Digital Resistances - Digital Culture - page 142

analyses to questions of language, literature and music. The
complexities already evident in L'anti-oedipe are compounded by
Deleuze and Guattari's deliberate refusal to propose a central narra-
tive or theme for the topic. They refer to the sections in Mille
plateaux as 'plateaus', a term they derived from the anthropological
work of Gregory Bateson. Bateson had used the term to describe
the libidinal economy he found in Bali, which differed from that
in the West, with its emphasis on climax. Deleuze and Guattari
intended that the sections of their topic should not reproduce the
climactic and dissipative character of Western discourse, as mani-
fested in the traditional topic format with its culminations and
terminations. They hoped rather that each plateau would operate
as part of an assemblage of connecting parts to be approached by
the reader in whichever order they chose. As this might suggest
Mille plateaux is a complex and difficult topic, though, at the same
time, extraordinarily compelling, which is also a fair estimation of
Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy.
The complexity of Deleuze and Guattari's thought, especially as
demonstrated in Mille plateaux , makes any kind of précis almost
impossible. But it is possible to pick out some of the ideas that have
most obviously influenced those involved with new technologies
and information discourses (though this runs the risk of simplifying
and distorting these ideas). Three of their concepts in particular
have become part of the discourse of digital culture: machines,
assemblages and rhizomes. The first of these terms is introduced at
the beginning of L'anti-oedipe , where Deleuze and Guattari remark
that 'everywhere it is machines'. 25 Thus they describe throughout
the topic the actions of social machines, territorial machines, desir-
ing machines, producing machines, and even technical machines. 26
Each of these delineates the actions, couplings and connections
of different elements, such as that of the breast machine with the
mouth machine. (This use of the term machine is, as they are careful
to point out, not a metaphor, but meant literally. 27 ) In Mille plateaux