We have considered in particular two great alloplastic and anthropomorphic assemblages, *the war machine and the State apparatus.* These two assemblages not only differ in nature but are quantifiable in relation to “the” abstract machine in different ways. They do not have the same relation to the phylum, the diagram; they do not have the same lines, or the same components. This analysis of the two assemblages and their coefficients demonstrates *that the war machine does not in itself have war for its object,* but necessarily adopts it 13 as its object when it allows itself to be appropriated by the State apparatus. At this very precise point, the line of flight and the abstract vital line it effectuates turn into a line of death and destruction. Hence the name war “machine,” which is much closer to the abstract machine than is the State apparatus, which divests the war machine of its power of metamorphosis. Writing and music can be war machines. The more an assemblage opens and multiplies connections and draws a plane of consistency with its quantifiers of intensities and of consolidation, the closer it is to the living abstract machine. But it strays 5, 9 from it to the extent that it replaces creative connections with conjunctions causing blockages *(axiomatics),* organizations forming and strata *(stratometers),* reterritorializations forming black holes *(segmentometers),* and conversions into lines of death *(deleometers).* Thus there is a whole process of selection of assemblages according to their ability to draw a plane of consistency with an increasing number of connections. Schizoanalysis is not only a qualitative analysis of abstract machines in relation to the assemblages, but also a quantita tive analysis of the assemblages in relation to a presumably pure abstract machine.
There is one last point of view, that of typological analysis. For there exist general types of abstract machines. The abstract machine or machines of the plane of consistency do not exhaust or dominate the entirety of the operations that constitute the strata and even the assemblages. The strata “take” on the plane of consistency itself, forming areas of thickening, coagulations, and belts organized and developing along the axes of another plane (substance-form, content-3 expression). This means that each stratum has a unity of consistency or of composition relating above all to substantial elements and formal traits, and testifying to the existence of a properly stratic abstract machine presiding over this other plane. And there is a third type: on the alloplastic strata, which are particularly propitious for the assemblages, there arise abstract machines that compensate for deterritorializations with reterritorializations, and especially for decodings with overcodings or overcoding equivalents. We have seen in particular that if abstract machines open assemblages they also close them. An order-word machine overcodes language, a faciality machine and overcodes the body and even the head, a machine of enslavement overcodes or axiomatizes the earth: these are in no way illusions, but real machinic effects. We can no longer place the assemblages on a quantitative scale measuring how close or far they are from the plane of consistency. There are different types of abstract machines that overlap in their operations and qualify the assemblages: *abstract machines of consistency,* singular and mutant, with multiplied connections; *abstract machines of stratification* that surround the plane 5 of consistency with another plane; and *axiomatic or overcoding* and *abstract machines* that perform totalizations, homogenizations, conjunctions of closure. Every abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines, not only because they are inseparably political, economic, scientific, artistic, ecological, cosmic — perceptive, affective, active, thinking, physical, and semiotic — but because their various types are as intertwined as their operations are convergent. Mechanosphere.
[1] Gilles Deleuze, in Deleuze and Claire Parnet, *Dialogues* (Paris: Flammarion, 1977; forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press), p. 10.
[2] Gilles Deleuze, interview with Catherine Clement, *L’Arc,* no. 49 (revised ed., 1980), p. 99.
[3] Gilles Deleuze, “Nomad Thought,” in *The New Nietzsche,* ed. Donald B. Allison (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), p. 148. *Semiotext(e), Nietzsche’s Return* 3,1 (1978), p. 20.
[4] Deleuze and Parnet, *Dialogues,* p. 20. On the relationship between philosophy and the State, see also pp. 351–473 of the present work. Deleuze develops an extended critique of rationalist philosophy in *Difference et repetition* (Paris: PUF, 1968); see especially, “LTmage de la pensee,” pp. 169–217.
[5] Deleuze, “I Have Nothing to Admit,” trans. Janis Forman, *Semiotext(e), Anti-Oedipus 2,* 3 (1977), p. 12 (translation modified).
[6] “What I detested more than anything else was Hegelianism and the Dialectic” (ibid).
[8] See Deleuze’s discussion with Michel Foucault, “Intellectuals and Power,” in Foucault, *Language, Counter-Memory, Practice,* ed. Donald Bouchard (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 205–217.
[10] Felix Guattari, “Sur les rapports infirmiers-medecins” (1955), in *Psychanalyse et transversalite* (Paris: Maspero, 1972), p. 11.
tiny atproto appview i wrote in 2025-2026 winter. you can store and ’like' 88x31 buttons, and fetch em with an iframe api or atproto json xrpc api (i don’t think i documented this)
[11] Guattari, *Psychanalyse et transversalite,* pp. 40, 173n, 288–289. The journal *Recherches,* of which Guattari was an editor, was the mouthpiece of the institutional analysis movement.
