Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus

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2 D 10,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS

 

First, on the level of morphogenesis: on the one hand, realities of the 

molecular type with aleatory relations are caught up in crowd phenomena 

or statistical aggregates determining an order (the protein fiber and its 

sequence or segmentarity); on the other hand, these aggregates themselves 

are taken up into stable structures that "elect" stereoscopic compounds, 

form organs, functions, and regulations, organize molar mechanisms, and 

even distribute centers capable of overflying crowds, overseeing mecha-

nisms, utilizing and repairing tools, "overcoding" the aggregate (the fold-

ing back on itself of the fiber to form a compact structure; a second kind of 

segmentarity).

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 Sedimentation and folding, fiber and infolding.

 

On a different level, the cellular chemistry presiding over the constitu-

tion of proteins also operates by double articulation. This double articula-

tion is internal to the molecular, it is the articulation between small and 

large molecules, a segmentarity by successive modifications and polymeri-

zation. "First, the elements taken from the medium are combined through 

a series of transformations.. . .All this activity involves hundreds of chem-

ical reactions. But ultimately, it produces a limited number of small com-

pounds, a few dozen at most. In the second stage of cellular chemistry, the 

small molecules are assembled to produce larger ones. It is the polymeriza-

tion of units linked end-to-end that forms the characteristic chains of 

mac-romolecules. . .. The two stages of cellular chemistry, therefore, 

differ in their function, products and nature. The first carves out chemical 

motifs; the second assembles them. The first forms compounds that exist 

only temporarily, for they are intermediaries on the path of biosynthesis; 

the second constructs stable products. The first operates by a series of 

different reactions; the second by repeating the same reaction."

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 There is, 

moreover, a third level, upon which cellular chemistry itself depends. It is 

the genetic code, which is in turn inseparable from a double segmentarity 

or a double articulation, this time between two types of independent 

molecules: the sequence of protein units and the sequence of nucleic 

units, with binary relations between units of the same type and 

biunivocal relationships between units of different types. Thus there are 

always two articulations, two segmentarities, two kinds of multiplicity, 

each of which brings into play both forms and substances. But the 

distribution of these two articulations is not constant, even within the 

same stratum.

 

The audience rather sulkily denounced the numerous misunderstand-

ings, misinterpretations, and even misappropriations in the professor's 

presentation, despite the authorities he had appealed to, calling them his 

"friends." Even the Dogons . . . And things would presently get worse. The 

professor cynically congratulated himself on taking his pleasure from 

behind, but the offspring always turned out to be runts and wens, bits and 

pieces, if not stupid vulgarizations. Besides, the professor was not a geolo-

 

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0,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS □ 43

 

gist or a biologist, he was not even a linguist, ethnologist, or psychoanalyst; 

what his specialty had been was long since forgotten. In fact, Professor 

Challenger was double, articulated twice, and that did not make things any 

easier, people never knew which of him was present. He (?) claimed to have 

invented a discipline he referred to by various names: rhizomatics, 

stratoanalysis, schizoanalysis, nomadology, micropolitics, pragmatics, the 

science of multiplicities. Yet no one clearly understood what the goals, 

method, or principles of this discipline were. Young Professor Alasca, 

Challenger's pet student, tried hypocritically to defend him by explaining 

that on a given stratum the passage from one articulation to the other was 

easily verified because it was always accompanied by a loss of water, in 

genetics as in geology, and even in linguistics, where the importance of the 

"lost saliva" phenomenon is measured. Challenger took offense, preferring 

to cite his friend, as he called him, the Danish Spinozist geologist, 

Hjelmslev, that dark prince descended from Hamlet who also made lan-

guage his concern, precisely in order to analyze its "stratification." 

Hjelmslev was able to weave a net out of the notions of matter, content and 

expression,form and substance. These were the strata, said Hjelmslev. Now 

this net had the advantage of breaking with the form-content duality, since 

there was a form of content no less than a form of expression. Hjelmslev's 

enemies saw this merely as a way of rebaptizing the discredited notions of 

the signified and signifier, but something quite different was actually going 

on. Despite what Hjelmslev himself may have said, the net is not linguistic 

in scope or origin (the same must be said of double articulation: if language 

has a specificity of its own, as it most certainly does, that specificity con-

sists neither in double articulation nor in Hjelmslev's net, which are gen-

eral characteristics of strata).

 

He used the term matter for the plane of consistency or Body without 

Organs, in other words, the unformed, unorganized, nonstratified, or 

destratified body and all its flows: subatomic and submolecular particles, 

pure intensities, prevital and prephysical free singularities. He used the 

term content for formed matters, which would now have to be considered 

from two points of view: substance, insofar as these matters are "chosen," 

and form, insofar as they are chosen in a certain order {substance and form 

of content). He used the term expression for functional structures, which 

would also have to be considered from two points of view: the organization 

of their own specific form, and substances insofar as they form compounds 

(form and content of expression). A stratum always has a dimension of the 

expressible or of expression serving as the basis for a relative invariance; 

for example, nucleic sequences are inseparable from a relatively invariant 

expression by means of which they determine the compounds, organs, and 

functions of the organism.

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 To express is always to sing the glory of God.

 

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