Annotated Bibliography: Deleuze & Guattari

Lambert, G. (2010). The war-machine and "a people who revolt". Theory & Event, 13(3),http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v013/13.3.lambert.html

Note* Project Muse does not have page numbers for this journal**

Lambert's work focuses on the "war-machine" and on the inherent contradictions that occur within the exercise of state police/war functions. Lambert describes how the violence of the state to remedy illegal behavior puts the state in a conflict with its own conservative identity- the state must enact violence upon its people as a way of preserving the non-violence of society: thus the "exteriority" of the war-machine/police violence apparatuses of the state. Lambert postulates that this exteriority is also present with "the people" - another abstraction of political discourse. "The people"'s exteriority can be understood as the product of a similar structural transformation as identified in Habermas' work, namely the privatized function of the state to serve particular interests of a few private individuals. This exteriority also gives birth to an understanding of revolt and how "the people" can appropriate the violence of the state (the war-machine) to enact revolutionary politics.

Ringrose, J. (2010). Beyond discourse? using deleuze and guattari's schizoanalysis to explore affective assemblages, heterosexually striated space, and lines of flight online and at school. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(6), 598-618. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00601.x

This article discusses applications of Deleuze and Guatarri’s theories concerning “assemblages” within the context of social networking technologies and their impact on education systems. The author concludes that school communities and online social networking communities can be understood as “assemblages”, that is, multiplicitous entities which form a body through also-multiplicitous interactions. Ringrose examines the possibility of educational spaces becoming striated via their interactions with online social networking communities. More specifically, the author attempts to explain how gendered and heteronormative discourse is intensified through its articulation via instant messaging, Facebook, Bebo, etc. where there exist structural limits to how students can express their attachments and relationships. “Relationship statuses” and other iterations of classifying relationships striate these spaces in terms of heteronormativity and its normative assumptions concerning gender and sexual orientation.

Tamboukou, M. (2008). Machinic assemblages: women, art education and space. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,29(3), 359-375. DOI: 10.1080/01596300802259129

Tamboukou’s article is an excellent introduction to A Thousand Plateaus - the particular subject matter (art education, educational spaces) is secondary, for our purposes, to her brilliant explanations of D&G’s terminology. Specifically, the author is interested in “lines of flight” or the “direction” in which deterritorialization proceeds. Within the context of narrative theory, narratives can be understood as a sort of deterritorialization of the self, where the “territory” of the self is emptied through the process of interpretation, and reconstituted by new signs and associations. Tamboukou also posits that the self can be understood as an unstable structure (perhaps “smooth” space) that is in a constant flux of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (via discourse). The self, then, is “multiplicitous” – a body acting and being acted upon – through the various internal and external interactions of desire.

Marzec, R. (2000). The war machine and capitalism: notes towards a nomadology of the imperceptible. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 1(3), Retrieved from http://rhizomes.net/issue3/marzec/UntitledFrameset-14.html

This article provides another excellent introduction to a few of the key ideas in A Thousand Plateaus. The author discusses deterritorialization and the rhizome within a context that illuminates the possibility of their plain meaning: international relations. The “war machine” is “decoded” to make more evident particular meanings within the context of inter-state warfare; “war machines” are everywhere, within our social imaginary as vampires, zombies – the infirm. The ideological presence of images of “warriors” helps propel the organization of multiplicities and the channeling of their desire into “the economy of war”.

Sussman, H. (2000). Deterritorializing the text: flow-theory and deconstruction. MLN,115(5), 974-996. DOI: 10.1353/mln.2000.0077

Sussman's article provides an excellent introduction to A Thousand Plateaus not only by providing tips at how to read the book, but also by describing how to read the text in terms of its own vocabulary. Sussman contextualizes many of the ideas D&G posit (Nomadology, the Rhizome) with earlier thought on semiotics as part of an attempt to elucidate how their form (of writing) took shape. Sussman extracts from A Thousand Plateaus "flow-theory", or his name for the methodology of D&G, which is itself an attempt to escape the "incestuous" reslationship (nomadic despotism) of thinkers to source material located in (particular senses of) past texts (pp.973-5).