[12] Uneasy because Guattari believed that Laing’s communitarian solution reconstituted an extended Oedipal family *(La Revolution moleculaire,* [Paris: Editions Recherches, 1977], p. 121), and because he was critical of Basaglia’s assimilation of mental illness and social alienation and his rejection of any kind of institutions for the insane *(Psychanalyse et transversalite,* p. 264).
[13] In 1973, Guattari was tried and fined for committing an “outrage to public decency” by publishing an issue *ofRecherches* on homosexuality. All copies were ordered destroyed *(La Revolution moleculaire,* p. 1 lOn).
[14] *Anti-Oedipus,* trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
[15] *La Revolution moleculaire,* p. 144. The disintegration of the Left into dogmatic “groupuscules” and the amoeba-like proliferation of Lacanian schools based on personality cults confirmed the charge of bureaucratism but belied the potency of the mix. Guattari himself began his political life in the early 1950s with stormy attempts at membership in two Trotskyist splinter parties *(Psychanalyse et transversalite,* pp. 268–271).
[17] Jean-Francois Lyotard, *The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,* trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 32–33.
[18] Jurgen Habermas’s notion of “consensus” is the updated, late-modern version.
[19] Interview with Gilles Deleuze, *Liberation,* October 23, 1980, p. 16.
[20] See Foucault’s essay on Blanchot, often quoted by Deleuze: “The Thought from Outside,” in *Foucault/Blanchot,* trans. Brian Massumi, Maurice Blanchot, and Michel Foucault (New York: Zone Books, 1987).
[21] Deleuze’s books on cinema *(Cinema I: The Movement-Image* [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986], and *Cinema II: The Time-Image* [forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press]) and on painting *(Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation* [Paris: Ed. de la Difference, 1981 ]) are not meant as exercises in philosophical expansionism. Their project is not to bring these arts to philosophy, but to bring out the philosophy already in them.
written in go and htmx
[22] The terms “smooth space” and “striated space” were in fact coined by Pierre Boulez. See p. 361–62 of the present work and note 20.
[23] Interview with Gilles Deleuze, *Liberation,* October 23, 1980, p. 17.
[25] On style in literature, see Deleuze, *Proust and Signs,* trans. Richard Howard (New York: Braziller, 1972), pp. 142–150.
[27] [TRANS: U. Weinreich, W. Labov, and M. Herzog, “Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language,” in W. Lehmann and Y. Malkeiel, eds., *Directions for Historical Linguistics* (1968), p. 125; cited by Francoise Robert, “Aspects sociaux du changement dans une grammaire generative,” *Langages,* no. 32 (December 1973), p. 90.]
[28] Bertil Malmberg, *New Trends in Linguistics,* trans. Edward Carners (Stockholm: Lund, 1964), pp. 65–67 (the example of the Castilian dialect).
[29] Ernst Jiinger, *Approches; drogues et ivresse* (Paris: Table Ronde, 1974), p. 304, sec. 218.
[30] Remy Chauvin in *Entretiens sur la sexualit’e,* ed. Max Aron, Robert Courrier, and Etienne Wolff (Paris: Plon, 1969), p. 205.
[31] On the work of R. E. Benveniste and G. J. Todaro, see Yves Christen, “Le role des virus dans 1’evolution,” *La Recherche,* no. 54 (March 1975): “After integration-extraction in a cell, viruses may, due to an error in excision, carry off fragments of their host’s DNA and transmit them to new cells: this in fact is the basis for what we call ‘genetic engineering.’ As a result, the genetic information of one organism may be transferred to another by means of viruses. We could even imagine an extreme case where this transfer of information would go from a more highly evolved species to one that is less evolved or was the progenitor of the more evolved species. This mechanism, then, would run in the opposite direction to evolution in the classical sense. If it turns out that this kind of transferral of information has played a major role, we would in certain cases have to *substitute reticular schemas (with communications between branches after they have become differentiated) for the bush or tree schemas currently used to represent evolution”* (p. 271).
[32] Francois Jacob, *The Logic of Life,* trans. Betty E. Spillmann (New York: Pantheon, 1973), pp. 291–292, 311 (quote).
[33] Carlos Castaneda, *The Teachings of Don Juan* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 88.
[34] Pierre Boulez, *Conversations with C’elestin Deliege*(London: Eulenberg Books, 1976): “a seed which you plant in compost, and suddenly it begins to proliferate like a weed” (p. 15); and on musical proliferation: “a music that floats, and in which the writing itself makes it impossible for the performer to keep in with a pulsed time” (p. 69 [translation modified]).
