To examine how Deleuze and Guattari draw emphasis to the constructed and contingent nature of social reality
(1) To contrast their model of creative, "rhizomatic" thought with traditional 'tree-like' models of thought based in sequential argumentation
(2) To examine Deleuze and Guattari's interpretations of processes of social change and development
(3) To consider how they propose individual people might transform themselves
(4) To contextualise these theories of change and development in relation to the concepts 'the virtual' and 'the actual' (central to their thinking)
Deleuze and Guattari
- Influencial in numerous fields - Architecture, music, geography, sociology, literature etc
- Collaboration developed against the student and worker protests in Paris
- Directly challenged the French state
- Let to the reassessment of the role of the activist in society
A Thousand Plateaus
- Tried to rethink social change
- Change was ongoing and incremental
- Revolt against the traditional modes of thought, represented by a tree-like structure
- Trunk - central thesis, branch - argumentation
- One line of arguments must sequentially lead to another
- Still continues to have resonance
- They suggested the reader takes in information in the same way you would listen to a record
Rhizomatic Thinking
- Drew idea from plant forms
- Underground stem that grows horizontally and draws up horizontal shoots
- Unforeseen configurations
- Provides an alternative mode of thought against the traditional 'tree-like' structure of thinking
- Linked through leaps of association - seemingly unconnected ideas
- Emphasised that ideas need to be invented - they are not 'waiting'
Saussure's model
Concept (signified) <---> Sound-image (Signifier)
- Concepts we use in thought and reading gain meaning from repetitive contextualisation
- Agreement of meaning through society
- Entirely constructed by a pattern of usage
- The Rhizo links objects, places, ideas
- Produced intentionally and unintentionally
- Become creative forces that create new configurations
Isa Genzken, Hospital (Ground Zero), 2008
- Represents chaos of urban landscape
- Manual production
- Held together in provisional ways
- Made of materials found in a shop, or even on the street
- Brought together in a configuration
- Takes on the form of an assemblage
The Assemblage
- Processes of arranging, organising
- Emphasise the convergence of food, furniture, people and so on in recognisable structures
- A dinner party or a school are examples of an assemblage
- Home is a place where we express comfort
- How places become meaningful
- Assemblages can be rooted / embedded in society
Language
- Language is not just about the transmission of messages
- Simple language use imposes a role upon the language user
- Value, power, prejudice
Zaha Hadid for MAXXI, national Museum of XX1 Century Arts
- Designed by Hadid as an assemblage
- Architecture flows around and in-between surround buildings
- Mutating in relation to people through the space
Subjectivation
- Deleuze and Guattari believed this is how we are constructed
- Our sense of identity is always under construction
- The subjects recognition is an afterthought
- The word 'I' is empty and can only be appropriated to different bodies
- Used as a self reference
Ideology
- Ideology shapes how we view ourselves and our shape in the world
- Circulate in any given society at any given time but some are able to dominate
- Those who get the means of productions 'shout the loudest'
- Privileged status of politicians and the media within society
The working day
- 'Shocked out of dream fantasies'
- Commuter -> Labourer etc
- Unique demands upon the individual - how we ought to 'behave'
- Roles defined by their context
Psycho-analysis
- Individuals reconfigure their own subjectivities
- Guattari's psychiatric practice
- Re-negotiated the role of the analyst
- The patient and analyst would take on roles
- Sets a process of change and development
Body without organs
- Initially developed by a play writer in the 1920s
- We are a structure
- Francis Bacon, Study of George Dyer, 1969
