structure of these relations,
prior to their actualisation in a given series of sounds or inscriptions, which
defines a given language. In the case of social structures, Deleuze follows
the structural Marxism of Althusser and his collaborators in taking the
economic structure of society to be a system of 'differential relations
between differential elements' (Deleuze 1994: 186). These include relations
of property and relations of production established between unspecified
'supports' of ownership and labour power. Defined in this manner,
intrinsically rather than by external relations, such structures constitute
'an internal multiplicity - in other words, a system of multiple, non-
localisable connections between differential elements which is incarnated in
real relations and actual terms' (Deleuze 1994: 183). Deleuze proposes that
the relations of reciprocal determination between the elements of a given
structure be understood on the model of the differential relationship
dy/dx, where the progressive determination of this relationship is supposed
37
to generate a particular primitive function. Just as the determination of a

given differential relation partially specifies the behaviour of a curve at
adjoining points, so the specification of a given series of singularities or
singular points determines the curve corresponding to the relation between
the elements in question. For this reason, Deleuze comments in 'How do
we recognize structuralism?', that there are two aspects to any given struc-
ture: 'a system of differential relations according to which the symbolic
elements determine themselves reciprocally, and a system of singularities
corresponding to those relations and tracing the space of the structure'
(Deleuze 1998a: 265). 8
As we noted above, Deleuze's structures are virtual in that they are not
actual, not in the sense that they lack reality: The virtual is fully real in
so far as it is virtual' (Deleuze 1994: 208). The differential elements and
relations, along with the singularities that correspond to them, form the
real content of a given structure. They define a completely positive multi-
plicity which, Deleuze argues, should not be subsumed under the categories
of opposition or negation since these play no part either in the constitution
of structures or in their actualisation: The process of difference and of
différenciation is primary in relation to that of the negative and opposition'
(Deleuze 1994: 207). Différenciation is the process by which Ideas become
actualised in spatio-temporal events and states of affairs. The agents of
différenciation are 'spatio-temporal dynamisms' which are internal to
given fields of ideational or material intensity. The embryological example
of the egg provides an example of this process of actualisation and of the
sense in which the order of morphogenetic processes implies a prior ideal
structure of relations embedded in the genetic structure (Deleuze 1994:
214). This account of the relation between virtual structures and spatio-
temporal events and states of affairs is the means by which Deleuze circum-
vents the philosophy of representation: bodies and states of affairs do not
resemble the structures or ideal events of which they are the expression.
In this sense, he argues, 'actualisation or différenciation is always a genuine
creation' (Deleuze 1994: 212).
Deleuze's concept of difference therefore has two parts: on the one hand
the determination of the virtual content of a multiplicity, which he calls
differentiation, and on the other the actualisation of the multiplicity in
particular species and component parts, which he calls différenciation:
Whereas differentiation determines the virtual content of the Idea

as problem, différenciation expresses the actualisation of this
virtual and the constitution of solutions . . . Différenciation is like
the second part of difference, and in order to designate the
integrity or the integrality of the object we require the complex
notion of different/ciation.
(Deleuze 1994: 209) 9
38
There is therefore an important sense in which he maintains the primacy of

difference over identity. Difference is the fundamental term on the basis of
which the identity of all phenomena must be understood. As su^h, differ-
ence never refers back to a primary identity but only to further differences.
Ultimately, however, difference is a process before it is a category: 'Every
object, every thing, must see its own identity swallowed up in difference,
each being no more than a difference between differences. Difference must
be shown differing' (Deleuze 1994: 56).
Deleuze describes this process of difference differing by reference to the
forms of communication which take place between different physical,
linguistic, psychic or other differential structures. Such communication
between different systems implies the presence of an agent which he calls
the 'disparate' or the 'dark precursor'. The differences of electrical potential
which cause a signal or flash of lightning to discharge provide one
example, but in reality the identity of such 'agents' of communication
between heterogeneous systems will vary from case to case, since it will be
defined by the particular difference between the systems involved. This
difference will be expressed in its effects. In this sense, like the relationship
of reciprocal determination between the elements of a structure, the dark
precursor may be described as a second-order difference or 'differing
difference' (Deleuze 1994: 119-20).
In apparent contrast to the account we have given of the metaphysics
outlined in Difference and Repetition, Todd May argues that Deleuze is
'not a thinker of difference at all, if by that is meant that he is a thinker
who should be read as considering difference to be privileged over unity'
(May 1997: 166). May does not claim that Deleuze does not privilege a
concept of difference at the expense of unity, in both the ethical and meta-
physical senses indicated above. On the contrary, he points out that
Deleuze develops a concept of difference intended to serve a 'positive and
disruptive function', namely that of resisting the privilege attached to
forms of unity and totality within philosophy. The function of the concept
of difference, he suggests, 'is at once to attack the unifying forces that
have abounded in philosophical discourse and to substitute for such
forces a new perspective' (May 1997: 176). However, he argues that
Deleuze cannot do this by simply positing a world of pure difference in
which unities are explained only as secondary phenomena. To do so
would create a number of inconsistencies within Deleuze's philosophy.
First, he points out that an attempt to describe a world of difference 'in
itself would involve claims about the nature of Being which might readily
be construed as claims about a realm which is transcendent to human
experience. As a result, 'Being as difference threatens to go transcendent,
to become a thing apart from our experience that structures it from the
outside' (May 1997: 184). Such a relapse into transcendence is inadmis-
sible for Deleuze, since an essential aim of his philosophy is to refuse
39
transcendence in all its forms. May reminds us that in What Is Philosophy?

(1994) transcendence is identified as foremost among the illusions that
inevitably arise from the plane of immanence on which a given philosophy
is laid out (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 49). Second, he argues that
Deleuze's various characterisations of this world of difference 'in itself,
whether in terms of Bergsonian duration or pre-individual singularities,
invoke a concept of the unity of the field or plane of immanence upon
which these entities are described: a unity of time in the case of duration,
a unity of the domain of pre-individual differences subtending all identities,
and so on. If this is so, then it cannot be true that difference is prior to
unity.
May is right to point out that Deleuze's philosophy of difference cannot
be understood simply in terms of the dialectical interrelations of the con-
cepts of unity and difference. But his argument for incoherence in the
Deleuzian concept of difference does not withstand closer examination.
Deleuze provides many indications that his account of difference in itself
should not be construed as invoking a transcendent realm. Rather, he pro-
poses a concept of differential conditions which must be understood as
transcendental but entirely immanent to real experience. As May himself
points out (May 1997: 186), for Deleuze as for Kant, transcendental condi-
tions of experience are not the same as transcendent conditions. Whereas
Kant proposes transcendental conditions of possible experience, Deleuze's
transcendental empiricism refers to genetic conditions of real experience.
His suggestion that the transcendental field is open to quasi empirical
investigation points to an appropriate response to May's second objection.
In positing time as a condition of experience, Kant does not suppose the
unity of time. He does suppose the continuity and uniformity of time, but
since he also argues that time is neither finite nor infinite, this uniformity
does not imply unity. Similarly, Deleuze posits a uniform transcendental
field, whether of duration, difference, will to power or intensities, without
supposing the unity of that field.
Freedom and the problem of society

We saw in Chapter 1 how Deleuze describes thought as problematic in the
sense that its highest capacity lies in the constitution of new problems. Like
Kant's transcendental Ideas, the problems that define thought are never
completely actualised in any given solution. Deleuze's Ideas or virtual
multiplicities are treated as problems of this order. They are defined by
elements which 'have neither sensible form nor conceptual signification'
(Deleuze 1994: 183) and they may be incarnated in material as well as
theoretical or conceptual solutions: an organism 'is nothing if not the solu-
tion to a problem, as are each of its differenciated organs, such as the eye'
(Deleuze 1994: 211). In terms of Deleuze's differential ontology, everything
40
that exists incarnates a problem of some kind, and there will be as many
kinds of problem as there are distinct species of matter and thought,
including physical, biological and psychic problems.
Languages and societies are solutions to particular species of problem.
Language in general may be regarded as a solution to the problem of how
to communicate an infinite variety of semantic contents using a relatively
small number of signifying elements. The Idea of language as such, or the
transcendental Problem of language, will therefore be a virtual structure
which includes all of the sets of relations between signifying elements
which may be actualised in particular languages. Determinate sets of rela-
tions between phonemes will be incarnated in the particular languages
which are solutions to the problem of language as such. Similarly, human
societies may be regarded as solutions to the fundamental problem of the
survival and reproduction of the species in the form in which this arises
for human beings, namely the constitution of a mode of production of
necessary means of subsistence. Marx showed that social relations are, in
the final instance, a means of solving this problem. The Idea or transcen-
dental Problem of society as such will therefore be a virtual set of indeter-
minate relations between means of production, direct and indirect
producers, and consumers, while particular Ideas of society will involve
an actual set of determinate social relations. These relations, in turn, will
determine the 'synthetic and problematising field' (Deleuze 1994: 186) to
which that society's economic, juridical and political arrangements con-
stitute solutions. The crucial events which mark the history of a society
will represent the emergence of actual solutions to its economic or other
problems, or the replacement of one set of solutions by another.
Political theory is not a primary concern of Difference and Repetition
(1994). Nevertheless, some political themes emerge in the exposition of
the metaphysics of difference. In many cases, these are consistent with
aspects of Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche while at the same time pre-
figuring aspects of the overtly political theory in A Thousand Plateaus
(1987). One such theme emerges in connection with the conception of
particular forms of society as solutions to the problem of society as such.
Deleuze's conception of society implies that, while the specific political
problems that confront a given society are the expression or incarnation
of the ideal relations which define a given Idea of society, these do not yet
express the transcendental Idea of sociability or social organisation as
such. The truly differential or 'transcendent object of sociability', Deleuze
writes, cannot be lived within actual societies, but 'must be and can only
be lived in the element of social upheaval (in other words, freedom, which
is always hidden among the remains of the old order and the first fruits of
a new)' (Deleuze 1994: 193). In other words, while some Idea or other is
immanent in every empirical form of society, the properly transcendental
Idea of society is only actualised during those periods of transition from
41
one solution to the problems which define a society to another. In short,

'the transcendent object of the faculty of sociability is revolution. In this
sense, revolution is the social power of difference, the paradox of society,
the particular wrath of the social Idea' (Deleuze 1994: 208).
On the one hand, this celebration of exceptional moments recalls the
selective character of Nietzsche's eternal return and the manner in which
this doctrine privileges the higher forms of existence, where these are under-
stood not as a particular human or social type but rather as the active and
affirmative forms, those that go to the limit of what they are capable of
doing or being. In the case of social existence in time, these higher forms
are realised only in moments of 'creative disorder or inspired chaos which
can only ever coincide with a historical moment but never be confused
with it' (Deleuze 1994: 54). On the other hand, Deleuze's conception of
such revolutionary moments, or freedom, as the expression of the transcen-
dental Idea of society privileges processes of social transformation and
metamorphosis in the same way as do certain concepts developed in
A Thousand Plateaus. We shall examine in detail some of these concepts,
such as becoming, line of flight, absolute deterritorialisation, nomadism
and smooth space in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.
Assemblages and abstract machines

In Chapter 1 we suggested that the concept of assemblage is the most
important concept in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Not only is the book
itself an assemblage but the successive plateaus describe a variety of
assemblages in relation to different fields of content: machinic assemblages
of desire, collective assemblages of enunciation, nomadic assemblages and
apparatuses of capture, ideational, pictorial and musical assemblages.
A Thousand Plateaus might be described as a reiterated theory of
assemblages in which the concept of assemblage provides formal continuity
across the analyses of very different contents in each plateau. At the same
time, those analyses transform and deform the concept of assemblage in
such a manner that it exemplifies the continuous variation which Deleuze
and Guattari ascribe to philosophical concepts (see Chapter 1, pp. 13-17).
What Deleuze and Guattari call an assemblage is, in the first instance, a
multiplicity (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 132). In accordance with Deleuze's
reiterated contrast between numerical and qualitative multiplicities, there
are two kinds of assemblage: extensive, molar multiplicities that are
divisible, unifiable, totalisable and organisable; and molecular, intensive
multiplicities that are not unifiable or totalisable and that do not divide
without changing in nature. These two kinds of assemblage may be
characterised in a variety of ways: for example, in their Introduction to
A Thousand Plateaus (1987), Deleuze and Guattari contrast arborescent
and rhizomatic multiplicities. While the terminology of trees and rhizomes
42
is chosen for its broad cultural resonance, the differences between them
correspond to the differences between numerical and qualitative multi-
plicities. Arborescent systems are 'hierarchical systems with centres of
signifiance and subjectification' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 16). They are
'unifiable' objects in the sense that their boundaries can be clearly defined
and their parts connected according to an invariant principle of unity.
They embody the principles of organisation found in modern bureaucra-
cies, factories, armies and schools, in other words, in all of the central
social mechanisms of power. By contrast, rhizomes are fuzzy or indetermi-
nate objects, defined 'by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight
or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature (meta-
morphose into something else) and connect with other multiplicities'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 9). They lack principles of unity or connection
such as central axes or invariant elements. They are determined rather by
'magnitudes and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the
multiplicity changing nature' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 8). 10
Another variation on the distinction between two kinds of assemblage or
multiplicity occurs when Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between molar
and molecular or between macropolitical and micropolitical levels of
social analysis. This is not simply a difference in scale but a difference in
kind. On the one hand, politics is played out in conflicts between molar
social entities such as social classes, sexes and nations. On the other hand,
it is simultaneously played out at the molecular level in terms of social
affinities, sexual orientations and varieties of communal belonging. The
microsociology of Gabriel Tarde offers an alternative to class analysis
which addresses the molecular level of social life. In these terms, for
example, in respect of the 1789 revolution 'what one needs to know is
which peasants, in which areas of the south of France, stopped greeting
the local landowners' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 216). n Deleuze and
Guattari explicitly relate the differences in kind between micropolitical
and macropolitical analysis to the distinction between kinds of multiplicity
drawn by Reimann, Bergson and others when they suggest that
We are doing approximately the same thing when we distinguish

between arborescent multiplicities and rhizomatic multiplicities.
Between macro- and micro- multiplicities. On the one hand, multi-
plicities that are extensive, divisible and molar; unifiable, totaliz-
able, 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 them-
selves in the course of their communications.
43
Assemblages are defined in terms of a quadripartite structure along two

axes. On the first axis, assemblages are composed of discursive and non-
discursive components: they are both assemblages of bodies and matter
and assemblages of enunciation or utterance. Deleuze and Guattari distin-
guish between forms of content that involve bodies, their interactions and
passions; and forms of expression that involve utterances, speech acts or
statements. In this respect, assemblages are close to what Foucault called
dispositifs of power and knowledge, such as the modern system of penal
imprisonment, or the complex arrangements of discourse and practices
which define modern sexuality.12
On the second axis, assemblages are defined by the nature of the move-
ments governing their operation. On the one hand, there is the constitution
of territories and fields of interiority; on the other hand, there are points of
deterritorialisation, lines of flight along which the assemblage breaks down
or becomes transformed into something else. Every assemblage has both
movements of reterritorialisation, which tend to fix and stabilise its
elements, and 'cutting edges of deterritorialization which carry it away'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 88). For Deleuze and Guattari, these move-
ments are constitutive of any assemblage: the articulation of the corporeal
and discursive elements of a given assemblage 'is effected by the move-
ments 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' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 90).
It is at this point that the second element of Deleuze's concept of differ-
ence, the concept of virtuality, plays an important role in the concept of
assemblage. While assemblages are more or less concrete arrangements of
things, their mode of functioning cannot be understood independently of
the virtual or abstract machine which they embody. Deleuze and Guattari
propose that the constitutive function of the movements of deterritorial-
isation is in turn directed by the abstract machine which inhabits the
assemblage like its virtual double. They define abstract machines as onto-
logically prior to the distinction between content and expression within a
given assemblage, existing in 'the aspect or moment at which nothing but
functions and matters remain' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 141). Like the
Ideas, Problems or Structures in terms of which Deleuze characterised the
transcendental field of thought and matter in Difference and Repetition,
abstract machines are virtual multiplicities which do not exist indepen-
dently of the assemblages in which they are actualised or expressed: they
are neither corporeal nor semiotic entities but 'diagrammatic' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 141). They are always singular and immanent to a
given assemblage. As the diagram of a given assemblage, the abstract
machine is vital to the operation of that assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 100). Abstract machines are virtual machines in the same sense as
the software program which turns a given assemblage of computer hard-
ware into a certain kind of technical machine (a calculating machine, a

drawing machine, etc.). As the characterisation of abstract machines as
diagrammatic suggests, they constitute a dimension of the assemblage not
unlike Derrida's writing in general where 'Writing now functions on the
same level as the real, and the real materially writes' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 141).
Deleuze and Guattari also assign a complex causal function to abstract
machines. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze endorsed the concept of
structural causality in terms of which Althusser and others sought to
make sense of Marx's thesis of economic determination, suggesting that
'this structure never acts transitively, following the order of succession in
time; rather, it acts by incarnating its varieties in diverse societies and by
accounting for the simultaneity of all the relations and terms which, each
time and in each case, constitute the present' (Deleuze 1994: 186). In
similar fashion, the abstract machine immanent in a given assemblage 'pre-
sides over' the distinction between forms of content and expression and
distributes this across the various strata, domains and territories. It also
'conjugates' the movements of deterritorialisation that affect those forms
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 141). Abstract machines are therefore
endowed with a directive power which Deleuze and Guattari are careful
to distinguish from other models of causality: an abstract machine 'is
neither an infrastructure that is determining in the last instance nor a trans-
cendental Idea that is determining in the supreme instance. Rather, it plays
a piloting role' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 142). 13
Deleuze and Guattari sometimes speak as if there were but a single
Abstract Machine of which all concrete assemblages were more or less
complete actualisations. This is because for them the function of mutation,
metamorphosis and the creation of the new is ontologically primary. Just
as Bergson viewed qualitative multiplicities as associated with the onto-
logically primary realm of duration, and just as problematic Ideas or Struc-
tures formed the fundamental elements of Deleuze's differential ontology in
Difference and Repetition, so Deleuze and Guattari treat rhizomatic,
molecular and micropolitical assemblages as prior to arborescent, molar
and macropolitical assemblages, and the abstract machine of mutation as
prior to the abstract machine of overcoding. This priority is implicit
throughout the reiterated theory of assemblages in A Thousand Plateaus,
even though it is only occasionally made explicit. We saw above that
rhizomatic multiplicities are defined not by an internal principle of unity
but by the line of flight or deterritorialisation according to which they
metamorphose. Elsewhere, Deleuze and Guattari differentiate their con-
ception of assemblages from that of Foucault in similar terms.14 Given
this conceptual connection between absolute deterritorialisation and quali-
tative assemblages, Deleuze and Guattari assert the ontological primacy
of both when they refer to the priority of movements of absolute
45
deterritorialisation, describing absolute deterritorialisation as 'the deeper

movement... identical to the earth itself (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 143).
Politics and difference

A meaningful politics of difference requires more than a simplistic formula
about the relative priority of difference and identity. As long as the argu-
ment remains at the level of an undetermined concept of difference and its
supposed priority in relation to identity, there are both political and con-
ceptual limits to the philosophical defence of difference. From a conceptual
point of view, since concepts of identity and difference appear inextricably
linked to one another, the case for difference readily becomes entrapped
in a sterile dialectic which dooms in advance all attempts to argue for the
priority of either. The identity of something implies its difference from
others. Conversely, since difference is always difference from something, it
implies reference to an identity of some kind. Identities presuppose differ-
ences and are inhabited by them, just as differences inevitably presuppose
and are inhabited by identities.15 From a political point of view, arguments
that appeal to the value of difference over that of identity or equality are
subject to what Foucault called the 'tactical polyvalence of discourse'
(Foucault 1978: 100). Differentialist arguments may be mobilised in sup-
port of racism and sexism as well as against these forms of discrimination.
For example, since the 1980s, the French 'new right' has argued for the
forced repatriation of non-European immigrants on the basis of respect
for a cultural 'right to difference'. In the US, in response to a legal case
brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, lawyers for
Sears, Roebuck &c Company argued that 'fundamental' differences between
the sexes rather than the firm's discriminatory practices explained the
gender imbalance in its workforce. 16
A politics of difference requires the conceptual determination of differ-
ence and the specification of relevant kinds of difference, in an ontological,
ethical or political sense. This is how the French philosophers of difference
have provided support for a politics of difference: not only by their refusal
to treat difference as secondary, derivative or deficient in relation to a pre-
sumed identity, but also by providing conceptual grounds for the auton-
omy of individual differences and rejecting those forms of reductionism
which treated particular differences, such as sex and race, as subordinate
to one central difference or social contradiction. Deleuze's philosophy of
difference is consistent with both of these themes. The conception of a
world of free differences outlined in Difference and Repetition (1994)
points to a defence of the particular against all forms of universalisation
or representation: every time there is representation, Deleuze suggests,
there is always an 'unrepresented singularity' which does not recognise
itself in the représentant (Deleuze 1994: 52). 17 In A Thousand Plateaus
46
(1987), Deleuze and Guattari explicitly reject the Marxian idea that
societies are defined by the contradiction between labour and capital in
favour of a 'micropolitical' conception of societies as defined by their lines
of flight or deterritorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 216). However,
as this thesis suggests, the linkages between Deleuze's philosophy of
difference and politics are complex. They are mediated by the theory of
assemblages developed in A Thousand Plateaus, and by many of the con-
cepts developed in conjunction with this theory. We shall examine Deleuze
and Guattari's concepts of becoming, deterritorialisation and capture in
more detail in following chapters, but it is helpful at this point to consider
one example which illustrates some connections between a politics of
difference and the theory of multiplicities outlined above.
Consider their concept of minority and the corresponding advocacy of a
minoritarian politics. This might be regarded as Deleuze and Guattari's
version of a relational understanding of difference, in contrast to the wide-
spread tendency to recognise and evaluate difference only from the stand-
point of an implicit standard or prior identity. They define minority in
opposition to majority, but insist that the difference between them is not
quantitative since social minorities can be more numerous than the so-
called majority. Both concepts involve the relationship of a group to the
larger collectivity of which it is a part. Suppose there are only two groups
and suppose that there is a standard or ideal type of member of the larger
collectivity: the majority is defined as the group which most closely
approximates the standard, while the minority is defined by the gap
which separates its members from that standard. In a social collectivity,
majority can take many simultaneous forms:
Let us suppose that the constant or standard is the average

adult-white-heterosexual-European-male-speaking a standard lan-
guage . . . It is obvious that 'man' holds the majority, even if he is
less numerous than mosquitoes, children, women, blacks, peasants,
homosexuals, etc. That is because he appears twice, once in the
constant and again in the variable from which the constant is
extracted. Majority assumes a state of power and domination, not
the other way around.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 105, 291)
A politics of difference might simply defend the right of the minorities

to figure in the majority. In other words, it would seek to broaden the
standard so that it becomes male or female - European or non-European
- hetero- or homosexual, etc. Liberal versions of gender neutrality or multi-
culturalism take this form. Deleuze and Guattari do not deny the
importance of such changes to the nature of majority.18 However, they go
further and introduce a third term in addition to the pair majority-
47
minority, namely becoming-minor or minoritarian, by which they mean a

creative process of becoming-different or divergence from the majority.
Becoming-minor involves the subjection of the standard to a process of
continuous variation or deterritorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
106). 19 Deleuze and Guattari's third term suggests that social minorities
might be conceived in one of two ways: either as outcasts but potentially
included among the majority, or as collectivities of an entirely different
kind which threaten the very existence of a majority.
The difference between these two ways of understanding minority cor-
responds to the difference between qualitative and quantitative multi-
plicities. Minorities considered as transformational multiplicities threaten
the status of the majority in a manner that recalls the threat posed by simu-
lacra to the stable order of representation. In contrast to much of what
goes under the name of a politics of difference, Deleuze and Guattari's
political perspective is directed not at the installation of new constants or
the attainment of majority status, but rather at the minoritarian-becoming
of everyone, including the bearers of minority status. They are advo-
cates of the transformative potential of becoming-minor, or becoming-
revolutionary, against the normalising power of the majority. At the end
of Plateau 13, '7000 B.C.: apparatus of capture', in the context of their
analysis of capitalism as an axiomatic system, Deleuze and Guattari
redescribe the difference between majority and minority in terms of the
difference between denumerable and non-denumerable sets, suggesting
that 'what distinguishes them is that in the case of a majority the relation
internal to 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' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
470). In these terms, the politics of becoming-minor may be recast as a
'formula' which asserts the power of the non-denumerable against that of
the denumerable:
The power of the minorities is not measured by their capacity

to enter and make themselves felt within the majority system,
nor even to reverse the necessarily tautological 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.
48
3
POWER
Power and will to power

Deleuze has had a profound impact on contemporary approaches to the
theory of power. Through his studies of the philosophies of Nietzsche and
Spinoza, he develops a concept of power which has none of the juridical
and moral presuppositions typically associated with power in the tradition
of modern political thought. This concept of power none the less enables
a form of ethical evaluation which plays an important role in the social
and political theory developed in collaboration with Guattari. It informs
both the theory of desire that is the basis for their critique of psycho-
analysis in Anti-Oedipus (1977) and the theory of assemblages developed
in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). The key elements of Deleuze's concept of
power are presented in his 1962 study, Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983).
The aim of this chapter is to outline the concept of power developed
through Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, and to show how this is
developed further in his subsequent collaboration with Guattari.
In order to do so, it will be helpful to trace some of the important
continuities with as well as divergences from Foucault's concept of power.
To a considerable degree, Deleuze's impact upon contemporary political
thought has been mediated by the work of Foucault, who acknowledged
the influence of Deleuze's 'superb book about Nietzsche' on his own think-
ing about power (Foucault 1983a: 203).* Deleuze in turn commented
upon and elaborated Foucault's theses about power, first in his review of
Discipline and Punish (Deleuze 1975: 1207-27) and then in the additional
comments on power in his Foucault (1988b). In fact, there are several
'zones of indiscernibility' between the concepts of power deployed through-
out the texts of Deleuze, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, but also
a number of differences between them. The most important of these
differences has to do with the explicitly normative character of Deleuze's
approach to power. We will take up this issue, and the evaluative character
of the social theory developed with Guattari, in the third section of this
chapter.
49
Nietzsche is not the first to propose an interpretation of human beha-

viour in terms of power: Hobbes and Spinoza among others preceded him
in this endeavour. But Nietzsche's understanding of power differs from
preceding theories in several important respects. First, he refuses any
perspective according to which the fundamental drive is to preserve or to
increase the power of the body concerned. For Nietzsche, will to power is
not a matter of individual bodies striving to maintain their power or perse-
vere in their being, in the manner of Hobbes or Spinoza. It is not energy
expended in order to reach a particular goal or end-state, but simply the
expenditure of energy itself. The power of a body is expressed when it
acts with all of the force or energy with which it is endowed. In paragraph
13 of Beyond Good and Evil (1973), he remarks that we should beware of
superfluous ideological principles such as the drive to self-preservation. His
own principle is more general, encompassing the drive to self-preservation
but also the drive to self-destruction or self-overcoming: A living thing
desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power - self-
preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of
it' (Nietzsche 1973: part 1, para. 13). 2 It follows that Nietzsche's under-
standing of power must be distinguished from the homeostatic principle
which underpins the Darwinian conception of nature. Deleuze comments
that 'Nietzsche criticises Darwin for interpreting evolution and chance
within evolution in an entirely reactive way. He admires Lamarck because
Lamarck foretold the existence of a truly active plastic force, primary in
relation to adaptations: a force of metamorphosis' (Deleuze 1983: 42).
The idea that life, in the broadest sense of the term, is essentially active
and transformative is a recurrent theme throughout Deleuze's philosophy.3
A second fundamental point of difference between Nietzsche and his
predecessors with regard to power is that he treats it as a matter of effec-
tive capacity on the part of the body concerned rather than as something
represented and therefore able to be recognised or not by others. Deleuze
suggests that according to Hobbes, 'man in the state of nature wants to
see his superiority represented and recognised by others' (Deleuze 1983:
80). By contrast, for Nietzsche, it is only the slave who understands
power in terms of representation since this is a mediocre and base interpre-
tation of power. Any such representational concept of power is prone to an
implicit conformism, since it implies that an individual will only be recog-
nised as powerful in accordance with accepted values. By contrast,
Nietzsche understands power to involve the attainment of new values:
'against the image of a will which dreams of having established values
attributed to it, Nietzsche announces that to will is to create new
values' (Deleuze 1983: 85).
In his remarks on the history of human moral sentiments in Human, All
Too Human (1984) and Daybreak (1982), Nietzsche offers many examples
of the analysis of human drives or forms of moral judgement in terms of
50
POWER
power. Although he did not use the term 'will to power' until Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1969a), 4 by the time he wrote On the Genealogy of Morality
(1994), the concept had become so established in his thinking that he could
refer to his theory that 'in all events a will to power is operating' (Nietzsche
1994, essay 2, para. 12). A common misunderstanding assumes that the
will to power is a particular psychological drive, such as the love of
power which motivates so many political actors. While Nietzsche certainly
recognises this phenomenon,5 this is not what is expressed by his concept
of will to power. To interpret will to power as wanting or seeking power,
Deleuze argues, is to produce 'platitudes which have nothing to do with
Nietzsche's thought' (Deleuze 1983: xi). The will to power is not one
drive among others but the immanent principle in terms of which all
human drives are to be understood.
In treating will to power as central to Nietzsche's system, Deleuze antici-
pates the argument of a number of more recent studies of Nietzsche.6 In
common with a number of these studies and contrary to the widespread
view of Nietzsche as an unsystematic or even anti-systematic thinker, he
presents him as a rigorous philosopher who 'uses very precise new terms
for precise new concepts' (Deleuze 1983: 52). Alongside nihilism and the
eternal return, he argues, 'will to power' is one of the most important of
the new concepts that Nietzsche creates and introduces into philosophy
(Deleuze 1983: 80). Deleuze's systématisation of Nietzsche's theory of
will to power takes its point of departure from those passages in the
posthumously assembled The Will to Power (1968), in which Nietzsche
extends his theory that 'in all events a will to power is operating' to include
the physical universe. Against the atomism then prevalent in physics, he
proposes a conception of material reality understood as centres of force.
This implies a universe in which there are no ultimate, irreducible particles
'but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other quanta'
(Nietzsche 1968: para. 635). In these terms, physical bodies are constituted
by relations of opposition or collaboration between forces, which are them-
selves effects of the differential power relations between the centres of
force. These point-forces are dynamic quanta, in Nietzsche's view, because
each strives to become master over all space and to thrust back all that
resists its extension. In doing so, they 'continually encounter similar efforts
on the part of other bodies and end by coming to an arrangement with
those of them that are sufficiently related . . . thus they conspire together
for power. And so the process goes on . . .' (Nietzsche 1968: para. 636).
It is this expansive character of forces, the active element internal to them
which Nietzsche calls will to power: 'The victorious concept force, by
means of which our physicists have created God and the world, still needs
to be completed: an inner will must be ascribed to it, which I designate
will to power9 (Nietzsche 1968: para. 619).
51
Deleuze's reconstruction of Nietzsche's concept of will to power begins

with this conception of reality as a field of quanta or quantities of force.
These forces are virtual capacities to affect and be affected by other forces
which are actualised in determinate form in a given material. According
to Deleuze, forces are essentially related to other forces and the will to
power must be understood as the inner principle of the relation between
forces. Chance brings particular forces into relation with one another, but
the will to power determines the character and the outcome of the relations
between forces: whether a particular force is primarily active or reactive;
which force prevails in a particular encounter given that active forces do
not always prevail over reactive forces. In any event, both the dominant
and dominated forces are manifestations or expressions of the will to
power. Taking the differential calculus as his model, Deleuze argues that
the will to power is the differential and genetic element which is realised
in the encounter between forces or capacities of different kinds. There is a
relation of mutual presupposition between, on the one hand, the forces or
capacities of particular bodies which are only realised in such encounters
and, on the other hand, the will to power which is inseparable from the
existence and interrelation of particular determinate kinds of force. That
is why the will to power is an 'essentially plastic principle' that is no
wider than what it conditions (Deleuze 1983: 50).
In Deleuze's usage, the language adapted from Nietzsche's remarks on
physics is intended to apply not only to biological forces but also to the
psychical, moral, social and political 'forces' which characterise the field
of social and political action. 'Force' here assumes a very broad sense
which has no necessary connection with violence. Foucault follows Deleuze
in this usage of the term. It is because forces are of different 'natural kinds',
as well as different magnitudes, that he refers to the space in which forces
confront one another as 'a "non-place", a pure distance, which indicates
that the adversaries do not belong to a common space' (Foucault 1977b:
85). Nevertheless, in any given encounter, one force will dominate and
another will be subordinated: in one context, the law may prevail over
racially discriminatory public opinion; in another, public opinion may
force politicians to override the rule of law. In this sense, a certain stable
or precarious but always reversible balance of forces will be established.
'Force' should be understood, in abstraction from any determinate kind of
action or interaction, to encompass all of the means by which bodies inter-
act with one another. In this sense, 'force' is equivalent to 'power' in its
primary sense of capacity to do or to be certain things. Forces are the
potentials for acting and being acted upon which constitute bodies as
bodies of a particular kind. Deleuze's abstract and relational concept of
force leads to an equally abstract concept of bodies, according to which
the different kinds of force involved will determine the nature of different
kinds of bodies: physical, organic or social. Bodies are understood here as
52
POWER
assemblages of particular kinds of force or capacity: 'every relationship

of forces constitutes a body - whether it is chemical, biological, social or
political. Any two forces, being unequal, constitute a body as soon as they
enter into a relationship' (Deleuze 1983: 40).
As the inner principle of relations between forces, will to power is mani-
fest both as a capacity to affect and a capacity to be affected. Deleuze
points out that, even before Nietzsche had fully elaborated his concept of
will to power, he treated power 'as a matter of feeling and sensibility'
(Deleuze 1983: 62). The significance of the feeling of power derives from
the fact that human beings are animals whose actions give rise to a cor-
responding subjective affect. Not only do they act, but they are also
affected by their own actions. Before he had fully developed his theory of
will to power, Nietzsche spoke about the feeling of power as the single
most important element of human agency. Although he does not refer to
it by name, the concept may be discerned in Human, All Too Human,
where phenomena such as pity and teasing are analysed in terms of the
'feeling of superiority' thereby obtained, and where he advances the
hypothesis that in all actions 'it is the individual's sole desire for self-
enjoyment . . . that gratifies itself in every instance' (Nietzsche 1984: bk 2,
para. 107). In Daybreak, Nietzsche suggests that
because the feeling of impotence and fear was in a state of almost

continuous stimulation so strongly and for so long, the feeling of
power has evolved to such a degree of subtlety that in this respect
man is now a match for the most delicate gold-balance. It has
become his strongest propensity: the means discovered for creating
this feeling almost constitute the history of culture.
(Nietzsche 1982: bk 1, para. 23) 7
Deleuze points out that this dimension of Nietzsche's concept of power

brings him close to Spinoza, who 'in an extremely profound theory,
wanted a capacity for being affected to correspond to every quantity of
force' (Deleuze 1983: 62). However, this affective dimension of the concept
of power is not only a point of contact between Spinoza and Nietzsche:
as we shall see in Chapter 4, it forms an important bridge between the
Deleuzian concepts of power, desire and becoming.
At the level of sociopolitical analysis, the outcome of this differential
concept of force and will to power is a proto-deconstructive concept of
power, according to which the power of any given body resides not in the
body itself but in its relations to other bodies. The suggestion that power
is essentially relational is not in itself an original insight. C. B. Macpherson
drew attention to the fact that Hobbes defines men's natural powers not
in terms of any absolute level of bodily endowments but in terms of the
'eminence' of those faculties (Macpherson 1968: 34). In other words, the
53
power of a body depends upon its differences from other bodies and an
individual in society is more powerful to the degree that his or her capaci-
ties exceed those of others; less powerful to the degree that they are
exceeded by the capacities of others. There is, of course, a variety of ways
in which the relative power of an individual body can be increased, includ-
ing combining with or capturing the powers of others, or reducing the
power of other bodies by imposing constraints on their capacity to act.
The techniques of disciplinary power, which Foucault describes in detail
in Discipline and Punish, involve both the combination of individual
powers and the subordination of the resultant complex power to superior
ends. Hobbes points out in Leviathan that the power of an individual in
society includes not only the 'natural' powers of the body concerned but
also the 'instrumental' powers, where these are the means by which one
can command the forces of others, such as riches, reputation or friendship
(Hobbes 1968: 150). The greater the instrumental powers, the greater the
degree to which the power of an individual will exceed the power of
others.
Another way for individual bodies to enhance their power is to form
alliances with other bodies. Interpersonal relations such as friendship may
involve alliances that reinforce the powers of both parties, but so may
political movements or institutional arrangements. The body politic of
classical social contract theory might be considered a composite body
which serves to enhance the power of its individual members, even though
in its Hobbesian form it also involves the capture of individual powers by
the sovereign.8 Deleuze and Parnet point to another kind of composite
body which involves an increase of the powers of its constituent bodies
through their example of the symbiosis of the wasp and the orchid. This
is a phenomenon of 'double-capture' whereby
The orchid seems to form a wasp-image, but in fact there is a

wasp-becoming of the orchid, an orchid-becoming of the wasp, a
double capture since 'what' each becomes changes no less than
'that which' becomes. The wasp becomes part of the orchid's
reproductive apparatus at the same time as the orchid becomes
the sexual organ of the wasp.
(Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 2) 9
Such processes of double-capture are only one of the ways in which the
powers of an individual body may be transformed by entering into a rela-
tion with the powers of another without incorporating or weakening the
other body. More generally, this kind of metamorphosis in the powers of
a given body or assemblage is what Deleuze and Guattari call 'becoming'.
The primary concern of Plateau 10, '1730: becoming-intense, becoming-
animal, becoming-imperceptible' in A Thousand Plateaus is the analysis of
54
POWER
the affective dimension of certain kinds of relationship between bodies by

means of the concept of 'becoming'. This concept is examined in more
detail in Chapter 4, pp. 78-83.
Because human bodies are complex and possess a range of 'natural'
powers, including the power of imagination, they are capable of many
different kinds of interaction with other bodies. The kinds of action of
which a human body is capable will depend upon its physical constitution,
the enduring social and institutional relations within which it lives, and
the moral interpretations which define its acts. In Daybreak (1982: bk 1,
para. 38), Nietzsche points out that moral interpretations of phenomena
are among the most important means by which human beings act upon
themselves and others: it is by such means that an individual can enjoy
his own magnanimity or arouse pity in others. In On the Genealogy of
Morality (1994), following the principle that 'All events in the organic
world are a subduing, a becoming master' (Nietzsche 1994: essay 2,
para. 12), he applies the concept of will to power to the historical analysis
of moral and cultural phenomena such as punishment, guilt, bad
conscience and asceticism. These are events in the evolution of human
consciousness which involve the emergence of new forms of human self-
interpretation and which therefore determine the nature of social institu-
tions and possible forms of action. Similarly, the systems of thought in
relation to mental illness, punishment and sexuality described by Foucault
are elements of the interpretative framework within which Europeans
have acted upon themselves and others. These systems of thought serve to
integrate and coordinate moral as well as physical and institutional forces.
Descriptive ontology or 'analytic* of power

