A Thousand Plateaus  

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A Thousand Plateaus (French: Mille Plateaux) (1980) is a book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It forms the second part of their Capitalism and Schizophrenia duo (the first part being Anti-Œdipus). This book is written as a series of "plateaus", a concept derived from Gregory Bateson, each identified by a particular date and title. Each refers to a peculiar age or date in which the state described in each plateau had a central role in the world. The book reflects Deleuze and Guattari's rejection of hierarchical (arborescent) organization in favor of less structured, "rhizomatic" growth. The nomadic war machine is opposed to the state apparatus. In the last plateau the noosphere is invoked.

The English edition was translated by Brian Massumi.

A Thousand Plateaus served as a 'model' for Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's book Empire.

Excerpts and quotes

"Flying anuses, speeding vaginas, there is no castration" -- (p. 32)

"We're tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They've made us suffer too much. All of arborescent culture is founded on them, from biology to linguistics"

Table of Contents to the English edition

Translator's Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy, Brian Massumi, ix

Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgments, xvi

Author's Note, xx

1. Introduction: Rhizome, 3

2. 1914: One or Several Wolves? 26

3. 10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?) 39

4. November 20, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics, 75

5. 587 B.C.--A.D. 70: On Several Regimes of Signs, 111

6. November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? 149

7. Year Zero: Faciality, 167

8. 1874: Three Novellas, or "What Happened?" 192

With an illustration by Outcault, on the novellas "In the Cage" by Henry James, "The Crack-up" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and "The Story of the Abyss and the Spyglass" by Pierrette Fleutiaux

9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity, 208

10. 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible..., 232

11. 1837: Of the Refrain, 310

12. 1227: Treatise on Nomadology:--The War Machine, 351

13. 7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture, 424

14. 1440: The Smooth and the Striated, 474

15. Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines, 501

Notes, 517

Bibliography (compiled by Brian Massumi), 579

Index, 587

List of Illustrations, 611

See also

• Piano Pieces for David Tudor (1959), Sylvano Bussotti [1]
• Fleet in being (quoting Paul Virilio; the "fleet in being" is a "vector of deterritorialization")
• Plane of immanence
• Desiring-production
• Nomadism