Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus

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viii D NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

more restricted concept: the "me" as subject of enunciation for the "I" (je) 

as subject of the statement. It is also the French term for the Freudian ego.

 

SIGNIFIANCE/INTERPRETANCE. I have followed the increasingly com-

mon practice of importing signifiance and interpr'etance into English with-

out modification. In Deleuze and Guattari these terms refer respectively to 

the syntagmatic and paradigmatic processes of language as a "signifying 

regime of signs." They are borrowed from Benveniste ("signifying capac-

ity" and "interpretative capacity" are the English translations used in 

Benveniste's work).

 

STATEMENT

.

 

Enonce  (often "utterance") has been translated here as 

"statement," in keeping with the choice of the English translators of 

Foucault, to whose conception Deleuze and Guattari's is closest. "Enunci-

ation" is used for enonciation.

 

TRAIT. The word trait has a range of meanings not covered by any single 

word in English. Literally, it refers to a graphic drawing, and to the act of 

drawing a line. Abstractly, it is the purely graphic element. Figuratively, it 

is an identifying mark (a feature, or trait in the English sense), or any act 

constituting a mark or sign. In linguistics, "distinctive features" {traits 

distinctifs  or  traits pertinents) are the elementary units of language that 

combine to form a phoneme. Trait also refers to a projectile, especially an 

arrow, and to the act of throwing a projectile. Here, "trait" has been 

retained in all but narrowly linguistic contexts.

 

GENDER-BIASED 

USAGE 

has been largely eliminated through 

plural-ization or the use of male and female pronouns. However, where 

Deleuze and Guattari seem deliberately to be using "man" to designate a 

socially constructed, patriarchal standard of human behavior applied to 

both men and women, the masculine generic has been retained.

 

* * * 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. I would like to express my gratitude to the 

National Endowment for the Humanities and the French Ministry of Cul-

ture for their generous assistance, without which this translation would not 

have been possible, and to the authors for their patience in answering my 

questions. Winnie Berman, Ken Dean, Nannie Doyle, Shoshana Felman, 

Jim Fleming, Robert Hurley, Fredric Jameson, Sylvere Lotringer, Susan 

McClary, Giorgio Passerone, Paul Patton, Dana Polan, Mary Quaintance, 

Michael Ryan, Lianne Sullivan, Susan Yazijian, and Caveh Zahedi pro-

vided much-appreciated aid and advice. Glenn Hendler likes to see his 

name in print.

 

I consulted the following translations: "Rhizome" (first version), trans. 

Paul Foss and Paul Patton, Ideology and Consciousness, no. 8 (Spring 1981,

 

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NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS □ xix

 

pp. 49-71); "Rhizome" (final version), trans. John Johnston in Deleuze 

and Guattari, On the Line (New York: Semiotext[e], 1983); "One or Sev-

eral Wolves?" (first version), trans. Mark Seem, Semiotext(e), vol. 2, no. 3, 

pp. 137-147 (1977); "How to Make Yourself a Body without Organs" (first 

version, abridged), trans. Suzanne Guerlac, Semiotext(e)  vol. 4, no. 1 

(1981), pp. 265-270.

 

Portions of this translation have appeared previously. "Treatise on 

Nomadology" was published as a separate book entitled Nomad Machine 

(New York: Semiotext(e), 1986). Extracts from "Becoming-Intense ..." 

appeared under the title "Becoming-Woman" in Subjects/Objects, no. 3 

(Spring 1985), pp. 24-32, and from "The Smooth and the Striated" under 

the title "Nomad Art" mArtandText, no. 19(Oct.-Nov. 1985), pp. 16-23.

 

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Authors' Note

 

This book is the companion volume to Anti-Oedipus (paperback ed., Uni-

versity of Minnesota Press, 1983). Together they make up Capitalism and 

Schizophrenia.

 

It is composed not of chapters but of "plateaus." We will try to explain 

why later on (and also why the texts are dated). To a certain extent, these 

plateaus may be read independently of one another, except the conclusion, 

which should be read at the end.

 

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A Thousand Plateaus

 

 

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SYLVANO BUSSOTI

 

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, 

there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that 

came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have 

assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our 

own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecog-

nizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us 

act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say 

the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To 

reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no 

longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. 

Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.

 

A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed 

matters, and very different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a 

subject is to overlook this working of matters, and the exteriority of their 

relations. It is to fabricate a beneficent God to explain geological move-

ments. In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or 

segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of 

deterritorialization and destratification. Comparative rates of flow on

 

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