Deleuze's concept of a transcendental field of force relations, encompassing
all of the means by which bodies of different kinds may act upon each
other, forms the basis of Foucault's novel approach to the analysis of
power in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, vol. I
(1978): 'Power's condition of possibility . . . is the moving substrate of
force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender
states of power' (Foucault 1978: 93). Foucault understands power as the
effect of relations between different forces: the power of a body resides
not 'in a certain strength we are endowed with', but in the fluctuating
field of relations to other bodies. The power even of a single body is
dispersed in such a manner that 'power is everywhere, not because it
embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere' (Foucault
1978: 93). Within the terms of this definition of power as a relation
between forces, power relations can take a variety of forms: attraction,
repulsion, incorporation, decomposition of one force by another and so
55
on. Foucault subsequently proposed a definition of power relations which

limited the field to interactions between human forces, suggesting that he
was concerned only with power relations understood as the 'set of actions
upon other actions' (Foucault 1983: 220). However, even within these
limits, there are still many ways in which individual or collective agencies
can act upon the actions of others: they can provoke, incite, restrict, pro-
hibit, make more or less probable, and so on. As a result, Deleuze suggests,
we can imagine an 'open list of variables expressing a relation between
forces' (Deleuze 1988b: 70).
Among the many ways in which we can act upon the actions of others,
only some will have the effect of limiting or diminishing their capacities
for action. Conversely, there are many ways in which we can act to
enhance or assist others in the exercise of their powers. Foucault does not
offer any account of such ways of being or acting outside the relations of
government and domination. His studies of power tended to focus on
those relatively fixed or congealed relations of force which enable some to
govern the conduct of others. Nevertheless, the concept of power as the
effect of differential force relations allowed him to abandon a series of
assumptions about the nature and operation of power associated with
Marxist social theory. He argued that power is not localised in the State
but diffused throughout the social field; that power is not the property of
a class nor does it operate only by violent or ideological means; that there
is no economic essence of power but only purely functional relations
involving the dominated as well the dominating force. Deleuze summarises
this contribution to the understanding of power by suggesting that
Foucault put forward a new 'topology' of social power relations founded
on an immanent field of power 'without transcendent unification', without
centralisation on the figure of the State, or totalisation in relation to the
system of economic relations (Deleuze 1988b: 27).
According to the interpretation of Nietzsche's genealogy advanced by
Deleuze and Foucault, the nature of an institution such as the prison is
determined by the character of the forces in play around it at any given
moment. Tracing the history of such an institution will then be a matter
of retracing the 'succession of forces' which have taken possession of it
(Deleuze 1983: 3). In this manner, genealogy seeks to re-establish 'the
hazardous play of dominations' (Foucault 1977a: 83). Contrary to the
Marxist view, no single logic of development governs the direction of
history understood in these terms. All events are the effects of the interplay
of forces, as things are transformed or reinterpreted to serve new ends.
It follows that there is no more an enduring essence within social phen-
omena than there is within biological phenomena: 'the eye was not
always intended for seeing, and punishment has had other purposes than
setting an example' (Foucault 1977a: 83).
56
POWER
Foucault's account of the emergence of modern punishment by incar-

ceration provides an illustration of the application of this conception of
power to the social field. The fact that prisons became the predominant
form of punishment in the early nineteenth century represented a conver-
gence of two quite disparate force-fields: the political economy of punish-
ment in late eighteenth-century society, which involved the widespread
revision of penal codes and the realignment of the application of penal
discipline to particular acts and segments of the population; and the politi-
cal technology of disciplinary power, which involved specific techniques for
distributing individuals in space and controlling their activities over time.
As a specific technology for the exercise of power over groups of indi-
viduals, discipline combined the enhancement of productive capacities
with the reinforcement of domination. Yet, as Foucault points out,
imprisonment was neither envisaged nor implied by the eighteenth-century
projects for the reform of the penal system. While the acceptance of
imprisonment as the primary mode of punishment makes sense against
the background of the spread of disciplinary techniques, Foucault's
account of the 'birth' of the prison nevertheless appears incomplete: how
does his genealogy acquire the force of explanation with regard to the
form of modern punishment?
In his review of Discipline and Punish, Deleuze points to an element of
Foucault's analysis which enables a complete explanation: his suggestion
that there is a generalisable 'diagram' of power which was embodied in
the prison and other social institutions such as factories, barracks, schools
and hospitals. Foucault called this generalisable form of disciplinary
power 'panopticism', after Jeremy Bentham's plan for a building design
which could serve as a school, workshop or penitentiary: in short,
wherever there was a need 'to impose a particular conduct on a particular
human multiplicity' (Deleuze 1988b: 34, cf. 72). Deleuze points out that
what Foucault calls a 'diagram' of panoptic power is the name of a pure
function applied to an unspecified matter. This is what he and Guattari
call an 'abstract machine' capable of actualisation in a variety of concrete
assemblages: 'We define the abstract machine as the aspect or moment at
which nothing but functions and matters remain. A diagram has neither
substance nor form, neither content nor expression' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 141). As we noted in Chapter 2 (p. 45), within the theory of assem-
blages developed in A Thousand Plateaus, the abstract machine functions
as an 'immanent cause' which explains the mutually supportive interaction
between the forms of content and expression in any given assembage. It is
both a condition of the effects realised in a given assemblage and an
abstraction that exists only in those effects, in a manner that parallels the
relationship of the will to power to the relations between particular forces
in which it is expressed. In this case, the abstract machine of panopticism
accounts for the convergence of the discourse of delinquency and the
57
disciplinary techniques which together make up the social assemblage

which Foucault called the carcéral dispositif (Deleuze 1988b: 37).
Deleuze's 'Postscript on control societies' (Deleuze 1995b: 177-82)
builds on Foucault's suggestion that modern society is disciplinary by
proposing the diagram of a new form of power which has taken hold in
the course of the twentieth century and which he defines as control or
modulation. The principles of control are contrasted step by step with
those of discipline. Control involves continuous modulation rather than
discontinuous moulding of individuals and activities, competition rather
than normalisation:
In disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again (as
you went from school to barracks, from barracks to factory),
while in control societies you never finish anything - business,
training and military service being coexisting states of a single
modulation, a sort of universal transmutation.
(Deleuze 1995b: 179)
The digital language of control operates by means of codes rather than

identifying signatures, passwords rather than orderwords. Just as disci-
plinary techniques developed alongside industrial capitalism, so the
mechanisms of control correspond to the transformation of capitalism
into a system dominated by metaproduction, marketing and financial
services.
Deleuze and Guattari's social 'cartography' takes as its primary task the
mapping of the abstract machines at work within a given social field.
Every society has its diagrams or abstract machines and different kinds of
diagram or abstract machine will correspond to different kinds of social
formation. Part Three of Anti-Oedipus outlines the macromachines that
characterise distinct kinds of society: the 'territorial' machine of so-called
primitive societies, the 'overcoding' machine of state governed societies,
and the axiomatic of global capital (see Chapter 5). In A Thousand
Plateaus, machinic analysis is developed further by the description of
many different kinds of abstract machine which inhabit the social field:
the abstract machine of language and its actualisation in collective
assemblages of enunciation; abstract machines of thought, desire and
social space or segmentarity. Cutting across the analyses of such abstract
machines is a recurrent opposition between abstract machines of capture
and abstract machines of metamorphosis and transformation. In order to
appreciate the sense in which this distinction provides a basis for evalua-
tion, we must understand its origins in Deleuze's interpretation of
Nietzsche's will to power.
58
POWER
Power and evaluation: active and reactive force

When political theorists talk about power, they tend to mean ways in
which some agents govern or exercise control over the actions of others.
This was not always so. The shift from a more general concept of power
as capacity to the narrower concept of power which predominates in
modern political theory is exemplified in Hobbes's discussion in Leviathan
where, after defining power as 'present means to obtain some future
apparent good', he goes on to consider only the means by which indi-
viduals can enhance their own powers by controlling the powers of others.
The fact that he includes friendship as an 'instrumental' power alongside
riches and reputation draws attention to an important feature of the
concept, namely that there is nothing objectionable about exercising
power (Hobbes 1968: 150ff.). As we saw above, to offer advice, instruc-
tion or support is also to act upon the actions of others. The widespread
view of power as essentially repressive assumes that power is by nature
hostile to the interests of those over whom it is exercised. By contrast, for
Deleuze and Foucault, power is not always detrimental to the interests of
those over whom it is exercised.10 Indeed, in some respects, the exercise
of power is what shapes and determines those 'interests'. Their concept of
power is non-normative in the sense that it includes all of the ways in
which agents are able to act, upon others or upon themselves. That is
why Deleuze can comment that there is no point in asking whether a new
form of power, such as that embodied in mechanisms of control, is better
or worse than the old: in each case there is conflict 'between the ways
they free and enslave us' (Deleuze 1995b: 178).
The question raised by this approach to power is whether there are
evaluative means of differentiation immanent to the exercise of power
itself? Can we distinguish between forms of domination and more benign
modes of action upon the actions of others in terms intrinsic to the exercise
of power? Critics such as Fraser and Habermas have pointed to the absence
of any criteria in Foucault which would allow for normative discrimination
between ways of exercising power. Others have pointed to his failure to
address any of the normative issues which concern liberal political theory
and the social contract tradition: when and in what ways is power,
especially State power, justified? These issues are largely although not
entirely absent from Foucault's discussions of power up to the publication
of The History of Sexuality, Volume J, in 1 9 7 6 . n
By contrast, in Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983), there is a
sense in which Nietzsche's theory of will to power does provide grounds
for evaluation, but in a manner that is unlikely to satisfy Foucault's critics.
Deleuze argues that Nietzsche's project is the realisation and radicalisation
of Kant's critique. For Nietzsche, it is values themselves which must be
evaluated, in contrast to the uncritical acceptance of established values
59
which characterises Kantian critique. According to Deleuze, we find in

Nietzsche an explicit qualitative distinction between active and reactive
modalities of power, and it is this qualitative dimension of the will to
power which enables the evaluation of values. Nietzschean critique takes
the form of a genealogical interpretation of phenomena which assesses
their sense and their value. The sense or meaning of a given phenomenon
is determined by the quality of force which predominates (forces are
either active or reactive), and its value by the quality of the will to power
which is present (affirmative or negative).
In other words, in addition to the differences between the various natural
kinds of force, Deleuze draws attention to the distinction between 'active'
and 'reactive' force. This finds its clearest expression in Nietzsche's account
of the differences between master and slave morality in On the Genealogy
of Morality (Nietzsche 1994: essay 1, paras 10, 11). The fundamental
difference is between those who distinguish the good (themselves and their
like) from the bad, and those who distinguish the evil (the others) from
the good (themselves). This is a difference in the direction of what
Nietzsche calls 'the value-positing eye', between self-directed action and
other-directed action:
In order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile

external world; it needs physiologically speaking, external stimuli
in order to act at all - its action is fundamentally reaction. The
reverse is the case with the noble mode of valuation: it acts and
grows spontaneously.
(Nietzsche 1994: essay 1, para. 10)
In Deleuze's systematic reformulation, this distinction is drawn in the first

instance with reference to the relative strength of the forces present: the
superior force, by which is meant the one that dominates in a given
encounter with another force, is active, while the inferior or dominated
force is reactive. The difference between these two kinds of force is thus
a difference in their manner of action. Reactive forces are those whose
activity is conditioned or constrained by superior forces. They are para-
digmatically forces of adaptation or conservation, regulative forces whose
'mechanical and utilitarian accommodations . . . express all the power of
inferior and dominated forces' (Deleuze 1983: 41). By contrast, active
forces are those appropriative, dominant or superordinate forces that
impose forms of activity upon others. While these are to some degree con-
strained by their own nature, even this constraint is relative, since active
forces are essentially transformative: 'the power of transformation, the
Dionysian power, is the primary definition of activity' (Deleuze 1983: 42).
Deleuze describes the difference between active and reactive forces as a
difference between two qualities of force, where the qualities correspond
60
POWER
to a difference in quantity. In effect, since forces exist only in relation to

other forces, quantitative difference is the essence of force as such (there
are no equal forces in nature). But this quantitative difference in turn
gives rise to a difference in quality: 'forces in relation reflect a simultaneous
double genesis: the reciprocal genesis of their difference in quantity and the
absolute genesis of their respective qualities' (Deleuze 1983: 51). The will
to power is the differential and genetic principle which accounts for the
relationship between forces. It is the inner principle which gives rise to
this double genesis: 'The will to power is the element from which derive
both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that
devolves into each force in this relation' (Deleuze 1983: 50). While it does
not bring the forces into relation, that task being left to chance, the will
to power 'produces' the difference in quantity and the resultant quality
which each force acquires in a given relation (Deleuze 1983: 53).
Although the quality of forces has its origins in quantitative difference, it
is not bound by that original state of affairs. Cultural phenomena no less
than physical events involve dynamic systems. As Nietzsche repeatedly
argues, the weak may triumph over the strong. In On the Genealogy of
Morality he analyses some of the principal forms of reactive force which
have held sway over human nature, namely ressentiment, bad conscience
and the ascetic ideal. Reactive forces may get the better of active ones, but
they do not thereby become active, for the reason that their mode of
operation is not the same. Nietzsche's view, according to Deleuze, is that
the difference between active and reactive forces derives in the first instance
from the difference in quantity: active forces are those that dominate while
reactive ones are dominated. But this difference in the quality of forces
cannot be reduced to quantitative difference alone. If it could, then the dis-
tinction would serve no critical purpose, whereas Deleuze clearly wants it
to do so: 'inferior forces can prevail without ceasing to be inferior in quan-
tity and reactive in quality' (Deleuze 1983: 58). 12 He therefore draws the
distinction in terms of the difference between two modes of operation or
functioning: reactive forces are forces of limitation or decomposition
which resist the activity of other forces. They 'separate active force from
what it can do' (Deleuze 1983: 57), and in this way are able to overcome
active forces by neutralising some or all of their power. By contrast, active
force is force that acts of its own accord. In doing so, it may impose
forms upon lesser forces or otherwise appropriate or subordinate them to
its own ends. Active force goes to the limit of what it can do, even to the
point of its own destruction and transmutation into something else.
At this point, Deleuze argues, a further distinction is necessary to com-
plete the evaluative function of the will to power: 'in order to be the
source of the qualities of force in this way, the will to power must itself
have qualities, particularly fluent ones, even more subtle than those of
force' (Deleuze 1983: 53). These qualities are the affirmative and negative
61
character of the will to power itself. Although the difference in mode of

operation between active and reactive forces may appear to follow from
the original quantitative difference - dominant forces are those in a posi-
tion to pursue their own activity while dominated forces are constrained
to respond, and constrained in their possible responses - the difference
also corresponds to a difference between affirmation and negation. Active
force affirms its own nature rather than seeking to oppose or limit that of
the other.
Affirmation and negation or denial are primordial expressions of the will
to power. They are, Deleuze says, 'the immediate qualities of becoming
itself (Deleuze 1983: 54). That is why will to power cannot mean wanting
power: what the will wants, to speak in anthropomorphic terms, is
'a particular relation of forces, a particular quality of forces. And also a
particular quality of power: affirming or denying' (Deleuze 1983: 85).
Given that in all events a will to power is operating, it follows that every
phenomenon expresses a certain combination of forces and therefore a
certain type. Conversely, while the will to power is expressed in every
type of body, it does nevertheless take higher and lower forms. Power in
the sense that is praised above all others by Zarathustra is active and
creative. It is especially manifest in 'the bestowing virtue': 'the will to
power is essentially creative and giving: it does not aspire, it does not seek,
it does not desire, above all it does not desire power. It gives' (Deleuze
1983: 85).
The introduction of this primordial distinction between qualities of the
will to power interjects further complexity into Nietzsche's genealogical
interpretation. Interpretation involves determining the sense and value of
a thing, where its sense is determined by the quality of force which is
present while its value is determined by the quality of the will to power.
There is an affinity or complicity between affirmation and active force,
and between negation and reactive force, but never a confusion of these
two levels. This implies that active forces may in fact possess the value of
negative will to power or, what amounts to the same thing, that forces of
nihilism, life-denying forces, may become active. Conversely, forces of affir-
mation may themselves become reactive: 'There are reactive forces that
become grandiose and fascinating by following the will to nothingness
and there are active forces that subside because they do not know how to
follow the powers of affirmation' (Deleuze 1983: 67).
The distinction between qualities of force and those of will to power is
not one that can simply be read off from the relative strength of the
forces in play on a given occasion: that is why it provides the basis for a
form of critical evaluation which can judge the present. But this is not the
moral form of critique which judges what is against what should be,
rather it is a genealogical critique which judges what is by determining the
quality of the forces present and their affinity with one or other character
62
POWER
of the will to power. The result is a complex and nuanced system of judge-
ment which does not allow for any simple axiological priority of active
over reactive, affirmative over negative.
Take the example of Christian religion: for Nietzsche, this has its origins
in 'the slave revolt in morality' and possesses an essential affinity with the
negative side of the will to power. This apparently doubly negative phe-
nomenon has nevertheless produced some of the highest forms of human
life hitherto.13 It is both a 'rigorous and grandiose stupidity' (Nietzsche
1973: part 5, para. 188), yet also the principal means by which the
(European) human spirit has been educated and developed to its present
state of sensibilities and possibilities. At issue here is the historical diversity
of the forms which this religion has assumed, the different character (active
or reactive) and nuance (affinity with affirmation or negation) of the forces
which have held sway in different contexts. The reactive consciousness of
sin that becomes evangelistic and denunciatory is not the same as the
active abstention from all that is sinful. There are forms of religious life
that display an inner strength of affirmation and enjoyment of themselves.
The reactive forces of spiritual discipline and self-denial may acquire an
affinity with the affirmative aspect of the will to power. Or take the
example of illness or injury which separates the healthy individual from
his or her powers and limits the possibilities for action. While this is clearly
a reactive force, its value depends on the nature of the subject and how it
responds to the illness which acts upon it. The same physiological state
may weaken some powers but also open up new possibilities of feeling or
bring about new capacities for acting and being acted upon. Nietzsche
spoke of his illness in these terms when he suggested that it enabled him
to discover life and himself anew and that it was during the years of his
'lowest vitality' that he 'ceased to be a pessimist' (Nietzsche 1969: 'Why I
am so wise', section 2). Depending on how the illness is lived, we must
ask whether it is the same condition or the same illness in each case: 'is it
the same invalid who is the slave of his illness and who uses it as a means
of exploring, dominating and being powerful?' (Deleuze 1983: 67).
Ultimately, it is the relationship between the illness and the patient which
determines the affirmative or negative quality of this reactive force.
The dynamic aspects of the interplay between the qualities of will to
power and those that supervene on force relations mean that the evaluation
of particular phenomena is no simple matter. The internal complexity that
is introduced by the possibility that active forces may become reactive,
and acquire an affinity with the negative rather than the affirmative quality
of the will to power, or the possibility that reactive forces may become
active and acquire an affinity with the affirmative dimension of the will to
power, implies that the meaning and value of particular phenomena can
only be assessed by a patient and meticulous practice of genealogy. There
is no algorithm by which we can read off the quality of a given event or
63
phenomenon. Indeed, as Nietzsche's conception of history as successive

events of subduing and becoming master suggests, philosophy conceived
as the interpretation of the meaning of things must be an art (Nietzsche
1994: essay 2, para. 12). None the less, defenders of the Enlightenment
faith who cling to the possibility of objective judgement might still insist
that there must be grounds for reassurance. Even granted the complexity
of phenomena and the tortuous paths of their historical development,
surely there is an objective value which is theirs alone: in the end, a given
phenomenon must be assigned a single, if complex and nuanced, value.
At this point, a further bifurcation appears in Deleuze's reconstruction of
Nietzsche's metaphysics of power. At the level of empirical acts of judge-
ment by particular, historically constituted subjects, there is no transcen-
dent point or uniform standard of judgement. Ultimately, it is the will to
power which interprets and which evaluates (Deleuze 1983: 53-4), and
the will to power is divided. As a result, all evaluation must be grounded
in one or other character of the will to power, one or other quality of
force. Values cannot be abstracted from the standpoint from which they
draw their value, and that standpoint is ultimately the affirmative or nega-
tive character of the will to power. At this level, evaluations reflect the
quality of the forces which make them, and there will be as many evalua-
tions of a given phenomenon as there are subjects of evaluation. There is
no transcendent standard, no God's-eye point of view to ground the pos-
sibility of objective evaluation. Any particular judgement will be an
expression of the nature of that which judges. For this reason, Nietzsche
and Deleuze argue, 'we have the hierarchy that we deserve, we who are
essentially reactive, we who take the triumphs of reaction for a transforma-
tion of action and slaves for new masters' (Deleuze 1983: 61). In this sense,
the Nietzschean philosophy of power supports Foucault's refusal to get
caught up in the play of justifications, since it shows why there is no
possible accommodation between conflicting points of view.
At the same time, considered as a transcendental principle of the quali-
ties of force, the will to power does enable a critical perspective on values:
High and noble designate, for Nietzsche, the superiority of active

forces, their affinity with affirmation, their tendency to ascend,
their lightness. Low and base designate the triumph of reactive
forces, their affinity with the negative, their heaviness or clumsiness.
(Deleuze 1983: 86)
The will to power is not only divided but internally ordered such that the
affirmative quality and active forces are primary. For Nietzsche, the will to
power is ultimately affirmative. Wherever it assumes a negative character,
this can only be understood in relation to the more fundamental affirma-
tive character: thus nihilism, the will to nothingness, 'is and remains a
POWER
will' (Nietzsche 1994: essay 3, para. 28). Similarly, there is an important

sense in which active force is the primary quality of force: while the
reactive is no less present at the origin, it can only be understood as
reactive 'in relation to and on the basis of the active' (Deleuze 1983: 42).
In this sense, the will to power is already a partisan principle, one that
cannot claim the neutral status of 'objective truth' but only consistency
with its own fundamental nature. Will to power is itself an affirmative
thought, capable of expressing new forces: 'A thought that would go to
the limit of what life can do, a thought that would lead life to the limit of
what it can do' (Deleuze 1983: 101). There is no independent answer to
the following question: in what sense and by what right is nobility higher
or better than baseness? There is no external justification for the pre-
eminence of the affirmative and active. It is not enough to point to the
logical pre-eminence of the active over the reactive, the affirmative over
the negative, since if the will to power only exists in its determinate and
qualified forms, then it is no less present on the side of the negative and
the reactive. In order to function as a basis for critical evaluation, Deleuze
argues, the will to power must be considered in the context of Nietzsche's
philosophy as a whole. We cannot only consider the will to power 'in
itself or abstractly, as merely endowed with two opposite qualities, affirma-
tion and negation' (Deleuze 1983: 86). We must also refer to the 'test' of
eternal return. Ultimately, Deleuze's Nietzschean metaphysics implies a
selective concept of being, or a concept of being as a selective process, in
which it is only the active and the affirmative which return, and in which
the negative must eventually be transmuted into the affirmative. Because it
implies a principle of selection, Deleuze's Nietzschean philosophy of differ-
ence is no less 'moral' in its effect than Plato's. But it involves a different
principle of selection, allowing only the return of the excessive and trans-
formative forms, those that go to the limit of their capacities and transform
themselves into something else. Since being is conceived in terms of degree
of power, this amounts to the selection of the 'higher' forms: those with
the greatest capacity to act and to be acted upon, those with the greatest
capacity and the greatest sensibility. The eternal return thus defines and
selects that which is 'noble' in Nietzsche's sense of the term: 'Eternal
return alone effects the true selection, because it eliminates the average
forms and uncovers "the superior form of everything that is"' (Deleuze
1994: 54-5). In this sense, unlike Foucault's analytics of power, Deleuze's
Nietzschean metaphysics does offer a surrogate for hope.
Deleuze and Guattari's sociopolitical analysis relies upon an equally
selective and partisan conceptual framework of evaluation. Consider
Plateau 9, '1933: micropolitics and segmentarity' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 208-31), where they challenge the anthropological idea that the
social space of 'civilised' society is centralised and hierarchical, in contrast
to the segmentary space of so-called primitive societies. They point out
65
that the social fabric of modern capitalist society is no less segmented in its
economic and political organisation, its uses of language and its organisa-
tion of desire. Segmentarity is present in both forms of society, they
argue, but there are two kinds of segmentarity: one supple and molecular;
the other rigid and molar. These are distinct 'because they do not have
the same terms or the same relations or the same nature or even the same
type of multiplicity' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 213). They are insepar-
able 'because they coexist and cross over into each other' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 213). For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, their
conception of social space in general implies a distinction between two
simultaneous states of the one Abstract Machine: an abstract machine of
overcoding which defines a rigid segmentarity and which is linked to the
State and its apparatus of government, and 'an abstract machine of
mutation which operates by decoding and deterritorialization' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 223). These concepts and their consequences for
social and political theory will be examined in Chapters 5 and 6. What is
important here with regard to Deleuze and Guattari's evaluative frame-
work is the manner in which different types of segmentation of social
space result in different kinds of line: molar lines which correspond to the
forms of rigid segmentation found in bureaucratic and hierarchical institu-
tions; molecular lines which correspond to the fluid and overlapping
forms of division characteristic of 'primitive' territoriality. As individuals
and as collectivities, Deleuze and Guattari argue, we are composed of
different kinds of lines. What they call 'micropolitics', 'schizoanalysis' or
social 'cartography' is the study of these different lines and their inter-
actions in a given social field.
Molar and molecular lines correspond to different ways of organising or
occupying social space. From an evaluative point of view, each has its own
advantages and its own dangers. However, for Deleuze and Guattari's
structure of evaluation, the important figure is another kind of line
altogether: the line of flight or deterritorialisation which traces the paths
along which things change or become transformed into something else.
The line of flight is privileged in their analysis and throughout A Thousand
Plateaus. Preference is accorded to those processes or modes of existence
that exhibit the greatest possible degree of creativity or life: lines of flight
or deterritorialisation, 'continuous variation', 'becoming-minor' are some
of these processes; 'rhizome', 'body-without-organs', 'plane of consistency'
and 'nomadism' are some of the figures associated with these creative
processes. There is nevertheless an ambivalence inherent in all of these
Deleuzian figures of metamorphosis and creativity. Nothing in A Thousand
Plateaus is unambiguously good or bad and the line of flight is no
exception. It is both the line of maximal creative potential and the line of
greatest danger, offering at once the possibility of the greatest joy and
that of the most extreme anguish.
66
POWER
As well as being creative lines or potential paths of mutation in an indi-

vidual or social fabric, lines of flight have their own dangers: they may
themselves 'emanate a strange despair, like an odour of death and immola-
tion, a state of war from which one returns broken' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 229). The danger is that, once having broken out of the limits
imposed by the molar forms of segmentarity and subjectivity, a line of
flight may fail to connect with the necessary conditions of creative develop-
ment or be incapable of so connecting and turn instead into a line of
destruction. When this occurs, the outcome can be a 'passion of abolition'
which leads to suicide or worse (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 229). The
potential danger and uncertainty associated with lines of flight are the
reason for the essential prudence of Deleuzian politics. It is because we
never know in advance which way a line of flight will turn, or whether a
given set of heterogeneous elements will be able to form a consistent and
functional multiplicity, that caution is necessary. At the same time, it is
because 'it is always on a line of flight that we create' (Deleuze and Parnet
1987: 135) that we must continue to experiment with such lines.
67
DESIRE, BECOMING AND
FREEDOM
Politics of desire
Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus launched a polemical assault on the
varieties of uncritical synthesis of Freudianism and Marxism which had
become theoretical orthodoxy for much of the extra-parliamentary left in
France after May 1968. Their criticism of the psychoanalytic concept of
desire and sketch of an alternative schizoanalytic concept immediately
became a succès de scandale. The notoriety achieved by their first
collaborative work has meant that the names Deleuze and Guattari are
firmly associated with a philosophy and a politics of desire. Philip Good-
child represents the opinion of many when he writes that T h e politics of
desire is the sole purpose of Deleuze and Guattari's thought' (Goodchild
1996: 5). However, 'the politics of desire' is an ambiguous phrase which
can refer to more than one dimension of their collaborative work. Our
concern here is not with the details of their historico-political critique of
psychoanalysis.1 Rather, our aim is to identify some of the significant
features of their 'politics of desire' and to show how these are derived
from their non-psychoanalytic concept of desire. The most obvious sense
in which they engaged in a 'politics of desire' emerges from their argument
that desire is implicated in all social and political processes:
There is no such thing as the social production of reality on the

one hand, and a desiring-production that is mere fantasy on the
other . . . We maintain that the social field is immediately invested
by desire, that it is the historically determined product of desire,
and that libido has no need of any mediation or sublimation, any
psychic operation, any transformation, in order to invade and
invest the productive forces and the relations of production.
There is only desire and the social, and nothing else.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 28-9)
68
DESIRE, BECOMING AND FREEDOM
This perspective is the basis for their analysis of territorial, despotic and
capitalist forms of social organisation in terms of the different abstract
machines of desire present in each case. The resultant 'universal history' is
discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.
The analysis of the social field in terms of desire also sustains a sense in
which Deleuze and Guattari's social theory may be considered complemen-
tary to that of Foucault. If we suppose that all social relations are power-
relations as well as desire-relations, then one and the same social institution
may be considered either as an apparatus of power or as a complex circuit
of desire: for example, the prison is both a dispositif of micro-power, an
assemblage of techniques which purports to train the souls of delinquent
subjects by subjecting them to a regime of corporeal discipline, and a com-
plex desire-machine which coordinates bodily activities and the subjective
experience of docile behaviour. Of course, this description applies to the
prison as envisaged by nineteenth-century social planners and prison
reformers: real prisons are altogether more complex circuits of desire and
power. From both the point of view of power and the point of view of
desire, the relation between them poses a problem for political theory. For
Deleuze and Guattari, this problem is raised in stark form by the phenom-
enon of fascism, once it is acknowledged that the success of fascism
cannot be explained by duplicity or ideology. Following Wilhelm Reich,
they insist that fascism must be explained in terms of desire. Their account
in turn relies upon their own view that desire is inseparable from the
machinic assemblages that operate at a micropolitical level to form indi-
vidual perceptions, attitudes, expectations and ways of speaking: 'Desire is
never an undifferentiated instinctual energy, but itself results from a highly
developed, engineered setup rich in interactions: a whole supple segmen-
tarity that processes molecular energies and potentially gives desire a fascist
determination' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 215). At one point in Anti-
Oedipus, they suggest that the question of desire's involvement in its own
involuntary servitude is 'the fundamental problem of political philosophy'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 29).
The same might also be said of the converse problem which Deleuze and
Guattari address only at the end of Anti-Oedipus: how is revolution
possible? Their concept of desire provides an answer to this problem as
well. If by revolution is meant a rupture with the causal determinations
previously at work in a given social field, then 'only what is of the order
of desire and its irruption accounts for the reality this rupture assumes at a
given moment, in a given place' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 377). By this,
they mean more than just that revolutions only occur when the con-
figurations of desire shift in such a way that old allegiances no longer
hold sway and authorities can no longer rely on their orders being carried
out. They mean that desire must be understood to embody the power of
69
differential reproduction or becoming-other which is the condition of

