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Deleuze and Guattari
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Deleuze and Guattari
​"Artifice is fully a part of nature, since each thing, on the immanent plane of Nature, is defined by the arrangement of motions and affects into which it enters, whether these arrangements are artificial or a natural." - Gilles Deleuze

the rhizome

the human as a machine

the virtual

assemblages and plateaus

deterritorialisation

desire

identity-zones

the world as a conditioned reality 

the world as vortex of energy

multiplicity

the flow

immanence

the virtual

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I found the ideas and concepts of Deleuze and Guattari particularly interesting in thinking about the body and the mind and the structures and connections they make which are defined by them as machine like. Gilles Deleuze and Guattari created these concepts to „create the world differently and (to create) new tools with which to reorder our selves and our world" (O´Sullivan, 2002, p. 84). Deleuze and Guattari aim to overcome the „ontological iron curtain between being and things (Guattari, 1995)“ and therefor define the concept-tools of the rhizome and the machine.

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​Dried Rhizome
"The important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not a form, or a development of form, but as a complex relation between differential velocities, between deceleration and acceleration of particles. A composition of speeds and slowness on a plane of immanence…it should be clear that the plane of immanence, the plane of Nature that distributes affects, does not make any distinction at all between things that might be called natural and things that might be called artificial. Artifice is fully a part of nature, since each thing, on the immanent plane of Nature, is defined by the arrangement of motions and affects into which it enters, whether these arrangements are artificial or a natural." - Deleuze

The concept of the rhizome

 

The rhizome is an anti-hierarchical and a-centered open system, that can be connected to anything at any point of it and must be. It creates connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power and relevant circumstances. That is why it fosters transversal and alogical connections between events and offers multiple entry ways of contact. These entry ways can be imagined as plateaus and a single plateau is made of nonlinear assemblages. An assemblage of meaning can “inform others and each other (...) and (these connections) only make sense when read within and against each other” (Honan, 2007 in Jeffery, 2013). Deleuze understands it as a symbolization of how thoughts, ideas and movements link together. It is a non fixable and never completely graspable structure which has no clear beginning or end. (West, 2018, episode 127; Jeffery, 2013)

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For Deleuze the rhizome is also a map with which people can „reorganize or resingularise themselves in a creative and affirmative manner (…) always opening up to an outside" (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.84). It does not differ between the inner and the outer as defining categories. The infinite reorganization of the rhizome follows the principle of an “asignifying rupture” where a line in the rhizome is destroyed just to start up again at that same point and to develop in a different or even the same direction. (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.84; Jeffery, 2013)

 

”A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines... Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialised, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterritorialisation down which it constantly flees” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988).

"We are all machines…and the institutions we make for ourselves such as the family and the state are also machines that take the desiring production of humanity and process it in useful ways for a particular social regime…in order to work functionally we have to desire efficiently. But the desire is innately reckless and inefficient; an energistics without bounds, and it should be understood as just one segment in larger flows of energy and matter that constitute the world as a mobile, varying, multiple flux with different strata that make up planes of consistency.
We exist within such planes as lines of flight that can either escape or be captured and pinned down by signifying regimes, semantic orders that assign us meanings and identities…All such stabilizations or codings constitute territorialisations in that they establish boundaries of identity that restrain temporarily the movement of the flows and the lines of flight…but deterritorialisation is a more powerful force, and everything eventually breaks apart and flows anew, only once again to be recaptured and reterritorialised by another social regime of signification (Deleuze, 1998)."

The concept of the machine

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For Deleuze and Guattari each living individuality can be understood as not a form, or a development of form, but as a complex relation between deceleration and acceleration of particles. That is why they define the function and meaning of human bodies as machines who work as assemblages and depend on the other bodies or machines they form connections with. Becoming human is "to affect and be affected" (Mercieca and Mercieca, 2010). Identity is a process in motion rather than a fixed state of being. The individual finds himself in an "identity zone" which can always be reconfigured without having to be stuck in it. (Jeffery, 2013) 

 

The human exists as a fragment of the One as he begins to enter a world of populated events where subject and object are replaced by determinations, magnitudes and dimensions. He is a strategic position to launch into other worlds whereas in this world only conditions exists which are producing other conditions. The world becomes a conditioned reality and a "vortex of energy". (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.88; West, 2018, episode 127; Jeffery, 2013)

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Deleuzes machine can be described as a fluid function and as part of mega machine. This concept can be applied on the human body functioning as a machine of organs whereas the human could also simultaneously be a part of several bigger machines like the machinery of society. The human body is also able to connect itself to a non-living machine for example a car, a bus or a bike and despite their different natures make a functioning connection. These connections are defined as flows, comparable to the flowing water in a river, which are changed completely by human interaction. But why is there a flow in particular? Every process becomes fluid in its multiplicity and this multiplicity drives deterritorialization. The world can be understood as a world in constant motion where difference keeps the flow alive. This difference enables us to derive our identity from it and understand our life as a process of being rather than becoming. (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.88; West, 2018, episode 128)

 

Not only the human can be perceived as rhizomatical also data can be analysed following a rhizomatic approach. This approach enables us to to create "plausible readings of connections between and across and within various data"(Jeffery, 2013). Deleuze does not differentiate between things that might be called natural and things that might be called artificial. He perceives artifice as "fully a part of nature" on the shared plane of immanence, the plane of Nature. (Jeffery, 2013)

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The concept of the virtual

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For Deleuze the virtual is strictly a part of the real object. The object in itself exists in both dimensions the virtual and the objective one. The only difference between those dimensions is that „the virtual is temporal and the completely determined structure of the object” (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.90; Bergson). The virtual is a genuine creation and therefore cannot be seen as the possible. For Deleuze abstract machines constitute becomings - thus are always singular and immanent. (O´Sullivan, 2002)

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"The only danger in all this is that the virtual could be confused with the possible. The possible is opposed to the real, the process undergone by the possible is ‘realisation’. However the virtual is not opposed to the real, it possesses a full reality by itself. The process it undergoes is actualisation. It would be wrong to see only a verbal dispute here: it is a question of existence itself" (Deleuze, 1988, p.211).

References

 

O´Sullivan, S (2002) Cultural Studies as rhizome - rhizomes in Cultural Studies. Available at:

(Accessed 05 Nov 2021)

 

O´Sullivan, S (2014) A Life Between the Finite and Infinite. 

Available at: https://www.simonosullivan.net/articles/life-between-finite-infinite.pdf

(Accessed 03 Jan 2022)

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Jeffery, S (2013) Thesis Review Part One: Assemblages and Rhizomes. Available at: https://nthmind.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/thesis-review-part-one-assemblages-and-rhizomes/ (Accessed 18 Jan 2022)

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Thornton, E (2017) The Rise of the Machines: Deleuze’s Flight from Structuralism. University of Memphis: The Southern Journal of Philosophy Available at: https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/files/34753376/The_Rise_of_the_Machines_SJP_Sharing_Copy_.pdf (Accessed 03 Jan 2022)

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West, S (2018) Podcast Philosophize This!, Episodes 125 – 129. Available on Spotify and at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6RnMHRtos4&t=315s (Accessed 05 Dec 2021)

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