[35] See Melanie Klein, *Narrative of a Child Analysis* (London: Hogarth Press, 1961): the role of war maps in Richard’s activities, [TRANS: Deleuze and Guattari, with Claire Parnet and Andre Scala, analyze Klein’s Richard and Freud’s Little Hans in “The Interpretation of Utterances,” in *Language, Sexuality and Subversion,* trans. Paul Foss and Meaghan Morris (Sydney: Feral Publications, 1978), pp. 141–157.]
[36] Fernand Deligny, *Cahiers de Vimmuable,* vol. 1, *Voix et voir, Recherches,* no. 8 (April 1975).
[37] See Dieter Wunderlich, “Pragmatique, situation d’enonciation et Deixis,” in *Langages,* no. 26 (June 1972), pp. 50ff.: MacCawley, Sadock, and Wunderlich’s attempts to integrate “pragmatic properties” into Chomskian trees.
[38] Steven Rose, *The Conscious Brain* (New York: Knopf, 1975), p. 76; on memory, see pp. 185–219.
[39] See Julien Pacotte, *Le r’eseau arborescent, scheme primordial de la pens’ee* (Paris: Hermann, 1936). This book analyzes and develops various schemas of the arborescent form, which is presented not as a mere formalism but as the “real foundation of formal thought.” It follows classical thought through to the end. It presents all of the forms of the “One-Two,” the theory of the dipole. The set, trunk-roots-branches, yields the following schema:
[40] More recently, Michel Serres has analyzed varieties and sequences of trees in the most diverse scientific domains: how a tree is formed on the basis of a “network.” *La traduction* (Paris: Minuit, 1974), pp. 27ff.; *Feux et signaux de brume* (Paris: Grasset, 1975), pp. 35ff. 14. Pierre Rosenstiehl and Jean Petitot, “Automate asocial et systemes acentres,” *Communications,* no. 22 (1974), pp. 45–62. On the friendship theorem, see Herbert S. Wilf, *The Friendship Theorem in Combinatorial Mathematics* (Welsh Academic Press); and on a similar kind of theorem, called the theorem of group indecision, see Kenneth J. Arrow, *Social Choice and Individual Values* (New York: Wiley, 1963).
[41] Rosenstiehl and Petitot, “Automate asocial.” The principal characteristic of the acentered system is that local initiatives are coordinated independently of a central power, with the calculations made throughout the network (multiplicity). “That is why the only place files on people can be kept is right in each person’s home, since they alone are capable of filling in the description and keeping it up to date: society itself is the only possible data bank on people. A naturally acentered society rejects the centralizing automaton as an asocial intrusion” (p. 62). On the “Firing Squad Theorem,” see pp. 51–57. It even happens that generals, dreaming of appropriating the formal techniques of guerrilla warfare, appeal to *multiplicities* “of synchronous modules ... based on numerous but independent lightweight cells” having in theory only a minimum of central power and “hierarchical relaying”; see Guy Brossollet, *Essai surla non-bataille* (Paris: Belin, 1975).
[42] On Western agriculture of grain plants and Eastern horticulture of tubers, the opposition between sowing of seeds and replanting of offshoots, and the contrast to animal raising, see Andre Haudricourt, “Domestication des animaux, culture des plantes et traitement d’autrui,” *L’Homme,* vol. 2, no. 1 (January-April 1962), pp. 40–50, and “Nature et culture dans la civilisation de l’igname: l’origine des clones et des clans,” *L’Homme,* vol. 4, no. 1 (January-April 1964), pp. 93–104. Maize and rice are no exception: they are cereals “adopted at a late date by tuber cultivators” and were treated in a similar fashion; it is probable that rice “first appeared as a weed in taro ditches.”
[43] Henry Miller, in Henry Miller and Michael Fraenkel, *Hamlet* (New York: Carrefour, 1939), pp. 105–106.
-rachel
[44] See Leslie Fiedler, *The Return of the Vanishing American* (New York: Stein and Day, 1968). This book contains a fine analysis of geography and its role in American mythology and literature, and of the reversal of directions. In the East, there was the search for a specifically American code and for a recoding with Europe (Henry James, Eliot, Pound, etc.); in the South, there was the overcoding of the slave system, with its ruin and the ruin of the plantations during the Civil War (Faulkner, Caldwell); from the North came capitalist decoding (Dos Passos, Dreiser); the West, however, played the role of a line of flight combining travel, hallucination, madness, the Indians, perceptive and mental experimentation, the shifting of frontiers, the rhizome (Ken Kesey and his “fog machine,” the beat generation, etc.). Every great American author creates a cartography, even in his or her style; in contrast to what is done in Europe, each makes a map that is directly connected to the real social movements crossing America. An example is the indexing of geographical directions throughout the work of Fitzgerald.