creativity in culture as well as in nature.
Deleuze and Guattari's answer to the question 'how is revolution pos-
sible?' points to a further sense in which they may be said to be engaged
in a politics of desire. For not all assemblages of desire will sustain revolu-
tionary actions. This raises a number of questions about the nature of
desire and the assemblages in which it is determined, which will be
examined below. At the heart of the project of schizoanalysis lies a distinc-
tion between two poles or states of social libidinal investment: 'the para-
noiac, reactionary, and fascizing pole, and the schizoid revolutionary pole'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 366). The difference between these two poles
is described in terms of the familiar Deleuzian contrast between two kinds
of multiplicity or between lines of integration and territorialisation on the
one hand, and lines of escape that follow decoded and deterritorialised
flows on the other. Schizoanalysis, they say, 'has strictly no political pro-
gram to propose' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 380). Rather, it offers a
series of conceptual contrasts in terms of which we can analyse a given
social field or process and evaluate the assemblages in play. We saw at
the end of the preceding chapter the kind of ethical or political evaluation
which this framework allows.
Concept of desire
The first distinguishing feature of the theory of desire outlined in Anti-
Oedipus (1977) is its positivity: desire is understood as a primary active
force rather than as a reactive response to unfulfilled need. Desire is pro-
ductive in the sense that it produces real connections, investments and
intensive states within and between bodies. In this sense, Deleuze and
Guattari suggest 'desire produces reality' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 30).
This fundamental difference in point of departure sets the Deleuzian
theory apart from an entire tradition of thought about desire that extends
from Plato through Hegel to Freud. In particular, it sets this conception
apart from the idea that desire is constituted by the ever-renewed and
impossible attempt to regain a lost object of satisfaction. The point is not
to deny that unsatisfied desire may give rise to phantasmatic satisfactions,
but to deny that this phenomenon is the essence of desire. Deleuze and
Guattari's theory of desire is constructivist in the sense that desire always
requires a machine or assemblage. Desire is present in a given assemblage
in the same way that, in a musical work, the principle of composition is
present in the silences as much as in the audible sounds: 'Lack refers to a
positivity of desire and not desire to a positivity of lack' (Deleuze and
Parnet 1987: 91).
A second distinguishing feature of their account is that the process of
desire is not by nature directed at the production of stable subjects whose
70
own conscious desires respect the familial and social order. Rather, ego
formation and the constitution of subjects involve a historically specific
fixation of desire, brought about by the action of social codes, family
structures and behaviour towards the child. In this sense, their conception
of subjectivity is entirely consistent with Foucault's view that 'it is one of
the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain
discourses, certain desires come to be identified and constituted as indi-
viduals' (Foucault 1980: 98). Nor is desire internal to a subject, in their
view. Rather, it is the subject which is inseparable from the constitu-
tion of a machinic assemblage of fluxes of intensity, particles of affect and
a-signifying signs. Desire produces intensities and the consumption of
intensities, wherever and in whatever form these may be found. Subjectivity
is an effect of this process rather than its origin. Moreover, Deleuze and
Guattari claim, desire is a-social or revolutionary by nature, not in the
sense that it 'wants' revolution but rather 'as though involuntarily, by
wanting what it wants' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 116). They follow
Freud in calling the energy that is transformed in the process of desire
libidinal energy. They insist that this energy is not primarily sexual nor
directed at other persons and reject the idea that it naturally tends toward
the formation of a fixed or centred subjectivity. In their view, it becomes
fixed under the influence of Oedipal social and familial structures which
impose a particular usage of the primary syntheses. The best evidence,
they argue, 'points to the fact that desire does not take as its object persons
or things, but the entire surroundings which it traverses, the vibrations and
flows of every sort to which it is joined and in which it introduces breaks
and captures' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 292). Alternatively, if we persist
in calling such libidinal energy sexual, then we must say that sexuality is
everywhere: in the manner in which a bureaucrat fondles his files, the way
in which a judge administers justice, or the way in which a film-maker
handles her camera, her characters and her story. What is important is
the manner in which this energy is invested in its surrounding field: 'we
always make love with worlds', Deleuze and Guattari write, 'and our love
addresses itself to this libidinal property of our lover, to either close himself
or herself off or open up to more spacious worlds' (Deleuze and Guattari
1977: 294).
In Deleuze and Guattari's initial outline of their theory at the beginning
of Anti-Oedipus, desire is treated as a process of production. What desire
produces, in the first instance, is a machine or circuit of libidinal energy
which they call a desire-machine. This is a complex process which has
three phases corresponding to the main stages of the production process
as described by Marx: first, there is the connection of part-objects and
flows of energy or material to form an elementary body or simple machine.
Second, the aggregation of these elements to form a complex body involves
the constitution of what they call a 'body-without-organs' or 'plane of
71
consistency'. This is an imaginary body-surface on which the various

elementary bodies and energies are recorded, but on which they may also
be desexualised and reconnected in different configurations. As such, it
embodies the creative or 'schizophrenic' potential of desire.2 Third and
finally, there is a phase of consumption involving the experience of inten-
sive states of the resultant psychic body. This implies sensation or self-
enjoyment in a broad sense, which includes privation and suffering as
well as sensual pleasure. According to Deleuze and Guattari, subjectivity
emerges only as a residual effect of this consumption of intensive states
which accompanies the connections and recordings of desire. To each
phase, they assign a distinct form of synthesis: a connective synthesis of
flows and part-objects, a disjunctive synthesis of meanings attached to the
elementary machines, and a conjunctive synthesis of resultant differences
which give rise to intensities. Desire is the force that animates this process
of connection, encoding and consumption. The concept of desire as the
principle of co-function or composition which determines the existence of
any machinic assemblage echoes Deleuze's metaphysical account of the
will to power as the differential principle of force relations: 'Desire: who,
except priests would want to call it "lack"? Nietzsche called it "Will to
Power'" (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 91).
The end-point of the process of desiring production is a form of intensity
which is 'consumed' by the body. Intensities are the products of a synthesis
of differential forces, the effects of an encounter between different levels or
kinds of energy, and the basis of all sensation. They express the difference
between one state and another: warm-cold, light-dark, hard-soft, etc.
Intensity is thus the primary mode in which desire consumes itself, the
primary mode in which a body of whatever kind is affected. For the
human body, intensity is the primary affect from which all forms of feeling
and emotion are subsequently derived. Both schizophrenic experience and
works of art involve such intensive quantities in their pure state. Through-
out Anti-Oedipus (1977), Deleuze and Guattari draw upon accounts of
schizophrenic delirium to illustrate aspects and stages of the process of
desire, on the grounds that such experience is closest to the heart of
desire. This assumption serves a polemical function in providing clinical
leverage to their disagreement with Freud. It allows them to represent
psychoanalysis as a misrepresentation of the nature of desire, and indeed
as an institutional and discursive arm of those social forces that seek to
repress and inhibit the authentic experience of desire. Beyond this, the
more important point of their reliance upon schizophrenic delirium lies in
the suggestion that the experience of intensity is the real motor of the pro-
cess of desire as production. For this reason too, Deleuze and Guattari
draw upon the experience of writers and painters to establish the link
between a susceptibility to intensities and a creative relationship to the real.
72
Art is the capture of sensations in a given medium, and therefore depends

upon a susceptibility to the effects of forces in producing intensive states.
Like desire, art in its pure form exists in a state of permanent exile, a
nomadic state which resists the territorialisation of particular styles, genres
or modes of capture. Both art and desire in its schizo form have an affinity
with those states that carry the potential for change or metamorphosis.
Desire and the affective dimension of power

In the preceding chapter we noted the extent to which Deleuze and
Guattari shared with Foucault a conception of philosophy as involving
the analysis of assemblages or apparatuses. On this basis, Deleuze points
to the close proximity between 'what Foucault called the metaphysics of
power and Guattari the micropolitics of desire' (Deleuze 1995b: 86). It is
tempting to see Deleuze and Guattari's work and that of Foucault during
this period as engaged in parallel but complementary projects, and more
than one commentator has succumbed to this temptation: for example,
Ronald Bogue comments that 'Power for Foucault, like desire for Deleuze
and Guattari, permeates all social relations, penetrates the body at a sub-
individual level, and implements an immediately political investment of
the body within larger circuits of action and production' (Bogue 1989:
105). There are a number of formal parallels between their respective
theories of desire and power, as well as approving footnotes to Deleuze
and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus in Foucault's Discipline and Punish (Foucault
1977a: 309). Just as Deleuze and Guattari develop a machinic theory of
desire, so Foucault proposes an analysis of panoptic power as a machine
for the production of homogeneous effects of power (Foucault 1977a:
202). Just as Anti-Oedipus asserts that desire produces reality (Deleuze
and Guattari 1977: 30), so Foucault asserts that power is productive,
'power produces; it produces reality. . . The individual and the knowledge
that may be gained of him belong to this production' (Foucault 1977a:
194).
At the same time, there are important differences between their respec-
tive approaches to machinic assemblages. Deleuze and Guattari appear to
endorse this conception of their complementary relation to Foucault while
drawing attention to their differences in a footnote to the analysis of
regimes of signs in A Thousand Plateaus:
Our only points of disagreement with Foucault are the following:

(1) to us the assemblages seem fundamentally to be assemblages
not of power but of desire (desire is always assembled), and
power seems to be a stratified dimension of the assemblage; (2) the
diagram and abstract machine have lines of flight that are primary,
73
which are not phenomena of resistance or counterattack in an

assemblage, but cutting edges of creation and deterritorialization.
Stated in these terms, the difference between power and desire all too easily
appears to coincide with a difference between the positive force of desire
and the negative force of power. The difference between Deleuze-Guattari
and Foucault would then turn on the question of whether theoretical
priority is accorded to power or to desire. Correspondingly, each approach
would confront its own distinctive political problem. In Foucault's case,
this would be the problem of explaining how resistance is possible. For
Deleuze and Guattari, as we saw above, this would be the Reichian
problem of explaining how desire becomes complicit in its own repression.
However, this way of presenting the relation between them oversimplifies
the issues and seriously underestimates the conceptual resources common
to both Foucault's approach to power and the Deleuzian theory of desire.
Taking into account the affective dimension of power points towards a
different way of understanding the relation between power and desire,
which suggests they are not so much parallel and complementary as
convergent phenomena.
We noted above that Deleuze's concept of power took into account not
only the capacity of a body to affect other bodies but also the capacity to
be affected. He suggests that there is a Spinozist inspiration to Nietzsche's
theory in so far as will to power is manifest both as capacity to affect and
capacity to be affected: 'the will to power is not a being, not a becoming,
but a pathos' (Nietzsche 1968: para. 635). Whether or not the claim of
inspiration is historically accurate with regard to Nietzsche, it is around
this affective dimension of the exercise of power that we can trace the out-
lines of a zone of indiscernibility between the Deleuzian concepts of power
and desire. For we also noted that Deleuze explicitly aligns his conception
of desire with Nietzsche's conception of life as will to power. This implies
that, like Nietzsche's expansive force, desire seeks its own enhancement
and tends to reproduce itself on an ever-expanding scale. In other words,
both Deleuze's concept of desire and his concept of power involve an
inner principle of increase. From the point of view of the affective dimen-
sion of power, this principle of increase implies that a body will be more
powerful the more ways in which it can be affected, and the greater its
range and degree of sensitivity to different kinds of intensive states.
A body will increase in power to the extent that its capacities to affect
and be affected become more developed and differentiated (Deleuze 1983:
62). Deleuze follows Spinoza in calling such capacities to be affected the
'affects' of a body. Strictly speaking, these correspond to the transition of
the affected body from one state to another. Spinoza distinguishes between
transitions that involve increase in a body's power of acting and those that
74
involve a decrease: the former give rise to joy while the latter give rise to
sadness (Deleuze 1988c: 49-50). 3
Nietzsche draws a similar contrast between the affective states which
accompany transitions in the state of a body's power in terms of the
enhancement or depletion of the 'feeling of power'. This term refers to the
conscious or unconscious feeling that accompanies all action, what
Nietzsche refers to as the 'desire for self-enjoyment' that is gratified in
every individual action (Nietzsche 1984: bk 2, para. 107). The feeling of
power is a sign of our own power to act; however, it is not a reliable
sign. The history of culture provides many examples of illusory means by
which individuals and groups seek a feeling of power: sacrifices to gods,
cruelty to others and to animals, fast cars and alcohol, to name but a few.
Just as the actions of others produce sensations in us, so too do our own
actions. To the extent that these actions are successful, the feeling of
power will be enhanced: to the extent that they fail, the feeling of power
will be depleted. In turn, these affective states which accompany actions
will react upon the agent's capacity to act. In other words, there is a feed-
back loop between the success or otherwise of attempts to act and the
agent's capacity to act. This is why the feeling of power has become the
'strongest propensity' of human beings and why Nietzsche suggests that
the means for producing it retrace the history of our culture.4
The component of the Deleuzian concept of desire which corresponds to
Spinoza's affect or Nietzsche's feeling of power is the concept of intensity.
Deleuze and Guattari describe the final phase of the production process of
desire, after the construction of a plane or body without organs on which
intensities circulate, as the experience or 'consumption' of pure intensive
states. The principle of increase implies that desire will be enhanced the
greater the range and degree of intensities available. In extreme cases, the
process gives rise to raw feelings such as those Nietzsche describes in his
letter to Gast of 14 August 1881: unable to go out because his eyes were
inflamed from weeping 'tears of joy' while wandering in the mountains,
he fears that he is 'one of those machines that can burst apart'.5 These
states are typically associated with transitions from one affective state to
another: in Nietzsche's case, this transition is related to his ecstatic revela-
tion of eternal return; in the case of another of Deleuze and Guattari's
examples in Anti-Oedipus, Judge Schreber, the transition relates to his
experience of becoming-woman; in the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald (see
p. 86), the transition relates to his 'crack-up' and subsequent experience
of a strange despair which led him to describe 'a feeling that I was standing
at twilight on a deserted range, with an empty rifle in my hands and the
targets down' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 229). In all cases, it is a ques-
tion of new possibilities for affecting and being affected. The feeling of
power is an affect which is associated with a process of becoming-other
than what one was before. In Anti-Oedipus (1977), Deleuze and Guattari
75
tend to draw their examples from the celibate machines of writers, artists
and psychotics. Although these give the impression that intensities are
solitary affairs and individual desiring machines are like characters from
Beckett, nothing in the theory of desire limits the experience of joy to
cases such as these. Consider the principle of increase or 'inner will' at
work in the Deleuzian theory of desire: desire produces intensities, but
these intensities are tied to the physical, emotional or intellectual capacities
of the body concerned. As a result, a typical path to increase in the range
or degrees of intensity available to a given body will pass through the sub-
ject's involvement with activities outside itself. Activities or forms of
engagement with the world and with other bodies, which are inseparable
from action upon the actions of others, are the means by which we can
bring about increase in our own desire.
Jane Gallop's account of a pedagogic encounter which gave rise to an
experience of erotic intensity may be understood in these terms (Gallop
1992). She recounts an episode in which a graduate student confronts her
after receiving a bad grade on a paper he has written and challenges her
to go through the paper with him. Reluctantly, she agrees to do so and
eventually, after a long and intense session working through the text
together, the student is left bowed and vulnerable while the teacher finds
herself similarly exhausted but agitated in a manner that she describes as
indistinguishable from sexual desire. This was not the familiar scenario of
erotic desire intruding upon the scene of pedagogy, but a more interesting
story 'of desire arising within the scene of pedagogy, where it is troublingly
unclear whether this is really teaching or really sex' (Gallop 1992: 212).
The episode involved an exercise of intellectual or pedagogic power over
the student, apparently to good effect. Moreover, this was an exercise of
power over another which conforms to the open agonistic structure rather
than the structure of domination. In the course of what began as a peda-
gogic confrontation, each party acted upon the other in ways that could
not have been predicted at the outset: he caused her to reschedule a pre-
vious engagement, she changed his appraisal of his own work. The out-
come was not an affair but a distinct improvement in the student's
powers as a writer and in Gallop's sense of her own power as a teacher.
It was an event of considerable intensity in which the powers of both
teacher and student were enhanced. Gallop's description of the student's
reaction illustrates the sense in which the joy that accompanies an increase
of power is not always a pleasurable experience: 'He sat there huddled over
and seemed very vulnerable' (Gallop 1992: 211). While the teacher was no
less exhausted by their marathon session, her response is one of increasing
agitation that turns into erotic desire. However, the origin of this desire is
anything but sexual in the narrow sense. For, in her own words, the
desire was rather awakened by the nature of the pedagogic encounter: by
76
the experience of working closely with the student and 'the intimate
experience of being good together' (Gallop 1992: 215). In short, what pro-
duced her erotic state was the experience of her successful exercise of her
own power as a teacher, in a manner and to a degree she had never done
before; in other words, her feeling of her own power to enhance the
power of the other.
Gallop's experience shows how the feeling of power obtained by contri-
buting to the power of others may be indistinguishable from an intense
experience of desire, and vice versa. If this is so, then it matters little
whether we speak of desire or the feeling of power. What matters is the
manner in which we act upon the actions of others, and the kinds of
assemblage in which and through which we desire. We noted above that
schizoanalysis does not propose a political programme (see p. 70). Yet
even though, as Deleuze and Guattari say, 'there are no revolutionary or
reactionary loves', there are none the less 'forms of love' that are indices
of the reactionary or the revolutionary character of the libidinal investment
in a given social field (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 365-6). The distinction
between these two forms of love or two poles of social libidinal investment
goes to the heart of the schizoanalytic 'politics of desire'. It is stated in
various ways in the course of Anti-Oedipus (1977), in terms of different
uses of the syntheses which define the process of desire, or in terms of the
difference between molar and molecular states of desire. The same dis-
tinction is later drawn between the two states or sides of any machinic
assemblage: one side which faces the strata which make it an organism,
subject or complete entity of some kind, and the other which faces the
body without organs or plane of consistency on which the organism tends
to break down or is transformed into something else. Both sides are equally
states of desire, but it is only in the latter state that pure intensities arise or
circulate (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 4). Just as Foucault contrasts
relations of domination with open or agonistic relations in which an
agent acts upon the actions of another (Foucault 1983b), so Deleuze and
Guattari distinguish between, on the one hand, assemblages of desire that
are fixed or delimited in particular ways, shut off from all but certain speci-
fied relations to the outside, and on the other, more fluid and open-ended
assemblages in which new connections and new forms of relation to the
outside are always possible, even at the risk of transforming the assemblage
into some other kind of body. They attach systematic conceptual and
ethical priority to the latter kind of assemblage which enables new
connections and relations to the outside. In this sense, the Deleuzian
concept of desire justifies the view that 'Desire is revolutionary because it
always wants more connections and assemblages' (Deleuze and Parnet
1987: 79).
77
Becomings
The concept that best expresses the intimate connection between power
and desire in Deleuze and Guattari's thought is their concept of 'becoming'.
We saw in Chapter 1 how they define philosophical concepts in part by
reference to their 'becomings', by which they mean the pathways along
which a concept may be transformed while retaining a family resemblance
to its former incarnation. In similar fashion, they define material bodies in
part by reference to the ways in which they can 'become-other'. Corporeal
becoming is a different process to conceptual becoming, but similar in so
far as it is 'the action by which something or someone continues to
become other (while continuing to be what it is)' (Deleuze and Guattari
1994: 177, translation modified). Deleuze often uses Spinoza's term
'affect' to refer to such transformations in bodily capacities. The concept
of affect therefore establishes a conceptual connection between the under-
standing of bodies in terms of power and in terms of becoming. Bodies
undergo modification or change when they act upon other bodies or when
they are acted upon by other bodies. These modifications which result
from entering into relations with other bodies are what Spinoza calls 'affec-
tions'. He distinguishes such affections or modifications from the 'affects'
or variations in degree of power to which they give rise in the body con-
cerned.6 In these terms, a body may be defined by the affects of which it
is capable. Children often think of bodies in these terms: for example,
Freud's Little Hans defines a horse by means of affects such as 'having
eyes blocked by blinders, having a bit and bridle, being proud, having a big
peepee-maker, pulling heavy loads . . . e t c ' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:257).
Affects can be either active or reactive and, in his discussion of
Foucault's concept of power, Deleuze relies upon this distinction in order
to classify the different ways in which a body can act upon others and the
ways in which it can be acted upon: 'to incite, provoke or produce . . .
constitute active affects, while to be incited, or provoked, to be induced to
produce, to have a "useful" effect, constitute reactive affects' (Deleuze
1988b: 71). Defining bodies in terms of the affects of which they are cap-
able is equivalent to defining them in terms of the relations into which
they can enter with other bodies, or in terms of their capacities for engage-
ment with the powers of other bodies. In A Thousand Plateaus, what
Deleuze and Guattari call processes of 'becoming' are precisely such
engagements with the powers of other bodies. This is the reason for their
assertion that 'affects are becomings' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 256).
Plateau 10 is devoted to the analysis of a variety of different kinds of
'becoming'. The list is open-ended but includes at least: becoming-intense,
becoming-animal, becoming-woman and becoming-imperceptible.
From the perspective of desire, becomings may be defined in terms of the
affects or intensities that correspond to a body's relations with other
78
bodies: 'to the relations composing, decomposing, or modifying an indi-

vidual there correspond intensities that affect it, augmenting or diminishing
its power to act' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 256). In the case of Little
Hans, his own becoming-horse is an attempt to construct an assemblage
which would include some of the intensities associated with the affects of
the cart-horse. Deleuze and Guattari ask in what way the elaboration of
a becoming-horse might 'ameliorate Hans's problem, to what extent
would it open a way out that had been previously blocked?' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 258). In the case of the experience of intensity described
by Gallop, we saw how the same event might be described in terms of
desire or in terms of the feeling of power: her exercise of pedagogic power
over the student produced a feeling of power that was for her indistin-
guishable from erotic desire. We can now see that this event involved a
process of becoming in the strict Deleuzian sense: a becoming-student on
the part of the teacher, to the extent that she was forced to come to terms
with his version of what he had wanted to say in the paper, and a
becoming-teacher on the part of the student to the extent that he was
forced to see his own text through the eyes of a more experienced reader.
From the perspective of power, becomings may be regarded as processes
of increase or enhancement in the powers of one body, carried out in rela-
tion to the powers of another, but without involving appropriation of
those powers. One way in which bodies can increase their powers is by
entering into alliances with other bodies that serve to reinforce or enhance
their own powers. The symbiotic relation between wasps and orchids (see
p. 54) is an example of a double-becoming which involves real interaction
between the two parties. In some cases, such as alliance between individual
bodies in the form of a social contract, the mutual reinforcement of powers
may amount to the formation of a new and more complex body. Yet
another kind of becoming-other occurs when bodies form a kind of virtual
alliance with other bodies or states of being. In relation to human beings as
a whole, becomings are by definition perverse processes which involve a
relation to the unnatural or the inhuman. For example, we learn from
myths, anthropological accounts and religious practices that human
beings are capable of a variety of becomings-animal. These are not a
matter of literally becoming the animal, Deleuze and Guattari suggest,
but rather of enhancing the powers one has or of acquiring new powers
by entering into a proximity to the animal. Thus, the first stages of
becoming-wolf are marked by improved senses of smell and hearing. It is
not that the real powers of the animal are in fact always assumed by the
subject of the becoming, although in some cases something akin to those
powers may be acquired. Rather, it is a question of the production of
affects, or forming an inter-individual body with the real or imagined
powers of the animal in question. Even an engagement with the powers
attributed to the animal in the social imaginary may serve to enhance the
79
feeling of power and thereby the real capacities of those engaged in the
becoming: sorcerers, warriors, actors and so on. Deleuze and Guattari
suggest that the processes of animal-becoming are essentially related to
marginal social groups or movements. From a historical point of view,
[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.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 247) 7
Becomings may be realised in the social imaginary or in the unconscious

desires of individuals, but they are always linked to a qualitative multi-
plicity of some kind: 'We do not become animal without a fascination for
the pack, for multiplicity' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 239-40). 8 The
animal which humans become always appears in the form of a pack or
band. The pack is an assemblage of affects and powers which, in turn,
affect the quality of the human which enters into relation with them.
Melville's Moby Dick is Deleuze's favoured example of a becoming-
animal in which the relation to the multiplicity is mediated by the relation
to an anomalous figure who stands at the border of the pack. Through
his pursuit of the white whale, Ahab enters into a becoming-whale while
the object of his pursuit becomes the white wall of human weakness
through which he desires to pass: 'How can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall,
shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis
enough' (Melville 1994: 167). Ahab's becoming is a line of flight which
takes him beyond life itself, even if in doing so he confronts his own
death. The white whale stands for all those figures with whom we can
enter into a pact in order to pass beyond a given state of life or being.
He is anomalous not just in being an exception but in marking a limit or
frontier beyond which everything changes. Anomalous does not mean
abnormal but 'the unequal, the coarse, the rough, the cutting edge of
deterritorialization' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 244).
The becomings which interest Deleuze and Guattari are not simply
becomings-other but minoritarian becomings. There is no such thing as
becoming-majoritarian. The concept of becoming is therefore intimately
linked to the concept of the minoritarian, and through this to the processes
of deterritorialisation which define a given qualitative multiplicity. We
noted at the end of Chapter 2 how they distinguish between minorities
conceived as subsystems or determinate elements within a given majority
and the process of becoming minor or minoritarian, which refers to the
potential of every element to deviate from the standard or norm that

defines that majority. In these terms, to become-minoritarian is to embark
upon a process of deterritorialisation or divergence from the norm, while
conversely 'all becoming is minoritarian' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
106, 291). In so far as the subject of modern European society and political
community is masculine, then women and children as well as animals are
minorities, and becoming-animal, becoming-child or becoming-woman are
potential paths of deterritorialisation of the majority.
Becoming-woman should be understood as a becoming of the same type
as becoming-animal, in the sense that it involves a virtual alliance with the
affects and powers that have been traditionally assigned to women. The
reality of the becoming has little to do with a relation to real women, but
everything to do with a relation to the incorporeal body of woman as it
figures in the social imaginary. This body might be defined in terms of the
affects associated with the nurture and protection of others, or the affects
associated with dependent social status such as a capacity for dissimulation
or for cultivating the affection of others, delight in appearances and role-
play.9 Becoming-woman does not involve imitating or assuming the forms
of femininity but rather creating a molecular or micro-femininity in the
subject concerned by reproducing the characteristic features, movements
or affects of what passes for 'the feminine' in a given form of patriarchal
society. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari argue that there is a sense in
which becoming-woman is primary in relation to the other kinds of social
and political becoming-minoritarian.
Only minorities can function as agents or media of becoming, but they
can do so only on condition that they cease to be 'a definable aggregate in
relation to the majority' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 291). For this
reason, Deleuze and Guattari argue that women themselves must undergo
a becoming-woman, and that their doing so is a condition of the
becoming-woman of all, men and women alike. It is in so far as they
form the other term of a binary opposition which defines the majority
that women may be subjects of a becoming-woman. It is in so far as they
form a minority within the majority that they can function as a medium
of becoming. Becomings are molecular not molar. While they are careful
to acknowledge the importance of 'molar' feminist politics aimed at the
establishment of women's rights on an equal footing with those of men,
Deleuze and Guattari also insist on the necessity of a 'molecular women's
politics' alongside the molar. In this sense, all becomings are molecular
and they all 'begin with and pass through becoming-woman. It is the key
to all the other becomings' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 277). The only
reason they give for this primacy is the 'special situation' of women in
relation to the male standard (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 291), which is
to point to the fundamental role of the domination of women by men in
relation to the differential assignment of power and affect to the sexes.
81
Their claim is that the acquisition of affects through other forms of becom-
ing, such as animal-becoming, presupposes a degree of becoming-woman:
that this is the 'first quantum' of becoming-minoritarian in all its forms.
The concept of becoming-woman and the special place accorded to it in
the spectrum of minoritarian becomings has been a focus of much feminist
criticism of Deleuze and Guattari.10 There is no doubt that they adopt the
speaking position of the masculine subject of the majority, even as they
advocate the deterritorialisation of the structures of domination which sus-
tain that position. It is also true that their concepts and methods of analysis
are different from those that have informed much feminist theory. Never-
theless, it is not clear that they are guilty of all of which they have been
accused. One recurrent criticism takes their priority claim for becoming-
woman to imply that, in the context of gender politics, it is women who
must take the lead in breaking with the stereotypical assignment of affects
and roles. Such a view would be sexist since it places the burden of
change primarily upon women (Massumi 1992: 89). However, Deleuze
and Guattari assert the primacy of becoming-woman not that women
must 'go first' in the practical politics of challenging the mechanisms of
male domination. Becoming, in their view, is transhistorical and 'cannot
be conceptualized in terms of past and future' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 292). As Moira Gatens points out, there is no justification in terms
of their social cartography for regarding the priority of becoming-woman
as a temporal priority in the processes of becoming (Gatens 1996: 175).
Underlying this temporal reading of the priority of becoming-woman is
another, more significant confusion with regard to Deleuze and Guattari's
political perspective. This is the confused idea that the end of gender
politics
is the destruction of gender (of the molar organisation of the sexes

under patriarchy) - just as in their view the end of class politics is
the destruction of class (of the molar organisation of work under
capitalism). The goal would be for every body to ungender itself,
creating a nonmolarizing socius that fosters carnal invention
rather than containing it.
(Massumi 1992: 89)
In the first place, it is a mistake to think that becomings are subject to this
kind of teleology. A line of becoming, they claim, 'has neither beginning
nor end, departure nor arrival, origin nor destination' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 293). As such, it makes no sense to regard becoming-
woman as a necessary stage in a broader process of abolition of molar
subjectivity or human liberation.11 Second, the idea of a 'nonmolarizing
socius' is an illusion of the same order as the idea of a society without
power relations. Deleuze and Guattari are not theorists of liberation but
82
theorists of becoming-revolutionary. The latter implies the possibility of

transformation in the forms of social organisation of work and desire,
and the possibility of redistribution of the molar assignment of differential
power and affects to the sexes, but not the abolition of molarisation as
such. Becoming-revolutionary is a process open to all at any time. More-
over, its value does not depend on the success or failure of the molar
redistributions to which it gives rise: 'The victory of a revolution is
immanent and consists in the new bonds it installs between people, even if
these bonds last no longer than the revolution's fused material and quickly
give way to division and betrayal' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 177).
Freedom is manifest in such moments of becoming-revolutionary, whether
in a personal or a social sense, but this is a different concept of freedom
to that which underpins liberal and liberation theories alike.
Critical freedom
The Deleuzian ethic that we have so far described in terms of assemblages,
power and desire might also be described as an ethics of freedom. How-
ever, in order to do so, it is necessary to clarify the concept of freedom
that is involved. We have seen how the theory of assemblages developed
in A Thousand Plateaus (1987) systematically privileges processes of
creative transformation and metamorphosis through which individual and
collective bodies may be transformed. Implicit in this theory is a concept
of critical freedom, where 'critical' is understood not in the sense that
relates to criticism or judgement, but in the technical sense which relates
to a crisis or turning point in some process. In these terms, a critical point
is an extreme or limit case; a point at which some state or condition of
things passes over into a different state or condition. Critical freedom
differs from the standard liberal concepts of positive and negative freedom
by its focus upon the conditions of change or transformation in the subject,
and by its indifference to the individual or collective nature of the subject.
By contrast, traditional liberal approaches tended to take as given the indi-
vidual subject and to define freedom in terms of the capacity to act without
hindrance in the pursuit of one's ends or in terms of the capacity to satisfy
one's most significant desires.
For example, in both Isaiah Berlin's classic description and defence of
negative liberty (Berlin 1969) and Charles Taylor's criticism of that concept
(Taylor 1985), the focus is upon the preservation or continuity of the indi-
vidual subject of freedom rather than its transformation. Berlin defines
negative liberty in terms of 'the area of non-interference' within which sub-
jects are left to do or be what they are able to do or be (Berlin 1969: 16).
His concept of freedom involves two elements: first, a majoritarian subject
of action, where this is supposed to be a 'normal human being' with
desires, goals and capacities for action which fall within the range of
83
normality for a given time and place. Second, the presence of external
limits to the individual's sphere of action. The implication of his spatial
metaphors is that freedom lies in between agents and the constraints upon
their action.12 While the boundaries of that space may vary over time, free-
dom is a matter of where the line is drawn at any given moment. At any
particular historical moment, freedom presupposes a static subject with
given capacities and interests.
By contrast, Taylor's concept of positive freedom is based upon a more
complex concept of the subject of action as an individual capable of
'strong evaluation'. The resulting concept of freedom thus includes an
element absent from Berlin's concept, namely the concept of internal
limits to freedom. Taylor defends a view of positive freedom as 'the
exercising of control over one's life' (Taylor 1985: 62). This control or
self-realisation demands that one have a sense of one's identity, of who or
what one is, on the basis of which one can discriminate between one's
authentic or essential desires and those that are inauthentic or inessential.
Such discrimination is what Taylor means by strong evaluation, and his
argument is that even negative liberty presupposes this kind of qualitative
judgement about the purposes or kinds of action that are significant to per-
sons. However, Taylor's concept of freedom also remains tied to a concept
of the subject as a given, determinate structure of interests, goals or desires.
Freedom still refers to the capacity of the subject to act in pursuit of a given
set of fundamental interests, rather than the capacity to alter those
interests. In other words, Taylor's concept of positive freedom overlooks
the important sense in which a person is deemed free only to the extent
that they are able to distance themselves from the structure of values with
which they grew up and to acquire others. Any defensible account of
freedom must allow for the possibility that agents will act in ways that
lead them to alter their desires, preferences and goals, and even for the
possibility that they might consciously question certain forms of self-
understanding which sustain their accepted goals. Such questioning may
occur in isolation, but it is more likely to arise in the course of a movement
for change in the relevant area of social life, or in the context of exposure
to other ways of thinking and acting. In these ways, for example, feminist
criticism of assumptions about the respective capacities of men and
women to affect and be affected may raise questions about the traditional
distribution of affects, or an influx of immigrants in a formerly mono-
cultural society may challenge the core values of both residents and
newcomers.
Liberal political philosophy now takes note of this dimension of free-
dom, insisting that freedom must include not just the individual's capacity
to act without interference and in accordance with his or her fundamental
values, but also the capacity critically to evaluate and revise those values.
Liberalism, it is now argued, guarantees not only the individual's right to
choose their own conception of the good, but also their right to revise
and reformulate that conception. Thus, James Tully uses the term 'critical
freedom' to refer to this capacity to 'question in thought and challenge in
practice one's inherited cultural ways' (Tully 1995: 202). Moreover, if we
accept that a person is defined by the values and beliefs that determine
their structure of strong evaluation, then a possible outcome of the exercise
of such critical freedom is that one becomes a different person:
Our conceptions of the good may and often do change over time,
usually slowly but sometimes rather suddenly. When these changes
are sudden, we are likely to say that we are no longer the same
person. We know what this means: we refer to a profound and
pervasive shift, or reversal, in our final ends and commitments . . .
(Rawls 1993: 31)
In contrast to the traditional concepts of negative and positive freedom,

