3rd out of 30 books
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7 voters
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. He is a key figure in poststructuralism, and one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Felix Guattari (1930-1992) was a psychoanalyst at the la Borde Clinic, as well as being a major social theorist and radical activist.
A Thousand Plateaus is part of Deleuze an...more
A Thousand Plateaus is part of Deleuze an...more
Paperback, 632 pages
Published
December 21st 1987
by Univ Of Minnesota Press
(first published January 1st 1987)
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Plateaus is required reading for Assange fans and enemies, as well as those who don't give a fig but carry a Master or Visa card or just have a particular bent for Continental theory.
According to Deleuze and Guattari Western thought is dominated by a structure of knowledge they call aboresence. This way of knowing is tree-like, vertical, and centralized. For instance, in biology, we have Linnean taxonomies. In chemistry, we have Porphyrian trees. In linguistics we have Chomskyan sentence trees....more
According to Deleuze and Guattari Western thought is dominated by a structure of knowledge they call aboresence. This way of knowing is tree-like, vertical, and centralized. For instance, in biology, we have Linnean taxonomies. In chemistry, we have Porphyrian trees. In linguistics we have Chomskyan sentence trees....more
August 9, 2010
We will be reading this for our next bookclub selection (because it follows Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals so well?). Once my boyfriend finds his second copy of this I'll get started. Yes, my boyfriend is the kind of person who owns two copies of this book. Intentionally.
I would also like to mention that I will be reading this at the mercy of the one who decided we should read this (who is not my boyfriend, believe it or not - apparently there are other p...more
We will be reading this for our next bookclub selection (because it follows Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals so well?). Once my boyfriend finds his second copy of this I'll get started. Yes, my boyfriend is the kind of person who owns two copies of this book. Intentionally.
I would also like to mention that I will be reading this at the mercy of the one who decided we should read this (who is not my boyfriend, believe it or not - apparently there are other p...more
Finally, finally, I have finished this book, I was very definitely punching above my weight trying to read this, but overall I have enjoyed it thoroughly, well perhaps not enjoyed the actual reading of it, but this book has provided such a vast resource of ideas for me, I don't regret a single one of the many months that it has taken me to read through this, this is a huge personal achievement for me, now that I have read this I feel like I could read anything.
For the most of this book the subje...more
For the most of this book the subje...more
This is basically a nonreview: like a restless nomad I would read several pages of one section and then find myself completely unable to go on, and then I’d move to the next one. Same for the next chapter and the next.
Right from the beginning I knew I had already read too much of this type of writing to have much patience for it. Here’re the authors justifying the fact that they affixed their names to the books they write:
“Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To ma...more
Right from the beginning I knew I had already read too much of this type of writing to have much patience for it. Here’re the authors justifying the fact that they affixed their names to the books they write:
“Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To ma...more
I'm not even going to pretend that I understood half of what D & G were trying to get at here, nor am I going to weigh in on whether or not their ideas are rigorous enough to be regarded as good philosophy. There certainly seems to be a system here, of sorts, but it's a system that seems based on an assessment of the conditions that allow for the production of that which cannot be systematized. The authors posit a tension between the conventional and the known (molar strata), and the unconve...more
The most difficult book ever written. EVER. But it’s also liberating as hell. Just sit back and enjoy how strange it makes you feel. And then how ecstatic, confused, angry, etc., all at once. But if you're ever climbing and all of a sudden you realize that you're getting it, like, really getting it, then hang on and stay with it because it will probably change your life when you get to the top. And that feels pretty groovy. Especially when you really have to work for the plateau. It ain’t easy b...more
Any book of philosophy that features a chapter in which a geologist (named Challenger no less) undergoes a metamorphosis while delivering a lecture is pretty good. What takes it to the next level is what Challenger the geologist turns into: a lobster! This book has it all from Deleuze and Guattari: wolf packs, war machines, nomadologies, becomings-animal, rhizomes, the differences between the games of Go and Chess, and plenty of rips on Freud and psychoanalysis. My favorite chapters were the int...more
Lawyer Chibli Mallat has chosen to discuss Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari's
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
, on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Maverick Political Thought, saying that:
"...Sadr was executed, aged 45, by Saddam Hussein in April 1980. He is in my view the greatest Islamic thinker of the 20th century, and he reshaped the whole field of Islamic law away from the monstrous idea of it, held by Eastern and Western ignoramuses alike. Iqtisaduna is th...more
"...Sadr was executed, aged 45, by Saddam Hussein in April 1980. He is in my view the greatest Islamic thinker of the 20th century, and he reshaped the whole field of Islamic law away from the monstrous idea of it, held by Eastern and Western ignoramuses alike. Iqtisaduna is th...more
The second part of Deleuze and Guattari's two volume mind boggling and yet a playful critique of capitalism is full of insights and useful ideas. They do manage to take the language of critical theory forward from Lacan, Derrida and Foucault. One of the most intersting and useful metaphor is the metaphor of rhizome used instead of hierarchic logic of the metaphor of `tree'. One of the most important philosophical treatise of this `post modern' era.
