Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus

60 □ 10,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS

 

deterritorialized is capable of reproducing itself. When content and 

expression are divided along the lines of the molecular and the molar, sub-

stances move from state to state, from the preceding state to the following 

state, or from layer to layer, from an already constituted layer to a layer in 

the process of forming, while forms install themselves at the limit between 

the last layer or last state and the exterior milieu. Thus the stratum devel-

ops into epistrata and parastrata; this is accomplished through a set of 

inductions from layer to layer and state to state, or at the limit. A crystal dis-

plays this process in its pure state, since its form expands in all directions, 

but always as a function of the surface layer of the substance, which can be 

emptied of most of its interior without interfering with the growth. It is the 

crystal's subjugation to three-dimensionality, in other words its index of 

territoriality, that makes the structure incapable of formally reproducing 

and expressing itself; only the accessible surface can reproduce itself, since 

it is the only deterritorializable part. On the contrary, the detachment of a 

pure line of expression on the organic stratum makes it possible for the 

organism to attain a much higher threshold of deterritorialization, gives it 

a mechanism of reproduction covering all the details of its complex spatial 

structure, and enables it to put all of its interior layers "topologically in 

contact" with the exterior, or rather with the polarized limit (hence the spe-

cial role of the living membrane). The development of the stratum into 

epistrata and parastrata occurs not through simple inductions but through 

transductions that account for the amplification of the resonance between 

the molecular and the molar, independently of order of magnitude; for the 

functional efficacy of the interior substances, independently of distance; 

and for the possibility of a proliferation and even interlacing of forms, 

independently of codes (surplus values of code or phenomena of trans-

coding or aparallel evolution).

22

 

There is a third major grouping of strata, defined less by a human 

essence than, once again, by a new distribution of content and expression. 

Form of content becomes "alloplastic" rather than "homoplastic"; in other 

words, it brings about modifications in the external world. Form of expres-

sion becomes linguistic rather than genetic; in other words, it operates with 

symbols that are comprehensible, transmittable, and modifiable from out-

side. What some call the properties of human beings—technology and 

language, tool and symbol, free hand and supple larynx, "gesture and 

speech"—are in fact properties of this new distribution. It would be diffi-

cult to maintain that the emergence of human beings marked the absolute 

origin of this distribution. Leroi-Gourhan's analyses give us an under-

standing of how contents came to be linked with the hand-tool couple and 

expressions with the face-language couple.

23

 In this context, the hand must 

not be thought of simply as an organ but instead as a coding (the digital

 

---

1

0,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS □ 61

 

code), a dynamic structuration, a dynamic formation (the manual form, or 

manual formal traits). The hand as a general form of content is extended in 

tools, which are themselves active forms implying substances, or formed 

matters; finally, products are formed matters, or substances, which in turn 

serve as tools. Whereas manual formal traits constitute the unity of compo-

sition of the stratum, the forms and substances of tools and products are 

organized into parastrata and epistrata that themselves function as verita-

ble strata and mark discontinuities, breakages, communications and diffu-

sions, nomadisms and sedentarities, multiple thresholds and speeds of 

relative deterritorialization in human populations. For with the hand as a 

formal trait or general form of content a major threshold of deterri-

torialization is reached and opens, an accelerator that in itself permits a 

shifting interplay of comparative deterritorializations and 

reterritorial-izations—what makes this acceleration possible is, precisely, 

phenomena of "retarded development" in the organic substrata. Not only is 

the hand a deterritorialized front paw; the hand thus freed is itself 

deterritorialized in relation to the grasping and locomotive hand of the 

monkey. The synergistic deterritorializations of other organs (for 

example, the foot) must be taken into account. So must correlative 

deterritorializations of the milieu: the steppe as an associated milieu more 

deterritorialized than the forest, exerting a selective pressure of 

deterritorialization upon the body and technology (it was on the steppe, not 

in the forest, that the hand was able to appear as a free form, and fire as a 

technologically formable matter). Finally, complementary 

reterritorializations must be taken into account (the foot as a 

compensatory reterritorialization for the hand, also occurring on the 

steppe). Maps should be made of these things, organic, ecological, and 

technological maps one can lay out on the plane of consistency.

 

On the other hand, language becomes the new form of expression, or 

rather the set of formal traits defining the new expression in operation 

throughout the stratum. Just as manual traits exist only in forms and 

formed matters that shatter their continuity and determine the distribution 

of their effects, formal traits of expression exist only in a diversity of 

formal languages and imply one or several formable substances. The sub-

stance involved is fundamentally vocal substance, which brings into play 

various organic elements: not only the larynx, but the mouth and lips, and 

the overall motricity of the face. Once again, a whole intensive map must 

be accounted for: the mouth as a deterritorialization of the snout (the 

whole "conflict between the mouth and the brain," as Perrier called it); the 

lips as a deterritorialization of the mouth (only humans have lips, in other 

words, an outward curling of the interior mucous membranes; only human 

females have breasts, in other words, deterritorialized mammary glands:

 

---