critical freedom thus concerns those moments in a life after which one is
no longer the same person. It is the freedom to transgress the limits of
what one is presently capable of being or doing, rather than just the free-
dom to be or do those things. In the course of a life, individuals make
choices which may significantly affect the range, nature or course of their
future actions: the decision to become a parent, to embark upon one par-
ticular career or course of study, or to leave one's country of birth and
live in another culture, are all cases of significant action upon one's future
actions. To the extent that these events may have the effect of opening up
certain paths and closing off others, and to the extent that the individual's
capacities to affect and be affected will change as a result, they are possible
occasions of 'becoming' in Deleuze and Guattari's sense of the term. They
are limits beyond which an individual's desires, preferences or goals may
be irrevocably changed. It is no objection to point out that all moments in
a life carry this potential, since for Deleuze and Guattari the possibility of
becoming-other is indeed present at every moment. It is realised in those
moments when a qualitatively different kind of transition is involved.
Following Deleuze's mathematical model of qualitative multiplicity, we
might consider a life as a series of points at which decisions are made, or
events are experienced. The critical points will then be the distinctive as
opposed to the ordinary points upon a curve: they are the 'events' that ulti-
mately determine the shape of a life. In these terms, a life will manifest
more critical freedom the more it is capable of variation of this kind. To
be capable of such variation does not imply a commitment to experiencing
it at every opportunity, just as radical change in the circumstances of a
life does not necessarily imply critical freedom on the part of the subject.13
Deleuze and Guattari do not offer a concept of persons but a concept of
assemblage which can be applied equally to social or to personal identity.
85
Different identities can be specified in terms of the lines or processes that

make up different kinds of assemblage. As individuals or collectivities,
they argue, we are composed of different kinds of 'lines': molar lines that
correspond to the forms of rigid segmentation found in bureaucratic and
hierarchical institutions; molecular lines that correspond to the fluid or
overlapping forms of division characteristic of 'primitive' territoriality;
and finally, lines of flight that are the paths along which things change or
become transformed into something else.
The manner in which differences between these lines may be used to
express different kinds of personal transformation is demonstrated by
Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novella, The
Crack Up (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 198-200). Fitzgerald distinguishes
three different kinds of transition from one state or stage in a life to
another: first, there are the large breaks between youth and adulthood,
between poverty and wealth, between illness and good health, between
success or failure in a chosen profession. These, Fitzgerald writes, are 'the
big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside'. In his own
life, they include an adolescent illness which affected his college career, an
encounter with class difference in the form of a failed relationship, the rise
of cinema and its perceived effect on the novel, and the onset of alcohol-
ism. But these are not the most significant breaks: the important breaks
are those almost imperceptible cracks which affect a person's concept of
self. These are the subtle shifts of feeling or attitude which distance the
person from his or her former convictions. They involve molecular changes
in the structure of a person. They are, in Fitzgerald's words, 'the sort of
blow that comes from within - that you don't feel until it's too late to do
anything about it'. A person does not recover from blows of this sort, he
writes, 'he becomes a different person and, eventually, the new person
finds new things to care about'.
In the autobiographical case recounted in the novella, the subject is con-
fronted with a particularly severe break-down which involved a loss of
faith in his former values and the dissipation of all his convictions. He
seeks to effect what he calls 'a clean break' with his past self (Fitzgerald
1956: 69-84). By this means, he resolves to become 'a writer only' and to
'cease any attempt to be a person, to be kind, just or generous'. Fitzgerald's
novella recounts an experience of what Deleuze and Guattari call
'becoming-imperceptible'. The desire to be like everyone else and to go
unnoticed is connected to a desire to reduce oneself to a minimal set of
traits on the basis of which to forge new connections with the world: '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' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 280).
Of course, in many senses of the term, Fitzgerald's subject remains the
same person after as before, but not in the senses that matter for the liberal
concept of freedom. The subject of Fitzgerald's novella no longer has the

same interests nor the same desires and preferences. His goals are not the
same, nor are the values that would underpin his strong evaluations. As a
result, the kind of freedom that is manifest in a break of this kind cannot
be captured in the definitions of negative and positive freedom. By contrast,
Fitzgerald's experience of the 'clean break' is precisely what interests
Deleuze and Guattari. Such a break amounts to a redistribution of desire
such that 'when something occurs, the self that awaited it is already dead,
or the one that would await it has not yet arrived' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 198-9). This kind of sudden shift towards another quality of life or
towards a life which is lived at another degree of intensity is one possible
outcome of what they call a line of flight. It is on this kind of line that
critical freedom is manifest.
We noted at the end of Chapter 3 the dangers associated with lines of
flight: Deleuze and Guattari's argument is not that lines of flight will
always turn out badly, but that they may do so, for example in the absence
of productive connections with other forces, or in the aftermath of an all-
encompassing or too-abrupt refusal of one's past or prior self. In view of
these dangers, it is apparent that critical freedom is indifferent to the
desires, preferences and goals of the subject in the sense that it may
threaten as much as advance any of these. As a result, whereas the norma-
tive status and the value of liberal freedom is straightforwardly positive,
critical freedom is a much more ambivalent and risky affair: more ambiva-
lent since it involves leaving behind existing grounds of value, with the
result that it is not always clear whether it is a good, or indeed by what
standards it could be evaluated as good or bad; risky because there is no
telling in advance where such processes of mutation and change might
lead, whether at the level of individual or collective assemblages.
87
5
SOCIAL MACHINES AND THE STATE
The history and politics of deterritorialisation
Machinic theory of society

Deleuze and Guattari propose an outline of 'universal history' which in
some respects resembles Marx's materialist theory of history. For Marx, it
is the mode of production of essential goods and services which explains
the nature of society in each epoch. For Deleuze and Guattari, it is the
abstract machines of desire and power which define the nature of a given
society: 'We define social formations by machinic processes and not by
modes of production (these on the contrary depend on the processes)'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 435). While they distinguish three major
kinds of social machine - territorial, despotic and capitalist - unlike
Marx, they do not consider these to be successive stages in a single process
of evolution. Rather, they are understood as virtual machines which may
be operative in a given social field. Concrete social formations are then
specified by the extent to which the different abstract social machines are
actualised within them in varying combinations. In this respect, Deleuze
and Guattari propose a form of philosophical knowledge of history which
remains indebted to the structuralist Marxism of Althusser. Their aim is
not primarily to describe particular societies but to present concepts,
along with historical examples and illustrations, which may in turn be
applied to the analysis of concrete social formations.
We noted in Chapter 4 that Deleuze and Guattari propose a concept of
desire which treats it as a process of production, where the successive
stages of this process parallel the stages of material production as these
are described by Marx. In Part 3 of Anti-Oedipus (1977), this concept of
'machinic' production forms the point of departure for their theory of
society as a machine. Social life is machinic in so far as it involves the dif-
ferentiation and distribution of material flows, the recording of primary
processes by the establishment of chains of signification, and the resultant
differentiation of social subjects and 'consumption' of social being. In
these terms, social life may be conceived as 'a global system of desire and
destiny that organizes the productions of production, the productions of
88
recording and the productions of consumption' (Deleuze and Guattari

1977: 142).
Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between different kinds of social
machine according to the manner in which the coordination and control
of material social flows are carried out. What they call the socius is the
imagined surface upon which this control and coordination take place.
The socius thus appears to be the agent of the social production process:
the business of the socius, they argue, is to code desire: 'The prime function
incumbent upon the socius has always been to codify the flows of desire, to
inscribe them, to record them, to see that no flow exists that is not properly
dammed up, channeled, regulated' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 33).
Capital, as Marx describes it, provides both a model and primary exemplar
for this concept of the socius. In Marx's account, capitalism is a system of
coordination of the flows of social production and reproduction in which
capital itself appears to be the cause of the entire process of social produc-
tion: it forms a surface on which the forces and agents of production are
distributed and the surplus appropriated. To the extent that capital is 'the
body without organs of the capitalist, or rather of the capitalist being'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 10), the socius is the imaginary body of
society as a whole, the full body from which the material flows are
supposed to emanate.
The socius takes different forms according to the means of codification
of flows: 'flows of women and children, flows of herds and seed, sperm
flows, flows of shit, menstrual flows: nothing must escape coding' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1977: 142). The first form of socius is the primitive territorial
machine: 'territorial' not because it operates upon territories but because in
these societies it is the earth itself which is the recording surface or full
body of all social processes:
The earth is the primitive, savage unity of desire and production . . .

It is the surface on which the whole process of production is
inscribed, on which the forces and the means of labour are
recorded, and the agents and the products distributed. It appears
here as the quasi-cause of production and the object of desire (it
is on the earth that desire becomes bound to its own repression).
The territorial machine is therefore the first form of socius, the
machine of primitive inscription, the 'megamachine' that covers a
social field.
This machine effects a collective investment of bodily organs (mouth, anus,

penis, vagina, etc.) which 'plugs desire into the socius and assembles social
production and desiring-production into a whole on the earth' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1977: 142). This collective social investment involves literal
inscription upon bodies via marks of initiation. These transform individual

biological bodies into social bodies, codifying the organs in accordance
with the requirements of social existence. Following Nietzsche, Deleuze
and Guattari call this process of enculturation a system of cruelty, but
also a principal means by which humanity first forged for itself a
memory. It therefore corresponds to the earliest stages of human culture.
The method of codification practised by the territorial machine is primitive
not only in the sense that it is characteristic of so-called 'primitive'
societies, but also in the sense that it remains the basis of human culture:
to the extent that all societies presuppose forms of collective social invest-
ment of the body, pre-capitalist social machines are 'inherent in desire'
The primitive territorial socius is above all a system of organising people,
and its principal mechanism for doing so is the kinship system. Kinship
systems specify the classes or groups to which individuals belong and the
relationships between them. Deleuze and Guattari argue for a conception
of kinship systems as practices or strategies of alliance rather than struc-
tures. They argue that lines of filiation and alliance are equally important
determinants of the operation of the social machine, being neither derived
from nor reducible to the other: 'it is essential to take into consideration
how ties of alliance combine concretely with relations of filiation on a
given territorial surface' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 147). By means
of the relationships which they establish between groups and the forms of
exchange between them, kinship systems determine the flows of material
production within primitive societies. They establish the deductions that
constitute a minimal stock or inherited accumulation of goods, as well as
the detachments such as those that occur in the context of marriage:
'A flow is coded insofar as detachments from the chain and deductions
from the flows are effected in correspondence' (Deleuze and Guattari
1977: 149).
Following Nietzsche and Bataille, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the
economy of the primitive territorial machine is governed not by equal
exchange but by the principle of fundamental disequilibrium which
corresponds to relations of debt and credit. Nietzsche's analysis of the
psychic economy of punishment in On the Genealogy of Morality (1994)
provides the model for their account of the 'code surplus' which explains
the equivalence of pain inflicted for the injury experienced. The same phe-
nomenon of surplus value of code, they suggest, accounts for the manner
in which, in some societies, the accumulation of perishable wealth converts
into imperishable prestige (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 150).
The second form of socius is the full body of the despot which accom-
panies the 'Barbarian Despotic Machine'. By contrast with the territorial
machine, Deleuze and Guattari argue that this social machine is charac-
terised by the instauration of a new system of alliance and a new form of
filiation. The despotic machine substitutes hierarchical castes or classes for

the lateral alliances of the territorial machine and introduces a new form
of filiation which connects the people through the despot directly to the
deity; 'new alliance and direct filiation are specific categories that testify
to the existence of a new socius, irreducible to the lateral alliances and
extended filiations that are declined by the primitive machine' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1977: 194, trans, modified). There is a profound discontin-
uity between this social machine and the primitive, but also a degree of
continuity to the extent that it retains the old territorialities of lineage and
alliance, while integrating them as subordinate working parts of the new
machine. As in Nietzsche's genealogical conception of history, changes in
the nature of social institutions are understood to be the result of their
being overtaken by new forces and subjected to new meanings (Deleuze
and Guattari 1977: 196). The despotic machine does not suppress the old
regime of lateral alliances and extended filiations but rather displaces their
character as determinant relations of social organisation by subordinating
them to its own system of alliance and filiation. For example, the forms of
local alliance debt are subordinated to an 'infinite debt' owed to the
despot, who annuls existing debts or provides credit in the form of protec-
tion and infrastructure only to create an interminable debt to himself.
Marx's analysis of Asiatic production provides a model for this analysis
of a form of social organisation in which 'the autochthonous rural com-
munities subsist and continue to produce, inscribe and consume; in effect
they are the State's sole concern. The wheels of the territorial lineage
machine subsist, but are no longer anything more than the working parts
of the State machine' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 196).
Whereas the earth was the socius or full body of the primitive territorial
machine, this place is now filled by the body of the despot or the deity,
who in turn becomes the quasi-cause of all production and the final
destination of all consumption.
What counts is not the person of the sovereign, nor even his func-
tion, which can be limited. It is the social machine that has
profoundly changed: in place of the territorial machine there is
the 'megamachine' of the State, a functional pyramid that has the
despot at its apex, an immobile motor, with the bureaucratic
apparatus as its lateral surface and its transmission gear, and the
villagers at its base, serving as its working parts.
We noted above that for Deleuze and Guattari, the essential task of the
socius is to code the flows of desire and matter which make up a society.
The essential mechanism and the novelty of the despotic state machine is
that it introduces a system of overcoding. By this means, a new form of
91
inscription is overlaid upon the forms of primitive inscription, forcing them

into alignment with the new alliance of despot and people and the direct
filiation of despot and deity.
Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the Barbarian Despotic Machine
implies a theory of the origin and nature of state-governed societies. They
contrast their concept of the state with those accounts that represent it as
the result of a treaty or contract (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 195), arguing
instead that 'overcoding is the operation that constitutes the essence of the
State' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 199). They argue that, far from being
tied to the establishment of a territory, the state is the result of a movement
of deterritorialisation which substitutes abstract signs for the signs of the
earth and makes the land into an object of property. Nevertheless, the
despotic state machine remains a system of code: it shares with the terri-
torial machine a horror of decoded flows. While it emerges as a result of
a process of deterritorialisation in relation to the territorial machine, the
despotic machine immediately reterritorialises the new forms of property
on the new socius. At the same time, it introduces its own forms of deterri-
torialisation, such as the invention of money, which initially serves the
needs of taxation rather than those of commerce (Deleuze and Guattari
1977: 197). As such, money under the conditions of the despotic machine
amounts to a limited deterritorialisation and corresponding reterritorial-
isation of the flows of product.
The 'Civilised Capitalist Machine' differs in several important respects
from the previous social machines. First, whereas both the territorial and
the despotic machines give rise to processes of deterritorialisation and
generate decoded flows of various kinds, capitalism is the only social
machine which is defined by 'the generalised decoding of flows'. Within
pre-capitalist societies, the development of private property and commodity
production, the extension of markets and the accumulation of money all
amounted to deterritorialised flows of social product and activity. A pri-
mary task of the early modern states was to contain such flows by the
creation of new social institutions and codes. Capitalism emerges only
once these decoded flows are brought together in a new economic and
social system which effects what Deleuze and Guattari call the conjunction
of deterritorialised flows. It is this conjunction of decoded flows that allows
capitalism to develop and capital to become 'the new social full body'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 226). Deleuze and Guattari follow Marx's
account of the process of 'primitive accumulation' in describing the contin-
gent encounter between flows of deterritorialised money and labour which
gave rise to industrial capital. It is this encounter which alone makes pos-
sible capitalism as a self-reproducing and dynamic system of social pro-
duction. The capitalist machine is not assembled until money in the form of
capital takes direct control of the process of production itself. But this only
occurs because of a series of historical accidents which bring together in the
92
same place and time the necessary elements: 'on the one side, the deterritor-
ialized worker who has become free and naked, having to sell his labour
capacity; and on the other, decoded money that has become capital and is
capable of buying this labour capacity' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 225).
Once properly capitalist production is established and takes over the
principal sectors of industry within society, capital becomes the full body
or quasi-cause that tends to appropriate all the productive forces. Capital
is thus the third form of socius and the one that accompanies the Civilised
Capitalist Machine.
The second feature which distinguishes the capitalist machine from the
territorial and despotic machines has to do with its mode of coordination
and control: whereas the other two both involve the extraction of a code
surplus, the capitalist machine extracts a surplus of flux or 'flow surplus'.
Deleuze and Guattari rewrite Marx's account of the origin of surplus
value under the conditions of capitalist production. Whereas Marx locates
the secret of the process whereby money is able to beget more money in
the peculiar capacity of labour power to create more value in a given
period than it costs to buy, Deleuze and Guattari confine their analysis to
the sphere of exchange in order to argue that the surplus results from the
conjunction of decoded flows of constant and variable capital. Capitalism
is the generation of a surplus by means of the differential relation between
flows of constant and variable capital. They describe the essence of capital
as a differential relation in the mathematical sense, Dy/Dx, where Dy
represents the fluctuation of variable capital and Dx represents the fluctua-
tion of constant capital, and they attribute to it a generative power in a
manner that recalls Deleuze's metaphysics of the calculus in Difference
and Repetition. It is this differential relation which defines 'the immanent
social field peculiar to capitalism' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 227).
Understood in this manner, the generation of surplus value is in principle
without limit, subject only to the conditions of the reproduction of capital
which are immanent to the process.
With the emergence of capitalism, society passes from a regime of code
surplus to a regime of flow surplus (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 228).
Deleuze and Guattari suggest that this analysis provides a means of under-
standing certain features of capitalism which remain opaque to orthodox
Marxist economic analysis, such as the fundamental incommensurability
of money as capital or credit and money as a means of payment for con-
sumption goods and services, which is reflected in the different treatment
of these two forms of money in banking practice. This lack of common
measure between the value of enterprises and the value of the labour
capacity of workers is put forward as a reason why the tendency of the
rate of profit to fall remains operative without ever reaching its ideal
limit. Another aspect of the problem of the falling rate of profit which
93
Deleuze and Guattari suggest their account of flow surplus can accommo-
date is the contribution of technological innovation to surplus value:
There is a machinic surplus value produced by constant capital

which develops along with automation and productivity, and
which cannot be explained by factors that counteract the falling
tendency - the increasing intensity of the exploitation of labour,
the diminution of the price of the elements of constant capital,
etc. - since, on the contrary, these factors depend on it.
Their explanation of the contribution of technological change to capital's

expanded reproduction amounts to a generalisation of the notion of flow
surplus to include the surplus that derives from the flows of intellectual,
scientific and technological code. Such flows of code are the basis for the
creation and adoption of new technical machines. Deleuze and Guattari
argue that the condition of their adoption is the social machine which
'organizes all the decoded flows, including the flows of scientific and tech-
nical code, for the benefit of the capitalist system and in the service of its
ends' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 233). Ultimately, the crucial form in
which this machine is actualised is the world market. However, as we
shall see in the following section, it includes among its elements the various
nation-states which play a crucial role in the regulation of capital move-
ments and in the realisation of surplus value.
Whereas the previous social machines operate by means of the codifica-
tion of social processes, capitalism is unique in that it functions by means
of a formal connection of decoded flows which Deleuze and Guattari call
'axiomatisation'. This is the third and most significant aspect of their
characterisation of the difference between the capitalist social machine and
the preceding machines. The concept of capitalism as an axiomatic system
is a distinctive contribution which provides a privileged point of entry
into Deleuze and Guattari's political thought. As we saw in Chapter 1,
their concept of philosophy allows no place for metaphor. Their use of
the term 'axiomatic' must therefore be regarded as the invention of a new
concept by means of the adaptation of elements of the concept of an axio-
matic system in mathematical logic and their transposition to the socio-
economic field. They argue that it is 'the real characteristics of axiomatics
that lead us to say that capitalism and present-day politics are an axiomatic
in the literal sense' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 461). Chief among these
characteristics is the difference between an axiomatic system and a code.
Whereas a code establishes a systematic correspondence directly between
the elements of different signifying systems, an axiomatic system is defined
by purely syntactic rules for the generation of strings of non-signifying or
uninterpreted symbols. The resultant strings of symbols may be given an
interpretation by the specification of a model and the assignment of signifi-

cations to elements of the formal language.
In these terms, capital may be supposed to function as 'an axiomatic of
abstract quantities' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 228). As a universal
equivalent, money is a purely quantitative measure that is indifferent to
the qualitative character of flows of different kinds. Commodity produc-
tion under capitalist conditions generalises this formal equality of all
social goods and relations. Factors of production appear in the balance-
sheet of an enterprise simply as units of monetary value. Objects produced
under non-capitalist regimes of code may also be drawn into the global
market, where they are exchanged equally as items of value alongside
capitalistically produced goods. To the extent that they are subsumed
under the exchange relation, objects produced under the most diverse
regimes of code, such as artefacts of indigenous handicraft, and products
of fully automated production systems, may be 'formally united' within
the capitalist axiomatic.1
Whereas capital is a directly economic means of regulating the produc-
tion, circulation and consumption of social goods, pre-capitalist economies
operate through codes that are extrinsic means of regulating the flow of
economic materials and forces on the socius. Social codes determine the
quality of particular flows, for example, prestige as opposed to consump-
tion goods, thereby establishing indirect relations between flows of differ-
ent kinds. They also determine the manner in which, within certain limits,
a surplus is drawn from the primary flows: in code-governed societies,
surplus value invariably takes the form of code surplus. Finally, because
they are extrinsic to the processes of production and circulation of goods,
systems of codification imply the existence of forms of collective belief,
judgement and evaluation on the part of the agents of these processes. By
contrast, capitalism has no need to mark bodies or to constitute a
memory for its agents. Since it works by means of an axiomatic intrinsic
to the social processes of production, circulation and consumption, it is a
profoundly cynical machine: 'the capitalist is merely striking a pose when
he bemoans the fact that nowadays no one believes in anything any more'
Deleuze and Guattari speak of the capitalist axiomatic in both a
restricted and primarily economic sense, and also in a broader sense
where this refers to a social machine that includes a juridical and a political
as well as a technocratic apparatus. It is as though there were two aspects
of capitalism, or a distinction to be drawn between capital understood as
'a general axiomatic of decoded flows' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 453),
and capitalism understood as a mechanism or set of mechanisms for the
maintenance of a relatively stable assemblage of the social factors required
to sustain the extraction of flow surplus. Capitalism as an economic
system forms an axiomatic but so does capitalist society:
95
The true axiomatic is that of the social machine itself, which takes
the place of the old codings and organizes all the decoded flows,
including the flows of scientific and technical code, for the benefit
of the capitalist system and in the service of its ends.
This points to a second distinctive feature of axiomatic systems which

justifies this adaptation of the concept. Subject to certain overriding
constraints such as consistency or the generation of surplus value, there is
considerable scope for variation in the axioms that may be appropriate
for a given model. The history of capitalism has involved experimentation
and evolution with regard to axioms. Its successive crises each provoke a
response which may take the form of the addition of new axioms (the
incorporation of trade unions, centralised wage fixing, social welfare, etc.)
or the elimination of existing axioms (the elimination of trade unions and
currency controls leading to the deregulation of banking, finance and
labour markets). None of these axioms is essential to the continued func-
tioning of capital as such, any more than are the axioms of bourgeois
social life. Economic activity is increased when family members dine
individually at McDonalds. As Marx and Engels pointed out in The
Communist Manifesto, capitalism threatens to sweep away all the values
of civilised social existence and replace them with the 'cash nexus'. The
circulation of capital through the differential relation between the flows of
finance and the flows of personal income, along with the circulation of
information through the electronic circuits of mass communication, propels
the entire world towards a society in which all the signs of the past are
detached from their origins and written over with new signs, and the
motley representatives of the present appear as 'paintings of all that has
ever been believed'.2 Capitalism constantly approaches this limit only to
displace it further ahead by reconstituting its own immanent relative
limits. The capitalist axiomatic generates schizo-flows which are the basis
of its restless and cosmopolitan energy while at the same time setting new
limits on the socius. In this sense, the capitalist axiomatic is a machine
that represses the very social forces and flows of matter and energy which
it produces: 'it substitutes for the codes an extremely rigorous axiomatic
that maintains the energy of the flows in a bound state on the body of
capital as a socius that is deterritorialized, but also a socius that is even
more pitiless than any other' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 246).
Like Marx, Deleuze and Guattari propose a universal history written
from the standpoint of a present which provides a privileged point of
view on the past. In this sense, they argue that 'capitalism has haunted all
forms of society' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 140). As the only social
machine that operates by means of a generalised decoding of flows, capi-
talism reveals the secret of the earlier forms of society, namely their
96
abhorrence of decoding and their commitment to 'coding the flows and

even overcoding them rather than allowing anything to escape coding'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 153). The Civilised Capitalist Machine thus
haunts the earlier forms of social codification not as the inevitable end-
point of a single process of development but as their other and their
absolute limit. The absolute deterritorialisation of social life also haunts
capitalism in the form of a limit that is continually approached but never
attained. This external limit is the end-point of the process of decoding
and deterritorialisation. Were it ever realised, it would amount to a form
of social schizophrenia, the point at which the flows of desire 'travel in a
free state on a desocialized body without organs' (Deleuze and Guattari
1977: 246). However, just as schizophrenia is an unsustainable and
unlivable mode of personal and social existence, so absolute deterri-
torialisation remains an ideal and unattainable state of social existence.
Capitalist societies simultaneously reterritorialise what they deterritorialise,
producing all manner of 'neoterritorialities' which may be 'artificial, resi-
dual or archaic' but which have the effect of resuscitating or reintroducing
fragments of earlier social codes, or inventing new ones: examples range
from the more virulent forms of religious or nationalist fundamentalism
to the relatively benign constitutional monarchisms or civic nationalisms.
Capitalism as a distinctive form of social organisation has a limit which is
the absolute decoding of flows 'but it functions only by pushing back and
exorcising this limit . . . the strength of capitalism indeed resides in the
fact that its axiomatic is never saturated, that it is always capable of
adding a new axiom to the previous ones' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977:
250).
The state and deterritorialisation

Deleuze and Guattari allow that particular kinds of state, such as the
ancient empires, city-states and feudal states, succeed one another in
history. At this level, they follow Nietzsche's hypothesis with regard to
the emergence of actual states, arguing that these do not result from the
internal dynamics of the territorial machine but are imposed from without.
Citing Nietzsche's remarks on the founders of the state in On the
Genealogy of Morality (Nietzsche 1994: essay 2, para. 17), they insist
that 'the death of the primitive system always comes from without: history
is the history of contingencies and encounters' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977:
195). Equally, in accordance with the principle of Nietzsche's genealogical
method that 'the events that restore a thing to life are not the same as
those that gave rise to it in the first place' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977:
261), they argue that the state is transformed and adapted to new ends
within the capitalist axiomatic. Once the newly decoded flows of capital
and labour converge and begin to transform European societies,
97
[the State] can no longer be content to overcode territorial

elements that are already coded, it must invent specific codes for
flows that are increasingly deterritorialized, which means: putting
despotism in the service of the new class relations, integrating the
relations of wealth and poverty . . . everywhere stamping the mark
of the Urstaat on the new state of things.
The capitalist state represents a transformation of the earlier apparatus of

overcoding in so far as it has now become a key mechanism for the co-
ordination and control of the decoded and deterritorialised flows which
are coextensive with capitalism itself. The functioning of the capitalist axio-
matic implies agents of decision, administration and inscription, in other
words a bureaucracy and a technocracy which function as an apparatus
of regulation. The state has always performed this regulatory role, begin-
ning with the regulation of the conditions of labour, including wages, the
granting of monopolies and the acquisition of colonial territories. Deleuze
and Guattari also point to a more directly economic function which has
been assumed by the state in its 'military industrial' form since the Second
World War, namely the realisation and absorption of surplus value
through the costs of administration and military expenditure (Deleuze and
Guattari 1977: 235).
Over and above these economic and technical functions within the
capitalist axiomatic, there is another function of the state in which the
shadow of the Urstaat continues to hover over modern societies. A prin-
cipal function of the state is the reterritorialisation of the mutant flows
generated by the dynamic of the system as a whole. The state reterritoria-
lises those flows so as to prevent them breaking loose at the edges of the
social axiomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 258). As a result, Deleuze
and Guattari argue, modern capitalist societies are caught between the
two poles of an extreme futurism and an archaism, between a deterritoria-
lisation which, if left unchecked, might carry them towards an absolute
threshold and 'the Urstaat that they would like to resuscitate as an over-
coding and reterritorializing unity' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 260).
These negative and positive functions of the modern state reflect the dual
character of the capitalist social axiomatic as Deleuze and Guattari
describe it, but they also point to the singular role played by the concept
of the despotic state machine in their universal history. Despotism is at
once the primordial form of the state, as it appeared in the ancient empires,
and the figure of the state in general.3 In the terms of their account, the
concept of the state is a 'special category', actualised in different concrete
forms, but not identifiable with any of these, since it is also an abstraction
which haunts all subsequent forms of sovereign power. In A Thousand
Plateaus (1987) the distinction between the state as pure abstract machine
98
and historically specific forms of state is made explicit by the introduction

of the concept of the state-form and the distinction between this and
specific forms of state, such as ancient archaic empires and early modern
monarchical states.
As an abstract machine, the state-form may be rigorously defined by a
specific form and a function, prior to any concrete instantiation. The essen-
tial function of the state is capture: it is inseparable from 'a process of
capture of flows of all kinds, populations, commodities or commerce,
money or capital' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 386). In the West, the
form in which this function has appeared is political sovereignty: 'the State
is sovereignty' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 360). However, the underlying
abstract form of the state is an inferiority of some kind, since 'sovereignty
only reigns over what it is capable of interiorizing, of appropriating locally'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 360). The exercise of sovereignty therefore
requires the institution of borders and the constitution of a milieu of
interiority. This form and this function are in fact two aspects of the same
assemblage, since it is by means of capture that the state establishes a
milieu of interiority. Historically, the most important mechanisms of
capture have been those exercised upon land or its produce, upon labour,
and upon money. These correspond to Marx's 'holy trinity' of ground
rent, profit and taxes, but they have long existed under other forms. All
three modes of capture occur in paradigmatic form in the ancient empires,
as described in Mumford's analysis of the primitive megamachine or
Marx's account of the Asiatic mode of production. In the despotic
machine, the body of the despot assumes the role of 'full body' and
becomes the quasi-cause and the destination of all social production
(Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 194). To that extent this implies a form
of capture of the primary social flows; Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of
despotism already hinted at what they later call the abstract machine of
capture.
The concept of the state-form as machine of capture will be examined
more closely in Chapter 6, in connection with the specific case of colonial
capture. For the moment, it is important to follow through the conse-
quences of this distinction between the state-form and particular kinds of
state for Deleuze and Guattari's historical and political analysis. Most
importantly, this distinction enables them to posit an evolution of the
state while still maintaining the thesis that, in certain fundamental respects,
there has only ever been a single form of state. It is with respect to the
abstract machine or state-form that they deny all evolutionary theses con-
cerning the origin of the state, insisting instead that it 'was not formed in
progressive stages; it appears fully armed, a master stroke executed all at
once; the primordial Urstaat, the eternal model of everything the State
wants to be and desires' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 217). Deleuze and
Guattari's universal history is remarkable both for its level of abstraction
and its resolute anti-historicism. The territorial, despotic and axiomatic

social machines are not considered as successive stages in an evolution, in
the sense that one can be regarded as resulting from the effects of another.
However, this does not mean that there are not historical progressions
from societies dominated by one machine to societies dominated by
another, or that there are not 'evolutionary' developments across the suc-
cessive actualisations of a particular machine. Deleuze and Guattari's view
is that all three abstract social machines co-exist in a perpetual state of
becoming or virtuality. Concrete history, as they later suggest, is simply
the working out of these processes in particular cases: 'All history does is
to translate a co-existence of becomings into a succession' (Deleuze and
Within the perspective of their universal history, they introduce a typol-
ogy of different kinds of state, distinguishing three major kinds. The first
is the imperial archaic state, which corresponds to the despotic mega-
machine described in Anti-Oedipus (1977). This is the 'immemorial
Urstaat, dating as far back as Neolithic times, and perhaps farther still'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 427). It is a type of state which operates pri-
marily by means of overcoding and which is characterised by the absence
of private property and money except as these relate to the universal
obligation towards the despot. Money exists only in the form of the tax
owed, while property is held only in virtue of the individual's membership
or function within the community. The net result is a form of generalised
servitude of the population which Deleuze and Guattari call machinic
enslavement. The second type of state is one in which machinic enslave-
ment is replaced by a regime of social subjection. Under this type of state,
property has become private and the bond that ties the individual to the
sovereign has become personal. Relations of personal dependence or
allegiance replace those based upon public functions and the modern form
of law emerges as an important aspect of the maintenance of rule. There
are many forms of state corresponding to this type, including feudal
systems, monarchies and city-states. They form the immediate historical
precursor to the modern nation-states which appear in the context of the
emergence of capitalism. The nature of these modern states cannot be
understood independently of the processes of deterritorialisation and
reterritorialisation which capitalism develops to a higher level.
The internal principle of the evolution in forms of state derives from the
tendency of states to produce their own forms of deterritorialisation and
decodification. Even the archaic empires did not overcode 'without also
freeing a large quantity of decoded flows that escape' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 448). In particular, their own mechanisms gave rise to
flows of certain kinds of materials and agents: the construction of public
works generated flows of metals and metallurgy, while the collection of
taxes gave rise to flows of money which, in turn, allowed the emergence
100
of merchants and banking. The statecraft manual of the Chinese Qin

dynasty described these flows generated by the operations of the body
politic as 'lice of the empire'.4 Freed slaves, or more generally the forms
of social 'outsider', were another deterritorialising flow which, in turn, fed
into the existing flows of metallurgy, trade and commerce: what matters is
that 'in one way or another the apparatus of overcoding gives rise to
flows that are themselves decoded - flows of money, labour, property'
It is against this background that Deleuze and Guattari identify a new
function for the state, namely the organisation of conjunctions of decoded
flows. This new function in turn leads to a transformation in the nature
of the state and the development of mechanisms of capture based upon
social subjectification to replace those of machinic enslavement. However,
this new kind of state only performs local and 'topical' or qualitative con-
junctions of flows through such means as the organisation of corporations
in the towns or the maintenance of feudal relations in agriculture. While
these inhibit the propagation of flows, the state cannot prevent new flows
from continuing to escape and so in effect it prepares the way for the
generalised conjunction of decoded flows that is capitalism: 'Capitalism
forms when the flow of unqualified wealth encounters the flow of unquali-
fied labour and conjugates with it' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 453). With
this, a new threshold of deterritorialisation is reached.
In the Conclusion to A Thousand Plateaus (1987), deterritorialisation is
defined with deceptive simplicity as the movement or process by which
something escapes or departs from a given territory (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 508). In fact, as Deleuze and Guattari go on to point out, the con-
cept is complex in a number of ways: 'deterritorialization is never simple
but always multiple and composite' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 509).
First, it always involves at least two elements, namely the territory that
is being left behind or reconstituted and the deterritorialising element.
A territory of any kind always includes 'vectors of deterritorialisation',
either because the territory itself is inhabited by dynamic movements or
processes or because the assemblage that sustains it is connected to other
assemblages. In the case of Marx's account of primitive accumulation, the
development of commodity markets is one such vector of deterritorialisa-
tion in relation to the social and economic space of feudal agriculture,
encouraging the shift to large-scale commercial production. The conjuga-
tion of the stream of displaced labour with the flow of deterritorialised
money capital provided the conditions under which capitalist industry
could develop. Second, deterritorialisation is always 'inseparable from
correlative reterritorialisations' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 509).
Reterritorialisation does not mean returning to the original territory, but
rather refers to the ways in which deterritorialised elements recombine and
enter into new relations in the constitution of a new assemblage or the
101
modification of the old. In this context, Deleuze and Guattari distinguish

between the connection of deterritorialised flows, which refers to the ways
in which distinct deterritorialisations can interact to accelerate one another,
and the conjugation of distinct flows, which refers to the ways in which
one may incorporate or 'overcode' another, thereby effecting a relative
blockage of its movement (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 220). It is signifi-
cant that capitalism is born as the result of a generalised conjunction or
conjugation of deterritorialised flows of capital and labour, since the conju-
gation of flows implies a different form of reterritorialisation to that found
in the case of connection and a less positive outcome of the prior deterri-
torialisations. In effect, this concept of conjugation introduces a 'zone of
indiscernibility' through which the concept of reterritorialisation is con-
nected to the concept of the state-form as an abstract machine of capture.
Unlike capitalism, capital is not in the first instance a machine of capture
but a nomadic and 'universal cosmopolitan energy which overflows every
restriction and bond' (Marx 1964: 129, cited in Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 453). Capital is one of those non-territorially based organisations
which have always formed part of the external environment of states, a
polymorphous machine of deterritorialisation which exists only in its own
metamorphoses (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 360). For this reason, Deleuze
and Guattari suggest that from its inception 'capitalism has mobilized a
force of deterritorialization infinitely surpassing the deterritorialization
proper to the State' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 453). This superior
power of deterritorialisation may be glimpsed in the form in which capital
appeared in the aftermath of financial deregulation during the 1980s and
1990s, namely as an enormous monetary mass which circulates ceaselessly
through foreign exchange and stock markets around the globe, beyond
the control of any one government or organisation and subject only to the
vicissitudes of the market. Unlike all existing forms of state hitherto, capital
is not a territorially based machine since its object is neither a portion of
the earth nor a people but value pure and simple, the commodity form of
private property where this has become a type of convertible abstract
right, an entitlement to profit share, a futures contract or a financial deriva-
tive. As a result, 'it could be said that capitalism develops an economic
order that could do without the State. And in fact capitalism is not short
on war cries against the State, not only in the name of the market, but by
virtue of its superior deterritorialization' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 454).
At the same time, capitalism is inseparable from the state since it is the
state which codifies the conditions under which the axiomatic can operate
and regulate the flows of capital. As such, modern nation-states function
as models of realisation of the immanent axiomatic. This is the third type
of state within Deleuze and Guattari's typology: no longer transcendent
apparatuses of overcoding or subjection but models of realisation of an
axiomatic of decoded flows. They define the modern nation-state as a
102
territorially based group of productive sectors among which labour and

capital circulate freely, without barriers to the homogeneity of capital or
to the conditions of competition between capitals. Just as the purely eco-
nomic relations of capital are realised in the relations between 'factors of
production' in diverse sectors of economic activity, so nation-states group
together a certain number of sectors of production, according to their
wealth, natural resources, population, level of industrialisation, etc. Thus,
'States under 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 the same thing as to do without'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 454). Equally, not to be able to do without
is not the same as to be wedded to the existing forms of state. We can see
in this definition the possibility of the kinds of supra-state association
already beginning to emerge in Europe, North America and South-East
Asia.
Deterritorialisation and the political