Apr 03, 2013
Jimmy
marked it as to-read-other
Great article that made me want to attempt this author: http://htmlgiant.com/random/the-begin...
Jun 04, 2007
courtney
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people smarter than i am
i loved reading this -- it was exciting and confrontational and challenged the primacy of psychoanalysis and all sorts of other 20th century "givens." to say that i READ the book is a lie. i read about 50-100 pages of it (the section dealing with the Body without Organs, a plane of being that we all strive towards) and plan of reading further into it.
This is mind blowing. I don't think I totally understand everything but reading it and imagining what it means is a revelation. It seems to promote a consciousness of the world that is devoid of hierarchy and shatters fundamental categories. I decided to read this intermittently so far I finished chapter 5.
I like Deleuze. A lot. I think, insofar as this is meaningful to say, he is right. But I don't know that he is a good writer. He tends to get off task, run off on these giant tangents that are sometimes charming, but, as this VERY LONG book progresses, get increasingly more tedious and less productive. The becoming-woman discussion is a case in point for me. Deleuze spends more time trying to convince us that he has no intention of insulting transvestites and their accomplishments than he does a...more
This book was tremendously helpful, but tremendously more so once a critical article pointed out the autological feature of this tome. Frustrating at times, I ordered the companion, written by the same translator. It goes very well with much of Cary Wolfe & Jacques Derrida (The Animal..., & The Beast and the Sovereign), reinforcing and extending - sometimes over-extending - their concepts. My best recommendation is to read a bit at a time, then sleep on it! It's amazing how that helped....more
I actually have read this book. I have a vague idea of what its about, but I cannot claim to understand all of it. That in no way detracted from sheer reading pleasure.
Some of their ideas such as rhizomatic thinking and the body without organs are so beautiful you can stand and stare at them for hours. As for some of the other ideas, i have no clue what they're talking about.
They suggest that you read their book like listening to a concert. They also suggest that the book's chapters are plateaus...more
Some of their ideas such as rhizomatic thinking and the body without organs are so beautiful you can stand and stare at them for hours. As for some of the other ideas, i have no clue what they're talking about.
They suggest that you read their book like listening to a concert. They also suggest that the book's chapters are plateaus...more
I felt off balance with this one, especially in stark relief to Anti-Oedipus. I'm not suggesting I deftly maneuvered through that one, but the posture remained intact. I largely flailed and screeched during my readinging and kept it such until I read that Alec Empire loves this as well as some squatters in St. Petersburg: I read that second detail Wired magazine. Yeah, I bought a pair of copies of that back in the early months of Clinton's second term. It is strange, I recall so much of that art...more
Intellectually dishonest and almost total garbage. Don't bother with this for any other reason except to say that you've read it. The book is filled with pointless coinages and non-sense elliptical arguments. Prose seems indecipherable on purpose to conceal the vapidity of arguments.
Sadly, I think it's very easy for college-age readers to become blinded by the artifice of this style of writing and end up believing that this represents some kind of pinnacle of thought. It's not a pinnacle of any...more
Sadly, I think it's very easy for college-age readers to become blinded by the artifice of this style of writing and end up believing that this represents some kind of pinnacle of thought. It's not a pinnacle of any...more
Sep 11, 2011
Kathleen
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Kathleen by:
Elizabeth T.
Shelves:
academic
Someone who enjoyed this book a great deal highly recommended also reading "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" by Manuel De Landa, saying that this book was a more easily digested view of what Deleuze & Guattari are talking about. I never read it, but kept the book in mind.
