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See also Louis Hjelmslev | The Archaeology of Knowledge | A New Philosophy of Society

Assemblage (philosophy) - Quotations and Notes

General theory of the assemblage

"An assemblage has neither base nor superstructure, neither deep structure nor superficial structure; it flattens all of its dimensions onto a single plane of consistency upon which reciprocal presuppositions and mutual insertions play themselves out." (1980, 100)

"What is an assemblage? It is a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liasions, relations between them, across ages, sexes and reigns--different natures. Thus, the assemblage's only unity is that of co-functioning: it is symbiosis, a "sympathy."" (Deleuze and Parnet 1977, 69)

"It is the entire assemblage in its individuated aggregate that is a haecceity [...] inseparable from an hour, a season, an atmosphere, an air, a life." (1980, 289)

Examples of assemblages

The "State apparatus" is the assemblage that effectuates the abstract machine of molar overcoding. (see 1980, 250). The war machine and the State apparatus are two different kinds of assemblage (1980, 253). The becoming-horse of Little Hans: horse as affective element in machinic assemblage of "draft horse-omnibus-street" (1980, 284). The masochist's becoming-horse assemblage (1980, 172-3). The feudal assemblage (1980, 98).

"Very specific assemblages of power impose signifiance and subjectification as their determinate form of expression, in reciprocal presupposition with new contents: there is no signifiance without a despotic assemblage, no subjectification without an authoritarian assemblage, and no mixture between the two without assemblages of power that act through signifiers and act upon souls and subjects." (1980, 200)

Assembling the unconscious

"There are no internal drives in desire, only assemblages. Desire is always assembled; it is what the assemblage determines it to be." (1980, 253) See also "There exist no other drives than the assemblages themselves." (1980, 286)

"Indeed, what produces statements in each one of us is not ego as subject, it's something entirely different: multiplicities, masses and mobs, peoples and tribes, collective assemblages; they cross through us, they are within us, and they seem unfamiliar because they are part of our unconscious. The challenge for a real psychoanalysis, an anti-psychoanalytical analysis, is to discover these collective assemblages of expression, these collective networks, these peoples who are in us and who make us speak, and who are the source of our statements." (Deleuze 275-6; trans. modified)

The two faces of the assemblage

"First, in an assemblage there are, as it were, two faces, or at least two heads. There are states of things, states of bodies (bodies interpenetrate, mix together, transmit affects to one another); but also statements, regimes of statements: signs are organized in a new way, new formulations appear, a new style for new gestures" (Deleuze and Parnet 1977, 70-71).

"Assemblages are necessary for states of force and regimes of signs to intertwine their relations." (1980, 79)

"We could say that there are two constantly intersecting multiplicities, "discursive multiplicities" of expression and "nondiscursive multiplicities" of content." (1980, 74)

"Foucault often invokes a form of the discursive, or a form of the non-discursive; but these forms neither enclose nor interiorize anything; they are 'forms of exteriority' through which either statements or visible things are dispersed." Deleuze (1986, 43)

"The devices of power do not seem to us to be exactly constitutive of assemblages, but to form a part of them in one dimension on which the whole assemblage can topple over or turn back on itself" (Deleuze and Parnet 1977, 132).

"On a first, horizontal, axis, an assemblage comprises two segments, one of content, the other of expression. On the one hand it is a machinic assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another; on the other hand it is a collective assemblage of enunciation, of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies. Then on a vertical axis, the assemblage has both territorial sides, or reterritorialized sides, which stabilize it, and cutting edges of deterritorialization, which carry it away." Deleuze and Guattari (1980, 97-8).

Content and Expression

In a social field, distinguish: set of continuous corporeal modifications (content) and set of instantaneous incorporeal transformations (expression) (1980, 95-6).

"the hand-tool pole, or the lesson of things" (content) "the face-language pole, the lesson of signs" (expression)

"Content should be understood not simply as the hand and tools but as a technical social machine that preexists them and constitutes states of force or formations of power. Expression should be understood not simply as the face and language, or individual languages, but as a semiotic collective machine that preexists them and constitutes regimes of signs." (1980, 70)

The machinic assemblage

"Machinic assemblages are simultaneously located at the intersection of the contents and expression on each stratum, and at the intersection of all the strata with the plane of consistency. They rotate in all directions, like beacons." (1980, 81)

"We think the material or machinic aspect of an assemblage relates not to the production of goods but rather to a precise state of intermingling of bodies in a society, including all the attractions and repulsions, sympathies and antipathies, alterations, amalgamations, penetrations, and expansions that affect bodies of all kinds in their relations to one another. What regulates the obligatory, necessary, or permitted interminglings of bodies is above all an alimentary regime and a sexual regime. Even technology makes the mistake of considering tools in isolation: tools exist only in relation to the interminglings they make possible or that make them possible." (1980, 99)

"If different examples of architecture, for example, are visibilities, places of visibilities, this is because they are not just figures of stone, assemblages of things and combinations of qualities, but first and foremost forms of light that distribute light and dark, opaque and transparent, seen and non-seen, etc." Deleuze (1986, 57)

The collective assemblage

"Similarly, the semiotic or collective aspect of an assemblage relates not to a productivity of language but to regimes of signs, to a machine of expression whose variables determine the usage of language elements." (1980, 100)

"The order-words or assemblages of enunciation in a given society (in short, the illocutionary) designate this instantaneous relation between statements and the incorporeal transformations or noncorporeal attributes they express." (1980, 90)

Relationship between content and expression

"one can never assign the form of expression the function of simply representing, describing, or averring a corresponding content: there is neither correspondence nor conformity. The two formalizations are not of the same nature; they are independent, heterogeneous." (1980, 95)