[45] [TRANS: Karl Wittfogel, *Oriental Despotism* (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957).]
[46] Gregory Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New* York: Ballantine Books, 1972), p. 113. It will be noted that the word “plateau” is used in classical studies of bulbs, tubers, and rhizomes; see the entry for “Bulb” in M. H. Baillon, *Dictionnaire de botanique* (Paris: Hachette, 1876–1892).
[47] For example, Joelle de La Casiniere, *Absolument necessaire. The Emergency Book* (Paris: Minuit, 1973), a truly nomadic book. In the same vein, see the research in progress at the Montfaucon Research Center.
[48] *The Diaries of Franz Kafka,* ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 12.
[49] Marcel Schwob, *The Children’s Crusade,* trans. Henry Copley (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1898); JersyAndrzejewski,Lesp0rtesdwpararfzs(Paris:Gallimard, 1959);Armand Farrachi, *La dislocation* (Paris: Stock, 1974). It was in the context of Schwob’s book that Paul Alphandery remarked that literature, in certain cases, could revitalize history and impose upon it “genuine research directions”; *La chr’etiente et I’id’ee de croisade* (Paris: Albin Michel, 1959), vol. 2, p. 116.
[50] See Paul Virilio, “Vehiculaire,” in *Nomades et vagabonds,* ed. Jacques Bergue (Paris: Union Generale d’Editions, 1975), p. 43, on the appearance of linearity and the disruption of perception by speed.
[51] See Jean-Cristophe Bailly’s description of movement in German Romanticism, in his introduction to *La legende dispers’ee. Anthologie du romantisme allemand* (Paris: Union Generale d’Editions, 1976), pp. 18ff.
[52] Sigmund Freud, *Papers on Metapsychology,* vol. 14, *Standard Edition,* trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), p. 200.
[53] [TRANS: Virginia Woolf, *Mrs. Dalloway* (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1925), p. 11).]
[54] E. A. Bennet, *What Jung Really Said* (New York: Schocken, 1967), p. 74.
[55] Ruth Mack Brunswick, “A Supplement to Freud’s History of an Infantile Neurosis,” in *The Wolf-Man,* ed. Muriel Gardiner (New York: Basic Books, 1971), p. 268.
[56] Elias Canetti, *Crowds and Power,* trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Viking Press, 1963), pp. 29–30, 93ff. Some of the distinctions mentioned here are noted by Canetti.
[58] Letter cited by Roland Jaccard, *L’homme aux loups* (Paris: Ed. Universitaires, 1973), p. 113. 3.10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals
[59] Roland Omnes, *L’univers et ses metamorphoses* (Paris: Hermann, 1973), p. 164: “A star that has collapsed so far that its radius has fallen below the critical point becomes what is called a black hole (an occluded star). This expression means that nothing sent in the direction of such an object will ever come back. It is therefore perfectly black since it does not emit or reflect any light.”
[61] For a general treatment of the two aspects of morphogenesis, see Raymod Ruyer, *La genese de formes vivantes* (Paris: Flammarion, 1958), pp. 54ff., and Pierre Vendryes, *Vie et probability (Paris:* Albin Michel, 1945). Vendryes analyzes the role of the articulatory relation and articulated systems. On the two structural aspects of protein, see Jacques Monod, *Chance and Necessity,* trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Vintage, 1972), pp. 90–95.
[62] Francois Jacob, *The Logic of Life,* trans. Betty E. Spillman (New York: Pantheon, 1973), pp. 269–270 [translation modified].
[63] Francois Jacob, “Ix modelelinguistique enbiologie,“Cn7/(7«e, no. 322 (March 1974), p. 202: “Genetic material has two roles: it must be reproduced in order to be transmitted to the following generation, and it must be expressed in order for it to determine the organism’s structures and functions.”
[64] Louis Hjelmslev, *Prolegomena to a Theory of Language,* trans. Francis J. Whitfield (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 60.
[65] See Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, *Principes de philosophie zoologique* (Paris: Picton et Didier, 1830), which quotes extracts from the debate with Cuvier; and *Notions synthe-tiques, historiques et physiologiques de philosophie naturelle* (Paris: Denain, 1838), in which Geoffroy sets forth his molecular conception of combustion, electrification, and attraction. Karl Ernest von Baer, *Uber Entwicklungsgeschichte der* *Thiere* (Konigsberg: Beiden Gehrudern Borntrager, 1828–88), and “Biographie de Cuvier,” in *Annales des sciences naturelles* (1908). Vialleton, *Membres et ceintures des vertebres tetrapodes* (Paris: Doin, 1924).