DELEUZE
GUATTARI
a thousand plateaus
c a p i t a l i s m and s c h i z o p h r e n i a
t r a n s l a t i o n and
f o r e w o r d by
b r i a n m a s s u m i
A THOUSAND
PLATEAUS
Capitalism and
Schizophrenia
Gilles Deleuze Felix
Guattari
Translation and Foreword by Brian Massumi
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully
acknowledges translation assistance provided for this
book by the French Ministry of Culture and by the
National Endowment for the Humanities, an
independent federal agency.
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Minnesota Press All rights
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Eleventh printing 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Deleuze, Gilles.
[Mille plateaux. English]
A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia/Gilles
Deleuze, Felix Guattari; translation and foreword by Brian
Massumi. p. cm.
Translation of: Mille plateaux, v. 2 of Capitalisme et
schizophrenic.
A companion volume to Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and
schizophrenia.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8166-1401-6
ISBN 0-8166-1402-4 (pbk.)
1. Philosophy. I. Guattari, Felix. II. Title
B77.D413 1987
194-dcl9
87-18623
Originally published as Mille Plateaux, volume 2 of Capitalisme et
Schizophrenic © 1980 by Les Editions de Minuit, Paris.
Photo of Sylvano Bussoti, Five Pieces for Piano for David Tudor,
reproduced by permission of G. Ricordi, Milan, copyright © 1970
by G. Ricordi E.C. SPA; photo of Fernand Leger, Men in the
Cities, 1919, copyright © 1987 by ARS, N.Y./SPADEM; photo of
Paul Klee, Twittering Machine, 1922, reproduced by permission of
The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., copyright © 1987 by
Cosmopress, Geneva.
The University of Minnesota
is an equal-opportunity
educator and employer.
Contents
Translator's Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy Brian Massumi
ix
Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgments
xvi
Author's Note
xx
1. Introduction: Rhizome
3 Root, radicle, and rhizome—Issues concerning books—The One
and the Multiple—Tree and rhizome—The geographical directions,
Orient, Occident, America—The misdeeds of the tree—What is a
plateau?
2. 1914: One or Several Wolves?
26
Neurosis and psychosis—For a theory of multiplicities—Packs—The
unconscious and the molecular
3. 10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think
It Is?)
39
Strata—Double articulation (segmentarity)—What
constitutes the
unity of a stratum—Milieus—The diversity within a stratum: forms
and substances, epistrata and parastrata—Content and expression—
The diversity among strata—The molar and the molecular—Abstract
machine and assemblage: their comparative states—Metastrata
4. November 20, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics
75
The order-word—Indirect discourse—Order-words, acts, and incor-
vi □ CONTENTS
poreal transformations—Dates—Content and expression, and their
respective variables—The aspects of the assemblage—Constants, var-
iables, and continuous variation—Music—Style—Major and minor
—Becoming—Death and escape, figure and metamorphosis
5. 587 B.C.-A.D. 70: On Several Regimes of Signs
111
The signifying despotic regime—The passional subjective regime—
The two kinds of delusion and the problem of psychiatry—The
ancient history of the Jewish people—The line of flight and the
prophet—The face, turning away, and betrayal—The Book—The sys-
tem of subjectivity: consciousness and passion, Doubles—Domestic
squabble and office squabble—Redundancy—The figures of
deter-ritorialization—Abstract machine and diagram—The
generative, the transformational, the diagrammatic, and the machinic
6. November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without
Organs?
149
The body without organs, waves and intensities—The egg—
Masochism, courtly love, and the Tao—The strata and the plane of
consistency—Antonin Artaud—The art of caution—The three-body
problem—Desire, plane, selection, and composition
7. Year Zero: Faciality
167
White wall, black hole—The abstract machine of faciality—Body,
head, and face—Face and landscape—The courtly novel—Theorems
of deterritorialization—The face and Christ—The two figures of the
face: frontal view and profile, the turning away—Dismantling the face
8. 1874: Three Novellas, or "What Happened?"
192
The novella and the tale: the secret—The three lines—Break, crack,
and rupture—The couple, the double, and the clandestine
9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity
208
Segmentarity, primitive and civilized—The molar and the molec-
ular—Fascism and totalitarianism—The segmented line and the
quantum flow—Gabriel Tarde—Masses and classes—The abstract
machine: mutation and overcoding—What is a power center?—The
three lines and the dangers of each—Fear, clarity, power, and death
10. 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-
Imperceptible . ..
232
Becoming—Three aspects of sorcery: multiplicity;
the Anomalous, or
the Outsider; transformations—Individuation and Haecceity: five
o'clock in the evening—Longitude, latitude, and the plane of
consistency—The two planes, or the two conceptions of the plane—