"We cannot even say that the body or state of things is the "referent" of the sign. In expressing the noncorporeal attribute, and by that token attributing it to the body, one is not representing or referring but intervening in a way; it is a speech act." (1980, 95-6)

"Content and expression intermingle, and it is two-headed machinic assemblages that place their segments in relation." (1980, 80)

"An assemblage of enunciation does not speak "of" things; it speaks on the same level as states of things and states of content. So that the same x, the same particle, may function either as a body that acts and undergoes actions or as a sign constituting an act or order-word, depending on which form it is taken up by" (1980, 96)

"There is never correspondence or conformity between content and expression, only isomorphism with reciprocal presupposition. The distinction between content and expression is always real, in various ways, but it cannot be said that the terms preexist their double articulation. It is the double articulation that distributes them according to the line it draws in each stratum; it is what constitutes their real distinction." (1980, 49)

Relation to deterritorialization

"forms of expression and forms of content communicate through a conjunction of their quanta of relative deterritorialization, each intervening, operating in the other." (1980, 97)

"In short, there are degrees of deterritorialization that quantify the respective forms and according to which contents and expression are conjugated, feed into each other, accelerate each other, or on the contrary become stabilized and perform a reterritorialization. What we call circumstances or variables are these degrees themselves. There are variables of content, or proportions in the interminglings or aggregations of bodies, and there are variables of expression, factors internal to enunciation." (1980, 97)

"An assemblage is necessary for the relation between two strata to come about." (1980, 79)

"The surface of stratification is a machinic assemblage distinct from the strata. The assemblage is between two layers, between two strata; on one side it faces the strata (in this direction, the assemblage is an interstratum), but the other side faces something else, the body without organs or plane of consistency (here, it is a metastratum)." (1980, 45).

"The assemblage has two poles or vectors: one vector is oriented toward the strata, upon which it distributes territorialities, relative deterritorializations, and reterritorializations; the other is oriented toward the plane of consistency or destratification, upon which it conjugates processes of deterritorialization, carrying them to the absolute of the earth. It is along its stratic vector that the assemblage differentiates a form of expression (from the standpoint of which it appears as a collective assemblage of enunciation) from a form of content (from the standpoint of which it appears as a machinic assemblage of bodies); it fits one form to the other, one manifestation to the other, placing them in reciprocal presupposition. But along its diagrammatic or destratified vector, it no longer has two sides; all it retains are traits of expression and content from which it extracts degrees of deterritorialization that add together and cutting edges that conjugate." (1980, 160)

"In continuous variation the relevant distinction is no longer between a form of expression and a form of content but between two inseparable planes in reciprocal presupposition. The relativity of the distinction between them is now fully realized on the plane of consistency, where the assemblage is swept up by a now absolute deterritorialization." (1980, 121)

Diagram of the abstract machine

"We must therefore arrive at something in the assemblage itself that is still more profound than these sides and can account for both of the forms in presupposition, forms of expression or regimes of signs (semiotic systems) and forms of content or regimes of bodies (physical systems). This is what we call the abstract machine, which constitutes and conjugates all of the assemblage's cutting edges of deterritorialization." (1980, 155)

"For a true abstract machine pertains to an assemblage in its entirety: it is defined as the diagram of that assemblage. It is not language based but diagrammatic and superlinear. Content is not a signified nor expression a signifier; rather, both are variables of the assemblage." (1980, 101)

"Segments, then, are themselves governed by an abstract machine. But what power centers govern are the assemblages that effectuate that abstract machine, in other words, that continually adapt variations in mass and flow to the segments of the rigid line, as a function of a dominant segment and dominated segments." (1980, 249)

Hjelmslev's net

"Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding. Substances as formed matters refer to territorialities and degrees of territorialization and deterritorialization. But each articulation has a code and a territorality; therefore each possesses both form and substance." (1980, 46).

"The first articulation concerns content, the second expression. The distinction between the two articulations is not between forms and substances but between content and expression, expression having just as much substance as content and content just as much form as expression." (1980, 49) (re: Double articulation)

"Sometimes one goes from chaos to the threshold of a territorial assemblage: directional components, infra-assemblage. Sometimes one organizes the assemblage: dimensional components, intra-assemblage. Sometimes one leaves the territorial assemblage for other assemblages, or for somewhere else entirely: interassemblage, components of passage or even escape. And all three at once. Forces of chaos, territorial forces, cosmic forces: all of these confront each other and converge in the territorial refrain." (1980, 344-5)

The Diagram and matter-sign interaction

"Just what is it that enables a sign machine to 'grasp' and control a flux of particles? It is man's specific capacity for deterritorialization that enables him to produce signs for no purpose: not negative signs, not nothing signs, but signs to play about with for fun, for art. Human intervention so transforms things that an oral semiotic machine produces numen for no reason, and a writing machine in the hands of mischievous scribes runs to no purpose (for example, the poetry of Ancient Egypt)." (Guattari 1984, 126-7).

"Art and religion are assemblages for producing signs which will eventually produce power-signs, sign-points capable of playing the part of particles in the arena of deterritorialization." (Guattari 1984, 127; trans. modified)

"[D]iagrammatism cannot be concentrated into a single semiotic stratum: it is always trans-semiotic. If a diagrammatic relationship is established between a system of utterance and a material or social machinic system, it is not because of any formal similarities or correspondences. What happens is that the diagrammatism involves the same inner machinism within both systems--an abstract machinism of positive deterritorialization." (Guattari 1984, 145)