We noted in Chapter 4 Deleuze and Guattari's suggestion that schizo-
analysis proposes no political programme. We can now see that the axio-
logical structure of Anti-Oedipus (1977) is in many respects conducive to
an anti-political stance. The theory of capitalist society outlined in the
book establishes a fundamental dualism at the heart of the axiomatic and
within capitalist society as a whole, between the deterritorialising tendency
of capital and the necessary reterritorialisation effected by the state and its
agents. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, the revolutionary path
lies not in the attempt to set limits to market forces and the impetus of
deterritorialisation, but in the opposite direction, pursuing ever further the
movement of decoding and deterritorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari
1977: 239). Some commentators, such as Nick Land, sharpen this antagon-
ism to the point that the deepest tendencies of the capitalist axiomatic are
taken to be so fundamentally at odds with the social codes of bourgeois
civilisation that it appears in the guise of a 'social suicide machine': 'Only
by an intensification of neurotic attachments does it mask the eruption of
madness in its infrastructure, but with every passing year such attachments
become more desperate, cynical, fragile' (Land 1993: 68). Pursuing the idea
that the political axiology of Anti-Oedipus supports a politics of alliance
with the deterritorialising process of capital, Land recommends the
systematic dismantling of all social codes and forms of reterritorialisation:
'Always decode . . . believe nothing, and extinguish all nostalgia for
belonging. Ask always where capital is most inhuman, unsentimental and
out of control. Abandon all attachment to the state' (Land 1993: 67).
This political perspective is consistent with some aspects of the
Nietzschean framework of evaluation which run through Deleuze's writing.
103
In Difference and Repetition, for example, we find a defence of the singular

against the general, the individual against the herd, and a resistance to
forms of equality and equalisation. This 'anti-political' theme emerges
from the conception of the social field (like every other) as a field of free
differences and the rejection of representation: every time there is represen-
tation there is always 'an unrepresented singularity' who does not recog-
nise himself or herself in the représentant. Hence the misfortune of
speaking for others (Deleuze 1994: 52). 5 Similarly anti-political theses
might be derived from the application of the theory of power outlined in
Nietzsche and Philosophy (Deleuze 1983) to the social and political field.
This is not something Deleuze does in Nietzsche and Philosophy: there is
no discussion of Nietzsche's views on politics and the state, only comments
on his theory of culture and, at the end of the book, on the implications of
Nietzsche's theory for practice. If he had done so, the argument might run
as follows: power is fundamentally active and relational, appearing in the
interaction between different kinds and degrees of force. In the state of
nature, individual and collective bodies collide in the pursuit of their activ-
ities. However, purely chaotic interaction is not a state of social existence:
at best, life under such conditions will be uncertain, at worst it will be
brutish and short. Hence, it can be argued, the overriding aim of political
society is the establishment and maintenance of relatively stable forms of
interaction. Social relations require the stabilisation and fixation of certain
forms of interaction, including the institution of forms of government
which enable stable and predictable forms of action upon the actions of
others.
In these terms, government is a form of action upon individual or social
forces which seeks to limit or constrain their possibilities for action. From
the perspective of the forces governed, the government of individual and
collective bodies is essentially reactive. Deleuze and Guattari's account of
the state as a process of capture operating upon the primary flows of
matter and activity in the social field renders explicit this reactive character
of the political apparatus. The state, they argue, captures flows of popula-
tion, commodities, or money in order to extract from these flows a surplus
which then becomes a means to maintain and enhance its own power. It is
an institution whose primary mode of operation is one of limitation or con?
straint, a matter of separating active forces from what they can do. In these
terms, the state is by definition always a secondary formation, and the poli-
tical sphere is always reactive by nature. If we supposed that Deleuze's
Nietzschean concept of power implied a simple axiological priority of the
active over the reactive and the affirmative over the negative, then the out-
come would be a fundamentally anti-political orientation.
Much of the analysis of capitalism in Anti-Oedipus (1977) supports such
a reading. For example, the authors describe the capitalist axiomatic as a
system of enslavement in which all are subject to the constraint of its
104
axioms. By contrast with the form of slavery established by the despotic

state, which at least retained an apparatus of anti-production distinct
from the sphere of production and a corresponding class of masters,
capitalism installs 'an unrivalled slavery, an unprecedented subjugation' in
which 'there are no longer even any masters, but only slaves commanding
other slaves' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 254). Here, there is only one
class and bourgeois and proletarian alike are slaves of the social machine.
In contrast, Deleuze and Guattari point to 'the revolutionary potential of
decoded flows' and suggest that the opposition to this machine, which is
relevant from the point of view of revolutionary politics, is not that
between capitalist and worker but that between 'the decoded flows that
enter into a class axiomatic on the full body of capital, and on the other
hand, the decoded flows that free themselves from this axiomatic' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1977: 255). Eugene Holland comments that, in the terms of
this account of capitalism, 'deterritorialization looked "good" and
reterritorialization looked "bad", inasmuch as deterritorialization desig-
nated the motor of permanent revolution, while reterritorialization
designated the power relations imposed by the private ownership of capi-
tal' (Holland 1991: 58). Nor are such binary oppositions entirely absent
from A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Deleuze and Guattari defend the idea
that capitalism restores a system of machinic enslavement. They also main-
tain that there is an opposition between the axioms which constitute the
'semiological form' of the apparatus of capture and the 'living flows'
which are conjugated and controlled by the axiomatic: 'there is always a
fundamental difference between living flows and the axioms that subordi-
nate them to centers of control and decision making' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 464).
However, there are other elements of Deleuze and Guattari's mature
political philosophy which disallow a simplistic anti-political point of
view. First, the axioms of the capitalist social machine do not simply
repress a natural state of free and undirected social existence. They are also
constitutive of new social forces and forms of life. Deleuze and Guattari
are not romantic anarchists who believe in a realm of social being beyond
the subjection to political power. It would be an error, they argue, 'to take
a disinterested stance toward struggle on the level of the axioms' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 463). The reason is not simply that the conditions of
people's lives are at stake in those axioms, but also because forcing changes
at the level of the axiomatic is itself an indispensable mechanism of effecting
future concrete changes. As we have seen, it is a fundamental feature of the
axiomatic that it cannot reterritorialise existing flows without creating
conditions that will generate new forms of deterritorialisation. Second, as
Holland points out, the range and complexity of the concepts of deterritor-
ialisation and reterritorialisation are greatly increased in A Thousand
Plateaus (Holland 1991). In Anti-Oedipus, the terms were used in the
105
context of Deleuze and Guattari's historical account of the emergence of

state-governed societies and of capitalism, but also in the context of their
theory of desire to refer to the freeing of the 'schizophrenic' libido from
previous objects of investment. This psychoanalytic dimension of the con-
cept derives from Lacan's use of the term 'territorialisation' to refer to the
imprint of maternal care and nourishment on the child's libido and the
resultant formation of part-objects and erogenous zones out of the conjuga-
tion of particular organs and orifices such as mouth-breast.6 In A Thousand
Plateaus, the concept is applied to a variety of different domains, such as the
analysis of painting and music. Deleuze and Guattari define (European)
painting in terms of the deterritorialisation of faces and landcapes, and
(European) music as the deterritorialisation of the refrain and the human
voice (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 300-2). These are not simply applica-
tions of the concept but also means through which it is complicated.
Ultimately, processes of deterritorialisation are the movements that
define a given assemblage. Deterritorialisation is 'the operation of a line of
flight' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 508) and lines of flight are the primary
elements of a given assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 531). Lines
of flight or deterritorialisation are the determining elements in a given
assemblage in the sense that they define the form of creativity specific to
that assemblage, the particular ways in which it can effect transformation
in other assemblages or in itself. In the terms of Deleuze's concept of
power, what a given assemblage is capable of doing or becoming will be
determined by the lines of flight or deterritorialisation which it can sustain.
Theorem Eight says that
one assemblage does not have the same forces or even speeds of
deterritorialization 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... . One can only calculate and compare
powers of deterritorialization.
Thus, from the point of view of personal, social or political change, every-
thing hinges on the nature of the forms of deterritorialisation present in a
given situation.
At the end of A Thousand Plateaus (1987) Deleuze and Guattari outline
a normative typology of processes of deterritorialisation which distin-
guishes four types. The result is a complex conceptual and axiological
structure, not unlike the typology of expressions of the will to power out-
lined in Nietzsche and Philosophy, within which the character of events and
processes can be evaluated. Deterritorialisation is either relative or absolute.
It is relative in so far as it concerns only movements within the actual - as
106
opposed to the virtual - order of things. Relative deterritorialisation can

take either a negative or a positive form. It is negative when the deterritoria-
lised element is immediately subjected to forms of reterritorialisation which
enclose or obstruct its line of flight. It is positive when the line of flight
prevails over secondary reterritorialisations, even though it may still fail to
connect with other deterritorialised elements or enter into a new assemblage
with new forces. By contrast, absolute deterritorialisation refers to a quali-
tatively different type of movement. Deterritorialisation is absolute in so
far as it concerns the virtual - as opposed to the actual - order of things.
This is the state in which there are only qualitative multiplicities, the state
of 'unformed matter on the plane of consistency' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 55-6). Relative deterritorialisation takes place on the molar dimen-
sion of individual or collective life, but absolute deterritorialisation takes
place on the molecular plane of social existence.
Absolute deterritorialisation is not a further stage or in any sense some-
thing that comes after relative deterritorialisation. On the contrary, it
exists only in and through relative deterriorialisation: 'There is a perpetual
immanence of absolute deterritorialization within relative deterritorializa-
tion' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 56). It follows that, corresponding to
the distinction within relative deterritorialisation between its negative and
positive forms, absolute deterritorialisation also has two poles. The dangers
of the line of flight which we noted in Chapter 4 are also the dangers of
absolute deterritorialisation. Which way things turn out will depend on
the nature of the assemblages through which these movements are
expressed. Absolute and relative deterritorialisation will both be positive
when they involve the construction of 'revolutionary connections in oppo-
sition to the conjugations of the axiomatic9 (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
473). Real transformations in a given field require the recombination of
deterritorialised elements in mutually supportive and productive ways. In
this sense, social or political assemblages are truly revolutionary only
when they involve assemblages of connection rather than conjugation.
These are the conditions under which absolute deterritorialisation leads to
the creation of a new earth and new people: 'when it connects lines of
flight, raises them to the power of an abstract vital line or draws a plane
of consistency' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 510).
Thus, when Deleuze and Guattari argue that societies are defined by
their lines of flight or deterritorialisation, they mean there is no society
that is not reproducing itself on one level, while simultaneously being
transformed into something else on another level. In other words, funda-
mental social change happens all the time. Often it happens by degrees
and even imperceptibly, as we have seen with the steady erosion of myths
and prejudices about sexual difference and its implications for social and
political institutions. But sometimes revolutionary social change occurs
through the eruption of events which force a break with the past and
107
inaugurate a new field of social, political or legal possibilities. These are

not necessarily violent or bloody events. May 1968 was an event of this
kind, 'a becoming breaking through into history' (Deleuze 1995b: 153).
Other recent examples include the sudden collapse of Eastern European
communism, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, or the belated
decision by the Australian High Court to recognise a form of aboriginal
title to land (see p. 126). These are all in their way manifestations of
critical freedom. They are turning points in history after which some
things will never be the same as before.
108
6
NOMADS, CAPTURE AND
COLONISATION
As we saw in Chapter 1, for Deleuze and Guattari the purpose and value
of philosophy are external to philosophy itself. They conceive of philos-
ophy as a critical practice of thought which has a Utopian vocation,
namely the creation of new concepts supposed to contribute to the emer-
gence of 'new earths and new peoples' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 108).
Up to this point, we have examined a number of the political-philosophical
concepts which they propose - including their concepts of multiplicity,
assemblage, segmentarity, becoming, socius and deterritorialisation - with-
out asking whether or how these concepts fulfil this Utopian vocation. In
this final chapter, we shall examine more closely Deleuze and Guattari's
concepts of the state-form or apparatus of capture and its Other, the noma-
dic war-machine. While there are reasons to doubt that the war-machine
concept is likely to be effective in the form in which it is presented, the
idea of a type of assemblage which has an affinity with processes of deter-
ritorialisation may still turn out to be useful. In the latter part of this chap-
ter we shall redescribe the jurisprudence of aboriginal or native title as a
war-machine with deterritorialising effect on the legal institutions and
apparatus of colonial capture in common-law countries. This example pro-
vides an opportunity to test the degree to which this family of Deleuzian
concepts (war-machine, capture, deterritorialisation) enables an effective
counter-actualisation of the legal forms of internal colonisation to which
indigenous peoples are subject in common-law countries such as Australia,
Canada and Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Metamorphosis machines
Deleuze and Guattari contrast the state-form with another type of
assemblage which they call the 'war-machine'. This is one of the most
curious concepts invented in the course of A Thousand Plateaus (1987),
and also one of the most widely misunderstood. It is a concept which is
betrayed by its name since it has little to do with actual war and only a
109
paradoxical and indirect relation to armed conflict. It should not be

confused with what is commonly understood by 'the war-machine'.1 The
real object of Deleuze and Guattari's war-machine concept is not war but
the conditions of creative mutation and change. Consider the links between
the war-machine and lines of flight or deterritorialisation. Deleuze and
Guattari argue that the effectuation of such lines always requires the inter-
vention of a war-machine:
the assemblage that draws lines of flight is of the war-machine

type. Mutations spring from this machine, which in no way has
war as its object, but rather the emission of quanta of deterritorial-
ization, the passage of mutant flows (in this sense all creation is
brought about by a war-machine).
Becoming is also a kind of metamorphosis, particularly when it is defined

as a becoming-minoritarian which affects only elements of the majority
(see Chapter 4, pp. 80-3), and the assemblages which institute and sustain
such becomings are also of the war-machine type. Given that its primary
object is not war, even though as we shall see below it maintains a neces-
sary synthetic relation to war by virtue of its antipathy to the striated
space of apparatuses of capture, it might be preferable to think of this
type of assemblage not as a war-machine but as a machine of meta-
morphosis. A metamorphosis machine would then be one that does not
simply support the repetition of the same but rather engenders the produc-
tion of something altogether different.
As rhizomatic or qualitative multiplicities which function to produce
lines of flight or deterritorialisation, metamorphosis machines would be the
conditions of actualisation of absolute deterritorialisation and the means
by which relative deterritorialisation occurs: 'they bring connections to
bear against the great conjunction of the apparatuses of capture or domi-
nation' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 423, emphasis added). As abstract
machines of mutation and change, assemblages of the war-machine type
may be actualised in a variety of different material domains: they can
appear in thought as well as in material practices of resistance to capture..
Such a machine might take the form of a new invention or process in a
given technological phylum, a new individual or collective affect in the
stratum of desire, or a revolutionary judgement or new branch of juris-
prudence in the law. Machines of this kind can emerge in any domain or
stratum of the social field so long as they are propagators of smooth
space: 'an "ideological", scientific or artistic movement can be a potential
war-machine, to the precise extent to which it draws, in relation to a
phylum, a plane of consistency, a creative line of flight, a smooth space of
displacement' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 422-3).
110
NOMADS, CAPTURE AND COLONISATION
In their initial characterisation of the war-machine, Deleuze and Guattari

present it as a general name for those social assemblages that are outside
and hostile to the state. The war-machine is the Other in relation to the
state-form. Defined as a process of capture and constitution of a field of
inferiority, the state necessarily implies a domain external to itself. Every
time there is an insurgency of some kind against the state, whether this
takes the form of revolution, riot, guerrilla warfare or civil disobedience,
'it can be said that a war-machine has revived, that a new nomadic poten-
tial has appeared, accompanied by the reconstitution of a smooth space
or a manner of being in space as though it were smooth' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 386). In these terms, assemblages of the war-machine type
support all those processes that remain outside the forms of state and all
those movements that resist the process of capture. Historically, Deleuze
and Guattari suggest, there have been two main kinds of non-state social
machine: large-scale global or ecumenical organisations, such as religious
or commercial networks, and local groups or marginal communities
which continue to affirm the nature and rights of segmentary societies
against the organs of state power. No less than the different kinds of
state-form, organisations of both the ecumenical and marginal kind are
always present in any given social field. Moreover, both of these non-state
organisations are different in kind from the forms of state. Deleuze and
Guattari argue for the radical exteriority of the war-machine in relation to
the state-form: 'In every respect, the war-machine is of another species,
another nature, another origin than the state apparatus' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 352). They provide examples of this difference drawn
from Indo-European and African mythology as well as epistemology: even
the history of natural sciences such as mathematics and geometry provides
them with material for a distinction between state and nomad science
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 361-74). Alternatively, the difference between
these two kinds of assemblage might be supposed to appear in the different
ways in which a body can increase its power. As an apparatus of capture,
the state-form represents a purely quantitative or linear model of increase
of power. It involves the incorporation of other bodies, either because
their substance feeds the powers of the capturing body, or because their
powers may be added to its own. By contrast, the metamorphosis machine
represents a more qualitative or multi-dimensional model of increase of
power: 'it comprises something other than increasing quantities of force'
However, their primary description of the difference between state and
war-machine type assemblages is in terms of the different kinds of space
or spatial determination associated with each: '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' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 474). Smooth space is
111
Deleuze and Guattari's term for the heterogeneous space of qualitative

multiplicity, while striated space is the homogeneous space of quantitative
multiplicity. Smooth space is a rhizomatic or 'patchwork' space in which
local regions are juxtaposed without reference to an overarching metric
principle or directionality. It is a fluid space of continuous variation,
characterised by a plurality of local directions. The terms 'smooth' and
'striated' are taken from the composer Pierre Boulez who uses them to
differentiate two kinds of musical space (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
477). In the final plateau, '1440: the smooth and the striated', Deleuze
and Guattari provide a number of examples of this opposition drawn
from fields as diverse as art history, physics, mathematics and textile manu-
facture. In geometrical terms, the difference may be expressed in terms of
an inversion in the relationship between points and lines: striated space
treats the line as something between two points, as in Euclidean geometry.
By contrast, smooth space gives priority to the line and treats points
simply as relays between successive lines. Moreover, the lines themselves
are different in each case. In the case of smooth space, they are locally
directional with open intervals, whereas in striated space they are sub-
ordinate to a global dimensionality and have closed intervals. Striated
space 'closes a surface, divides it up at determinate intervals, establishes
breaks, whereas a smooth space involves distribution across a surface,
by frequency or along paths' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 481, trans.
modified).
We saw in Chapter 3 how Deleuze's Nietzschean conception of phil-
osophy as the invention of 'new possibilities for life' implies an evaluative
distinction between the reactive power of incorporation or capture and
the active power of transmutation or metamorphosis. In the same manner,
the differences between striated and smooth space must also be understood
in evaluative terms. Smooth spaces are the geometrical equivalent of lines
of flight or deterritorialisation. Although they do not in themselves
amount to spaces of pure freedom, it is nevertheless in these spaces that
political struggles undergo transformation or their goals are displaced.
The emergence of smooth spaces is a condition under which 'life reconsti-
tutes its stakes, confronts new obstacles, invents new paces, switches adver-
saries' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 500). However, in accordance with the
complexity that is always present in the Deleuzian structure of evaluation,
we must always assess what kind of smooth space we are dealing with: is
it one that has been captured by state forces or one that results from the
dissolution of a striated space? Does it allow more or less freedom of
movement? Above all, we should never believe 'that a smooth space will
suffice to save us' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 500).
The fundamental antipathy between war-machine and state derives from
their relations to two incompatible kinds of space. In each case, this is a
constitutive relation. It follows from the essence of the state as a machine
112
of capture that it creates homogeneous and measurable or striated spaces.

The constitution of a milieu of inferiority implies the drawing of bound-
aries and the installation of common measures which enable the determina-
tion of similarities and differences: 'One of the fundamental tasks of the
state is to striate the space over which it reigns' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 385). By contrast, war-machine assemblages are metamorphosis
machines which propagate smooth space. The fundamental tendency of
the war-machine lies in this active relation to smooth space: the war-
machine is 'in its essence the constitutive element of smooth space, the
occupation of this space, displacement within this space and the cor-
responding composition of peoples: this is its sole and veritable positive
objective (nomos). To increase the desert' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
417, trans, modified).
The antipathy between state and war-machine is in turn the basis of
Deleuze and Guattari's account of how war can result from an assemblage
which has no necessary relation to war. It is precisely when contact occurs
between these two modes of being that conflict erupts and the war-
machine's affinity with absolute war is actualised. By 'war', Deleuze and
Guattari understand the use of force in order to achieve the annihilation
or capitulation of enemy forces (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 417). It
follows that not every collective use of force or regime of violence constitu-
tes 'war': the forms of limited or sporadic violence practised within or
between non-state societies do not amount to war in this sense (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 447-8). It also follows that the state, no more than
the war-machine, does not have a necessary relation to war. In support of
this thesis, Deleuze and Guattari invoke the work of anthropologist Pierre
Clastres, who argues in Society against the state (Clastres 1977) that in
some primitive societies war-like activity is a means of preventing con-
centrations of power which may give rise to forms of state (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 357-9). They also draw upon Clausewitz, both in order to
reinforce their thesis that the state has no necessary relation to war and
also for their concept of war itself. In his classic treatise On War (Clause-
witz 1958), Clausewitz distinguished between the Idea of 'absolute war'
and the actual wars undertaken by states in pursuit of their political objec-
tives. Understood in these Kantian terms, absolute war is like a pure flow
of violence, the goal of which is the annihilation of an enemy. States can
be more or less good conductors of this flow, but there is no essential
relation to war on the part of states. Deleuze and Guattari's argument is
not that the state is fundamentally benign, but rather that it disposes of a
different regime of violence. In and of itself, the state relies upon a struc-
tural or lawful violence, a violence of capture, whose institutional mani-
festations are juridical and penal institutions of capture and punishment
such as police and prisons. For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari argue,
the essential characteristic of state violence is that
113
it consists in capturing while simultaneously constituting a right to

capture . . . 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.
We shall argue below that the capture of colonial territory by European

states is a paradigm of lawful state violence. But even within the modern
forms of state, as Foucault and others have pointed out, the juridico-penal
system contributes to the constitution of the very criminal underclass
against whom it is overwhelmingly deployed and the punishment of some
citizens is integral to the constitution of all as equal subjects before the law.
Assemblages of the war-machine type are defined by their tendency to
propagate smooth space. They may engage in war, but this is a synthetic
rather than an analytic feature of the war-machine. It is only by default
that war-machines become engaged in war. This default is triggered by
the encounter with states, since as apparatuses of capture, these are by
nature hostile to the extension of smooth space. Only when its funda-
mental strategy is thwarted by contact with the state does the conduct of
war become an objective of the war-machine. To the extent that state
apparatuses resist the tendency of the war-machine to increase smooth
space, war-machines must undertake their annihilation as a secondary con-
sequence of the pursuit of their primary objective. The synthetic relation of
the war-machine to the flow of pure war becomes actualised and the war-
machine becomes a conductor of total war directed against the state. War
is not essential to the war-machine considered as an abstract machine of
pure exteriority and metamorphosis. But the fact that the war-machine is
defined by its constitutive relation to smooth space implies a fundamental
antipathy to the apparatus of capture and striated space. Actual war is
triggered by the encounter between forms of state and war-machine. In
other words, war is at once both accidental to the nature of the war-
machine and inevitable, since the forms of state and war-machine are
coeval elements of any social field. To the extent that assemblages of the
war-machine type coexist alongside apparatuses of capture, war remains a
contingent but inevitable feature of the social field. The war-machine there-
fore has a 'supplementary' relation to the conduct of war, in Derrida's
sense of the term 'supplement' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 417).
War is therefore not a basic principle of Deleuzian social theory, but a
result of the inevitable conflict between two contradictory modes of being.
At the same time as war becomes the object of the war-machine, the state
in turn is compelled to appropriate its own war-machine. Throughout
Plateau 12 '1227: Treatise on nomadology - the war-machine', Deleuze
and Guattari distinguish between the war-machine in so far as it has been
114
appropriated and turned into a military apparatus of the state, and the
war-machine in its 'natural' state, external and unrelated to the state-
form. From the point of view of universal history, they suggest, the appro-
priation of forms of war-machine has been one of the most important tasks
undertaken by states. This appropriation takes a variety of forms, from the
annexation of a warrior caste or the employment of mercenaries to the
creation of modern professional armed forces. In all cases, however,
the relationship between the state and war-machine is fraught with
danger. As examples drawn from Dumézil's studies of Indo-European
mythology and Shakespeare's Richard HI attest, the mutual suspicion of
the statesman and warrior is widely borne out in myth and in history. In
turn, the persistence of this antagonism testifies to the exteriority of these
two assemblages. Contemporary cinema also provides many examples of
the mutual suspicion between warriors and servants of the state. In Francis
Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz is a soldier
formerly in the service of the state who has surrendered to the flow of
total violence and become a war-machine outside the control of the mili-
tary apparatus. As a warrior gone out of control, he has become a threat
to the overriding political objectives of the conflict which can no longer
be tolerated. 2
Real or imagined nomads

Deleuze and Guattari establish the exteriority of state and war-machine by
pointing to qualitative differences in two directions: externally, where it is
a matter of the most general characteristics of the assemblages in relation
to one another and to third-party phenomena such as war and space; and
internally, by analyses of the different elements and modes of articulation
which compose each type of assemblage. As an example of their internal
analysis of the differences, consider their comparison of tools and weapons.
They argue that the elements of a particular assemblage are only defined as
such by the play of differential traits and affinities under which they belong
to that assemblage. The difference between a tool and a weapon may be
abstractly specified in terms of the use to which each is put. Beyond that,
it is difficult to establish a list of intrinsic qualities that will differentiate
one from the other: weapons and tools 'have no intrinsic characteristics.
They have internal (and not intrinsic) characteristics relating to the respec-
tive assemblages with which they are associated' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 398). The same physical object, such as an axe, may serve either as
a tool or a weapon. In each case, the object will involve a particular
relation to the application of force or to movement, but it is not the same
force or the same movement. Weapons stand in an internal relation to
speed, in contrast to the essential gravity of tools. Absolute speed is a
characteristic of the war-machine, whereas the state has an affinity with
115
gravitas. Both weapons and tools involve the application of force, but it is
not the same mode of application in each case: weapons are projective,
whereas tools are introceptive. Tools involve an expenditure of force as
work, confronting resistance and being consumed in the process, whereas
weapons involve the exercise of force according to a model of free action
where this does not aim at overcoming a resistance so much as at impelling
the weapon itself in such a manner that it creates and occupies a smooth
space (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 397). Ultimately, the distinction
between weapons and tools refers back to the difference between assem-
blages of the war-machine and state kinds. Weapons and tools must be
understood in terms of the nature of the assemblages to which they
belong. Assemblages are essentially functional apparatuses and they are
primary in relation to their components. In this sense, Deleuze and
Guattari assert that: 'weapons and tools are consequences, nothing but
consequences' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 398).
We saw above that Deleuze and Guattari argue for the exteriority of the
war-machine and its irreducibility to the form of the state. In addition, they
claim that it is not enough to assert the exteriority of the war-machine and
the state, but that 'it is necessary to reach the point of conceiving the war-
machine as itself a pure form of exteriority' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
354). In other words, war-machine assemblages are the expression of a
peculiar kind of abstract machine, one that 'exists only in its own meta-
morphoses' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 360). It follows that there can be
no concept of the war-machine in the traditional sense of a series of fea-
tures or marks that will determine necessary and sufficient conditions for
something falling under the concept. War-machines are rhizomatic assem-
blages which can only be defined by their relations to the outside and
their concept is delineated by tracing a line of continuous conceptual varia-
tion in relation to elements and phenomena 'external' to assemblages of the
war-machine type. In this sense, the war-machine concept is a limit case of
the potential variability inherent in all concepts. For these reasons, Deleuze
and Guattari define the characteristics of the war-machine by reference to
the conditions of nomadic existence. However, the question is: 'what in
nomad life is a principle and what is only a consequence?' (Deleuze and
In effect, the relation to smooth space is the principle of nomadic
existence as they define it. This is the 'territorial principle' of the nomad:
to be 'distributed in a smooth space which he occupies, inhabits, holds'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 381, see also 410). It is on this basis that
they distinguish nomads from migrants, itinerants and transhumants who
also move about, some of them no less incessantly than nomads.3 For the
migrant or transhumant, a journey is simply a trajectory between two
points, whereas for the nomad, it is the journey that matters, the points
along the way being 'strictly subordinated to the paths they determine'
116
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 380). In contrast to the roads and highways
that connect the regions of sedentary social space, the paths of nomadic
existence serve to distribute individuals and groups across an open and
indeterminate space. Whereas sedentary space is striated by enclosures
and paths between enclosures, the territory of nomadic peoples is a pure
surface for mobile existence, without enclosures or fixed patterns of distri-
bution. Deleuze and Guattari draw upon accounts of the life of desert
peoples to make the connection between nomadism and smooth space,
but in the end this means that the desert in their text is little more than a
rhetorical expression of smooth space. Ultimately, it is the active relation
to smooth space which defines the fundamental nature of the war-machine
and that of the nomad as well: 'the nomads make the desert no less than
they are made by it. They are vectors of deterritorialization' (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 382). To say that nomadic existence is essentially deter-
ritorialised and deterritorialising is not to say that real nomads have no
attachment to territory, but rather that their relationship to their territory
is different to that of sedentary peoples. They do have territories, which
they are reluctant to quit unless driven away by force as they often were
under the pressure of colonial occupation, but these territories are not
homelands which belong to them so much as the ground or support of
their existence. The different relationship to territory is one of the reasons
why European colonists were typically unable or unwilling to recognise
indigenous inhabitants as proprietors of their lands. Deleuze and Guattari's
references to actual nomads are largely confined to peoples of North
Africa, the Middle East and the Eurasian steppes. We shall consider in the
next section how the colonial capture of indigenous territories led to the
dispossession of nomadic peoples in other parts of the world.
Deleuze and Guattari's axiom linking nomads and war-machines means
that the phrase 'nomadic war-machine' is a pleonasm and the detailed
account of the conditions of nomadic existence no more than a means to
specify key characteristics of the war-machine. The connection between
nomads and war-machine assemblages appears to be justified by their
historical claim that processes of becoming-nomad tended to involve the
constitution of a war-machine. In reality, they make it an axiom that the
war-machine is a nomadic invention. This procedure draws attention to
the fact that they are engaged in the invention of a concept rather than
empirical social science. In an important and well-informed critique of
Deleuze and Guattari's nomadology, Christopher Miller argues that their
reliance upon anthropological sources, however limited, commits them to
'anthropological referentiality' and leads them to make anthropological
statements (Miller 1993: 11-13). 4 However, while he points to passages
in which Deleuze and Guattari deny that they are making empirical
claims, Miller does not take sufficient account of the abstract nature of
the assemblages which they seek to define, much less the sense in which
117
they are attempting to define a novel type of abstract machine which exists
only in its multiple variations. As an abstract machine, the war-machine
is not to be confused with any concrete social or military apparatus.
The axiom that the war-machine is invented by nomads means that the
nomadism which they describe must be regarded as abstract to the same
degree as the war-machine. It follows that Deleuzian nomads are virtual
or conceptual objects whose features are settled not by observation, but
by definition. The quasi-empirical claims made about nomadic existence
only serve to specify the characteristics of the abstract machine which
defines assemblages of the war-machine type. It is therefore no criticism to
suggest that, through their reliance on dubious anthropology, they 'risk
superficiality and imprecision in their understanding of specific situations'
(Miller 1993: 20). The appropriate response, from the point of view of
their real aim in outlining a concept of nomadism, would be to abandon
such material and look for other ways to specify the concept.
Further, in so far as the concept of nomadism is understood as the
expression of an abstract machine of pure exteriority, it cannot be con-
sidered bound to any given form of expression. In their own terms, Deleuze
and Guattari are engaged in philosophy understood as the construction of
concepts. The manner in which they define nomadic existence in terms of
its relation to smooth space follows directly the conceptual paths traced
out by the nomad distribution of being which Deleuze describes in
Difference and Repetition. There he discovers among the philosophers of
univocity a
completely other distribution which must be called nomadic, a

