Re: Faire rhizome, 2

Conversation between Cath=82rine Cl=82ment and Gilles Deleuze
<L'Arc> 49, 1980
Q- What difference is there between the 1972 work <The Anti-
Oedipus> and that of 1980 <A Thousand Plateaux>?

GD- The situation of AO was relatively simple. AO dealt with a
familiar recognised domain: the unconscious. It proposed
replacing the theatrical or familial model of the unconscious
with a more political model: the factory, instead of the
theatre. It was a sort of Russian-style 'constructivism'.
Hence the idea of desiring production of desiring machines.
While MP is more complicated because it is trying to invent
its domains.The domains no longer preexist, they are traced by
the parts of the book. It is the sequel to AO, but the sequel
as improvisation, <in vivo>. For example the animal-becomong
of man, and its links with music...

Q- Aren't there alao circumstantial differences between the
two books?

GD- Certainly. AO is after 68: it was a period of
effervescence, of research. Today there is a very strong
reaction. There's a whole economics of publishing [or even
strategy of writing <economie du livre>], a new politics,
which imposes the present conformity. There's a recession in
the work-place, an organised deliberate recession, at the
level of books as well as the others. Journalism has assumed
more and more power over literature. And then a heap of novels
are rediscovering the most banal themes of the family, and are
never-endingly working out mummy and daddy: it's a worry, when
one discovers a ready-made, prefabricated novel in one's own
family. It's really the year of the patrimony, in that regard
AO was a complete failure. It would take time to analyse, but
the present situation is very difficult and stifling for young
writers. I can't say why I have so many bad feelings about the
future.

Q- OK, It will keep. But is MP literature? There are so many
different domains dealt with, ethnology, ethology, politics,
music etc., in what genre could one class the book?

GD- Philosophy, nothing but philosophy in the traditional
sense of the word. When one asks what painting is , the reply
is relatively simple. A painter is someone who creates in the
order of lines and colours (although lines and colours exist
in nature). Well a philosopher is similar, it's someone who
creates in the order of concepts, someone who invents new
concepts. Then again, there's obviously thought outside
philosophy, but not in this special form of concepts. Concepts
are singularities which react on ordinary life, on the
ordinary or everyday flows [flux] of thought. there's lots of
attempts at concepts in MP: rhizome, smooth space, hecceity,
animal-becoming, abstract machine, diagram, etc. Guattari
invents lots of concepts, and I have the same approach to
philosophy.

Q- But what would be the unity of MP, since there is no longer
any reference to a basic domain?


GD- It would perhaps be the notion of assemblage (which
replaces the desiring machines). There are all sorts of
assemblages, and of assemblage components. On the one hand we
are trying to substitute this notion for that of behaviour:
hence the importance of ethology in MP, and the analysis of
animal assemblages, for example territorial assemblages. [When
I attended D's seminars he explained that assemblages were
both organic, functioning like an organism, and inorganic,
functioning like an organisation, the nearest I can get to it
is those SF stories where a man becomes part of a machinic
becoming, the whole would then be an assemblage MM] A chapter
like that of the Refrain considers both animal assemblages and
actual musical assemblages: it's what we call a <plateau>,
which sees no break between bird refrains and refrains like
those of Schumann. On the other hand the analysis of
assemblages, taken in their diverse components, provides an
opening onto a general logic: we have only sketched it, and
creating this logic, what G calls <diagrammatism>, will
probably form the next stage of our work. In assemblages,
there are states of things, bodies, mixes of bodies, alloys,
there are also utterances (e'nonces'), modes of enunciation,
systems of signs. The relations between the two aspects are
very complex. For example a society is not defined by
productive forces and ideology, but rather by its <alloys> and
<verdicts>. The alloys are the mixes of bodies which are
practised, known, permitted (there are forbidden mixes of
bodies, hence incest). The verdicts are the collective
utterances, that is to say the incorporeal, immediate
transformations which are current in a society (for example,
"from a certain moment you are not a child any more"...).

Q- You describe these assmblages, but it seems to me that that
are not free of value judgments. Isn't MP also a book on
morality?

GD- Assemblages exist, but it's true that they have components
which act as their criteria and allow us to qualify them.
Assemblages are sets of lines, a bit like a painting. Now
there are all sorts of lines. There are segmentary or
segmented lines: there are lines which get bogged down or
which fall into <black holes>; there are lines which are
destructive, which draw death; finally there are vital and
creatibe lines. These are the ones which open up an assemblage
instead of closing it. The notion <abstract> is a very
complicated one: a line may represent nothing, be purely
geometrical, it's not truly abstract as long as it forms a
contour. The abstract line is the line which doesn't form a
contour, which passes <between> things, a mutant line.
Pollock's line has been described in this way. In this sense,
the abstract line is not the geometric line at all, it's the
most living, the most creative line. Real abstraction is a
non-organic life. The idea of a non-organic life is a constant
in MP, and it's precisely the life of the concept. An
assemblage is carried along by its abstract lines, when it is
able to have or draw them. Today we're present at a very
curious phenomenon: Silicon strikes back. Biologists have
often wondered why life <went through> Carbon rather than
Silicon. But the life of modern machines goes though silicon:
it's a whole non-organic life, distinct from the organic life
of carbon. In this sense one can speak of a silicon
assemblage. In the most varied domains, the components of
assemblage, the nature of the lines, the modes of life and
utterance, must be considered...=1A



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