This is probably the most difficult book I ever attempted to read. I read it for a class in grad school, for a degree in Digital Art & New Media. The approach the professor used for this, was that teams of 2 people...more
This is probably the most difficult book I ever attempted to read. I read it for a class in grad school, for a degree in Digital Art & New Media. The approach the professor used for this, was that teams of 2 people...more
So, I have been reading this book for over ten years. I open it to a random section, read a few pages, put it down, come back in a few months. It's a strange and difficult book.
During the weekend I read this.
During the weekend I read this.
"The multiple must be made, not by always adding a higher dimension, but rather in the simplest of ways, by dint of sobriety, with the number of dimensions one already has available—always n - 1 (the only way the one belongs to the multiple: always subtracted). Subtract the unique from the m...more
It was fun, it just wasn't that rigorous in the end. What I enjoy about the post-structuralists is that their writing is supposed to display implicitly how our language influences what we think, what conclusions or connections we can draw. To this end, the two authors have adopted a very unique, idiosyncratic framework which they then apply to psychology, society, human beings, etc., arriving at fresh outlooks on a variety of topics. Again, it was enjoyable precisely because of the sense of play...more
I am torn on this review and rating. On the one-hand I recognize this as one of the quintessential post-modern tomes up there with Lyotard's Postmodern Condition or Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge but on the other hand, the quixotic hubris in this text is almost overbearing. It really depends on how I am looking at the purpose of the writing. If i try to look at it like a true philosophical text with intended insight and description, it falls completely flat. It truly is the inane charti...more
Anyone who has touched this book will probably attest to its strangeness and difficulty. I went through this phase when I was really excited to figure out exactly what the authors had to say. I am not sure I ever got there, but I understood a good bit and then let go of it for a while.
Sometimes, with intellectual issues, it seems that the question shouldn't have been asked in the first place, or should have been asked differently. What's cool about this book is that the authors take full control...more
Sometimes, with intellectual issues, it seems that the question shouldn't have been asked in the first place, or should have been asked differently. What's cool about this book is that the authors take full control...more
This is a tough, tough read and crazy. This book just defies explanation. This will be one to revisit many, many times. If you're interested in Glissant, I would recommend reading parts of this book because Glissant uses Deleuze's rhizomatic thought as a founding notion in his Poetics of Relation for his nomadic thinking. Still struggling to get my mind around this books. There is something in here for everyone. Basically each plateau is a variation on one concept.
If you can make head-or-tails of this crap then this rating doesn't apply to you. It would probably be best if you read this outside a course with any expectations because if you're trying to figure out how you'll apply this to a paper as you read you'll never get anywhere. It's just strange and nonsensical. Even the most learned literary critic or psychoanalyst would have trouble following this text.
This falls in the the category of "extremely dense books that I'm utterly fascinated by and promise I'll read properly someday".
Instead, I went to see a documentary about people (artists, architects, etc... including DJ Spooky) who have been inspired by Deleuze's thinking. It's called Milles Gilles, directed by Ijsbrand van Veelen. It turned out to be pretty dull.
Instead, I went to see a documentary about people (artists, architects, etc... including DJ Spooky) who have been inspired by Deleuze's thinking. It's called Milles Gilles, directed by Ijsbrand van Veelen. It turned out to be pretty dull.
Tired of seeing everything from the point of view of the individual? Bored of anthropomorphism? This might be the book for you. This book changed the way I think about thinking. Swirls in your pot of boiling water will seem as complex and contingent as hurricanes. The migration of humans will look like the crawling of ants. Most importantly, though, Deleuze and Guattari show everything as a process of strategic movement through territory, whether it be the formation of layers of sediment or noma...more
Feb 11, 2010
DoctorM
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
critical-theory,
favourites
I could begin by saying that every lovely, black-clad Bookish Reclusive Dangerously Younger Train-Wrecky (BRDYTW) co-ed with whom I've been involved over the past twenty years or so has had a copy of "A Thousand Plateaus" on a bedside bookshelf, but this book is far more than a marker for lit-crit girls who prefer Older Lovers. I discovered this book back in the mid-80s, in the first flush of my exposure to critical theory and postmodernist thought, and it is one of the books that I've been enam...more
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Deleuze is a key figure in postmodern French philosophy. Considering himself an empiricist and a vitalist, his body of work, which rests upon concepts such as multiplicity, constructivism, difference and desire, stands at a substantial remove from the main traditions of 20th century Continental thought. His thought locates him as an influential figure in present-day considerations of society, crea...more
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