nomad nomos, without property, enclosure or measure. Here,
there is no longer a division of that which is distributed but
rather a division among those who distribute themselves in an
open space - a space which is unlimited, or at least without precise
limits.
(Deleuze 1994: 36)
The hostility to figures of unity, totality and closure which is expressed

in the Deleuzian world of 'free differences' is a direct antecedent of the
concept of nomadism. In turn, the figure of the state-form embodies all
the conceptual as well as political forces of unity, totality and closure.
Nomadic existence is defined not so much in opposition to those forces as
in relation to a different kind of space such that there is no common
measure between them.
Nevertheless, to say that the accounts of nomadism and the war-machine
serve the philosophical purpose of constructing concepts of a certain kind
does not mean that the conditions of nomadic social life offer the most
effective means to present key features of the concept in question, or that
118
the result is a good concept which counteractualises certain kinds of trans-

formative agency. I suggested above that the war-machine concept is
betrayed by its name and that it might be better to think of the abstract
machine in question as a metamorphosis machine. Another aspect of
Miller's criticism of the concept of nomadism gives reason to think that
'nomadism' might not be the most helpful path to understanding the
nature and workings of such machines: this is his suggestion that, behind
all the questions that can be raised with regard to the reliability of the
anthropological sources on which Deleuze and Guattari draw for their
accounts of nomadic existence, there lies the more profound and unsettling
issue of the historical condition of anthropological discourse in general:
'colonialism and its project of controlling by knowing' (Miller 1993: 20).
The choice of the term 'war-machine' to represent assemblages of mutation
and transformation is understandable in the context of the language of
struggle and class war which was characteristic of the post-1968 French
left. Might not the choice of nomads to specify the characteristics of war-
machines and smooth space betray a Eurocentric primitivism and a
fascination for the Other, the limits of which were already apparent to the
authors?5
While there may be some truth in this diagnosis, it would be a mistake
to suppose that this was all that lay behind the appeal to a concept of
nomadism in order to counteractualise the modern forms of resistance to
state and capture. For, as in Deleuze's revalorisation of simulacra or pro-
cesses of becoming, the association of nomadism with qualitative multi-
plicity, smooth space and the conditions of transformation is intended to
controvert a deep stratum of the European social imaginary. In particular,
it is a concept designed to overturn the priority attached to sedentary
forms of agriculture and social life at the expense of more fluid and
mobile relations to the earth. If, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, 'history
is always written from the sedentary point of view' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 23), their nomadology is an attempt to provide another perspective.
The relationship of sedentary peoples to the earth is mediated by a regime
of property or a state apparatus whereas in the case of nomads, they
argue, 'it is deterritorialization that constitutes the relation to the earth'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 381). Throughout the history of European
colonisation, a recurrent form of justification for the expropriation of
inhabited land has been the claim that the indigenous inhabitants were
not sufficiently settled or had not tilled the land in a manner that made
them rightful owners. J. G. A. Pocock argues that the crucial premise in
this justification is that of vagrancy: 'the premise that a wandering condi-
tion dehumanizes or must precede humanization' (Pocock 1992: 36). In
practice, the absence of sedentary institutions and agricultural practices
was considered sufficient to relegate the native peoples of North America
and Oceania to a condition of primitive savagery and to a cultural time
119
before the advent of civilisation. Pocock points out that the presumptions
associated with the 'Enlightened' preference for sedentary over nomadic
forms of social existence still served to legitimate the expropriation of
Maori land in Aotearoa/New Zealand well into the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, 'when the tangata whenua [people of the land] were
theorised as "savages", and denied any relation with the whenua on the
grounds that they had not appropriated it through the arable techniques
of agriculture' (Pocock 1992: 40).
In the remainder of this chapter, we shall consider the legal history of
colonisation from a nomadological perspective. We noted above that
assemblages of the war-machine type are revolutionary machines of muta-
tion and change. Their natural tendency is to emit quanta of deterritoriali-
sation and draw lines of flight or deterritorialisation along which they, as
well as the apparatuses of capture, may be transformed. We saw too that
it is a consequence of the concept of abstract machines that they are
susceptible to actualisation in more than one material domain. That is
why Deleuze and Guattari can demonstrate their axiom that war-machine
assemblages are external to the state by reference to distinct modes of
thought in science and philosophy (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 361-80).
It follows that, just as capture is not confined to the forms of political cap-
ture associated with sovereign states, so the key characteristics of metamor-
phosis machines (such as a productive relation to smooth space) are not
confined to political forms of resistance to capture. Deleuze points to the
possibility of metamorphosis machines in the law when he suggests in an
interview that, within constitutional states, the parallel to nomadic
processes of liberation lies not in 'established and codified constitutional
rights' but in 'everything that is legally problematic and constantly
threatens to bring what's been established back into question' (Deleuze
1995b: 153). In constitutional states, political creativity often takes the
form of the problematisation of existing rights or the creation of new
ones.6 Moreover, if as Deleuze suggests, 'it is jurisprudence which is truly
creative of rights' (Deleuze 1995b: 169, trans, modified), then jurispru-
dence must also be considered a potential site of metamorphosis machines
capable of deterritorialising legal regimes of capture.
Colonisation
Deleuze and Guattari's blunt assertion that 'The state is sovereignty'
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 360) points to the intimate connection
between sovereignty and the stratification of global political space in a
system of territorial states. Nicholas Onuf suggests that the modern con-
cept of sovereignty has three constituent elements, namely unchallenged
rule over a given territory, majesty and 'agency' where this means the
exercise of governance over a given territory and people (Onuf 1991: 426).
120
From a historical point of view, these different elements of sovereignty may

appear over time in relative independence of one another. From an analytic
point of view, they are all components of the concept of sovereignty in
its modern form. Onuf suggests that the peculiarly modern combination
of majesty, uncontested rule and government in the supposed interests of
those governed forms the 'primary architecture' of the modern state, to the
extent that it is redundant to speak of 'sovereign' states. He writes:
The state is the land, the people, the organisation of coercion and
a majestic idea, each supporting each other, so that they become
indivisible. Sovereignty describes this conceptual fusion and thus
the territorial organisation of early modern Europe. Simply by
adding states to its margins, the early modern world irresistibly
grew to its present proportions.
(Onuf 1991: 437)
The historical process by which the European world added states to

its margins involved the incorporation of indigenous peoples and their
territories into the sovereign territory of existing states. Deleuze and
Guattari offer no explicit theory of colonisation; however, their theory of
the state as apparatus of capture is particularly suited to describe this pro-
cess. Consider the elements of modern sovereignty identified by Onuf.
Each of these elements appears in Deleuze and Guattari's characterisation
of the state. The state is sovereignty, they argue, but 'sovereignty only
reigns over what it is capable of internalizing' (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 360). In other words, the state is inseparable from the exercise of
ultimate authority over a given territorial domain or 'milieu of interiority'.
Second, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that sovereignty has two poles. On
the one hand, it involves a form of 'magical capture' through which
authority is irrevocably imposed. In the terms of Georges DuméziPs analy-
sis of Indo-European mythology, this corresponds to the action of the
magician-king who casts a net and 'captures' the people or territory by
quasi-magical means. This aspect of sovereignty corresponds to what
Onuf calls 'majesty'. In the case of modern colonialism, magical capture
persists in the form of the belief that certain symbolic acts, such as the rais-
ing of flags or the reading of proclamations, are sufficient to establish
sovereignty over newly 'discovered' territories. On the other hand, sover-
eignty always implies the activity of a jurist-legislator who builds a political
structure by means of laws and political institutions. This aspect of sover-
eignty corresponds to the element of governmental agency which is charac-
teristic of modern sovereign rule and which, in the colonial case, comes
after the initial acquisition of territory.
In addition to the locus of sovereign power, Deleuze and Guattari claim,
the basic constituents of a nation-state are a land and a people, where
121
'land' is understood to mean a deterritorialised geographical area and

where 'people' is understood as a decoded flow of free labour (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 456). In this sense, a modern nation-state is one par-
ticular solution to the problem of society in general, involving a particular
configuration of fundamental economic relations, including the division of
labour and the relation to the means of labour such as land. In the colonial
case, the equation is complicated by the fact that the geographical surface
is already occupied by indigenous peoples with their own distinctive
relation to the earth. The social organisation of hunter-gatherer peoples
involves a very different solution to the problem of society, one that
realises an altogether different abstract machine from that expressed in
the modern nation-state. In cases such as this, where the indigenous inhabi-
tants lived an itinerant existence in accordance with the requirements of a
territorial assemblage, both 'land' and 'people' were lacking. The colonial
authorities had either to import other people in order to provide labour
(slaves or convicts), or to transform indigenous inhabitants into subjects
of labour. First, though, they had to transform the earth into land fit
for appropriation and exploitation by the establishment of a system of
property.
Law and the capture of territory

As we saw in Chapter 5, Deleuze and Guattari propose a concept of the
state as a particular expression of an abstract machine which they call the
state-form. The essence of this abstract machine is capture and the estab-
lishment of a modern nation-state involves a particular form of capture of
both the earth or geographical surface and the people or their productive
activity: it requires land as opposed to territory, labour as opposed to free
activity. Consider first the capture of human activity in the form of
labour, a mechanism perfected by capitalism but already practised in the
archaic imperial states. Productive activity may proceed under what
Deleuze and Guattari call a regime of 'free action' or activity in continuous
variation, such as may be found in the territorial assemblages of hunter-
gatherer societies. Productive activity becomes labour once a standard of
comparison is imposed, in the form of a definite quantity to be produced
or a time to be worked. The transformation of free activity into labour by
the imposition of a standard in turn allows the extraction of a surplus. In
order for surplus labour to be extracted in the form of profit, labour itself
must become a commodity. In effect, Deleuze and Guattari's argument is
that 'labor (in the strict sense) begins only with what is called surplus
labor'. With reference to the work of anthropologists such as Marshall
Sahlins, they note that in contrast to colonial perceptions that indigenous
peoples were unsuited for work, 'so-called primitive societies are not
122
societies of shortage or subsistence due to an absence of work, but on the

contrary are societies of free action and smooth space that have no use
for a work-factor' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 490-1). It is because the
indigenous inhabitants of the New World did not labour in this strict
sense of the term that they were considered by colonists not to work,
much less to work the land in a way that afforded them rights over it.
In the case of the capture of portions of the earth's surface which make
these portions lands rather than territories, Deleuze and Guattari describe
the conditions which enable the extraction of ground-rent as 'the very
model of an apparatus of capture' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 441). The
imposition of ground-rent involves the establishment of means of com-
paring the productivity of different portions simultaneously exploited, or
means of comparing the productivity of the same portion successively
exploited. The measure of productivity provides a general space of com-
parison, a measure of qualitative differences between portions of the
earth's surface which is absent from the territorial assemblage of hunter-
gatherer society. Thus, land stands to territory as labour stands to free
activity: 'labor and surplus labor are the apparatus of capture of activity
just as the comparison of lands and the appropriation of land are the
apparatus of capture of territory' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 442). In
each case, we find the same two key elements: the constitution of a general
space of comparison and the establishment of a centre of appropriation.
However, a further condition is necessary to sustain the politico-
economic capture of the earth and its resources. In order for ground-rent to
be extracted, the difference in productivity must be linked to a landowner:
'Ground rent homogenizes, equalizes different conditions of productivity
by linking the excess of the highest conditions of productivity over the
lowest to a landowner' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 441). The colonial
extension of the European state system therefore requires a system of
private property in land. In order for surplus labour to be extracted in the
form of profit, both land and labour must become commodities. In the
colonial case, the precondition of the productive employment of labour
was the deterritorialisation of indigenous territories by their conversion
into land. The extraction of ground-rent is not only the very model of an
apparatus of capture but 'inseparable from a process of relative deter-
ritorialization' because 'instead of people being distributed in an itinerant
territory, pieces of land are distributed among people according to a
common quantitative criterion' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 441). The
conversion of portions of the earth inhabited by so-called primitive peoples
into an appropriable and exploitable resource therefore requires the estab-
lishment of a juridical centre of appropriation. The centre establishes a
monopoly over what has now become land and assigns to itself the right
to allocate ownership of portions of unclaimed land. This centre is the
123
legal sovereign and the monopoly is the assertion of sovereignty over the
territories in question.
The fundamental jurisprudential problem of colonisation is therefore the
manner in which the territorial domains of the prior inhabitants become
transformed into a uniform space of landed property. This points to the
fundamental role played by law in the capture of indigenous peoples and
their territories: 'law, regarded by the West as its most respected and
cherished instrument of civilisation, was also the West's most vital
and effective instrument of empire . . . above all . . . Europe's conquest of
the New World was a legal enterprise' (Williams 1990: 6). Law was par-
ticularly important in the case of those settler societies established by the
British Crown relatively late in the European diaspora such as Canada,
Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. These were colonies which, from
the outset, were supposed to be governed in accordance with British
common law. As a result, the basis of their property law lay in the feudal
doctrine of tenure whereby all title to land is ultimately derived from the
Crown. The Crown is the ultimate authority with regard to ownership of
land in the territory and the centre of appropriation and alienation of
land title. By virtue of its right of sovereignty or imperium, the Crown has
the power both to create and extinguish private rights and interests in
land. In this sense, Crown land amounts to a uniform expanse of potential
real property which covers the earth to the extent of the sovereign territory.
It follows that, within these common-law jurisdictions, the imposition of
sovereignty constitutes an apparatus of capture in the precise sense which
Deleuze and Guattari give to this term. The legal imposition of sovereignty
effects an instantaneous deterritorialisation of indigenous territories and
their reterritorialisation as a uniform space of Crown land centred upon
the figure of the sovereign.
The mere fact of a change of sovereignty means nothing to the indigen-
ous inhabitants. The occupation of their territory by settlers proceeds
slowly and with varying degrees of legal regulation. The legal institutions
of the colony do not immediately impact upon their communities: internal
disputes continue to be settled according to traditional customary law.
However, once the reality of colonisation begins to take hold, they are
inevitably driven to seek recognition of their rights to land and the pro-
tection of their traditional way of life. The only peaceful avenues open to
them involve the institutions of law and representative government
introduced along with Crown sovereignty. In the absence of negotiated
settlements or a sympathetic hearing from colonial legislatures, they are
compelled to seek the protection of the law. In common-law countries, the
doctrine of aboriginal rights and title to land provides one of the few avail-
able remedies against the capture of their traditional territories.
124
Aboriginal or native title

Different forms of legal capture resulted from the manner in which, and the
degree to which, indigenous customary law and property rights were
accommodated by the colonial legal system. A variety of legal instruments
were employed, including treaties, the doctrine of conquest and the occupa-
tion of territory supposed to be uninhabited or terra nullius. Under the so-
called extended principle of terra nullius, inhabited land was considered
open to settlement when the indigenous inhabitants were considered so
uncivilised by European standards that they lacked the elementary forms
of 'political society'. This remains the accepted basis for the British claim
to sovereignty over its Australian territories. 7 In colonies where treaties
were signed, these often allowed that aboriginal peoples would retain
their lands along with their right to live according to their own laws and
cultural institutions. However, even where there were no explicit treaties,
the principles of British colonial constitutional law which had become
established in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
guaranteed the survival of aboriginal customary law and property rights. 8
Although the doctrine of aboriginal rights was an established body of
unwritten law, the degree to which and manner in which these principles
were implemented varied considerably from one colony to the next. In the
United States, a strong concept of aboriginal title and a right to self-
government was laid down in a series of decisions by the Supreme Court,
beginning with Johnson v. M'Intosh in 1823. Chief Justice Marshall relied
upon the notion that 'discovery' gave exclusive underlying title to the
European colonial state to argue that the rights of the original inhabitants
to complete sovereignty were necessarily diminished. They could no
longer enter into treaties with or sell land to anyone but the overriding
sovereign. They did, however, retain the right to continue their traditional
way of life and to exercise control over their own lands. 9
The doctrine of aboriginal rights meant that the imposition of British
sovereignty did not in and of itself adversely affect the property rights of
aboriginal peoples. However, it was a consequence of the feudal doctrine
of land tenure that, along with sovereignty, the Crown acquired the under-
lying or radical title to all land in the colony. This underlying title is the
basis of the Crown's power to grant or to extinguish property in land.
Where the Crown chose not to exercise this power, the laws and customs
of the aboriginal inhabitants could remain in force. The common-law doc-
trine of native title was, in effect, a mechanism through which the colonial
legal system could recognise and protect aboriginal territory and customary
law. Aboriginal or native title of this kind was recognised in New Zealand
as early as 1847 and in Canada from 1888. 10 Australia was a notable
exception. Until the establishment of statutory land rights legislation in
the 1970s, the legal capture of territory involved the total exclusion of
125
indigenous law and custom. Before the historic 1992 judgment of the High
Court in Mabo v. Queensland, there was no legal recognition of any rights
to land other than those derived from the Crown.11 This case involved a
claim to ownership of land on the Murray Islands off the northern coast
of Queensland. The majority judges affirmed for the first time that
aboriginal or native title formed part of Australian common law. They
drew attention to the distinction between radical or ultimate title and
ownership, in order to separate property rights from the underlying title
to land assumed by the Crown with the imposition of sovereignty, and in
order to argue that the importation of English property law was not of
itself an obstacle to the recognition of indigenous people's pre-existing
interests in land. As a result, a form of title to land grounded in the native
law and custom which existed prior to colonisation could now be recog-
nised and protected by the common law.
The Mabo decision appeared to many elements of Australian settler
society to pose a serious threat to the moral as well as the legal basis of
colonial rule. Because the introduction of native title into the Australian
legal system threatened important interests by its effects on mining invest-
ment and pastoral property values, successive federal governments were
impelled to undertake a secondary reterritorialisation by legislative means:
a Native Title Act passed at the end of 1993 served to validate mining
and pastoral leases, and to regulate the procedure by which native title
claims could be made. Revisions to this legislation in 1998 had the effect
of further limiting the scope for aboriginal land claims. The government's
response thus amounted to an attempt to reaffirm the integrity of a colonial
society founded upon a primary reterritorialisation of aboriginal territory
and a marginalisation of aboriginal cultures, laws and peoples. At the
same time, statements by some of the judges and their supporters demon-
strate the sense in which Mabo represented a profound shift in public atti-
tudes towards the aboriginal population and previous ways in which they
had been treated by the law and government.12 The controversy which
accompanied this decision also showed that the micropolitical attitudinal
shift among the non-indigenous population was by no means universal.
It was more a question of the opening up of a fissure within the social
imaginary with respect to its colonial past and the treatment of the
indigenous population. This could represent the beginning of a becoming-
indigenous of the social imaginary, a line of flight along which legal and
social change is possible, or it could represent little more than a minor
readjustment of the legal terms in which colonial capture was carried out.
In Deleuze and Guattari's terms, the question is whether the introduction
of native title jurisprudence into a colonial jurisdiction from which it had
been excluded could be anything more than a partial or relative deterritor-
ialisation of an antiquated and discriminatory system of legal capture.
Could it carry the potential for a larger transformation of the colonial
126
body politic or would it be all too readily subject to a definitive reterritoria-

lisation within the framework of the existing nation-state?13 We should not
be too quick to discount the deterritorialising power of new rights. Their
effectivity in legal and constitutional space might be compared to that of
those singular points which determine the shape of a curve in mathematics
and which are themselves, by Deleuze's account, the expression of a par-
ticular differential. Rights too are virtual singularities, the consequences of
which are only actualised in specific court decisions, legislative enactments
and the interactions between these.
Although the doctrine of aboriginal title had long been accepted in
Canadian law, it had little impact on the relations between aboriginal com-
munities and the state before the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Colder in
1973. 14 Since then, this doctrine has been the site of a developing body of
jurisprudence which has significantly altered the capacity of aboriginal peo-
ples to reassert control over traditional territories and resources. Similar
developments have occurred in Australia post Mabo, and in Aotearoa/
New Zealand, although the jurisprudence in that country is complicated
by its relation to the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and the Tribunal established
in 1975 to hear claims under the terms of the Treaty. Prior to the revival of
aboriginal title jurisprudence in Canada, the nature and scope of the legal
right in question were uncertain. The 1887 case of St Catherine's Milling
and Lumber Company defined it as a mere 'personal and usufructuary
right, dependent on the good will of the sovereign'. In addition, the applic-
ability of this legal right to aboriginal peoples tended to be judged in the
light of nineteenth-century colonial assumptions about relative levels of
civilisation and their implications for the existence of legally enforceable
rights. An influential statement of this 'barbarian principle' was offered by
the Privy Council in 1919 in the form of the opinion that
Some tribes are so low in the scale of social organisation that their
usages and conceptions of rights and duties are not to be recon-
ciled with the institutions or the legal ideas of civilised society.
Such a gulf cannot be bridged. It would be idle to impute to such
people some shadow of the rights known to our law and then to
transmute it into the substance of transferable rights of property
as we know them.15
The view that the indigenous inhabitants were barbarians without settled
law had long been accepted in New South Wales as the basis for the refusal
to recognise aboriginal customary law. 16 Similar views were expressed by
the trial judge in the 1991 case of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia,
when he described aboriginal peoples at the time of first European contact
as too primitive to have a form of law capable of recognition by the
colonists.17 The rejection of these colonial assumptions in a series of
127
landmark decisions that began with Calder in Canada and Mabo in

Australia opened the way for a process of judicial and political elaboration
of aboriginal property rights, the result of which has been to create new
opportunities for enhanced economic and political autonomy on the part
of indigenous peoples.
In Mabo v. Queensland (1992), the High Court of Australia explicitly
rejected the 'barbarian' principle which had allowed the land to be treated
as though it were terra nullius, both because it was based upon false
assumptions about the nature of aboriginal society at the time of colonisa-
tion, and because it represented a discriminatory and racist judgment
about the nature of aboriginal society which could no longer be tolerated.
The Court found that rights to the use of land in accordance with tradi-
tional law and custom could be recognised and protected, at least where
these rights had not been extinguished by a valid exercise of the Crown's
prerogative. The Court also held that native title could be extinguished by
the Crown without consent or compensation. Despite a rhetorical commit-
ment to respect for the rights of the indigenous inhabitants, it was clear
that the Court considered native title to be a lesser form of property
subject to a number of important restrictions. In the appeal case of
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia decided in 1997, the Canadian Supreme
Court laid down guidelines for defining and proving aboriginal title. The
Court rejected the idea that this was limited to traditional uses of land
and resources in favour of a more robust conception of native title as
encompassing
the right to exclusive use and occupation of the land held pursuant
to that title for a variety of purposes, which need not be aspects of
those aboriginal practices, customs and traditions which are
integral to distinctive aboriginal cultures . . . However, that range
of uses is subject to the limitation that they must not be irreconcil-
able with the nature of the attachment to the land which forms the
basis of the particular group's aboriginal title.
(Delgamuukw 1998: 86)
Although protected by Section 35 (1) of the Canadian Constitution Act of

1982, aboriginal title may still be overridden by the legislature acting in
the broader national interest.
Even though it is no longer dependent on the good will of the sovereign,
aboriginal or native title remains subject to a number of conditions which
serve to protect the overarching sovereignty of the colonial state. In strictly
legal terms, aboriginal or native title amounts to little more than a limited
and relative deterritorialisation of the legal apparatus of capture of
indigenous territory. In the terms of Deleuze and Guattari's account of the
modern state as a model of realisation of the capitalist axiomatic, native
128
title jurisprudence amounts to the addition of an axiom to regulate the dis-

tinct but subordinate status of internally colonised peoples. At the same
time, because of the manner in which native title implies reference to a
body of indigenous law and custom, there is a sense in which the concept
of native title has the potential to undermine the legal capture of aboriginal
territory. The concept of aboriginal or native title was always a curious
hybrid of indigenous and common law, which one commentator described
as 'an autonomous body of law that bridges the gulf between native
systems of tenure and the European property systems applying in the settler
communities. It overarches and embraces these systems, without forming
part of them' (Slattery 1987: 745). The Australian High Court defined
native title as straddling the border between the common law and systems
of indigenous law in a manner which emphasised the inherent undecid-
ability of this concept: 'native title, though recognised by the common
law, is not an institution of the common law' (Bartlett 1993: 42).
Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson has suggested that native title should be
understood as a 'recognition concept', by which he means a concept in
terms of which one body of law recognises the other under certain con-
ditions. As such, he argues, native title belongs to the space between two
systems of law (Pearson 1997: 154).
The consequences of this interpretation of the concept of native title are
far-reaching. In jurisprudential terms, the concept of aboriginal or native
title expresses a novel kind of right which opens up a smooth space in
between indigenous and colonial law. The interpretation of native title as a
recognition concept belonging to the space between the law of the coloniser
and the law of the colonised affirms that we are dealing with two bodies of
law in relation to the land, both of which claim to be final and absolute in
their own terms. It implies that there would no longer be just one body of
law which holds sway over the same territory but two or more 'law
ways'. In terms of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of becoming, the recog-
nition of native title involves a becoming-indigenous of the common law
to the extent that it now protects a property right derived from indigenous
law; and a becoming-common law of indigenous law to the extent that it
now acquires the authority along with the jurisprudential limits of the
common law doctrine of native title. In terms of their concept of capture,
the recognition of native title is a partial deterritorialisation of the legal
apparatus of capture by means of a refusal of its primary stage: the estab-
lishment of a uniform space of comparison and appropriation. It amounts
to the assertion of an irreducible difference where before there had only
been a uniform legal space of alienated or unalienated Crown land. In
this manner, aboriginal or native title gives effect to the absolute deterritor-
ialisation of the judicial apparatus of colonial capture.
In effect, the legal recognition of indigenous law and custom returns to
the fundamental jurisprudential problem of colonisation and rewrites the
129
terms of that event. It opens up the possibility of a reconfiguration of the

constitutional form of the colonial polity and the emergence of a different
solution to the problem of the colonial nation-state. To the extent that
aboriginal law would constitute distinct internal limits to the authority
and jurisdiction of the common law, there would no longer be a unique
locus of sovereign power. Sovereignty itself was not an issue in the Mabo
case and the decision bears only upon what follows from the acquisition
of sovereignty by the Crown. The judges were careful to avoid the issue
and to reaffirm the common-law doctrine that the extension of sovereignty
to a new territory was an 'act of state' that was immune to challenge in
municipal courts. Nevertheless, the judgment creates a degree of uncer-
tainty with regard to the legitimacy of the British claim to have acquired
sovereignty over land that was 'desert and uninhabited'. To the extent
that the argument of the majority judges rejected the common-law
equivalent of the extended terra nullius doctrine - the 'absence of law' or
'barbarian' principle - the case poses an implicit challenge to the official
doctrine that Australia was settled rather than conquered. As a number of
commentators have pointed out, if the High Court accepts the prior exis-
tence of aboriginal customary law and interests in land for the purposes
of the common law, then it seems committed to the view that prior indi-
genous societies were 'sovereign' in the sense that they saw themselves as
ruled by a law that was absolute and subject to no higher authority
(Patton 1996d; Ivison 1997). Conversely, it is difficult to see the law as
consistent when it rejects the barbarian principle for domestic purposes
while relying upon it as the justification of its own authority. Henry
Reynolds suggests that this is
the fundamental problem at the heart of Australian jurisprudence.

The doctrine of the settled colony only works if there literally was
no sovereignty - no recognisable political or legal organisation at
all - before 1788. And that proposition can only survive if under-
pinned by nineteenth-century ideas about 'primitive' people.
(Reynolds 1996: 13-14)
In a survey of the jurisprudence of aboriginal rights in Canada between the

1973 Colder case and the 1996 case of Van der Feet v. The Queen,18
Michael Asch argues that a similar contradiction emerges in recent
Canadian jurisprudence:
The view that indigenous peoples were uncivilised at the time of

settlement was repudiated in Calder, and to uphold it in order to
explain state sovereignty is not only contradictory; it is also repug-
nant to contemporary values. The idea is ethnocentric and racist, a
direct holdover from the colonial era . . . Yet the state has derived
130
no thesis to supplant it; the government has chosen not to address

it; and the court has chosen either to ignore it in the Calder era, or
to define it away in Van der Peet.
(Asch 1999: 441)
Although critical of the way in which the Supreme Court has sought to
characterise aboriginal rights in a manner that excludes any associated
political rights such as self-determination, Asch does not rule out the pos-
sibility that a more fundamental renegotiation of the political relationship
between indigenous peoples and the state may yet take place. His argument
that the opportunity to do so has not so far been taken up by the courts
confirms the suggestion here that the concept of aboriginal title creates a
jurisprudential smooth space which may develop in unexpected directions.
To the extent that it is able to connect up with other lines along which
the sovereignty of the colonial state is under challenge, and to avoid defini-
tive conjugation and reterritorialisation, native title jurisprudence as it con-
tinues to develop in Australia and Canada is a machine of constitutional
metamorphosis.
131
CONCLUSION
Deleuze's contribution to political thought is concentrated in the books he

co-authored with Guattari, particularly Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand
Plateaus. In the course of this brief survey, we have done little more than
chart the salient features of this complex body of work and indicate some
of the ways in which it offers new resources and new directions for think-
ing the political. We sought to show that these philosophically experi-
mental and politically engaged books are not an aberration or a detour in
relation to Deleuze's earlier work. Rather, they exemplify a conception of
philosophy which grows out of his engagement with the history of philos-
ophy and which displays the same virtues that he discerns in the tradition
which runs through Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza and Nietzsche, namely a
rejection of negativity, a belief in the externality of forces and relations, a
hatred of inferiority, and a commitment to the cultivation of joy by means
of the invention of concepts. In order to demonstrate this continuity, we
argued in Chapter 1 that Deleuze's earlier criticisms of the prevailing
'image of thought' in philosophy set the scene for his later attempts in
collaboration with Guattari to 'put concepts in motion'. We also pointed
to some of the concepts and themes which connect this collaborative
work with Deleuze's earlier studies in the history of philosophy, especially
the theory of qualitative multiplicities derived from Bergson and the
structure of immanent evaluation derived from Nietzsche's genealogy of
morality. Finally, we argued that some aspects of Deleuze's earlier writings
exercised considerable influence on political thought in their own right,
notably the metaphysics of difference elaborated on the basis of the
concept of multiplicity and the theory of differential force outlined in
Nietzsche and Philosophy.
Above all, we have sought throughout to present Deleuze's contribution
to political thought as philosophy in the sense that he and Guattari define
it in What Is Philosophy} (1994). Deleuze and Guattari share with Marx,
Nietzsche and many others the conviction that the task of philosophers is
to help make the future different from the past. For this reason, they
endow philosophy with an explicitly political vocation, defining it as the
132
CONCLUSION
creation of 'untimely' concepts. Philosophy is untimely and 'worthy of the

event' when it does not simply respond to social events as they appear but
rather creates new concepts which enable us to counter-actualise the signi-
ficant events and processes that define our historical present. Philosophy,
as they understand it, has both a cognitive and a critical function. The
cognitive function is achieved by the creation of concepts that provide
knowledge of pure events. The critical function is achieved not by the
creation of glorious images of new earths and new peoples but by the
creation of new concepts that afford new means of description of the forces
which shape our future and therefore new possibilities for action. Remark-
able or interesting concepts are those that can be taken up again and again
in new circumstances, continuing to work their subversive way through
history. Our discussion of aboriginal rights in Chapter 6 shows how the
concepts of equality before the law and the equality of peoples continue to
function as means of counter-actualisation of the treatment of indigenous
peoples in colonial countries.
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze described the act of thought as a
dice-throw, by which he meant that thinking is a form of experimentation,
the success or failure of which lies outside the control of the thinker.
Similarly, in What Is Philosophy} he and Guattari suggest that philosophy
is a form of experimentation in the creation of new concepts, by which
they mean that it is a form of critical practical reason which aims to pro-
duce new means of acting upon the present. Their account of the political
vocation of philosophy is therefore linked to a pragmatic conception of
the value of philosophical concepts. Obviously, the creation of concepts
can neither bring about nor controvert what those concepts express,
whether this be political society under a rule of law, justice, equality
between the sexes or racial equality. Rather, philosophical activity contri-
butes to making the future different from the past by affording new forms
of description, thought and action. As a result, the value of philosophical
concepts is not measured by their truth value but by their novelty, remark-
ability and degree of interest in relation to the present. It follows that the
effectiveness of philosophy as they conceive it cannot be decided by phil-
osophy alone. For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari present their own
concepts as rhizomatic conceptual assemblages, the purpose of which is
precisely to 'function' in relation to other concepts and practices outside
of themselves. The only appropriate test of the concepts they invent lies in
the attempt to make them function in new contexts.
Deleuze and Guattari do not offer a concept of the political as such.
Rather, they provide a series of concepts in terms of which we can describe
significant features of the contemporary social and political landscape.
These include concepts of social, linguistic and affective assemblages; con-
cepts of a micropolitics of desire founded on the dynamics of unconscious
affect and the different ways in which this interacts with individual and
133
collective subjectivities; a concept of capital as a non-territorially based

