“This is a book that speaks of many things, of ticks and quilts and fuzzy subsets and noology and political economy. It is difficult to know how to approach it. What do you do with a book that dedicates an entire chapter to music and animal behavior – and then claims it isn’t a chapter? That presents itself as a network of “plateaus” that are precisely dated, but can be read in any order? That deploys a complex technical vocabulary drawn from a wide range of disciplines in the sciences, mathematics, and the humanities, but whose authors recommend that you read it as you would listed to a record.”
Brian Massumi, Translator’s
forward to Gilles Deluze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia.
“The radical-system, or fascicular
root, is the second figure of the book, to which of modernity pays willing
allegiance. This time, the principal
root has absorbed, or its tip has been destroyed: an immediate, indefinite
multiplicity of secondary roots grafts onto it and undergoes a flourishing
development. This time, natural reality
is what aborts the principal root, but the root’s unity exists, as past or yet
to come, as possible. We must ask if
reflexive, spiritual reality does not compensate for this state of things by
demanding an even more comprehensive secret unity, or a more extensive
totality.”
-D & G
p. 5-6