Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus
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NOTES TO PP. 399-406 □ 561
been shown in the case of dry rice cultivation in Asia that the digging stick, the hoe, and the plow depend upon collective assemblages that vary according to population density and the fallow period. This enables Braudel to conclude: "The tool, according to this theory, is the result and no longer the cause"; Capitalism and Material Life, p. 116.
80. Treatises on martial arts remind us that the Ways, which are still subject to the laws of gravity, must be transcended in the void. Kleist's About Marionettes, trans. Michael Lebeck (Mindelheim: Three Kings Press, 1970), without question one of the most spontaneously ori- ental texts in Western literature, presents a similar movement: the linear displacement of the center of gravity is still "mechanical" and relates to something more "mysterious" that con- cerns the soul and knows nothing of weight. 81. See Paul Pelliot, "Les systemes d'ecriture en usage chez les anciens Mongols," Asia Major 2 (1925), pp. 284-289: The Mongols used the Uighur script, with the Syriac alphabet (it was the Tibetans who produced a phonetic theory of Uighur writing); the two versions of the Secret History of the Mongols that have been passed down to us are a Chinese translation and a phonetic transcription in Chinese characters. 82. Georges Charriere, Scythian Art (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1979), p. 185 [translation modified]. 83. See Lucien Musset, Introduction a la runologie (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1965). 84. There are, of course, forms of cooking and architecture that are part of the nomad war machine, but they fall under a different "trait," one distinguishing them from their seden- tary form. Nomad architecture, for example, the Eskimo igloo orthe Hunnish wooden palace, is a derivative of the tent: its influence on sedentary art came by way of domes and half-domes, and above all of space starting very low, as in a tent. As for nomad cooking, it consists literally of break-fast (the paschal tradition is nomadic). And it is under this trait that it can be part of a war machine: for example, the Janissaries used a cooking pot as their rallying point; there were different ranks of cooks, and their hat had a wooden spoon through it. 85. Itisinthe Trait'edu rebelle (Paris: Bourgois, 1981) that Jiinger takes his clearest stand against national socialism and develops certain points contained in Der Arbeiter: a concep- tion of the "line" as an active escape passing between the two figures of the old Soldier and the modern Worker, carrying both toward another destiny in another assembly (nothing of this remains in Heidegger's notion of the Line, although it is dedicated to Jiinger). 86. Lynn White, Jr., who is actually not inclined to ascribe much power of innovation to the nomads, sometimes establishes extensive technological lineages with surprising origins: he traces hot-air and turbine technologies to Malaya (Medieval Technology and
from some of the major figures of early modern science and technology through the later Middle Ages to the jungles of Malaya. A second, and related, Malay invention, the fire pis- ton, may have had significant influence upon the European understanding of air pressure and its applications." 87. On the particularly thorny question of the stirrup, see Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change, chapter 1. 88. See the fine article by A. Mazaheri, "Le sabre contre l'epee," Annates 13, no. 4 (October-December 1958), pp. 669-686. 89. Henri Limet, Le travail du metal au pays de Sumer au temps de la life dynastie d'Ur (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960), pp. 33-40. 90. Along these lines, Mazaheri effectively demonstrates that the saber and sword belong to two distinct technological lineages. In particular, damasking (damassage), which does not come from Damascus at all, but rather from the Greek or Persian word for diamond, designates the treatment of cast steel that makes it as hard as a diamond and the designs in this steel resulting from the crystallization of the cement ("true damask was made in the centers 562 □ NOTES TO PP. 406-414
that had never experienced Roman domination"). But on the other hand, damascening (damasquinage), which did come from Damascus, designates only inlay in metal (or in fab- ric), intentional designs imitating damasking using entirely different means.
91. Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945), pp. 356ff. Gilbert Simondon, discussing short series, takes up the question of the "absolute origins of a technological lineage," or of the creation of a "technical essence": Du mode d'existence des objects techniques (Paris: Aubier, 1969), pp. 41-49. 92. On the mold-modulation relation, and the way in which molding hides or contracts an operation of modulation that is essential to matter-movement, see Simondon, Du mode
ner"; p. 42). Simondon clearly shows that the hylomorphic schema owes its power not to the technological operation but to the social model of work subsuming that operation (pp. 47-49).
93. Simondon feels no special attraction for the problems of metallurgy. His analysis is not, in fact, historical and prefers to deal with examples drawn from electronics. But, histori- cally, there is no electronics without metallurgy. Thus Simondon pays homage to metallurgy: "Metallurgy does not entirely accommodate itself to an analysis using the hylomorphic schema. The fixing of the form is not accomplished visibly in a single stroke, but in several successive operations; the forging and quenching of steel are anterior and posterior, respec- tively, to the fixing of the form in the strict sense; forging and quenching are, nevertheless, operations that constitute objects" (L'individu, p. 59). 94. Not only must myths be taken into account, but also positive history, for example, the role of "the brass" in the evolution of musical form; or again, the constitution of a "metal- lic synthesis" in electronic music (Richard Pinhas). 95. Wilhelm Worringer defines Gothic art in terms of a geometrical line that is "primi- tive" but has taken on life. But this vitality is not organic, as it will be in the classical world: this line "embodies no organic expression.. . it is nevertheless of the utmost vitality... .Since this line is lacking in all organic timbre, its expression of life must, as an expression, be divorced from organic life.. . The pathos of movement which lies in this vitalized geometry—a pre- lude to the vitalized mathematics of Gothic architecture—forces our sensibility to an effort unnatural to it." Form in Gothic (London: Putnam's and Sons, 1927), pp. 41-42. 96. This is one of the essential points of V. Gordon Childe's argument in The Prehistory
san, whose sustenance is made possible by the formation of an agricultural surplus. The rela- tion of the smith to agriculture has to do not only with the tools smiths manufacture but also with the food they take or receive. The Dogon myth, as analyzed in its variants by Griaule, can be seen as marking this relation, in which the smith receives or steals grains, and hides them in his mallet. 97. Maurice Lombard, Lesm'etauxdansI'ancien mondedu VeauXIesiecle(TheHague: Mouton, 1974), pp. 75, 255. 98. The social position of the smith has been the object of detailed studies; for Africa in particular see the classic study by W. B. Cline, "Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa," Gen- eral Series in Anthropology, no. 5 (1937); and Pierre Clement, "Le forgeron en Afrique noire," Revue de geographie humaine et d'ethnologie, no. 2 (April-June 1948), pp. 35-58. But these studies are hardly conclusive; the better defined the principles invoked—"reaction of con- tempt," "of approbation," "of apprehension"—the hazier and more overlapping the results, as seen in Clement's tables. 99. See Jules Bloch, Les Tziganes, Que sais-je?, no. 580 (Paris: PUF, 1969). Bloch dem- onstrates precisely that the distinction between sedentaries and nomads becomes secondary in connection with cave dwelling.
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