axiomatic of flows of materials, labour and information; a concept of the
state as an apparatus of capture which, in the forms of its present actuali-
sation, is increasingly subordinated to the requirements of the capitalist
axiomatic; a concept of abstract machines of metamorphosis which are
the agents of social and political transformation; and concepts of processes
of becoming-minor or becoming-revolutionary which embody a politics of
difference defined in opposition to all attempts to capture or reconfigure
the position of majority. Our survey of Deleuzian political philosophy
retraced the path of this fragmentary approach to the political. We began
with an account of their concept of philosophy, focusing on their concept
of philosophical concepts, and ended with one of the most heterogeneous
and mobile concepts which they invent, namely the concept of nomadic
metamorphosis machines. In keeping with the nature of this concept and
the imperative of pragmatic evaluation, we sought to re-present it by
describing the common-law concept of aboriginal or native title as a meta-
morphosis machine in relation to certain legal forms of colonial capture.
The purpose of the discussion of colonisation and native title jurispru-
dence in Chapter 6 was not to suggest a simple application of the concept
of capture to the colonial case, but rather to show that capture takes on a
specific legal form in the case of constitutional colonial states, and to
suggest that in this context the jurisprudence of aboriginal or native title
amounts to a smooth legal space with the potential to alter significantly
both the rights of indigenous peoples and the constitutional form of those
states. It was not the aim of this discussion to invoke the aboriginal peoples
of the new world as exemplary Deleuzian nomads. Rather, the aim was to
demonstrate the complexity of their concept of nomadism by showing
that it has no necessary connection with actual nomads, just as the concept
of metamorphosis machines has no necessary connection with war. At the
same time, we sought to emphasise the abstract character of the concepts
of capture, metamorphosis machine and smooth space by showing how
these could be brought to bear on the phenomenon of colonisation. It is
precisely the abstract character of these concepts which allows them to be
deployed in contexts other than those in which they were first developed.
Our examination of Deleuzian concepts relevant to the political is
incomplete in the sense that other concepts could just as well have been
the focus of attention. Among the many novel concepts proposed in the
course of A Thousand Plateaus which we have not discussed are those of
strata, bodies without organs, faciality, the order-word and the refrain.
Even the concepts selected for discussion have sometimes been truncated
in the interests of simplicity and clarity. However, over and above these
contingent limitations of the present survey, there is an important sense in
which any discussion of particular concepts will necessarily constitute an
incomplete account of Deleuzian political thought. For what Deleuze and
134
CONCLUSION
Guattari created in A Thousand Plateaus is a heterogeneous assemblage

which has no built-in end-point or conclusion and a textual machine for
the creation of new concepts. That is why A Thousand Plateaus ends with
a series of definitions and rules rather than a conclusion. These are, on
the one hand, the rules of their own construction of concepts, but also
rules which might be adapted to the creation of new concepts. Thus, in
guise of a conclusion the authors provide a series of facultative rules
under the following headings: strata, stratification; assemblages; rhizome;
plane of consistency; body without organs; deterritorialisation; abstract
machines (diagram and phylum). Even this list itself is provisional since it
relates back to the concepts actually elaborated in particular plateaus. The
point of abstracting these rules is to show how the process could be con-
tinued and new concepts could be elaborated. In this sense, the body of
philosophy created by Deleuze and Guattari is an open-ended conceptual
corpus analogous to the common law. While it possesses its own internal
consistency in the form of a skeleton of principles which are subject to
certain formal constraints, it can be modified, extended or developed so
long as these constraints are respected. It is a rhizomatic body of concepts
which can allow indefinite proliferation and self-transformation.
We suggested at the outset that the conception of philosophy as the
creation of concepts whose function and value cannot be measured simply
in terms of their power of representation has particular relevance to the
activity of political philosophy. More generally we sought to show that
Deleuze and Guattari's own work is properly regarded as political philos-
ophy, both in its normative and its descriptive dimensions. To that end,
we pointed to the distinctive concepts of power and freedom which inform
their account of social, linguistic, intellectual and other assemblages. Our
aim in doing so was not to suggest that these are better concepts of
power and freedom than those that are more common in Anglo-American
political theory, but simply to show that there are points of connection as
well as similarities and differences between them. To the extent that
Deleuze and Guattari describe a world in which the possibility of creative
differentiation from the past is ever present, they share with other post-
structuralist thinkers a commitment to what Foucault called 'the undefined
work of freedom'. In Chapter 4 we argued that this orientation relies upon
a concept of critical freedom which implies more than the absence of
restraints or limits to our capacity to realise fundamental goals: it implies
the ability to question and revise those goals and desires which determine
the present limits of individual and public reason. In Deleuze and Guattari's
philosophy, this commitment is manifest in the way that their concepts
accord systematic preference to certain kinds of movement or process over
others: becoming-minor over being majoritarian, metamorphosis over cap-
ture, deterritorialisation over reterritorialisation and so on.
135
Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of the natural and social world pro-
vides both an open-ended machinic ontology and a normative framework
within which to describe and evaluate movements or processes. As such, it
is an ethics in Spinoza's sense of the term. We showed how this structure
of immanent evaluation could be found in Deleuze's reconstruction of
Nietzsche's will to power, but also how this structure was reiterated in a
series of conceptual oppositions throughout Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand
Plateaus: schizophrenic and paranoiac assemblages of desire; molar and
molecular lines versus lines of flight; processes of deterritorialisation and
reterritorialisation. In retracing the conceptual contours of this evaluative
ontology, we focused on some concepts and pairs of concepts at the expense
of others: becoming, lines of flight or deterritorialisation, nomadism and
metamorphosis machines rather than destratification, the constitution of a
body without organs or the opposition between the plane of consistency
and the plane of organisation. While this choice of concepts was necessarily
selective in the sense that other concepts developed in A Thousand Plateaus
could have been discussed, it was not unmotivated. For we argued that the
concept of deterritorialisation lies at the heart of Deleuzian ethics and poli-
tics, to the extent that Deleuze and Guattari's mature political philosophy
might be regarded as a politics of deterritorialisation.
For this reason, we endeavoured to retrace some of the internal com-
plexity of the concept of deterritorialisation. We pointed to the distinction
between the conjunction or conjugation of deterritorialised flows which
occurs when one process of deterritorialisation is blocked or taken over to
the benefit of another on which reterritorialisation occurs, and the con-
nection of deterritorialised flows which occurs when these enter into
mutually reinforcing interactions which lead to the formation of new
territorialities. The difference between these two forms of interaction
between deterritorialised flows corresponds to a distinction between the
exercise of power where this is reciprocal and mutually beneficial and the
exercise of power in relations of domination. We also drew attention to
the fundamental distinction between relative and absolute deterritorialisa-
tion, which corresponds to the distinction Deleuze draws between the two
dimensions of any event, or between events as actualised in bodies and
states of affairs and the pure event which is never exhausted by such
actualisations. Absolute deterritorialisation is like a reserve of freedom or
movement in reality or in the earth which is activated whenever relative
deterritorialisation takes place. For Deleuze and Guattari, thought can
also be a vector of absolute deterritorialisation: 'Thinking consists in
stretching out a plane of immanence that absorbs the earth (or rather
"adsorbs" it). The deterritorialisation effected on such a plane does not
preclude reterritorialization but posits it as the creation of a new earth to
come' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 88, trans, modified). Philosophy
136
CONCLUSION
achieves this ambition by the creation of new concepts. In one sense,

Deleuze and Guattari's contribution to political thought must be judged
by reference to the concepts that they have created. In another, their
legacy to thinking the political lies in this idea of a philosophy which aims
at new and creative forms of counter-actualisation of the present.
137
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1 We are not concerned in this book to separate the contributions of Deleuze and
Guattari to the work published under both their names. However, the focus is
on Deleuze's political thought and we read their collaborative work against
the background of his earlier philosophy.
2 See Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 69; Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 117. On
Deleuze's concept of concepts and their relation to metaphor, see Patton 1997c.
3 The original title of this book is Empirisme et subjectivité: essai sur la nature
humaine selon Hume. Deleuze argues that Hume presents an idea of society
that is opposed to that of the social contract theorists. 'The main idea is this:
the essence of society is not the law but the institution. The law, in fact, is a
limitation of enterprise and action, and it focuses only on a negative aspect of
society . . . The institution, unlike the law, is not a limitation but rather a
model of actions, a veritable enterprise, an invented system of positive means
or a positive invention of indirect means . . . The social is profoundly creative,
inventive, and positive . . . Society is a set of conventions founded on utility,
not a set of obligations founded on contract' (Deleuze 1991: 45-6).
4 Guattari's exact words were: 'Nous faisons partie d'une génération dont la
conscience politique est née dans l'enthousiasme et la naïveté de la Libération,
avec sa mythologie conjuratoire du fascisme' (Deleuze and Guattari 1972: 15).
5 Several short publications by Deleuze dealing with Palestine and the Gulf War
have been translated in a special issue of Discourse, vol. 20, no. 3, Fall 1998.
On Palestine, see Deleuze 1998b, 1998c, 1998d and Deleuze and Sanbar
1998. On the Gulf War, see Deleuze et al. 1998 and Deleuze and Scherer 1998.
6 'We no longer maintain an image of the proletarian of which it is enough to
become conscious' (Deleuze 1995b: 173 trans, modified).
7 See also the discussion of public and private thinkers in '1227: Treatise on
nomadology - the war-machine' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 376-7).
8 'Politics is active experimentation, since we do not know in advance which way
a line is going to turn' (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 137).
9 In this manner, Gatens and Lloyd suggest that 'Spinoza's own political phil-
osphy is folded into the metaphysical and ethical concerns addressed in the
Ethics' (Gatens and Lloyd 1999: 8).
10 The important distinction between absolute and relative deterritorialization is
discussed in Chapter 5, pp. 106-7.
138
NOTES
1 C O N C E P T A N D IMAGE OF T H O U G H T
1 Our concern here is not with the nature of these assemblages but the practice
of philosophy which gives rise to a book of this kind. Deleuze and Guattari's
concept of assemblage is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, pp. 42-6.
2 In an interview published after his death, Deleuze described A Thousand
Plateaus as the best thing he had ever written, alone or with Guattari (Deleuze
1995a: 114).
3 The 'secret link' which unites these thinkers is their 'critique of negativity, their
cultivation of joy, the hatred of interiority, the externality of forces and
relations, the denunciation of power' (Deleuze 1995b: 6).
4 In What Is Philosophy? (1994), Deleuze and Guattari suggest that both con-
temporary analytic and communicational or conversational images of thought
remain bound to the recognition model (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 138-9,
145-6).
5 In the Critique of Judgement, Kant explicitly grounds this accord among the
faculties by means of a 'common sense' (Kant 1987: 89-90). However, in
Kant's Critical Philosophy (Deleuze 1984), and in his article published in the
same year, 'L'Idée de genèse dans l'esthétique de Kant' (1963), Deleuze argues
that the notion of such an accord between faculties or common sense is implicit
in the accounts given in the preceding Critiques. Common sense is defined as
'an a priori accord of the faculties, an accord determined by one of them as
the legislative faculty' (Deleuze 1984: 35). In the case of knowledge claims, it
is the imagination, understanding and reason which collaborate under the
authority of the understanding to form a logical common sense, while in the
case of moral judgment, it is reason which legislates. Kant 'multiplies common
senses', creating as many as there are 'interests of reason' (Deleuze 1994:
136-7).
6 In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze uses Heidegger's example (Deleuze
1994:165) but the analogy holds for any individual body attempting to coordi-
nate bodily movement with a greater force, such as the novice rider attempting
to coordinate his or her bodily movement with that of the horse. In an inter-
view, Deleuze points to the contemporary passion for surfing (Deleuze 1995b:
121). For the example from Plato, cf. The Republic, 523b-c, and Deleuze
1994: 138-9.
7 In The Logic of Sense (1990) and later writings, Deleuze proposes that the
Leibnizian domain of the event is the ultimate element of thought. In What
Is Philosophy? (1994), transcendental or 'pure' events are singled out as the
external conditions of philosophical thinking: concepts express pure events.
Deleuze's concept of events and the relation between philosophical concepts
and events is discussed further below.
8 Deleuze and Guattari insist on the difference between concepts and the plane of
immanence which is not a concept but the region or milieu of thought in which
particular concepts may be formed: 'Concepts are concrete assemblages, like the
configurations of a machine, but the plane is the abstract machine of which
these assemblages are the working parts' (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 36). In
order to highlight continuities between the concept of philosophy outlined in
What Is Philosophy? and that in Chapter 3 of Difference and Repetition, we
focus on the identity asserted between the conceptual plane of immanence and
the image of thought. However, it should be noted that the concept of the
plane of immanence also has links to the important concept of the plane of
consistency developed in A Thousand Plateaus: see for example Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 70-3, 265-72.
139
NOTES
9 'I am well aware that I have never written anything but fictions. I do not mean
to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me that the pos-
sibility exists for fiction to function in truth, for a fictional discourse to induce
effects of truth, and for bringing it about that a true discourse engenders or
manufactures something that does not as yet exist, that is, "fictions" it' (Foucault
1980: 193).
10 In similar fashion, Best and Kellner read Anti-Oedipus (1977) as 'a materialist,
historically grounded, Foucauldian-inspired critique of modernity with a focus
on capitalism, the family and psychoanalysis' (Best and Kellner 1991: 85). At
the other extreme, Philip Goodchild argues that Deleuze and Guattari's theory
'should never be judged according to its apparent "truth" or "falsehood" . . .
Deleuze and Guattari's social theory does not tell us about society in general,
nor about the society in which we live; it only tells us about the social un-
conscious which Deleuze and Guattari have created, out of the resources
which lie to hand, and it provides a resource through which we may create
our own social meanings and relations' (Goodchild 1996: 46).
11 The equivalence of transcendental problems and pure events is reaffirmed in
Deleuze's account of the logical genesis of propositions in The Logic of Sense
(Deleuze 1990: 123).
12 The passage Deleuze cites from Péguy's Clio reads as follows: 'Suddenly, we felt
that we were no longer the same convicts. Nothing had happened. Yet a
problem in which a whole world collided, a problem without issue, in which
no end could be seen, suddenly ceased to exist and we asked ourselves what
we had been talking about. Instead of an ordinary solution, a found solution,
this problem, this difficulty, this impossibility had just passed what seemed like
a physical point of resolution. A crisis point. At the same time, the whole
world had passed what seemed like a physical crisis point. There are critical
points of the event just as there are critical points of temperature: points of
fusion, freezing and boiling points, points of coagulation and crystallization.
There are even in the case of events states of superfusion which are precipitated,
crystallized or determined only by the introduction of a fragment of some future
event' (Deleuze 1994: 189; cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 111-13; 156-7).
Note that it is in this context that Deleuze first introduces the categories of
importance and distinctiveness as criteria for the evaluation of thought, suggest-
ing that the problem of thought 'is not tied to essences but to the evaluation of
what is important and what is not, to the distribution of singular and regular,
distinctive and ordinary points, which takes place entirely within the inessential
or within the description of a multiplicity, in relation to the ideal events which
constitute the conditions of a "problem"' (Deleuze 1994: 189).
13 Kant 1992: 153-7; cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 100.
14 Deleuze and Guattari's characterisation of the event as the contour of an event 'to
come' is mirrored by Derrida's concept of the 'to come' as 'the space opened
in order for there to be an event, the to-come, so that the coming be that of the
other' (Derrida 1993: 216). A concept of the pure event appears in Derrida's
accounts of the undecidable objects of his quasi-concepts: for example, his dis-
cussion of signature explains the 'enigmatic originality' of every such mark of
identity by reference to 'the pure reproducibility of the pure event' (Derrida
1988: 20). In effect, all the objects of deconstructive a-conceptual concepts
might be described as pure events, or as variations upon the one pure event of
sense or meaning: writing, iteration, differance, incineration, justice, etc. The
experience of the undecidable, which is associated with all of these objects, is
also an experience of the event or an experience of that which is necessary in
140
NOTES
order for there to be an event. For Derrida as for Deleuze and Guattari, the con-
cept of the pure event functions as an inaccessible incorporeal reserve of being
which guarantees a freedom in things and states of affairs.
2 DIFFERENCE A N D MULTIPLICITY
1 For example, Iris Marion Young acknowledges the importance of discussions
of difference in the work of Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault and Kristeva for
her approach to the politics of difference (Young 1990: 7). Similarly, Seyla
Benhabib notes that 'the term "difference" and its more metaphysical permuta-
tions, "différance" in the work of Jacques Derrida, and "le différend" in the
work of Jean-François Lyotard, have become rallying points for two issues: a
philosophical critique of Enlightenment type rationalism, essentialism and uni-
versalism, and a cultural battle cry for those who insist on the experience of
alterity, otherness, heterogeneity, dissonance and resistance' (Benhabib 1996: 5).
2 Similarly, Alex Callinicos argues that 'Deleuze's significance is in part that,
starting from [a] fundamentally Nietzschean position . . . he has sought, draw-
ing on a variety of sources ranging from Kant and Bergson to Artaud and
Scott Fitzgerald, to develop a comprehensive philosophy of difference' (Callinicos
1982: 85).
3 See Bogue 1989: 15; Schrift 1995b: 6 0 - 1 . Other authors who point to the
importance of this book in establishing Nietzsche as a key figure in post-
structuralist thought include Leigh 1978, Pecora 1986 and Perry 1993.
Derrida makes reference to Deleuze's concept of power as the effect of differ-
ence between forces in his essay 'Différance' (Derrida 1982: 17). Foucault also
testifies to the enduring effect of Deleuze's differential reading of the will to
power on his own work: see Chapter 3, note 1. In his inaugural address to the
Collège de France, Foucault remarked, speaking of his teacher Jean Hyppolite,
'I am well aware that in the eyes of many his work belongs under the aegis of
Hegel, and that our entire epoch, whether in logic or epistemology, whether in
Marx or Nietzsche, is trying to escape from Hegel' (Foucault 1984a: 134). His
own work develops the theme of difference in a variety of ways: in his account
of Nietzsche's conception of genealogy, in his theory of discourse, and in his
theory of power. Foucault returns to this theme in the anti-teleological manner
in which he interprets Kant's question about enlightenment: Kant, he writes,
'is looking for a difference: What difference does today introduce with respect
to yesterday?' (Foucault 1984b: 34).
4 In Plato, Deleuze argues, 'a moral motivation in all its purity is avowed: the will
to eliminate simulacra or phantasms has no motivation apart from the moral.
What is condemned in the figure of simulacra is the state of free, oceanic
differences, of nomadic distributions and crowned anarchy, along with all that
malice which challenges both the notion of the model and that of the copy'
(Deleuze 1994: 265).
5 Notably by Baudrillard (1983). See also the entry 'Simulacrum' by Michael
Camille in Nelson and Shiff 1996: 31-44, as well as the discussion of simula-
tionist art and art criticism in Foster 1996: 99-107, 127-8.
6 See the extensive discussion of Bergson's distinction between two types of multi-
plicity and its relation to his theory of duration in Turetzky 1998: 194-210. On
Deleuze's use of Bergson's concept of multiplicity and his relation to neo-
Darwinism, see Ansell Pearson 1999: 155-9.
7 Similarly, in Negotiations he comments: 'I see philosophy as a logic of multi-
plicities' (Deleuze 1995b: 147).
141
NOTES
8 Deleuze is not guilty here of misusing or mystifying mathematical concepts in

the manner suggested by Sokal and Bricmont 1998: 160-5. Rather, he draws
upon the history of metaphysical interpretations of the calculus in order to
develop a philosophical concept of transcendental Problems or Ideas from a
genetic point of view, in full awareness that this is a philosophical rather than
a scientific enterprise (Deleuze 1994: xvi, xxi, 170-82). For mathematically as
well as philosophically informed comment on Deleuze's remarks on the
calculus, see Salanskis 1996.
9 Constantin Boundas discusses this concept of different/ciation and its relation to
Deleuze's interpretation of Bergson in Boundas 1996: 90-8.
10 In their discussion of pack, herd and swarm multiplicities typically found in
cases of becoming-animal (see Chapter 4), Deleuze and Guattari point out that
these continually cross over into one another as in the case of werewolves
which become vampires when they die. As such, these mythological pack
animals illustrate the transformative character of all qualitative multiplicities:
'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'
11 Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) was a French philosopher, criminologist and
psychologist. Along with Durkheim, he was one of the founding figures in
French sociology. His major works include Lois de l'imitation, Paris: Alcan,
1890 (translated as The Laws of Imitation, Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1962); La
logique sociale, Paris: Alcan, 1893; Essais et melanges sociologiques, Lyon:
Stock, 1895; and L'opposition universelle, Paris: Alcan, 1897. Other works by
Tarde translated into English include Penal Philosophy, Montclair, NJ:
Patterson Smith, 1968, and On Communication and Social Influence: Selected
Papers, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Deleuze and Guattari
refer to Tarde as the founder of a 'microsociology' in which the social is con-
sidered from the perspective of infinitesimal gestures which form waves of
influence both beneath and beyond the level of the individual, and 'differences'
and 'repetitions' that elude the dialectic of identity and opposition. Tarde is
cited in Difference and Repetition (1994: 25-6, 76, 307, 313-4, 326), Foucault
(1988: 36, 142) and The Fold (1993: 109-10, 154), and in A Thousand
Plateaus (1987: 216, 218-219, 548, 575). In part owing to the revival of inter-
est in Tarde inspired by thinkers such as Deleuze, a series of his major works is
currently being reissued by Synthélabo/Les empêcheurs de penser en rond with
prefaces by Eric Alliez, Isaac Joseph, Bruno Karsenti, Maurizio Lazzarato,
Jean-Clet Martin and René Scherer.
12 In his discussion of Foucault's theory of discourse, Deleuze comments that the
primary elements of discourse, statements or énoncés, are not only inseparable
from multiplicities (discursive formations) but are themselves multiplicities
(Deleuze 1988b: 6). With reference to his own concept of substantive multi-
plicity, he suggests that Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge represents 'the
most decisive step yet taken in the theory-practice of multiplicities' (Deleuze
1988b: 14).
13 '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 deterritorialization; this line can be effectu-
ated only in connection with general causalities of another nature' (Deleuze and
142
NOTES
14 See Chapter 4, pp. 73-4.

15 'Since every search for identity includes differentiating oneself from what one
is not, identity politics is always and necessarily a politics of the creation of
difference' (Benhabib 1996: 3).
16 On the differentialist arguments of the French new right, see Taguieff 1994. On
the case of EEOC v. Sears see Scott 1988 and Milkman 1986.
17 See also Deleuze 1994: 130. In this context, note Deleuze's comment in 'Intel-
lectuals and power' concerning the practical lesson provided by Foucault with
regard to 'the indignity of speaking for others': 'We ridiculed representation
and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the consequences of this "theore-
tical" conversion - to appreciate the theoretical fact that only those directly
concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf (Foucault 1977b:
209).
18 At the end of Plateau 13 '7000 B.C.: apparatus of capture', they assert: 'this is
not to say that the struggle on the level of the axioms is 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' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 470-1).
19 Compare William Connolly's discussion of the politics of becoming where he
comments that 'To the extent it succeeds in placing a new identity on the
cultural field, the politics of becoming changes the shape and contour of already
entrenched identities as well' (Connolly 1999: 57).
3 POWER
1 In an interview published in 1972, Foucault said to Deleuze: 'If reading your
books (from Nietzsche and Philosophy to what I imagine will be Capitalism
and Schizophrenia) has been so important for me it is because they seem to me
to go very far in posing this problem [who exercises power and where is it
exercised?]: underneath the old theme of meaning, signified and signifier etc.,
at last the question of power, of the inequality of powers and their struggles
See 'Intellectuals and Power' (Foucault 1977b), originally published as 'Les
intellectuels et le pouvoir', L'Arc, 49, 1972: 3-10. Deleuze's thinking about
power has also influenced others such as Negri, who admitted that without
Deleuze's work on Spinoza, his own 'would have been impossible' (Negri
1991: 267). See also Hardt 1993.
2 See also The Gay Science (Nietzsche 1974: bk 5, para. 107).
3 In his critical discussion of Nietzsche's complicated relation to Darwinism in
Viroid Life, Keith Ansell Pearson points to his rejection of the reactive concept
of life prevalent in 'English Darwinism' in favour of an active concept of life
which emphasises the priority of the 'spontaneous', 'expansive' and self-
oganising 'form-shaping forces at the expense of adaptation (Ansell Pearson
1997a: 92). At the same time, he argues that Nietzsche is 'in fact, closer to
Darwin in his thinking on evolution and adaptation than to the explicit
Lamarckian position frequently attributed to him' (Ansell Pearson 1997a: 87).
In Germinal Life (Ansell Pearson 1999), he makes Deleuze'e engagement with
biological thinkers the focus of an account of Deleuze's own 'philosophy of
germinal life'.
4 In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche writes 'where I found a living creature,
there I found will-to-power; and even in the will of the servant I found the will
to be master' (Nietzsche 1969a: part 2, 'Of self-overcoming').
143
NOTES
5 See, for example, Daybreak, bk 4, para. 262: 'Not necessity, not desire - no,
the love of power is the demon of men.'
6 See, for example, Schacht 1983; Schutte 1984; Warren 1988; Ansell Pearson
1994; Owen 1995.
7 The concept of the feeling of power is vital to understanding the application of
Nietzsche's theory of the will to power to human culture and society. The read-
ing of Nietzsche as a champion of violence and hierarchy is only possible
because of the failure to notice this concept. While in the past there have been
societies in which exploitation and cruelty towards others were glorified, this
does not imply that this is an inescapable feature of human social relations.
The history of human culture is in part a history of the development of new
means for attaining the feeling of power. There are many evaluative comments
throughout Nietzsche's writings which suggest a hierarchy among the possible
means of acting upon others. These imply that the feeling of power obtained
from contributing to the feeling of power of others is preferable to all other means
of obtaining this feeling. For examples and further comment, see Patton 1993.
8 At least, it might be considered to enhance the powers of all so long as it is con-
sidered as an association entered into by equals, without regard to the bodies
of women and others whose incorporation is simply a consequence of their
prior subordination. But even if we imagine a body politic founded upon the
effective equality of all its adult members, there are further distinctions to be
drawn before we can judge the effect of this composite body on the powers of
individual members: what is the quality of the power which predominates in
its formation? Does this involve a primarily negative form of capture or is it
an affirmative combination and transformation of the powers of its citizens?
These kinds of evaluative questions raised by Deleuze's theory of power will
be considered in the next section of this chapter.
9 See also Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 238, 293.
10 Similarly, but contrary to widespread opinion, Nietzsche's concept of power
does not imply that the exercise of power is inherently conflictual. Discussions
of Nietzsche, as well as discussions of those influenced by him such as Deleuze
and Foucault, tend to overlook this point of fundamental importance with
regard to the potential utility of Nietzsche's concept of power within political
theory. See, for example, Read 1989; Bogue 1989: 33.
11 For criticisms of Foucault's failure to address normative issues, see Fraser 1989:
17-34; Habermas 1987: 282ff. For responses to these criticisms and discussions
of the manner in which Foucault addresses normative issues in his later work,
see the essays collected in Moss 1998 and Ashenden and Owen 1999.
12 In this respect, Deleuze suggests that Nietzsche is close to Callicles in the argu-
ment with Socrates over nature versus convention in Gorgias (Deleuze 1983:
58).
13 'From this spirit and in concert with the power and very often the deepest con-
viction and honesty of devotion, it has chiselled out perhaps the most refined
figures in human society that have ever yet existed: the figures of the higher
and highest Catholic priesthood' (Nietzsche 1982: bk 1, para. 60).
4 DESIRE, BECOMING A N D FREEDOM

1 See Holland 1999: 36-57, 78-91.
2 Deleuze and Guattari employ the term 'schizophrenia' in this context to refer
not to a clinical condition but rather to a semiotic process inherent in the
nature of desire. See Holland 1999: 2-3, 26-33.
144
NOTES
3 Gatens and Lloyd point out that, for Spinoza, 'Desires arising from joy will, by
definition, be increased by affects of joy; while desires of sadness will be
diminished by affects of sadness. There is in this contrast an inherent orienta-
tion of joy towards engagement with what lies beyond the self, and hence
towards sociability; and there is a corresponding orientation of sadness towards
disengagement and isolation. The force of desire arising from joy will be
strengthened, rather than weakened, by the power of external causes. The
mind's increase of activity, which is joy, will be strengthened by its understand-
ing of the external causes of its joy' (Gatens and Lloyd 1999: 53).
4 See the passage from Daybreak, bk 1, para. 23, cited in Chapter 3, p. 53. Mark
Warren draws attention to the importance of the 'feeling of power' in
Nietzsche's account of human agency. He argues that Nietzsche's theory of the
will to power must be understood primarily as an account of the conditions of
the human experience of agency and that, for Nietzsche, it is the self-reflective
dimension of agency as expressed in the feeling of power which is paramount:
'In being conscious and self-conscious, humans increasingly strive less for exter-
nal goals than for the self-reflective goal of experiencing the self as agent'
(Warren 1988: 138).
5 Cited in Allison 1977: 107; also Klossowski 1997: 55.
6 'By affect I understand affections of the body by which the body's power of
acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained' (Ethics, III, def. 3). See
Deleuze's discussion in 1988c: 48-51.
7 See Charles Stivale's discussion of a contemporary politics of becoming in
cyberpunk science fiction (Stivale 1998: 124-42).
8 At one point they suggest that 'becoming and multiplicity are the same thing'
9 These are the affects which Nietzsche associates with actors, women and others
who had to survive under conditions of dependency. See Nietzsche 1974: bk 5,
para. 361, 'On the problem of the actor'.
10 See Jardine 1985; Braidotti 1991, 1994; Grosz 1994a, 1994b; Battersby 1998.
Grosz provides a useful summary of previous feminist criticisms of Deleuze
and Guattari in Grosz 1994a: 163-4, 173-9. Olkowski 1999: 32-58 and
Goulimari 1999 undertake critical readings of earlier feminist responses to
Deleuze and Guattari: both offer a more positive assessment of the prospects
for a 'minoritarian feminism'. Lorraine 1999 explores common ground between
Irigaray and Deleuze.
11 Grosz reads Deleuze and Guattari in this manner, taking them to be suggesting
that 'the liberation of women' is a necessary phase in the larger process of
human liberation. See Grosz 1994a: 179; 1994b: 208.
12 Diana Coole (1993: 84-7) points out the extent to which Berlin relies upon a
series of spatial metaphors in order to define negative liberty.
13 Deleuze's concept of critical freedom has affinities with Bergson, especially in
Time and Free Will, where free acts are regarded as rare exceptions to the
habitual actions of everyday life (Bergson 1913: 168). Later, he argues that
'freedom must be sought in a certain shade or quality of the action itself and
not in the relation of this act to what it is not or to what it might have been -
it really consists in a dynamic progress in which the self and its motives, like
real living beings, are in a constant state of becoming' (Bergson 1913: 182-3).
See also Cohen 1997: 153-4.
145
NOTES
5 SOCIAL MACHINES A N D THE STATE

1 Kenneth Surin draws attention to this feature of Deleuze and Guattari's analysis
of capitalism, suggesting that the capitalist axiomatic is capable of regulating
the interaction of a series of cultural and social 'accords', such that in its current
phase it should be regarded as a meta- or mega-accord: 'As a set of accords or
axioms governing the accords that regulate the operations of the various com-
ponents of an immensely powerful and comprehensive system, capital is situ-
ated at the crossing-point of all kinds of formations, and thus has the capacity
to integrate and recompose capitalist and noncapitalist sectors or modes of pro-
duction. Capital, the "accord of accords" par excellence, can bring together het-
erogeneous phenomena and make them express the same world' (Surin 1998).
2 This phrase from Nietzsche, cited by Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 34, comes
from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 2, 'Of the land of culture'.
3 Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the despotic machine involves a 'formation'
that may be found in spiritual as well as in secular empires. They point to para-
noia as the equivalent formation of desire, suggesting that 'the despot is the
paranoiac' (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 193).
4 See the commentary on the Qin dynasty treatise on government, The Book of
Lord Shang, by Kenneth Dean and Brian Massumi (1992: 11-71).
5 Elsewhere in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze points out that for every phil-
osophy that begins from a subjective or implicit claim about what everybody
is supposed to know, there is another that denies this knowledge or fails to
recognise what is claimed. Such philosophies rely not upon the common man
but on a different persona: 'Someone who neither allows himself to be repre-
sented nor wishes to represent anything' (Deleuze 1994: 130). In the interview
'Intellectuals and Power', he suggests that it was Foucault who taught the intel-
lectuals of his generation the indignity of speaking for others: 'We ridiculed
representation and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the consequences
of this "theoretical" conversion - to appreciate the theoretical fact that only
those directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf
(Foucault 1977b: 209).
6 Holland 1991: 57. See also the extended discussion of deterritorialisation and
decoding in Holland 1999: 19-21.
7 See the theorems of deterritorialisation elaborated in Plateau 7, 'Year Zero:
faciality' and in Plateau 10, '1730: becoming-intense, becoming-animal,
becoming-imperceptible' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 174-5; 306-7).
6 N O M A D S , CAPTURE A N D C O L O N I S A T I O N
1 For a long time, the term 'war-machine' was associated with the type of
military-industrial complex which emerged in the advanced industrial countries
after 1945. Deleuze and Guattari use the term in this sense in their description
of the post-war evolution of the nation-state, when they suggest that it is now
plausible to view the major industrial states as subordinated to a global war-
machine, a single many-headed monster whose most striking feature is its awe-
some destructive power: 'We have watched the war-machine grow stronger
and stronger, as in a science fiction story' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 422).
Since the publication of A Thousand Plateaus in France in 1980, and in the
aftermath of the 'wars' against Iraq and Serbia, the term has become commonly
used to refer to anything remotely connected to the military capacity of a
nation-state or multinational organisation such as NATO.
146
NOTES
2 See Stivale's extended schizoanalytic analysis of this film and the documentary
sequel Apocalypse Now, Hearts of Darkness (Stivale 1998: 27-70). Stivale
comments that 'Colonel Kurtz's apparent desire and (narrated) "becomings"
that so tempt Willard during his journey relate directly to the dream of merging
with the flows of a warrior band in a nomadic military operation supposedly
beyond the limited logic of the US Government's war machine' (Stivale 1998:
34).
3 The forms of nomadism in actual societies are typically to be understood as a
mixture of these distinct modes of social existence. Nevertheless, Deleuze and
Guattari insist that the formal differences are important since 'it is only on the
basis of the distinct concept that we can make a judgement on the mix' (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 410).
4 'The authors' reservations about anthropology do not prevent them from using
it in two important ways: first, they borrow heavily from anthropological
sources, and second, they make anthropological statements of their own'
(Miller 1993: 13).
5 See their defensive comment at the end of Plateau 12: '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' (Deleuze and Guatttari 1987: 422).
6 See William Connolly's micropolitical analysis of the emergence of a right to die
in Connolly 1999: 146-9.
7 Despite the fact that the first Governor of the colony of New South Wales was
under instructions to take possession of lands only 'with the consent of the
natives' and despite the long history of colonial negotiations and treaties with
indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, the British authorities chose
not to regard the indigenous inhabitants of Australia as settled peoples with
their own law and government. Instead, they opted for the fiction that New
South Wales had been acquired 'as desert and uninhabited'. This principle was
clearly stated by the British Privy Council in an 1889 case, Cooper v. Stuart,
when it declared Australia to be a Crown colony acquired by settlement on
the grounds that it was 'a tract of territory practically unoccupied without
settled inhabitants or settled law' (Reynolds 1996: 16, 110).
8 'Just as eighteenth century colonial law harboured rules governing such matters
as the constitutional status of colonies, the relative powers of the Imperial
Parliament and local assemblies, and the reception of English law, it also con-
tained rules concerning the status of the native peoples living under the Crown's
protection, and the position of their lands, customary laws, and political insti-
tutions. These rules form a body of unwritten law known collectively as the
doctrine of aboriginal rights. The part dealing specifically with native lands is
called the doctrine of aboriginal title' (Slattery 1987: 737).
9 Johnson v. MTntosh 21 US (Wheat) 543 (1823) at pp. 547, 573-4.
10 For Aotearoa/New Zealand see R v. Symonds (1847) NZPCC, 387; for Canada,
see St Catherine's Milling and Lumber Company v. The Queen (1888) 14 AC
46.
11 Mabo v. Queensland (1992) is reported at 175 CLR 1; 66 ALJR 408; 107
ALR 1. It is published in book form, with commentary by Richard H. Bartlett,
as The Mabo Decision, Sydney: Butterworths, 1993.
12 For example, the Chief Justice said in his judgment that 'the common law of
this country would perpetuate injustice if it were to continue to embrace the
enlarged notion of terra nullius and to persist in characterising the indigenous
inhabitants of the Australian colonies as people too low in the scale of social
147
NOTES
organisation to be acknowledged as possessing rights and interests in land'

(Bartlett 1993: 41).
13 In a Deleuzian analysis of Canadian aboriginal politics (which in several
respects parallels this account of aboriginal title jurisprudence) Kara Shaw
emphasises the degree to which both the trial judge's 1993 decision in
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia and the 1997 Appeal decision by the Supreme
Court amount to a reassertion of the sovereignty of the colonial State as the
ground of any claim to special rights. At the same time, with reference to Deleuze
and Guattari's distinction between the politics of minority and the majoritarian
politics of the axiomatic (see Chapter 2, pp. 47-8), she points to the important
sense in which these legal decisions also serve to expose the irreducible gap
between the aspirations of the Gitskan and Wet'suwet'en plaintiffs and the avail-
able forms of recognition within the axiomatic of the colonial State. Without
seeking to deny the importance of changes at the level of the axioms, she shows
the sense in which, for the aboriginal plaintiffs as for Deleuze and Guattari,
the domain of politics is not exhausted by struggle at this level (Shaw 1999:
280-308).
14 Colder et al v. Attorney-General of British Columbia (1973) 34 DLR (3d) 145.
15 Re Southern Rhodesia 1919 AC 211, at 233-4. Cited in Bartlett 1993: 26-7,
144.
16 This view was enshrined in the common law of the colony in R v. Murrell
(1 Legge 72). This case, heard in 1836, involved the trial of two aboriginal
men for killing another aboriginal man. The defence argument that the defen-
dants should not be tried under British law since they were acting in accordance
with tribal law was rejected on the grounds that native customs were not
worthy of recognition as laws. Rather, these customs were considered 'only
such as are consistent with a state of greatest darkness and irrational super-
stition' (Reynolds 1996: 62). In an 1847 case, Attorney-General v. Brown
(1 Legge 312), the judge explicitly refused to recognise any aboriginal custom-
ary law in relation to land when he asserted that 'the waste lands of this
colony are, and ever have been, from the time of its first settlement in 1788, in
the Crown', for the simple reason that there was 'no other proprietor of such
lands'.
17 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1991) 3 WWR 97 at 219-23. Cited in Asch
1999: 438.
18 Van der Peet v. The Queen (1996) 137 DLR (4th) 289 (SCC). In this case the
Canadian Supreme Court directly addressed the question of the nature and con-
tent of aboriginal rights, arguing that these should be understood as the means
whereby the assertion of Crown sovereignty is reconciled with the fact of prior
occupation by distinctive aboriginal societies.
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INDEX
aboriginal rights see rights 99, 101, 106-7, 109-10, 115, 117,
aboriginal title see native title 135, 139, 142; collective 6, 11, 42,
absolute deterritorialisation see 58, 87; concept of 11, 42, 44, 46,
deterritorialisation 85, 139; conceptual 11, 133;
abstract machine 42-5, 57-8, 66, 69, concrete 45, 57, 139; of desire 11,
73, 88, 98-9, 102, 106, 110, 114, 42, 70, 73, 77, 136; of enunciation
116, 118-20, 122, 134-5, 139; of 6, 11, 42, 44, 58; machinic 1, 9, 11,
capture 58, 99, 102, 113 42, 69, 71-3, 77, 109; political 45,
action 2, 52-3, 55-6, 60, 63-4, 75, 107; rhizomatic 17, 116; social 11,
83-5, 104, 133, 145; free 116, 58, 111, 133; territorial 11, 122-3;
122-3; upon actions 56, 59, 76-7, theory of 9, 36, 42, 45, 47, 49, 57,
85, 104 83; two kinds of 42-3, 111; of the
active see affect, force, power war-machine type 109-11, 113-14,
affect 7, 52-3, 55, 71-5, 78-84, 110, 116-20
133, 145; active and reactive 75, axiomatic 26, 48, 58, 94-8, 100,
78-9 102-3, 105, 107, 128, 134, 143,
affective dimension of power see power 146, 148; of flows 7, 95, 102, 134;
affirmation 4, 20, 23, 30-2, 42, 60-5, immanent 26, 102; see also capitalist
104, 144; see also difference, axiomatic
negation axiomatic system 7, 26, 48, 94, 96
Althusser, L. 37, 45, 88
analytic of power see power Bataille, G. 90
anarchism 4, 8, 105 Battersby, C. 145
Ansell Pearson, K. 141, 143, 144 Baudrillard, J. 141
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Beckett, S. 76
Schizophrenia 1-2, 4-7, 9, 11, 49, becoming 1, 7-1, 14, 27, 31, 34-5, 42,
58, 68-73, 75, 77, 88-100, 103-5, 47-8, 53-5, 62, 64, 66, 68, 70,
132, 136, 140, 146 74-5, 78-83, 85-6, 100, 106, 108-
anthropology 65, 79, 113, 117-19, 10, 117, 119, 126, 129, 134-6, 142,
122, 147 143, 145, 147; animal 78-82, 142;
apparatus of capture see capture conceptual 14, 27, 78; double 79;
apprenticeship 19-20, 22, 24 imperceptible 78, 86; indigenous
art 24, 35, 72-3, 110, 141 126, 129; master 55, 64; minor 7,
Artaud, A. 141 48, 66, 80-2, 110, 134-5; nomad
Asch, M. 130-1, 148 117; other 70, 75, 79-80, 85;
Asiatic production see production politics of 143, 145; revolutionary
assemblage 6, 9, 11, 42-6, 53-4, 7-8, 48, 83, 134; woman 75, 78,
69-70, 73-4, 77, 79-80, 83, 86, 95, 81-2
159
INDEX
Benhabib, S. 141 codification 89-90, 94-5, 97-8, 102; of

Bentham, J. 57 desire 89-91; of flows 89-91, 97-8
Bergson, H. 14, 18, 21, 35-7, 40, 43, Cohen, P. M. 145
45, 132, 141, 142, 145 collective assemblage see assemblage
Bergsonism 21, 35-6 colonial capture see capture
Berlin, I. 83, 84, 145 colonisation 27, 109, 117, 119-24,
Best, S. 140 126-9, 134
Blanchot, M. 24, 26 commodity production see production
body 25-7, 31, 38, 44, 50-5, 62, common law see law
69-79, 81-3, 89-90, 95-6, 104, 111, concepts 1-3, 6, 10-17, 23-8, 30, 32,
136, 139, 144, 145; full 89-93, 99, 35, 51, 78, 88, 94, 106, 109,
105; imaginary 72, 81, 89; -politic 116-20, 129, 132-5, 137, 138, 139,
54, 101, 127, 144; without organs 142; as open multiplicities 12-18;
75, 77, 89, 97, 135-6 history of 12-13; see also creation
body of the despot see despot of concepts
Bogue, R. 73, 141, 144 conceptual assemblage see assemblage
Boulez, P. 112 conceptual production see production
Boundas, C. 142 conceptual variation see variation
Bourdieu, P. 138 conjugation or conjunction 7, 45, 72,
Braidotti, R. 145 92, 101, 102, 105, 107, 110, 131,
Bricmont, J. 142 136
connection 7, 10-11, 43, 67, 72, 87,
calculus 52, 93, 141 94, 101-3, 107, 110, 131, 136
Colder et al. v. Attorney-General of Connolly, W. 143, 147
British Columbia 127-8, 130-1, 147 continuous variation see variation
Callinicos, A. 141 contradiction 6, 30-1, 44, 46-7, 114,
Camille, M. 141 130
capital 7, 47, 56, 89, 92-7, 99, 101-3, control 57-9, 89, 98, 105, 115, 119;
105, 134, 146 mechanisms of 8, 26, 59, 93
capitalism 6-7, 26, 48, 58, 66, 69, 82, Coole, D. 145
89, 92-8, 100-6, 122, 140, 146 Coppola, F. F. 115
capitalist axiomatic 48, 58, 94-8, counter-actualisation 28, 109, 119,
103-5, 128, 134, 146 132, 137
capitalist machine 88, 92-5, 97, 105 creation 2-3, 10-12, 20, 24-6, 38, 45,
capitalist society see society 66-7, 72, 74, 83, 92, 94, 107,
capture 7, 9, 47, 54, 71, 73, 99, 104, 109-10, 114-15, 120, 133, 135-6,
109-14, 119-20, 122-4, 129, 134-5, 143; of concepts 2-3, 6, 10-14, 17,
144; abstract machine of 58, 99, 24, 26, 109, 133, 135, 137; of new
102, 113, 122; apparatus of 42, 48, values 25, 50
105, 109-11, 114, 120-1, 123-4, creativity 6, 66, 70, 72, 106, 120
128-9, 134, 143; colonial 99, 109, critical freedom see freedom
114, 117, 126, 129, 134; double 54; critique 4, 9, 18, 22-3, 25, 49, 59-60,
of flows 99, 104; forms of 1, 8; legal 62,68, 117, 139, 140, 141
125-6, 128-9; magical 121; Croissant, K. 4
mechanisms of 7, 99, 101; modes of customary law see law
73, 99; political 120, 123; of
territory 122-5, 128-9; see also Darwin, C. 50, 141, 143
abstract machine Dean, K. 146
Clastres, P. 113 deconstruction 2, 15-16, 32, 34-5, 53,
Clausewitz, K. 113 140
code 7, 58, 90, 92, 94-6; social 7, 71, Delgamuukw v. British Columbia
92, 94-5, 97, 103; see also surplus 127-8, 148
160
INDEX
Derrida, J. 2, 15-16, 29-30, 32, 45, differential force see force

114, 140, 141 differential ontology see ontology
Descartes, R. 18-19 differential structures see structures
Descombes, V. 21, 30 differentiation 3, 32, 36-8, 59, 88,
descriptive ontology see ontology 135
desire 3, 5-7, 9, 11-12, 42, 49-50, 53, disciplinary power see power
58, 62, 66, 68-78, 80, 83-9, 91, discipline 57-8, 69
97, 99, 106, 110, 133, 135-6, 144, domination 47, 52, 56-7, 59-62, 76-7,
145, 146, 147; concept of 68-75, 77, 81-2, 110, 136; see also structures of
88; politics of 6, 68-70, 73, 77, 133; domination
process of 70, 72, 75, 77; double becoming see becoming
psychoanalytic concept of 68, 72; double capture see capture
theory of 9, 49, 70, 73, 76, 106; see Dumézil, G. 115, 121
also assemblages of desire, duration 35-7, 40, 45, 141
codification of desire, flows of desire Durkheim, E. 142
desiring machine 69, 71, 76
desiring production see production earth 3, 9, 12, 46, 89, 91-2, 102, 107,
despot 91-2, 100, 146; body of 90-1, 109, 119, 122-4, 133, 136
99 EEOC v. Sears 46, 143
despotic machine 90, 92-3, 99, 146 Empiricism and Subjectivity: an Essay
deterritorialisation 1, 6-7, 9, 11-12, on Hume's Theory of Human Nature
42-5, 47-8, 66, 70, 74, 80, 82, 88, 3, 138
92, 96-8, 100-3, 105-7, 109-10, Engels, F. 96
112, 117, 119-20, 122-4, 126, eternal return 31, 35, 42, 51, 65, 75
128-9, 135-6, 138, 142, 146; evaluation 4, 23, 49, 58-67, 70, 84,
absolute 9, 12, 42, 46, 97, 107, 110, 87, 95, 103, 106, 112, 134, 136,
129, 136; and the political 103-8; 140, 144; modes of 30, 60; of values
relative 107, 110, 123, 126, 128, 59-60; strong- 84-5, 87; see also
136, 13$; see also conjugation or power and evaluation, structures of
conjunction, connection, flows, State evaluation
Dialogues 1, 7, 10, 17-18, 42, 54, 67, evaluative ontology see ontology
70, 72, 77, 138 events 16, 27-8, 38, 41, 55, 85, 107-8,
difference 4, 10, 16, 29-40, 60-2, 141; 133, 136; pure 25-8, 37, 133, 136,
affirmation of 30, 32; concept of 4, 139, 140, 141
29, 31-2, 34-5, 38-40, 44, 46;
differing- 39; of force 30, 60-2; free feeling of power see power
37, 47, 104, 118; and identity 4, Fitzgerald, F. S. 75, 86, 141
30-4, 39-40, 46-7; internal 33; in flows 7, 71, 89, 92-3, 95-102, 104-5,
itself 32, 34, 37, 39-40; in kind 36, 134, 147; capture of 99, 104; of
43; metaphysics of 4, 21, 37, 41, code 94, 96; codification of 89-91,
132; philosophies of 4, 10, 29-32, 97-8; decoded 70, 92-7, 102, 122;
37, 39-40, 46, 65, 141; play of 34; of desire 89, 91, 97; deterritorialised
politics of 4, 29, 46-8, 134, 141; 70, 92, 102, 136; material 88-90;
qualitative 115, 123; quantitative 30, mutant 98, 110; of violence 113-15;
61, 62; and repetition 35; sexual see also conjugation or conjunction,
107 connection, surplus
Difference and Repetition 4, 17-24, 26, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque
31-5, 37-9, 41-2, 44-6, 65, 93, 142
104, 118, 133, 139, 140, 141, 142, force 5, 9, 19-21, 25, 39, 50-7, 59-68,
143, 144, 145, 146 72-4, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95-6, 102-7,
différenciation 36, 38, 41 111, 113, 115-16, 132, 139, 143,
different/ciation 39, 142 145; active and reactive 4, 14, 23,
161
INDEX
30-1, 52, 59-67, 70, 104; concept Ideas 21-2, 38, 40-2, 113; as problems
of 30-1, 51-3; differential 30, 36, 21, 26, 37-8, 41, 44-5;
51-3, 55-6, 60-2, 72, 132, 141 transcendental 21, 26, 40-2, 45,
Foster, H. 141 142; see also language, society
Foucault, M. 1, 4-8, 14, 25-6, 29, 44, image of thought 11, 17-18, 22-3,
46, 49, 52, 54-9, 64-5, 69, 71, 73, 132, 139; dogmatic 17-23, 25-6;
77-8, 114, 135, 140, 141, 142, 143, modern 23; rhizomatic 17
144, 146 imaginary body see body
Foucault 1, 49, 56-8, 78, 142 immanent axiomatic see axiomatic
Fraser, N. 59, 144 increase of power see power
free difference see difference intensities 1, 36, 38, 40, 71-2, 75-9,
freedom 1-2, 21, 40-2, 83-5, 87, 108, 87
112, 135-6, 141, 145; concept of intensive: elements 12-13, 15, 42-3;
83-4, 87; critical 83-7, 108, 135, states 70, 72-4; quantities 72, 75
145; liberal concept of 83-4, 86-7; internal difference see difference
negative 2, 83-5, 145; positive 2, internal multiplicity see multiplicity
83-5, 87 Irigaray, L. 29, 145
Frege, G. 15
Freud, S. 68, 70-2, 78 Jardine, A. 145
full body see body Johnson v. M'Intosh 125, 146
jurisprudence 3, 109, 110, 120, 124,
Gallop, J. 76-7, 79 126-7, 129-30, 134, 148
Gatens, M. 82, 138, 145
genealogy 20, 23, 56-7, 60, 62-3, 91, Kant, I. 1, 14, 19, 21-3, 27, 35, 40,
97, 132, 141 59, 113, 139, 140, 141
genesis 21, 23, 25-6, 30, 38, 40, 52, Kant*s Critical Philosophy 139
61, 140, 142 Kellner, D. 140
Goodchild, P. 68, 140 Kierkgaard, S. 17, 24
Goulimari, P. 145 Klossowski, P. 145
government 3, 22, 56, 66, 92, 95, 102, Kristeva, J. 29, 141
104-5, 20-1, 124-6, 146, 147
Grosz, E. 45 labour 7, 47, 89, 92, 97-9, 101-3,
Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons 122-4; power 37, 93; see also
4-5 surplus
Lacan, J. 106
Habermas, J. 59, 144 Lamarck, C. 50, 143
Hardt, M. 143 Land, N. 103
Hegel, G. W. F. 4, 30-2, 70, 141 land rights see rights
Heidegger, M. 19, 23, 139 language of 6-7, 27-8, 47, 58, 66, 95; .
history 6, 8, 21, 27, 41-2, 50, 55-6, idea of 37, 41
63-4, 68, 82, 88, 91-2, 96-100, law 3, 28, 52, 100, 110, 114, 120-1,
106, 108, 111-12, 115, 119-21, 122-7, 129-30, 133, 138, 147, 148;
133, 144, 147; critical 4, 140; of common 3, 109, 124-6, 129-30,
culture 53, 55, 75, 144; materialist 6, 134-5, 147; customary 125-30, 147,
88; universal 69, 88, 96, 98-100, 148, property 124, 126; rule of 52,
115 133
history of philosophy see philosophy legal capture see capture
Hobbes, T. 1, 12-14, 50, 53-4, 59 legal recognition see recognition
Holland, E. 105, 144, 146 liberalism 13, 22, 47, 59, 83-4; see
Hume, D. 3, 18, 132, 138 also freedom, political, politics
Husserl, E. 36 'L'Idée de genèse dans l'esthétique de
Hyppolite, J. 141 Kant' 19, 22, 139
162
INDEX
lines of flight 1-2, 6, 8, 10, 42-5, 47, molecular 42-3, 45, 66, 69, 77, 81, 86,
66, 73, 80, 86-7, 106-7, 110, 112, 107, 136
120, 126, 136, 142 multiplicity 4-5, 8-9, 15-16, 29, 31-2,
Lloyd, G. 138, 145 35-8, 42-3, 57, 66-7, 70, 80, 85,
Locke, J. 1, 12-13 109, 112, 119, 132, 140, 141, 142,
The Logic of Sense 26-8, 139, 140 145; concept of 4, 9, 29, 132, 141;
Lorraine, T. 145 internal 36-7; kinds of 30, 35-6, 43,
Lucretius 18, 132 70, 141; numerical 35; of parts 5, 8;
Lyotard, J. F. 8, 29, 141 qualitative 36, 80, 85, 112, 119;
quantitative 112; theory of 30, 37,
Mabo v. Queensland 126-8, 130, 147 47; virtual 35-40; see also
Machiavelli, N. 1 philosophy of multiplicity
machine, 1, 2, 139; mega- 2, 89, 91, Mumford, L. 1, 99
99-100; see also abstract machine, music 11,42, 106, 112
capitalist machine, desiring machine, mutant flows see flows
despotic machine, metamorphosis mythology 79, 107, 111, 115, 121,
machine, social machine, state 142
machine, territorial machine, virtual
machine, war-machine native title 108-9, 125-31, 134, 147,
machine of capture see capture 148
machinic assemblage see assemblage negation 30-1, 38, 62-3, 65; see also
machinic enslavement, 100, 101, 105 affirmation
machinic ontology see ontology negative freedom see freedom
machinic theory of society see society Negotiations 1972-1990 3, 5-8, 11,
Macpherson, C. B. 53 17-18, 26, 58-9, 73, 108, 120, 138,
macropolitics 6, 43, 45; see also 139, 141
micropolitics Negri, A. 3-4, 6-8, 26, 143
magical capture see capture Nietzsche, F. 2-6, 12, 14, 16-18, 20,
Marx, K. 6-7, 41, 45, 71, 88-9, 91-3, 23-5, 30-1, 34-5, 37, 41, 49-53,
96,99, 101, 114, 132, 141 55^6, 58-65, 72, 74-5, 90-1, 97,
marxist analysis 4, 6, 26, 37, 47, 56, 103, 106, 112, 132, 136, 141, 143,
68, 88, 93 144, 145, 146
Massumi, B. 82, 146 Nietzsche and Philosophy 4, 18-23,
master see slave 25, 30-1, 35, 49-52, 56, 59-65, 74,
May, T. 8, 39-40 104, 144
mechanisms of control see control nihilism 8, 31, 51, 62, 64
Meinong, A. 36 nomad 2, 1-2, 8-9, 11, 24, 42, 66, 73,
Melville, H. 80 102, 109, 111, 116-20, 134, 136,
metamorphosis 42-3, 45-6, 50, 54, 66, 141, 147; real or imagined 115-20;
73, 83, 110, 112, 135; machines 58, science 111; space 111
102, 109-15, 119-20, 131, 134, 136 nomadism 1, 8-9, 42, 66, 117-19,
metaphor 1-2, 84, 94, 138 134, 136, 147
metaphysics of difference see difference Nozick, R. 12
micropolitics 6, 43, 45, 47, 66, 69, 73,
126, 133, 147 Olkowski, D. 145
Milkman, R. 143 ontology 9, 30, 34-6, 44-6; descriptive
Miller, C. 117-19, 147 55-8; differential 30, 41, 45-6;
minority 7, 9, 29, 47, 48, 80-1, 143, evaluative 136; machinic 136;
148 political 9; social 9
modes of production see production Onuf, N. 120, 121
molar 42-3, 45, 66-7, 77, 81-2, 86, overturning Platonism see Platonism
107, 136 Owen, D. 144
163
INDEX
Parnet, C. 1, 54 47-65, 69, 71-83, 88, 93, 98, 102,

Pearson, N. 129 104-7, 111-13, 121, 124-5, 127,
Pecora, V. P. 141 130, 135-6, 139, 141, 143, 144,
pedagogy 21, 76-7, 79 145, 146, 147; active 14, 112;
Péguy, C. 27, 140 affective dimension of 73-77;
Perry, P. 141 analytic of 55-8, 65; concept of 14,
philosophy 3-5, 6, 9-11, 15, 17-18, 49-50, 53, 56, 59, 74, 78, 104, 106,
21-3, 25-6, 28, 39, 109, 118, 120, 141, 144; disciplinary 26, 54, 57;
132-3, 136, 141, 146; concept of 2, and evaluation 59-67; feeling of 53,
11-12, 25-6, 73, 94, 112, 132, 135, 75, 77, 79-80, 144, 145; increase of
139; définition of 11, 24; Deleuze's 76, 111; political 105; reactive 112;
10, 21, 39-40, 46, 50; of difference relations 51, 55-6, 82, 105;
4, 10, 29-32, 37, 39-40, 46, 65, sovereign 13, 98, 121, 130; state 8,
141; history of 10, 17-19, 23, 37, 59, 111; theory of 49, 104, 141, 144
132; of multiplicity 10; of nature 9; primary reterritorialisation see
political 1-2, 5-6, 8-12, 22, 25, 69, reterritorialisation
84, 105, 134-6, 138; of power 64; private property see property
practice of 2, 15, 17-18, 139; of problem 6, 13-14, 17, 20-2, 24, 26,
representation 4, 38; as a system 17, 28, 36-8, 40-2, 44, 69, 74, 124,
task of 12, 23-8, 132 129-30, 140; see also ideas,
Plato 11, 19, 32-4, 65, 70, 139, 141 language, society
Platonism 4, 32-7; overturning 32-7 production 37, 68, 73, 88-9, 91, 93,
play of difference see difference 95, 103, 105; Asiatic 91, 99;
Pocock,J. G. A. 119 commodity 92, 95; conceptual 18,
political 1, 3, 10, 103-8, 132-4, 137; 23, 34; desiring 68, 71-2, 75, 88-9;
activity 3-5, 9-10, anti- 103-5; 12, modes of 41, 88, 146; process of 71,
52; concepts 13-14, 109; liberalism 88-9, 92, 95; material 88, 90; social
13, 22; movements 4, 6, 54; theory 68, 89, 92, 95, 99
1-2, 41, 49, 59, 66, 69, 135, 144; property 12, 37, 92, 100-1, 118-19,
thought 2-3, 8, 10, 13, 49, 94, 132, 122, 124-9; private 92, 100, 102,
135, 137, 138; see also 123; see also law, rights
deterritorialisation, ontology, power Proust, M. 17-18, 36
political assemblage see assemblage Proust and Signs 17-18
political capture see capture psychoanalysis 5, 49, 68, 72, 106, 140;
political philosophy see philosophy see also desire
political power see power pure events see events
political rights see rights
political society see society qualitative difference see difference
political structures see structures qualitative multiplicity see multiplicity
politics 1, 5, 7, 9-10, 28, 43, 46-8, quantitative difference see difference
67-70, 80-2, 94, 104, 120-1, 136, quantitative multiplicity see multiplicity
138, 143, 148; liberal 59, 84;
revolutionary 7, 105; see also body Rawls, J. 13, 22, 85
politic, macropolitics, micropolitics reactive see affect, force, power
politics of becoming see becoming recognition 19-22, 25, 47, 50, 104,
politics of desire see desire 139, 146; legal 108, 117, 124-30,
politics of difference see difference 148
positive freedom see freedom Reich, W. 69, 74
poststructuralism 7-8, 30, 135, 141; Reimann, G. 36, 43
see also structuralism relative deterritorialisation see
power 2, 4, 8, 10, 12-14, 20-1, 23, deterritorialisation
25-6, 30-2, 34, 37, 40, 42-5, relay 5, 8, 112
164
INDEX
representation 5, 8, 11, 24, 26-8, social assemblage see assemblage

32-5, 47-8, 50, 104, 135, 143, 146; social contract 12, 14, 26, 28, 54, 59,
see also philosophy of representation 79, 138
reterritorialisation 1, 7, 9, 44, 92, social machine 7, 88-92, 94-6, 100,
97-8, 100-1, 103, 105, 107, 124, 105, 111
126, 131, 135-6; primary 126; social ontology see ontology
secondary 107, 126 social production see production
Reuleaux, F. 2 social space see space
revolution 5, 8, 27, 42, 69-71, 77, 83, society 3, 6-8, 12, 21, 27, 37, 54, 84,
105, 107, 111, 120 88-9, 91, 93, 96, 104, 107, 123,
revolutionary becoming see becoming 126, 128, 138, 140, 144; capitalist
Reynolds, H. 130, 147, 148 66, 93, 95-6, 103; forms of 41-2,
rhizome 11, 17, 43, 45, 66, 110, 112, 58, 66, 81, 96; just 13, 22; machine
116, 133, 135; see also image of theory of 1-2, 58, 88-97; modern
thought 58, 81; political 104, 125, 133; as
rhizomatic assemblage see assemblage problem 40-2, 122
rights 3, 111, 120, 123, 125, 127, 134; socius 82, 89-93, 95-6, 109
aboriginal 124-5, 130-1, 133, 147, Sokal, A. 142
148; constitutional 120; homosexual sovereign 12, 54, 91, 100, 124-5,
4; land 3, 124-6, 148; political 131; 127-8, 130; power 13, 98, 121, 130,
property 125-6, 128; universal 27; states 120-1, territory 121, 124
women's 81 sovereign power see power
Read, J. H. 144 sovereignty 99, 120-1, 124-6, 128,
Rousseau, J-J. 1, 12 130-1, 148
rule of law see law space: sedentary 111, 117; segmentary
Russell, B. 36 65; smooth 42, 110-14, 116,
118-20, 123, 129, 131, 134; social
Sahlins, M. 122 58, 65-6, 117; striated 110-14
Salanskis, J-M. 132 Spinoza, B. 1, 9, 14, 18, 49-50, 53,
Sartre, J-P. 5 74-5, 78, 132, 136, 138, 143, 145
Schacht, R. 144 Spinoza: Practical Philosophy 75, 145
schizoanalysis 5, 66, 68, 70, 72, 77, state, the 5-6, 8, 24, 56, 59, 66, 80,
96-7, 103, 106, 136, 144, 147 87, 91-2, 97-104, 109, 111-15,
Schutte, O. 144 120-2, 125, 127-8, 130-1, 133,
science 14-16, 21, 24-6, 31, 94, 146, 148; and deterritorialisation
110-11, 117, 120, 142 97-103; forms of 99-100, 102-3,
Scott, J. W. 132 109, 111, 114-16, 119, 122;
Sears case see EEOC v. Sears machine 91-2, 98
secondary reterritorialisation see state power see power
reterritorialisation Stivale, C. 145, 147
sedentary space see space Stoics 27-8
segmentarity 11, 66-7, 69, 109 striated space see space
segmentary space see space strong evaluation see evaluation
Shakespeare, W. 115 structuralism 37-8, 88; see also
Shaw, K. 148 poststructuralism
simulacrum 32-3, 35, 37, 48, 119, 141 structures 32, 34, 37-8, 40, 44-5, 90,
singularity 12, 16, 38, 40, 47, 104, 127 136; differential 39; of domination
Slattery, B. 147 76, 82; economic 37; of evaluation
slave 14, 31-2, 50, 63, 101, 105, 122; 66, 84-5, 112, 132, 136; of interests
and master 30, 60, 64; morality, 30, 84; political 121; social 37; virtual
60,63 38,41
smooth space see space SurinK. 146
165
INDEX
surface 27, 72, 89-90, 112, 117, 122-3 universal history see history
surplus 7, 89, 93-4, 122; code 90, 93, Utopia 3, 9, 109
95; flow 93-5, 104; labour 122-3;
value 90, 93-6, 98 value 6, 25, 31, 46, 62, 64, 83, 87,
93-5, 102, 109, 133, 135; see also
Taguieff, P-A. 143 truth, surplus value
Tarde, G. 43, 142 values 8, 20-3, 30, 59-60, 64, 84;
task of philosophy see philosophy established 22, 25, 50, 59; new 25,
Taylor, C. 83-4 50; see also truth
terra nullius 125, 128, 130, 147 Van der Peet v. The Queen 130-1, 148
territory 9, 44-5, 89, 92, 98, 101, 114, variation 43, 78, 85, 96, 118, 140,
117, 120-30, 147; see also capture 142; conceptual 11-16, 42, 116;
territorial machine 89, 90, 91, 92, 97 continuous 11, 16, 42, 48, 66, 112,
theory of assemblages see assemblage 116, 122, 142
theory of desire see desire violence 52, 56, 108, 113-15, 144; see
theory of multiplicities see multiplicity also flows
theory of power see power virtuality 35-6, 38, 44, 100, 107
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and virtual machine 45, 88
Schizophrenia 1-2, 4, 6-9, 11, virtual multiplicity see multiplicity
16-18, 24, 27, 30, 36, 41-9, 54,
57-8, 65-7, 69, 73-5, 77-83, 86-8, war 67, 109-11, 113-15, 119, 134
94-5, 98-103, 105-6, 109-17, war-machine 9, 11, 109-18, 120, 146,
119-23, 132, 134-9, 142, 143, 144, 147; see also assemblage of the war
145, 146, 147 machine type, metamorphosis
thought 2, 6, 9, 12, 16, 26, 31, 40-1, machines
44, 65, 109-10, 120, 133, 136-7, Warren, M. 144, 145
139, 140; untimely 3, 12, 18, 25, 28, What Is Philosophy? 2-3, 6, 9, 11-18,
133; see also image of thought, 23-8, 37, 40, 78, 83, 109, 132-3,
political thought 136, 139, 140
time 35, 40, 45 will to power 4, 12, 14, 20, 23, 25, 30,
transcendental ideas see ideas 37, 40, 49-55, 57-9, 61-5, 72, 74,
truth 18-21, 25, 65, 140; value 15, 106, 136, 141, 143, 144, 145
133; value of 20-1
Turetzky, P. 141 Young, I. M. 141
166

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THINKING THE POLITICAL

Volumes already published in the series are:

• Foucault & the Political by Jon Simons

London and New York

ISBN O-415-10063-1 (hbk)

1 Concept and image of thought: Deleuze's conception

2 Difference and multiplicity 29

4 Desire, becoming and freedom 68

6 Nomads, capture and colonisation 109

'Conceptual politics and the war-machine in Mille Plateaux', Substance,

less to notions of contract or consent. Their work is couched entirely in

I can easily understand Sartre's purpose in siding with us; I can

In reply, Deleuze points to the emergence of a new conception of the rela-

assemblages of enunciation determine the social usage of language and

forms of connection between deterritorialised elements of the social field.

theoretical and practical components of a 'multiplicity of parts'. This is an

The theory of assemblages developed in A Thousand Plateaus incorpo-

For many critics, Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy remains an

concepts of civil, liberal and democratic society. However, Deleuze and

Deleuzian concepts as open multiplicities

concepts (Connolly 1983: 225-31). In this view, concepts such as democ-

and logic. Whereas philosophy forms 'concepts' on a 'plane of immanence',

this feature of concepts. By contrast, Derrida argues that iterability in this

a word becomes a concept in so far as it simultaneously has to fit

arborescent image which has been prevalent in the history of philosophy,

approximation; on the contrary, it is the precise movement of that which is

The dogmatic image of thought

which need not involve the application of a method. Apprenticeship is not

and the elevation of each faculty to its transcendent exercise amounts to

Deleuze contrasts Kant's critique with Nietzsche's genealogy, arguing

The nature and task of philosophy

yet thinking' (Deleuze 1983: 108). In Difference and Repetition (1994), he

is self-referential, it posits itself and its object at the same time as it is

In these terms, the concept of the social contract may be considered

incorporeal transformations, it does not simply represent the world but

It was created precisely in order to escape the abstract opposition

element of a Unity or Totality yet to come, and instead distinguish

Deleuze's distinctive contribution to the philosophy of difference lies in his

In Difference and Repetition (1994) Deleuze sought to elaborate a con-

from resolving difference by tracing it back to a foundation, opposition

and the resemblance of copies: 'Difference is only understood in terms of

Deleuze's deconstructive reading of Platonism argues that it offers both the

categorical reversal according to which being is said of becoming,

The characterisation of a such a world in which difference rather than

return put forward in Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983), Deleuze argues

Virtual multiplicity and the concept of difference

By contrast, the other type of multiplicity 'appears in pure duration: It is

to generate a particular primitive function. Just as the determination of a

Whereas differentiation determines the virtual content of the Idea

There is therefore an important sense in which he maintains the primacy of

transcendence in all its forms. May reminds us that in What Is Philosophy?

Freedom and the problem of society

one solution to the problems which define a society to another. In short,

Assemblages and abstract machines

We are doing approximately the same thing when we distinguish

Assemblages are defined in terms of a quadripartite structure along two

ware into a certain kind of technical machine (a calculating machine, a

deterritorialisation, describing absolute deterritorialisation as 'the deeper

Politics and difference

Let us suppose that the constant or standard is the average

A politics of difference might simply defend the right of the minorities

minority, namely becoming-minor or minoritarian, by which they mean a

The power of the minorities is not measured by their capacity